“I’m just asking you for time.” Desperate. This was what being desperate felt like.
“And you’ve got it. But I can’t be your long-distance maybe while you take it.”
“I just thought you’d, I don’t know . . .” Sweat tricked down Deion’s back under his shirt while the universe waited for him to finish his sentence.
“What?” Carlos tipped his head. “Fight for you?”
Yes.
“Maybe.” He knew he’d said the wrong thing, though, when Carlos shook his head, frowning again.
“This isn’t a competition between me and football,” Carlos said sharply. “I’m not making decisions about the rest of my life, the rest of our lives, based on trying to talk you into giving up something you love. Or into coming out while you’re in the NFL.”
“I don’t need you to talk me into anything.” He wondered if he made Carlos feel like he did, though. Deion hadn’t hidden how desperate he was to get back on the field. How much he dreaded the day when he would never play again. How shitty he thought life would be as an out pro football player. And maybe it didn’t feel great to be the guy whose presence was associated with all the worst outcomes Deion could imagine. Deion shivered as a chill hit him, despite the sun. “I just need to know you want me.”
“Want you?” Carlos stepped into him, linking his hands together behind Deion’s back like he didn’t give a damn if anyone walked out of his parents’ house and saw them. He leaned his forehead against Deion’s and whispered hotly, chasing away the chill. “Babe, I’d fucking kill to have you be a permanent part of my life. To choose me, and Miami, and Benji and Josh and the clinic. Or choose to do the long-distance thing, publicly, while you keep playing. You’ve got these amazing futures ready right here for you. But I’m not going to push you to choose me over the one thing you’ve wanted your whole life. Over the career you love.”
Carlos kissed him. And took a step back, letting him go.
“You go. Live your life. Make your choices. I’ll be right here, and if you decide I’m what you want, come home to me.”
The ride back to Josh and Benji’s apartment was a silent one. Carlos parked the car one-handed, because Deion was holding his other hand in his lap. Looking at him made Deion’s chest ache and there weren’t any more words to say.
He couldn’t say goodbye, so he squeezed Carlos’s hand, climbed out of the car, and braced himself to leave Miami alone.
* * *
The weeks after Deion flew back to Kansas City were rough.
And as much as Carlos appreciated that his friends wanted to be there for him, he couldn’t handle being around Benji and Josh right now. His emotions were still too exposed, his skin sensitive and prickly as if his entire body had been sandpapered raw.
When Benji texted him for the tenth time within forty-eight hours after Deion left town, Carlos had to shut that shit down.
Carlos: I know you want to help, but I need to lick my wounds right now. Think I’m gonna hole up and work until I don’t feel so fucking shitty. I’ll call you later.
And because Benji had known him since his first teenage breakup, understanding was swift to follow.
Benji: Here for you when you’re ready. Xoxo
Carlos threw himself into his work.
The side benefit of having a breakup—Jesus, we were barely even dating, so how come I feel this terrible?—overlap the start of a new show was he already had the perfect excuse to withdraw from everything except the theater. His own perfectionism demanded all his attention and time be focused on the new production, which was oh so convenient when trying to pretend to the world, and to his friends in particular, that his heart hadn’t been smashed flat with a hammer.
And that he wasn’t spending too many nights drinking too much beer and obsessing over football gossip websites again, the same way he’d done years before after meeting Deion once. Only now, every time he got another Google Alert for Deion McCaskill, the sight of those words on his phone or laptop screen brought back the kind of memories he hadn’t had to deal with before. Intimate, vulnerable, achingly needy.
He hadn’t called or texted, although he’d responded to some of the rare texts Deion sent during the first couple of weeks. But even that was too hard on his emotions, so eventually he’d just . . . stopped.
Two months later, he’d even managed to find some kind of equilibrium. Each day started with the same slow waking up in a bed that still felt empty, but most of his hours were good ones. Work was going well, there had only been one minor injury involving bloodshed on the set, which was some kind of record, and he’d only broken down and bought a pack of cigarettes to smoke away his stress once before swearing off them again.
So when a long crew meeting paused for a smoke/pee break and Carlos saw his abuela and several other numbers had left messages, he listened to them without hesitation.
Family dinner plans. A call from Brian and Nancy about scheduling time to get together and talk about the bunk beds he was going to make for the girls. A message from a director he’d worked with before about a possible upcoming job that might fit into the gaps in his schedule here, especially since he had a fuckload of free time these days.
Then another beep. A pause. And the voice that was carved on the bones of his rib cage, holding his unsteady heart in place as Deion spoke in his ear.
“This is fuck-up on top of fuck-up. I don’t know what I’m doing here, babe, but I know it’s not where I want to be. The coach here isn’t sure he even wants me, and the only thing I want is a thousand miles away and not taking my calls. I’m going to ask for a meeting tomorrow and tell them I’m taking myself out of consideration. And then I’m going to book the earliest flight I can find to come home. I miss you. I l— I’ll see you soon.”
Carlos bit his lip, attempting to hide the explosion of joy that was currently trying to bust its way out of his chest in front of the crew members who hadn’t gone outside for a smoke. Jumping up and down and shouting his head off was not the way to make a good impression when this was his first full-season contract with full responsibility for the set design. Not a trial run. Not a one-off for a single show. The real deal. He had a whole mess of people reporting to him and although the mood under this director was generally easygoing, some unexpected hiccups had everyone on edge.
He listened to the message on repeat a dozen times, his stomach tumbling each time Deion cut himself off before saying I love you for their first time in a voicemail message.
Break over, the director called everyone back to the seats they’d grabbed at the front of the theater. His joy concealment skills must have needed some work.
“Got something you wanna share with the class, Kelly?” the director asked sarcastically, as they all sat and Carlos slipped his phone back in his pocket. Shit had been going downhill for a week on this genderbent Shakespeare tragedy—one cast member currently on the downward slope of an addiction they’d hidden from colleagues that had resulted in a trip to rehab and another with a broken leg from a freak surfing accident—and the petite director with the big afro was on edge, her normal patience stretched so thin as to be translucent.
“Uh, yeah,” he admitted a moment later, grinning like a goofball because how could he not when this voice was still echoing in his ear, saying the words Deion had left on his voicemail. “My boyfriend’s coming home.”
“How nice for you,” the director said. “My girlfriend just left me for our dog walker. Can someone please tell me they’ve figure out how we can deal with Stella’s heretofore unknown fear of heights? I still can’t believe that girl never noticed this until she was going up that lattice. Pretty hard to stage this one if Romeo takes a header into the orchestra pit because she gets dizzy.”
Because he actually had figured that one out, Carlos jumped in to offer his solution and kept his smile tucked away for later.
Deion was coming home.
Epilogue
Deion joined Carlos in the shower.
> “Babe. This place is amazing.”
“Told you.” Carlos swept a hand through the spray and flicked it at him, missing almost entirely, shooting water over the chest-high wall that protected them from view.
Not that there were any people in sight. Just acres of treetops and, in the distance, the shimmering highlight of a sunset on the breakers crashing on the beaches west of Esperanza. From here, he couldn’t see the rebuilding work still going strong on the Malecón boardwalk, where only half the businesses devastated by Hurricane Maria the previous fall were operational again. The following months had been a nightmare of worrying about everyone on the island, while coordinating housing and work for friends and family who relocated, temporarily or permanently, to Miami. Deion had thrown immense amounts of money at relief efforts, both general and Acosta family in particular. Carlos, Carlos’s father, and dozens of Mr. Kelly’s construction workers had made multiple trips to the mainland to help with rebuilding in the past year.
And now that family members and friends were, at last, clambering back toward something that looked like normal but would always be scarred, Deion was doubling down on this latest contribution: pumping cash into the tourist economy, which Vieques in particular desperately needed for its recovery.
“When you’re right,” Deion said, pulling him close until their slick wet bodies slid against each other and kissing him until Carlos growled and pushed him under the water.
“I’m fucking right. Now wash, because Josh and Benji are going to be knocking on our door in twenty minutes, and we’re supposed to be ready to go.”
Deion shook his head. Silly man.
Lovely, wonderful, bold, strong, hardworking, funny, kind man. But silly too.
“If you think they’re not fucking right now, you’re crazy. Benji almost pissed himself with happiness when Josh told him they were coming with us.” Josh had talked to his parents, who’d gifted them with a pre-wedding honeymoon, since the clinic was closed for the next week during the most intensive stages of their remodel. Deion had already caught both his friends on the phone with their contractor multiple times during the trip to the island. He hadn’t told them he’d made three calls of his own. Now that he was an investor in the business, he planned to be an active partner. “There’s no way that didn’t translate into an I love you more than anime blowjob as soon as they hit their suite.”
Carlos turned to face the water and rinse off. He’d soaped up lather all over himself while Deion had watched from the long bathroom before joining him in the sun. The up-close view was even more spectacular.
“Where are we going for dinner tonight?” Carlos asked through the spray.
“The woman at the desk said there’s a terrific barbeque shack right down the road. They just reopened last month. She said we could even get there on foot, but we should take flashlights for the walk back, because there aren’t any streetlights and there’s still a lot of debris on the roadside.”
Deion was so fucking excited to eat, the only thing that could possible distract him was having a naked and wet Carlos spinning slowly under the shower, the red-and-golden glow of the sunset lighting up his brown skin like something out of the world’s most romantic and best-lit porno.
“Benji wants to drive,” Carlos reminded him.
They’d picked up their rented Jeep at the tiny airport, getting used to the local habit of stopping in the middle of the road for a chat with an oncoming vehicle, or stopping to let herds of wild horses or skinny cows stroll across the tarmac.
“If we remind Benji that we’ll be downing piña coladas like they’re going out of style, he might change his mind and join us,” Deion said dryly.
“I think he’s afraid we’ll get attacked by wild animals on the walk home or something.”
“Tell him I’ll protect him.”
“What about me?” Carlos asked, mock offended.
“You? You’re gonna have my back,” Deion said with a grin. “I’m not getting eaten by a wild horse, dude.”
He couldn’t get over how peaceful it was here, even with post-hurricane construction all over the place. And every time Carlos’s laugh broke into the quiet of the isolated property, Deion got the squidgy feeling in his chest again. The one he’d been unable to kick since the first moment he’d seen Carlos at Joe’s and discovered that no, he hadn’t been misremembering how hot that guy who’d stared at him years before had been.
“I can’t believe we’re here,” Carlos said, grabbing him by the hips and brushing their dicks together. “You and me. Our friends. When we were floating in that cove last summer, I didn’t believe this could ever happen.”
“I’m one competitive motherfucker,” Deion said, pushing Carlos back until he was pressed against the wall and they were wrapped so tightly around each other even the streaming water couldn’t squeeze between them. “You told me your dad took you on the best vacation of your life, and I just had to beat it.”
Carlos grinned up at him. “I approve of this kind of competitiveness.”
They’d had some rocky moments. Times when Deion’s depression and anger about having lost the NFL career he’d loved settled over him like a cloud, shadowing his newer, more fragile joys. Other times when Carlos’s tendency to get 100 percent myopic and absorbed in his latest stage design had led to Deion feeling totally sidelined by his own boyfriend. But they were working it out, walking that fine balance between the things they would change for each other where they could and developing ways to cope with the reality that they weren’t perfect humans and would always have annoying flaws and ways in which they irritated the shit out of each other.
“And I approve of you being here with me, fully present and not obsessing about work,” he said back, tossing Carlos a grin as they acknowledged their flaws.
“If anyone’s going overboard on the work obsession right now. . .” Carlos said wryly.
Deion winced, stepping back and letting go to rub his hands over his head. Shit. That answered the question of whether or not anyone had noticed him stepping away at the airport in Miami and then again in Ceiba before they boarded the single prop plane that took them from mainland Puerto Rico to Vieques.
“I’ll be good, I promise.” After all the times he’d given Carlos shit for being unable to disengage from work at the theater long enough to have an entire conversation or meal with him at home, he wasn’t going to turn around and inflict the same thing on Carlos now.
“I know you will. Because I’m going to keep you so busy fucking me, you won’t have time to worry about the remodel.” A wicked grin. “Besides, you saw the signs.”
“I did.” They really took their no technology philosophy seriously at the hotel.
But when he looked at their suite, open and wild and beautiful, with the highest of high-end sheets and towels and kitchen equipment—a gorgeous, indulgent mix of simplicity and luxury that hit his pleasure buttons like whoa—he was happy the owner’s architectural philosophy also included suggestions that guests limit their use of electricity and technology while they stayed at Hix Island House.
He could already feel the stress seeping out of his muscles and running with the cool water across the floor and out the drains in the corner of the invisibly sloped poured concrete.
“Now get your ass over here,” Carlos said, waving him back in close. “After five days at my tía’s, I’m dying for it.”
Carlos’s auntie had been lovely, insisting they stay with her during the time they’d spent in San Juan, before Josh and Benji joined them for the trip to Vieques. On one of his visits in the past year, Carlos had rescued family heirloom furniture—heavy, carved wood pieces—that had been damaged when Tía Daniella lost her roof in the storm. As far as she was concerned, it would be an insult if Carlos and his guest did not stay with her. And Deion had loved it, especially after she’d put out a spread of asopao, pasteles, mofongo, and arroz con dulce their first night. By the time he and Carlos—okay, mostly him—had decimated the spicy and s
weet dishes, Deion was pretty sure he’d endeared himself to her for life.
Tía Daniella had played tour guide too, taking them around Old San Juan to visit the fort, which had miraculously reopened two months after Maria hit. Instead of the foodie walking tour Deion had once dreamed of taking in San Juan, Tía Daniella introduced them to the bars and restaurant owners struggling to rebuild, some of them still setting up grills in front of damaged buildings, feeding their customers at makeshift tables in the street while hammering and sawing echoed all around. Deion ordered lavishly, tipped hugely, and broadcast every meal on social media, hashtagged #PuertoRicoSeLevanta. Then Deion proceeded to blitz every shop owner Tía Daniella knew in an orgy of gift-buying for everyone in both his and Carlos’s families, shipping dozens of packages back to the mainland.
He even bought a ton of stuff at the obvious tourist traps, sending the tackiest items to Tomás in Miami. Just because. Which would’ve been more amusing if Deion himself hadn’t ended up obsessing over a growing collection of tie and lapel pins, all carved wooden frogs, the coquí of Puerto Rico. Carlos had made him count them, so Deion knew he owned fourteen already, and had his eye on a fifteenth carved out of something called mahogany obsidian.
That, however, was the only orgy during their five days with Tía Daniella.
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