by Willa Okati
The smart thing to do would be to park the car and stay safely put until morning, or maybe retrace the roads until he hit civilization of some kind. Call Gavin and tell him what’d happened.
He’d forgotten the rings Gavin wanted. Fuck. All the more reason to turn back.
But if he did -- if he called Gavin from a city away and promised everything would be fine…
Ford could taste the fear like metal on his tongue, the sense of “too late” that had dogged him since he had left the bar. Sign after sign and the wind, that wind that never stopped --
Fallen power lines sent out showers of angry sparks. Sz! Sz! Sz!
Ford threw the 4x4 into reverse. “Off road,” he muttered. “Let’s see how off road you can get.” If he looked, really looked, he thought he could see lights reflecting off a small lake whipped up by rain.
Maybe he was wrong. Maybe it was just an illusion. Maybe not.
Trying was all he had left. Holding on to hope.
Ford wheeled the 4x4 around with clear road ahead of him, though mud churned up under the heavy crash of each fat, angry raindrop.
He drove, pointed toward Gavin. His everything. Praying he wasn’t too late for… for… He didn’t know, only that the gnawing sensation inside told him that minute where he could make the right turn was long gone by.
* * *
Oh God. Gavin had forgotten. Not just about the brochures. Now he recognized the shape of the hills. Even the roads they’d twisted around on. How had he not seen that before? Too excited. Too hopped-up on Ford. Gavin rocked on his feet, needing something to grab to keep himself from falling. And Donny was there.
Donny misinterpreted him. Same as always. Gavin only needed something to lean on, and Donny thought that was a “yes, please.”
Donny’s lips weren’t on his, and then… they were. Nothing like Ford’s. Only… they were, a little. The size of him, the way he tipped Gavin just so and knew how to kiss him to make his knees unsteady all over again.
“See?” Donny stroked Gavin’s cheekbones. “You do love me at least a little. If you didn’t, you wouldn’t have kissed me now.”
If Gavin kept his eyes closed, he could so easily have confused Donny with Ford.
He kept them open and spoke the truth without hesitation, without a stutter. “I don’t love you. Not anymore.”
“But --” Donny’s eyes were shiny. “It’s not supposed to be this way.”
That drew a spark of anger. “Wrong. Fool me once? Shame on you. Fool me twice? No.”
“But you -- I thought since I came back that we were getting past that.”
“You never had a thought in your life that you didn’t get from a play or a book.” Weariness made Gavin ache. “You’re just playing another role. The hero comes in and saves the day at the last minute. Wins him away from the wrong man. This isn’t a stage drama and you’re not my hero.” He stepped away from the door silently and with purpose. “Go.”
For once in his life, Donny stood like a tree trunk with no plans to budge. “But… this isn’t how it’s supposed to happen.”
He sounded so like Ford. It made Gavin’s insides twist.
“I came to rescue you. See?” Donny dug in his pocket for something that jangled. “Look. It was like a sign that you needed me. You left your keys in the door. That’s how I got in and found the brochures in the first place. If I hadn’t been there, you’d have been robbed.”
Oh God. Oscar. “You.” Gavin had to stop. “You went in. Did you leave the door open while you were there?”
“Maybe for a few minutes.” Meaning however long he’d felt like staying -- a minute, an hour. “Why?”
Gavin fought down crazy laughter that wouldn’t have made sense to Donny. “You let the cat out of the bag.”
“What?”
“My cat.” Gavin couldn’t stand still; he had to turn his back on Donny. “You let my cat get out. He’s wild. He won’t come back.”
“Gavin.” Donny followed him and placed his hand on Gavin’s shoulder, his touch so firm and yet so hesitant. Just like Ford’s. “I didn’t know. I’m sorry.”
Gavin could almost believe him.
“But he’s just a cat. You can get another cat. I can buy you one.” Donny sounded so bright, as if that would fix it all. “Like a new start, right?”
Gavin shrugged him off.
“I’m sorry,” Donny said. Repetition didn’t work. “I wouldn’t have hurt you on purpose.”
There. That was the last he could take. “Wouldn’t hurt me?” Gavin turned on him, expecting to be angry, to be furious, but when he looked at Donny, the fury melted away. He saw Donny as if he were a stranger. A confused little boy in a man’s body, who’d never grow up and never see past the next big adventure.
Gavin had grown past him long ago. It’d just taken him longer than it should have for him to understand that. “I spent way too long being hurt by you. I have a chance to be happy now. I won’t let you take that from me too.”
“But I love you.”
“The only man you ever loved was yourself. I love Ford.” God. But -- There. He’d said it out loud to someone besides himself and Ford, and maybe in a bizarre way it almost mattered more to say it to Donny. Or not so bizarre at all, if he thought about it.
“Ford --”
“Is the man I love. I’ll marry him, and he’ll marry me, because he is not you.” Gavin stood aside and held the door open. “Go.”
“One more chance, Gavin. Please?”
“There are no more chances.” Gavin shook his head, tick-tock, back and forth. “Go. No. Don’t lay your hands on me. Understand? Just go.”
Crestfallen, Donny moved back. Gavin could see the questions and answers running through him. Intense cogitation didn’t look good on Donny. Donny didn’t think; Donny acted.
Gavin knew he should have seen it coming. It was his own fault that he didn’t.
Donny covered Gavin with his body, lifted him high off the ground so that Gavin had the choice between falling or hanging on, and kissed him. Donny probably heard violins soaring in his head.
Gavin? Gavin saw headlights charging toward them, attached to the battered red hood of a 4x4. He saw Ford behind the wheel.
As Ford saw them. And when Gavin looked at him, he saw everything he’d never wanted from Ford.
An ending.
Chapter Eleven
Ford could have slammed his hand in the Jeep door; for all he paid attention, it might have happened, and he’d only have noticed once it had stopped his moving forward. He had eyes for one thing only. No, two, and for once Gavin wasn’t at the top of that list.
Donny in the door, Donny wrapped around Gavin, Donny’s lips on Gavin’s, and Gavin -- one wide eye on Ford, fists knotted, shoulders tight, half a second away from giving Donny a taste of Roger’s medicine. That helped.
Some.
He had to have noticed the headlights flaring bright and the slam of the door. Not even Donny was that clueless. He might just be that much of a bastard, though.
Ford knew he’d called that one, because only when he was within spitting distance and Gavin had raised his fist did Donny stop kissing Gavin.
Ford didn’t stop approaching. He backed Donny into the wall by the door and shepherded Gavin to one side. The whole maneuver took maybe five seconds.
Long enough for Donny to start sweating.
“I have zero time for you,” Ford said, “and even less patience. You’ve got two options -- you can walk away, or you can fall down. Right now I don’t care which.”
Maybe Donny was that stupid after all. “From what our Gavin here tells me, you’re pure sunshine and sweetness. You wouldn’t hit me.”
Ford sensed Gavin’s tension beside him but only heard silence.
“Wouldn’t I?” Ford took Donny’s fist in his -- weak, floppy fist -- and squeezed until he felt the grinding pressure of something on the verge of popping. Too easy, almost like crumpling a ball of paper. “Believe me when I
say you don’t know how fucking close you are to making me break a lifelong promise. Okay?”
“Jesus Christ, Ford,” Gavin said. He crept back a step, and normally that would have put Ford on high alert, but there was only so high a man could go before he went too far to come back.
Donny darted a look at Gavin, maybe to get his help on scoffing, or maybe just to get his help. Didn’t happen.
“Your choice,” Ford told him. “Do you want to fight for Gavin, or do you want to take me on? Think fast, or God help me, I will make the choice for you.”
Donny struggled. Away from Gavin. Ford let him go and watched him bolt in the opposite direction, heading for the tidy cluster of cars belonging to other renters. All of them were probably peeking through blinds and past curtains, woken from their sleep and trying to make sense of the ruckus. Let them.
His puling nemesis ducked into the farthest of the cars, a sleek silver coupe, slung so low you couldn’t see it unless you were on top of it. Donny revved the engine and drove, casting up a splash of mud, and then he was gone. Fitting curtain call, if you asked Ford.
“He always loved dramatic exits,” Gavin murmured, the slightness of his slim body’s warmth drawing closer to Ford.
“I noticed.” Ford hadn’t wanted to do this, hadn’t meant to do this, but he’d crowded Gavin where Donny had been. He made himself move back, because he was not that man, and by God, he would never do that to Gavin. But he could not control his voice, the volume, or the break down the middle. “Gavin. What the hell?”
Gavin wiped his mouth on his sleeve. He stayed put, watching Ford with that same old look, the one he’d worn when Ford had first met him. Small. Trapped.
No. No, not quite the same. Behind that fear, Ford saw anger rising to match his own.
“This is not what it looks like,” Gavin said. Quiet, so quiet. Ford heard the fury in the coldness where he wouldn’t have before.
It should have made him want to give way. It didn’t. God help him if he weren’t strung tighter than a garrote, which came out as disdain that he didn’t -- no, he did -- mean. “I know it wasn’t. God.”
“Ford --”
Ford wasn’t done. He’d had this bubbling inside him for too long now, and it was coming out now, no stopping it. “That?” He flung his arm out in the direction Donny had fled.
Gavin didn’t flinch from the swing. Ford would have been proud of him. If…
“That’s the man you loved. That’s the guy who you thought I was so much like that it scared you sick.”
“You’re hurt by that.”
“No shit I’m hurt.” Ford speared his hands through his hair. He came away with a strand or three pulled loose, not even feeling the sting.
“You’re angry.”
“You blame me? Jesus Christ, Gavin. If you ever thought I was anything like him --”
“That was before. I didn’t know you then. I do now. Or I thought I did.”
Ford stayed silent. What else was there to say?
Plenty.
Gavin moved forward now; he didn’t crowd Ford back, but he could have if he’d wanted. He could have hurt Ford with his fists if he’d taken a swing. A hammer could chip scars into brick walls.
“I’ve taken a chance on everything because I don’t believe that. I didn’t ask him up here, Ford. I had nothing to do with that.” Gavin enunciated each word as clearly as the tap of a silver bell, just as pretty and just as cold. Metal rubbing against ice.
“Gavin --”
“Shut. Up. I am not done yet.” Gavin hadn’t put his glasses on, and in the chiaroscuro half-light of the cabin, the brown of his eyes stood out too darkly against the milky paleness of his skin. “He found me. I left my keys in the apartment door because I was so crazy to come with you, I wasn’t thinking. He let Oscar out. I’ve lost my job because I cared enough to take a swing at a colleague.”
“Broke his nose.”
“Still not sorry.”
Ford wanted to say, still proud. He didn’t, couldn’t. If he opened his mouth now, he had no idea what’d come out. Nothing good.
“Don’t you fucking dare think that I’m playing games.”
“I didn’t --”
“If you think I’m trying to turn the tables and make someone else hurt the way I did, then I am leaving right the fuck now, even if I have to walk all the way to the main roads.”
Don’t leave me. Ford stopped. Above Gavin’s head, he could see the branches of the small shade tree waving in the wind. The first drops of rain splattered heavy at Gavin’s feet; the storm was here on the rush of the Jonah wind.
Ford didn’t say the words he should have. Signs, everywhere signs. The light cast crosses over Gavin -- X, X, X, X. He swallowed a thick knot of nastiness and shook his head.
Would you look at Gavin? On fire. Standing tall, proud, on his own.
He didn’t need Ford anymore, did he?
Four X’s of crossed light and shadow rested on Gavin when Ford looked him in the eyes. Ford would have said his heart had sunk if it hadn’t already been buried in the earth at his feet.
“Goddammit, Ford.”
Ford looked away. Didn’t mean to, but it happened, and in front of him, unseen, Gavin was as silent as a cold night’s grave.
“So where does this leave us? No. You tell me.”
Ford’s lips wouldn’t move. Don’t go there. Please don’t.
But he knew Gavin couldn’t have done as he’d been asked, not even if it’d made it out into the air between them, which seemed colder and emptier by the second.
“Ford.” One word, but it was enough.
“What do you want me to say?” Ford shifted. Another half foot of space separating them.
Gavin followed him. “I want you to say you still love me. Like I love you. I want you to say you still want to marry me. That’s what I fucking want, because I gave everything up for you. The way I changed my life, there is no going back. I want you to say it, Ford. Don’t you fucking dare not.”
“Gavin, please.”
“No.” Gavin was the one who pushed into Ford now, as Ford had pushed into Donny; Ford recognized that same cold anger. “You were gone for how long after you left? I might have thought you weren’t coming back. I didn’t. Where were you?”
“The roads were bad.” A fat drop of rain slapped the crown of Ford’s head and rolled down between his eyes. “There’s a storm coming in. Accidents. I almost got hit by a tree.”
“Uh-huh. You got a map. I see it in your pocket. You told me so.”
Ford knew where this was going, knew there was no hiding from it, and he would not try. He owed Gavin that much.
X’s swung across Gavin. They flashed across Ford too, with them this close together. One. Two. Three. Four. Sz.
“I asked you to get something while you were out.” Gavin pushed Ford one arm’s length away, his hand splayed open between them. “I trusted you to do it.”
“Gavin, don’t.”
“No, I know you. You’d have twisted the bark off a tree if you hadn’t been able to find anything else.” Gavin folded his fingers down, then out. They shook. “I want my ring, Ford. I want that fucking ring I gave up everything for.”
Ford couldn’t give him anything. His pockets were empty.
Gavin didn’t lower his hand. He rubbed his thumb across the still-bare space where, by God, Ford had intended -- had wanted -- a simple band of gold to shine. One he’d dreamed of time and time again. Now, nothing.
“I’m sorry,” Ford said. Not enough. He knew it.
Gavin did too. Ford could see it, the second the walls slammed down, and a black smirk, the kind he hadn’t ever seen on Gavin, made his pretty mouth ugly. “So that’s how it is. You changed your mind.”
“Gavin --”
“Don’t you lie to me, Ford. Don’t you fucking lie to me. Tell me why. I know you wanted to marry me. Tell me why you’re doing this to me a second fucking time, bringing me up to the edge and then walking away.”
“I’m not walking away.”
“Aren’t you?” Gavin drew farther away. There was almost a gulf parting them now. Ford saw the shine in Gavin’s eyes, the gloss of tears his stupid stubborn nature would not let him shed. “Then tell me how it really is.”
“Gavin, God! What can I say to you? What is there that’ll be anything like what you need to hear?”
“The truth isn’t? God. No, I know it isn’t. Say anything. I don’t know. I don’t care. I have no… idea… where your head’s at. Tell me what happened. Give me a sign.”
Gavin stopped cold. So did Ford. He knew that Gavin knew.
Ford knew that what came next would be bad.
He was right.
“Signs,” Gavin said. “You’re seeing them… My God, I am so stupid. I should have seen it before, and still you asked me, and still here I am. How long, Ford?” He’d found his voice at last, and he poured all his fury and fear into it. “What have you been seeing? Signs that tell you ‘no, bad idea, turn back now’? For how long?”
Ford wanted to move away from the questions hurled like knives that buried themselves deep in his heart. He said nothing.
“Weeks,” Gavin guessed. “Tell me.”
He had to. Even if it was the end. Wasn’t it the end already anyway? “Weeks,” Ford said.
Gavin shut his eyes. “Damn you.”
Thunder rolled across the sky. Rain hit the lake and then the pair of them. Though they were soaked to the skin in seconds, neither of them moved.
“You’re going to throw us away because of superstitious bullshit.”
“I thought you wished you could believe.”
“Not if it costs me this much.” Gavin came back, close enough to touch. “Or… is it… Did I do something wrong?”
“Gavin, no. God no.” It was second nature by now to touch Gavin, to cradle Gavin’s face in his hands.
“Then stop being a dick and say you’re still going to marry me.”
Rain fell thick, hard, fast. Ford almost couldn’t see Gavin, even as close as they were. He said one thing, but the world said another. Slipping away.
Maybe Gavin didn’t know some of the water on his cheeks wasn’t rain. Ford couldn’t tell. For himself, he knew. But only that and nothing more. “I can’t.”
