“It may not be much longer,” Julio said as he showed Spencer out. Spencer cradled the laptop with more care than he’d shown Oscar’s crystal. “I’ll keep you posted, okay?”
“Okay.” Spencer didn’t trust himself to say anything else. In the car, he reached for his cell phone and had started typing before he remembered that he couldn’t reach out to Del. Couldn’t tell him about Oscar. He’d been so focused on taking care of Del that he hadn’t noticed all the ways that Del took care of him—listening to him about his worries for Oscar or his troubles with a story, being a warm bulk to lean on, both figuratively and literally. And now that was gone, and he felt that loss acutely, a blanket for the chaos that was his life that he was never getting back.
Oscar hadn’t pushed him on why he’d broken up with Del, had seemed resigned to it, in fact. This was just who Spencer was, what he did. Trusted journalist. And Oscar was entrusting him with his legacy. He should be proud of that. Feel validated as a friend and a journalist. But it wasn’t the journalist who missed Del with every fiber of his being. And as he drove away, it wasn’t the journalist who cried, wasn’t the journalist who grieved for what he couldn’t have, wasn’t the journalist who tried to bargain with the universe for a different outcome for all of them.
Chapter Twenty-Three
“You know, for a guy who doesn’t like kids, you certainly end up around them a lot,” observed Wizard’s husband, Isaiah, as he prepared a snack tray for the kids playing in the living room.
“It was the least I could do. Monica was in a jam. They’re moving Donaldson from the surgical floor the psych unit, and she needs to be there.”
“So Uncle Bacon to the rescue?” Isaiah laughed. “And last I checked, you didn’t much care for Donaldson.”
Bacon made sure none of the kids were around before speaking. “Oh, he’s still pretty awful. But his wife is the sweetest woman. Way more tolerant than his stupid-ass opinions. And he’s been my teammate for almost a decade now. I can’t just walk away from that.”
“You’re a good guy.” Isaiah finished setting out the snacks. “Now prepare for the hungry horde.”
Bacon might be a good guy, but his time in the military had also taught him when to call for reinforcements. As soon as he’d landed babysitting duty, he’d called Isaiah and begged to come over with the kids. He’d made sure Monica was cool with that arrangement, and after her okay, he’d had the very surreal experience of booster seats in his truck for the first time.
Now the kids were all playing together, and sure enough, they came charging in like wild animals smelling the vegetables and crackers. He already knew from his prior experience babysitting when Donaldson had the surgery that these boys could eat and eat. But Isaiah was prepared, like a pit crew at an Indy race, bringing out even more food and drinks before shooing them back to the huge container of interlocking blocks.
“I owe you so big,” Bacon said to Isaiah. “Seriously, what do you want? Need to borrow my truck for hauling materials again?”
“I have my own now. Be sure to admire my shiny new landscaping logo on it when you take a look. And what I want is for you to tell me what’s going on with you. Mark’s been worried about you. You ghosted everyone for months, then all of a sudden you’re back and in super-helpful friend mode, but you don’t seem very happy.”
“I was seeing someone. We broke up. End of story. Tell Wizard I’m fine.”
“Tell Wizard what?” Wizard came loping in through the kitchen door, and Bacon had to take a step back to avoid Isaiah barreling right through him on his way to greet Wizard. Isaiah’s whole body seemed to vibrate with energy at the sight of his husband, and he all but launched himself into his arms. With no apparent mind for Bacon standing right there, they shared a lengthy, tender kiss. Their love was so palpable that it hurt, caused an ache right behind his sternum, watching them. Wizard had been gone on a training exercise a few days, but the way they greeted each other, one would think it had been months.
I want that. Want that in my life. It wasn’t the first time he’d had that thought while watching them before, but now it just made him ache because he’d been so damn close with Spencer. Everything he wanted right there, a heartbeat away.
His phone buzzed. Please. Please. Please. But the universe didn’t care about his pleas for Spencer to contact him, and the message was from Monica, who was on her way to pick up the kids.
“Did you binge watch that awful show while I was gone?” Mark was teasing Isaiah. “Bet you ate pistachio ice cream and hogged the pillows.”
“Don’t you guys ever have real fights?” Bacon groused.
“Real fights?” Isaiah blinked.
“Yeah, like, a fundamental disagreement. Something that can’t be fixed easily. What happens when you really fight?”
“We talk. A lot.” Mark swiped a handful of the kids’ snacks. “Recently, we went around and around about school—I want private school for the kids, and Isaiah wasn’t so sure, and yeah, I guess you’d call that a real fight. But no one slept on the couch if that’s what you’re getting at.”
“I’m not sure.” Bacon made a frustrated noise. “I mean, is there anything that would be a deal-breaker at this point. Not cheating. Some other sort of deal-breaker.”
“No.” Mark was quick on the answer. “We love each other. We’d talk it out. Work it out. Find a solution. Whatever it was.”
“Yeah,” Isaiah agreed. “There’s not really a deal-breaker if you talk enough, I think.”
Well, wasn’t that just perfect. If only love for everyone was that easy. Fuck. Must be nice to be living in a freaking storybook. All Bacon could do was grunt before he said something mean. Luckily, Monica arrived to get the kids, and everything was a happy chaos of toys getting picked up and car seats getting traded and goodbyes. Mark and Isaiah invited him to stick around for dinner, but Bacon didn’t want to be a third wheel.
Out in his truck, he wasn’t in the mood for music, so he flipped to his preset news station. Only to hear Spencer’s voice and have to pull the fuck over because for a second he thought he was having some sort of hallucination.
But no, Spencer was on an NPR program talking about teens who ran companies and invented shit. And fuck, Bacon missed him so much. His sinuses stung. He remembered when Spencer had been working on the pitch for this piece, how excited he’d been.
“There’s no deal-breakers if you love each other.” Wasn’t that what Isaiah and Wizard had said? He couldn’t buy in to their sunny optimism that love cured everything—he’d seen too much to believe that. But he’d also been trained to see no-win situations and find a way out. Work harder. Smarter. Faster. Never stop trying. Except he didn’t know how to do that here, how to get to a future where love still won out. But he wanted it. Wanted it so bad. And if it was a matter of hard work, could he really live with himself if he never tried?
* * *
The phone rang right as Spencer was fixing himself an espresso in lieu of a real lunch.
“He’s gone. I’m sorry.” Julio’s phone call was hardly a surprise. He’d called earlier in the morning to say that Oscar’s family had gathered. And Spencer didn’t immediately fall apart. He poured the drink down the sink and went to stand at his bank of windows in the living area for a long time, looking out at the city below. Less than an hour later, the phone rang again, and it too was hardly a shock—his old paper wanted him to write up something about Oscar for Sunday’s edition. Oscar had apparently specially requested that it be Spencer. Details, Old Man, details, right to the end.
And no way was he saying no, nor admitting that he hadn’t written in days. So even though it was still well before cocktail hour, he poured himself some of the whiskey that had been his last present from Oscar and did what he’d been putting off for days now and opened Oscar’s laptop. It booted up just fine, and if he’d been expecting some sort of dramatic, advice-fil
led note expressly for him, he should have known better.
That was never Oscar’s style. Instead he found impeccably organized files—the laptop every bit as carefully cluttered as his office had been once upon a time. The pictures folder was something he’d return to later, see if there were any that were worth submitting with the article he was supposed to write, but he didn’t want to get lost down that rabbit hole quite yet. The book’s file was easy to find. Heart in his throat, he clicked Open.
“It began, as most things in my life did, with a boy...”
And so Spencer was riveted. The next few hours, he didn’t move, didn’t eat, simply was riveted to Oscar’s long, rambling tale of his life. It needed an editor still, of course, someone to come along and help him cull the side jaunts, to find the narrative at the heart of book. But raw and unfiltered, it was Oscar at his finest.
Spencer laughed out loud to his empty apartment more than a few times, and when he reached the part about the early 1990s when Oscar lost a lover to AIDS, he cried, big, fat, sloppy tears that Oscar would have hated and chided him over. Oscar had never mentioned the lover to him, not once in the twenty years they’d been colleagues and friends. Reading the chapter, though, it was clear that this one was one of the great loves of Oscar’s life. He detailed a road trip up to Napa they’d taken, and Spencer swore he could see the man’s thin hair blowing and hear his laugh at something Oscar said. Their fondness for each other shone through with every word.
“I’m not asking you to be the love of my life here.” Del’s voice, light and teasing, filtered back to him as he took a break from the screen to wipe his eyes.
I want to be. That should have been his reply. He could see it now, could hear the words leaving his throat, yet he knew he never would have been able to utter them. And now it was too late. He wouldn’t be the great love of Del’s life. Del would find someone else, because of course he would. He was young and gorgeous and smart and funny and sexy as hell. Someone else would get that title, be the grand romance, and Spencer would be but a dot on the roadmap of his life, a momentary stopover on the way to the real deal.
But for himself... Yeah, he knew in his bones that this was it for him, the way Oscar’s lover had been the last time he gave his heart away. This had been his great love story, and he had ruined it. He had to live with that now, live with his choices. Bile rising in his throat, he returned to the book, read through to the end.
I thought I wanted to be remembered by my bylines, my stories, my prizes, and by the young careers I helped launch and the paper I put to bed each night, but in the end, I am the man who loved David, Christopher, and Calvin, who never knew but should have. And Roberto, who did.
Fuck. Spencer couldn’t breathe. Memories assaulted him. His first feature. First time on the front page. First magazine feature nationally. First time on the radio. He’d called Oscar after each of those, celebrating his successes. His portfolio, his prizes, his legacy as a journalist. The reputation he’d worked so hard to safeguard. Did any of it really matter?
He’d always assumed that Oscar and he were cut from the same cloth, married to their jobs. Same as Spencer’s father. What a shock to realize that was far from the truth for Oscar. Without really thinking, he picked up his phone and texted his father the question that wouldn’t leave him alone.
What is the love of your life?
The answer came in a few short moments. You.
Spencer was so humbled that he sagged back against the couch cushions. For over forty years, he’d assumed that art was his father’s one great love. But he’d been wrong this whole time.
The single-word answer was followed by a second text. Are you all right? Do you need something?
Yes, yes, Spencer did, but it wasn’t something his father could provide. He needed Del. Needed to tell him about Oscar, read him the good parts of the book, brainstorm what to do with the gift he’d been given. Did he really want Del to spend the rest of his life thinking Spencer had chosen a story over him? Did he want to be a distant man, like his father, never showing his true emotions? Did he want to bury his pain in work like Oscar had? There was only one answer to his questions that made sense, only one course of action he could take.
Chapter Twenty-Four
“Ready?” asked a SEAL from another team named White as they waited in a back room of a hangar on base for the Chief Petty Officer pinning ceremony.
“Not sure,” Bacon answered honestly. Both Bacon and White had missed much of the six week “induction period” that most new chiefs went through because they were deployed with their respective SEAL teams.
The ceremony would include all those who had recently made chief, not just SEALs. Because such a small percentage of enlisted people went on to make chief, the base made a big deal of the pinning ceremony, taking over a hangar so that family and friends could watch, having speeches and sharing traditions like having all the new chiefs sing a navy song—something Bacon was going to suck at. They wore their khaki dress uniforms, minus the cover—they’d get new hats with the new rank on them at the ceremony and would get their anchors pinned onto their uniform by someone special to them.
“Who is doing your pinning?” he asked White.
“My wife.” He looked about ready to bust from pride, wide shoulders rising. “It’s a good year for us. She just got her nurse practitioner’s degree, and I got to be there for her graduation. Now it’s my turn. We’re looking to buy a house. Maybe kids...” He trailed off with a dopey grin. “How about you?”
“My mom.” He was trying very hard not to think about Spencer. He would have had his mom do the honors regardless, but seeing White’s pride about his wife made his chest ache all over again. They could have had a future like that. Plans. Celebrations.
In the days since he’d heard Spencer on the radio, he’d almost texted or emailed two dozen times, but each time he stopped, not sure what to say that might make a difference. That and he’d been super busy with getting ready for the pinning ceremony—long days of activities. A sleepy, poorly worded text could come off as little more than a booty call, which wasn’t what he wanted. The best bet might be to talk in person, but that was going to have to wait. And maybe the longer he waited, the more likely he would be to come up with the right words.
All the new chiefs marched out together, along with flag bearers for the naval and American flags. The hangar had been decorated with red, white, and blue bunting and a lectern on a large platform for the speeches. Behind the stage hung a mammoth American flag and a smaller sign with the Sailor’s Creed on it, and off to one side was the ceremonial bell they would each ring. Metal folding chairs for the audience were arranged in front of the platform.
His mom was there, near the front, next to Curly’s fiancée, Rachel, and the senior chief’s wife. His mom had on a brand-new dress she’d sent him photos of—white with small red flowers—and a blue cardigan. He wasn’t sure he’d ever seen her prettier or happier, her wide smile telegraphing her pride. The many rows of chairs were crowded, mostly with people he didn’t know, but there were a few other familiar faces like Isaiah and their friend Maddox, a former SEAL, sitting together. And then, right as they turned a corner while marching, he glimpsed a profile he’d know anywhere sitting in the very last row.
Spencer.
Bacon almost missed his next step, and only years of training kept his face neutral. Or at least he hoped it was neutral and serious, as suited the occasion. But inside, his thoughts raced. Spencer had come. Here. To this. To watch him. That had to count for something, right? But then that was followed by a second, more dour thought, What if nothing’s changed? What if Spencer was simply being supportive? Maybe he didn’t even intend for Bacon to see him.
He tried to turn his attention to the ceremony. The chief they had selected for the anthem would have been at home singing at the World Series, with a deep rich baritone. Then came the speech
es, and ordinarily, they would have bored him, but today felt different. Important. He’d worked a decade to get here. From the moment he’d joined the navy, he’d looked up to the chiefs and senior chiefs, and getting to join their ranks was special. His heart hammered hard as two SEAL chiefs carefully placed his cover on his head for him. They straightened it with the care Bacon might give checking his parachute rigging, and whispered congratulations to him.
Because of his last name, he was one of the first chiefs pinned. His mom came forward, hands visibly trembling as she pinned on his anchors. Tears shone in her eyes, and a lump the size of the bell he was about to ring formed in his throat.
“I’m so proud,” she whispered.
Cameras flashed, and he very deliberately did not look at Spencer in that moment, needing to stay inside himself to keep the swarming emotions at bay. After ringing the bell, he marched to the center walkway as the announcer said, “Chief Delbert Lawrence Bacon, Junior, SEAL teams, arriving.”
A whistle blew and the color guard saluted him as he walked through, a ceremonial “piped aboard” tradition he’d anticipated for years. It was then, and only then, once he’d walked through, that he let his gaze return to Spencer. Their eyes met and held, and his chest tightened, emotions again rising as he saw all the pride and love he’d seen on him mom’s face there on Spencer’s. He’d waited what felt like an eternity for some person to look at him like that, that sort of unconditional love brimming in their eyes.
But it’s not real, a little voice tickled at the edges of his thoughts. There were conditions on Spencer’s love, and his motives in coming had yet to be revealed. But still, he couldn’t help the way his heart trilled, the way his pulse galloped, or how reluctant his eyes were to leave Spencer. He might never see that look again, and he wanted to wallow in it.
But all too soon it was the next chief’s turn and so on as the whole group received their anchors and were piped aboard. The whole time his mind was reeling. Would Spencer leave before they could even talk? Did he want to talk? He let those thoughts rattle around through the rest of the ceremony. Afterward, everyone was milling around, congratulations and best wishes flying as countless pictures were taken. When he’d made E-4 and gotten his crow, tradition said that his teammates “tacked on the crow” by hitting his biceps. Now with the anchors, everyone kept hitting his collarbone where the anchors were and he was pretty sure he was going to have a bruise later from all the good-natured “pinning on.” Friendly hazing from his fellow chiefs would surely follow in the coming days too.
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