by Zoe Lee
Pretty soon, the rapids were picking up and we were definitely no longer on a beginner-level part of the river anymore. My muscles flexed and strained pleasurably and the noise of the water grew, and like a lot of summer rains out here, the sky stayed blue.
“This is awesome!” the tour manager shouted from the front of the raft.
We went into a more challenging stretch, with more rocks and fairly small drops, bouncing and hollering as we went faster. The publicist with us bounced high in the back and shrieked, then laughed her head off gleefully once she’d landed again.
“Shit, girl, I thought you were gonna take a header right into the river!”
“Now that would be a great story,” she yelled back, grinning ear to ear.
“You could have even gotten a cool scar,” someone else shouted.
“Scars are badass!”
“It’s about to get rougher, folks!” the guide called, and everyone cheered.
All of a sudden, dread cracked through me and I shivered violently, losing my grip on my paddle for a second. My heart pounded and I swore the sky darkened to near blackness, and the cold water felt like it was slithering into my wetsuit like icy worms on my skin.
If you have life insurance, I’d like to be the beneficiary. It’s sure to pay out shortly.
One of Eliott’s first texts echoed in my mind as if I were hearing him speak to me.
“What am I doing here?” I whispered.
“Gavin!” the person next to me shouted. “What are you doing? Help me steer!”
“S-sorry,” I stuttered, feeling like I didn’t have control over my fingers as I started to panic, unable to get my paddle at the correct angle to help keep us on course.
We shot over a drop and I honest to God thought I was going to throw up mid-air.
We hit at a sharper angle than we should have because I hadn’t done my part right, but I swore and jerked back into action, levering my body weight quick and hard to correct it.
“Damn, son, I thought you were going to pass out,” Barley joked from in front of me.
“Me too,” I muttered, but he didn’t hear me.
The rest of the trip was maybe two more hours, but it felt like pure hell. My heart never slowed its frantic thumping and I spent every ounce of my concentration to do my part paddling and steering. Everyone shouting in excitement and laughing joyously around me was like bees buzzing around my ears, distractions that made me flinch to try to escape.
When we were finally done, the raft up on the rocky, muddy shore, I fell out and couldn’t catch myself, hitting the ground on hands and knees, feeling the sting of scrapes.
“Shit, fuck,” I hissed.
Someone hooked an arm around my waist and hauled me to my feet.
Dazed, I looked up to find Rathbone, one of the band members, holding onto me. “Steady, Gavin,” he said quietly while everyone buzzed around us, not seeming to notice. “You look pale as death. Are you okay? I’ve never seen you so uncoordinated before.”
“I—”
My esophagus felt like it torqued in my throat and then I turned away and threw up.
“Whoa!” Barley yelled, skidding into my periphery immediately.
“You’re okay,” Rathbone murmured in his classy voice, his hands soothing over my back. “He’s okay, Barley, just had a bit of an existential crisis on the trip, I’d wager.”
“You did?” Barley sounded confused.
I felt everyone else crowd around before they started asking questions.
“Barley, get everyone loaded up, we’ll be right there,” Rathbone instructed.
“Sure. All right, y’all, get going that way, Gavin’s fine, give him some damn space!”
I concentrated on breathing and getting my throat to open, then unscrewed the lid of my water bottle with unsteady hands so that I could take careful swallows of water.
“Want to talk about it?” Rathbone offered once I’d blown out a big breath.
“I’ve always been a daredevil, and it’s never for a second given me any guilt or hesitation. No one in my family pesters me to quit, so it’s not like a rebellious thing,” I explained. “But, I don’t know, everyone was crowing about the pretty tame danger, then we went over a drop and I…” My shoulders went up in a tight jerk and then I looked up at him, feeling defiant, my mouth mulish. “No, it’s not a mystery or something that snuck up on me. I’m in love with my boyfriend and I haven’t told him, and he hates all this kind of stuff, and—”
All the air sucked out of my lungs and I couldn’t finish, the defiance draining out.
“You’ll learn how to balance it,” Rathbone replied with his signature self-assurance. When I looked over at him with a frown, he smiled and elaborated, “It’s nice, better than I ever thought it could be when I was young and completely free of responsibilities, to have someone you love out there. Someone you love more than, say, playing outdoor concerts in lightning storms, someone who needs you to be safe, but also wants you to be happy.”
“But you’re still out here, and I know you have someone out there,” I countered.
His lips quirked. “Has your man demanded that you stop being a daredevil?”
“No,” I denied immediately. “He’s just kind of… haughty about how reckless it is.”
Rathbone chuckled and started to lead me gently towards the others. “You’re not reckless; you mitigate risks by taking classes or getting certified and having expert guides, so you can have fun but be as safe as possible. He’ll get used to it, and you’ll reassure him.”
“How do I reassure him?” I asked.
“Just a suggestion—sex,” Barley boomed from right behind me.
Everyone cracked up and I shoved him in the shoulder, not that it moved him much.
“Life-affirming sex is as intense as make-up sex, but you don’t have to fight first!”
“Not the worst suggestion you’ve had,” I admitted. I caught Rathbone’s eyes and added quieter, “Thank you. I haven’t been in a real partnership before and I get all jumbled up.”
“Try telling him that,” Rathbone advised, rubbing my shoulder in reassurance.
Determination and the advice smoothed out the cracks my panic had caused and I nodded. The only reason that I hadn’t told Eliott yet that I was in love with him was because I didn’t know how and an opportune moment hadn’t come around naturally. But I was almost completely sure he was there too, so I really wanted to tell him, and then… level up.
Whatever that looked like, since I wasn’t anywhere near ready for, like, marriage.
There were a thousand things to do before that, I just needed to figure out which ones I liked best to show him that I was committed, that I was serious, that I’d never leave him unless I absolutely couldn’t control it, like an alien spaceship crash-landing on my head.
Chapter 37
Eliott
Gavin was sprawled across me, muscles still spasming sporadically in aftershocks from our midafternoon reunion. It had been hungry and intense at the beginning, clawing at each other’s backs and asses and getting as close as we could. But somewhere in the middle, he’d throttled way back, not on the intensity but on the tempo, lacing our fingers together on either side of my head. Our eyes had clung together, and I’d wrapped my legs around him, shivering with every slow, possessive push of him into my prone body.
We’d certainly gone four days without seeing each other since we got together, but something about this trip had been different than the other ones. Maybe it was the way my love for him was still compounding with every teasing challenge, every kiss, every date. Maybe it was that our boring versus daredevil dates bet was over, and there were no more pretenses or distractions when we were together, making that time even more special.
“So I got these scrapes on the rafting trip,” Gavin slurred into my neck, one of his hands sluggishly floating into the air sort of over my face to show me the fresh scabs.
“Those are booboos,” I corrected him in a
s prim a tone as possible.
“The ones on my knees are scrapes,” he argued. “But I can’t move my legs right now.”
I laughed brightly, my fingers sifting through his hair spilling down his back. “Are you pointing them out to garner sympathy? Because I already kissed it better, sweetheart.”
He groaned and agreed, “Yeah you did.”
A minute went by and all he did was melt sideways a little so he was more on my side than directly atop me, so I prompted, “So you sustained negligible injuries while rafting…”
“I had this really beautiful thing planned out, but I’m high on endorphins from this perfect romantic-cum-sexual encounter we just had, so I’m just going to say it without embellishment,” he replied, dragging his head and shoulders up enough to meet my eyes.
“Hm?” I encouraged him, rubbing my thumb over his sweaty collarbone.
“I”m madly in love with you, Eliott Navarre.”
My heart stumbled in my chest and I sat up so fast, my forehead cracked Gavin’s nose.
Horrified, I tried to pull my arm out from around his shoulder as he clapped his hands over his nose, which was pouring blood, and smacked his ear with the flat of my head.
“Hold still,” he shouted, then spluttered as some blood dripped into his mouth. “Yuck!”
“Did I—did I break your nose?” I shrieked, my hands flapping around mid-air. “I definitely heard a crack, that’s what it sounds like when you break your nose, right?” Gulping, my body going hot and cold as blood started to drip from underneath his hands onto his chest, I disentangled myself from him as though his skin was electrified. “We have to go the hospital, that’s so much blood—oh my God,” I moaned, swallowing hard, “I’m—”
Something like a wet snort emerged from behind Gavin’s hands. “Baby, calm down.”
My jaw dropped so fast, it practically unhinged. “Are you serious? I maimed you!”
“It’s not broken,” he stated, actually rolling his eyes at me. “Help me get off your expensive sheets and go stop the bleeding in the bathroom. Blood is easier to clean off tile.”
As I helped him off the bed, I wheezed faintly, “If you’d given me a cleaning tip about literally anything else than blood, I would’ve been turned on.”
“I have tips about puke, pus, piss, earwax—”
“I didn’t mean to say ‘literally,’ but I’m not at my best after breaking my boyfriend’s nose!” I cried as he kicked my bathmat aside and sat on the closed lid of the toilet.
Moaning in distress that I’d hurt him and that I didn’t have the fortitude to be cool under pressure, I snatched one of my hand towels off the counter and shoved it at him.
“I’ve broken my nose before,” he said, the words really muffled because he was swiping the towel across his mouth and chin, the center of his chest stippled with droplets of blood. “It sounds like a pop inside your own head,” he went on as he put the towel over his nose and pressed his hands over it again to apply pressure. “This is just a bad hit.”
“Bad hit? No way, we’re going to the hospital just as soon as you’re a little cleaned up—wait, I should get the New York Strip from the freezer, you can put it on your face—”
One of his hands, sticky with blood, grabbed my wrist, making me wince but stop. “You put steaks on a black eye, not a bloody nose,” he explained authoritatively. “And I’m not going to the hospital. I just need you to not freak out. And be really graceful. No flailing.”
“You—” My brain snapped back online and I remembered what it was Gavin had said that caused me to freak out and flail in the first place, and I gasped out, “Gavin, you said—”
“This is karma for blurting that shit out while too fucked out to be romantic,” he groaned, gently tipping his head forward until the crown rested on my bare thigh.
Carefully I gathered up all of his long, loose hair so it wouldn’t slide around to his face and get bloody, concentrating on how much I loved touching him even like this. Patience had unwound in me, and there was no way I was going to rush this moment, because no one else had a story like this about the first time their boyfriend said he loved them.
“I might have wanted to knock some sense into you now and then,” I whispered as I tugged the hand towel away to inspect the damage, cupping his chin, “but metaphorically.”
He looked up at me, his one-of-a-kind violet eyes big and vulnerable, and he breathed, “Your cock is four inches from my face and it’s not even a little bit hard, this is the worst.”
“Well, I’m leaving that out of this story,” I murmured, then utterly lost my composure when Gavin started to twist his face up to make fun of me, and then yelped in pain.
“You maim me, and now you’re laughing at me!” he groused, pinching my waist, but it only tickled me, making me laugh even harder so his expression soured. “Karma is a bitch.”
With a last couple puffs of silent laughter, I stepped around him to the sink. Turning on the tap, I dipped another hand towel in the lukewarm water and wrung it out. I cupped the back of his head feather-light and dabbed at the blood on his face, glad to see the bleeding had stopped. His eyes slid shut and he reached up to clasp my arm tightly. His brows were knit and his shoulders were stiff, strained from having his declaration unanswered.
Taking a quick, fortifying breath, I said quietly, “I’m madly in love with you, too.”
His eyes flew open and his fingers dug into my arm. “I didn’t fuck it up?”
“No, sweetheart,” I assured him. “But why did you… say it like that?”
Grimacing, he took the towel from me and scrubbed at the rest of the blood with less care than I’d been taking, impatient to get clean. Then he threw it in the tub, making it smack into the side before landing on the bottom with a splat of pinkish water.
“Did you expect some candlelit dinner with rose petals or something?”
The words were defensive and sharp, and I leaned against the wall, crossing my arms. “I was expecting to say it first,” I said at last, considering him with my head tipped sideways. “I’ve been feeling this way for a while and I was trying to find a way to make it special.”
He scoffed and jerked to his feet, a flush spreading over his cheeks around his swollen, bruising nose, and I felt guilt swamp me even though it had been an accident. “I thought you would just be happy for me to say it in an honest way, even if it wasn’t special timing!”
“I’m fine with it being honest and spontaneous, I just… I just would have liked something a little more serious,” I argued, hating everything about this, but like we’d always agreed, it was best to be yourself. “I haven’t felt this way about anyone in a very long time. Last time it was a total imitation of love compared to what I feel for you. I was putting together the words to show you how serious I am about this, how I want everything—”
“And now I’m not serious about you?” he interrupted, hands curling into the tops of his thighs and making red divots when they flew up to wave around wildly. “You should try cutting me a break because maybe I was going to say more, except you jerked back like I was going to throw up on you or something, and made my nose bleed, so I couldn’t finish right then. Maybe I was going to say all sorts of romantic, sappy, serious things!”
His chest was heaving, and he whirled around and stomped into the bedroom, then hopped around yanking on his underwear and pants, and I frantically tried to gather up my thoughts so I could salvage this, feeling like shit. But I took too long, again, because he’d already tugged on his shirt, leaving it unbuttoned, and was going for my door.
I rushed after him, my heart in my throat. “Where are you going? Don’t leave like this.”
“I’m not leaving,” he shot back, throwing my door open so hard it slammed into the wall. “I’m not running. I just need to be alone for a fucking minute to figure out how to prove I’m not a dumbass daredevil who will ruin moments that are supposed to be perfect!”
Perfect broke in the middle, and
his face crumpled before he shut it down with dignity.
“Gavin,” I started, reaching out.
But he ducked away from me. “I will figure it out, I promise, Eliott,” he declared in a low, deadly tone I’d never heard from him before. “You deserve—you deserve perfection.”
“It was stupid, I shouldn’t have…”
“No, I always want honesty,” he said quickly, even as he edged out onto the porch. “I’ve never done this before and I knew I should’ve asked for better advice than just tell him. I-I’ll call you tomorrow, okay? We promised we wouldn’t hide and I’m not, but I need to think.”
I felt my eyes blur with oncoming tears, but I swallowed hard. “Okay. I-I’m sorry.”
He shook his head again and then darted off the porch, into the shadows under the trees on my lawn, and I braced my hands on the walls to either side of me, body sagging.
When I could move again, I shut the door and stumbled up to my couch, swaddling myself in a blanket and reaching for the tissues. I had assumed he had never said I love you before, but he did new things with confidence and bravery all the time. It had never occurred to me that he’d have trouble finding enough of either to be honest and tell me the second he felt it. It had never occurred to me that he worried too about doing it perfectly. How could I make this up to him? How could I show him that I didn’t need perfection?
Chapter 38
Eliott
Two days later, I was still on the couch, but now I was wearing my softest tee shirt, from Chicago Pride years ago, and my sad day pajama pants with cats holding wine glasses. A playlist of sad violin pieces was on and a plate of barely-eaten microwaved mozzarella sticks was on the coffee table, judging me for having even bought them.
Gavin hadn’t called me yet, but he’d texted a few times. The first time was to tell me that he’d gotten home safely, but he wasn’t up for talking. I’d cried a little and called Asher, who only made fun of me a little before he helped me brainstorm what to say to Gavin. Then yesterday I’d gotten four texts, about two hours apart, that had said each time, I’m still here, but I’m not ready to talk yet. Early this morning, I’d gotten one that just said, Soon, baby.