Three

by Chloe Lynn Ellis

  “I love you guys,” she says, leaning against us. “Thank you so much for doing this. I can’t believe you set it all up without me knowing.”

  “We work here, don’t we?” Johnny says, grinning down on her and looking… looking just transcendent. No other word.

  Just like she does.

  I could get used to this, making these two happy. Seems pretty clear that it’s what I want to spend the next fifty or sixty years doing, and even if that means riding a damn camel or drinking endless cups of that tasteless tea that Eden pushes on me, I’m down. It’s all I want, really.

  They’re joking around about the chief and Eden’s aunt, Johnny getting downright dirty and Eden blushing as red as one of the engines that the boys shined up and parked out front to make the place look more festive, when all of a sudden the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. You ever get that? A sense of being watched when there’s just no earthly reason for you to know it’s happening?

  Eden’s doing her damnedest to drag Johnny out to the dance floor, and he’s digging in his heels—because he knows damn well that he’ll look like a spastic moose on crack if he sets foot out there and probably drive Eden away forever, thereby ruining things for the both of us—when suddenly she catches sight of something over my shoulder that’s got her eyes widening.

  Exactly the direction I had that feeling from.

  “Oh!” she exclaims, dropping Johnny’s arm as her eyes dart to mine and then back over my shoulder again. She sucks that lower lip into her mouth and starts chewing on it, and me and Johnny turn at the same time.

  “Santi,” Johnny says, the first to recover. “Hey there. Hey, Nick. Uh…”

  He looks between me and Dad—Dad all stiff and uncomfortable-looking and me looking like I don’t know what, but probably not anything good as my stomach does its best to regurgitate itself—and I can read Johnny as easy as I always can. He’s torn. He’s pissed at Dad, I can tell and I love him for it, but Dad is also basically like his dad, and Johnny wants things to be right. Wants our family to be right again, so bad he’s practically vibrating with it.

  “It is good to see you, Johnny,” Dad says, sounding strained. “And… and you, Eden. Feliz cumpleaños.” Happy birthday. Then a stiff nod to me. “Mijo.”

  “You came,” I say, stating the obvious and managing to do it without puking, even though I feel a whole bunch of shit inside that’s the opposite of how happy I was just a moment ago.

  Why did he come?

  Is he gonna make a scene?

  Disown me, the way I guess I did to him all those years ago?

  I haven’t talked to him since storming out of his house a couple of weeks ago, and truth is, I can’t even think about him since then without wanting to shut down. For some reason, this last two weeks of estrangement hurts more than the previous eight years.

  Hurts more… but has also been more bearable, because of who I’ve got with me.

  Johnny and Eden sort of close ranks around me, both touching me in some way or another. A hand on my waist. An arm around me. Both making it clear where things stand by body language alone. And then we all just sort of stand there staring at one another for who knows how long.

  A minute?

  Ten?

  Fucking eternity, the way it feels?

  Finally, Nick clears his throat like he’s going to try to move us all along toward whatever purpose the two of them had in coming here today, and Eden springs into action, reminding me of her aunt for a minute even though nothing about her could ever be intimidating.

  “Johnny was just going to dance with me,” she says, holding a hand out to Nick and latching on to Johnny’s arm again with what looks like a grip of steel. “Join us, Nick?”

  It’s not an invitation, no matter how sweetly she’s smiling, and Nick gets it right away. I almost do expect to see him salute her, and I’m not sure if I’m relieved, grateful, or scared shitless when Eden hustles them away and leaves me and Dad alone a second later.

  I don’t get much time to think about it.

  Scratch that, I get none.

  “I am an ass, my Mateo,” my father begins, adjusting his sport coat and looking distinctly uncomfortable. He certainly fancied himself up for this. Broke out the hair gel and everything. “Nick tells me this, but he does not need to, no? I know it, and I am sorry it has taken me so many days to say it.”

  Oshit. Now I really am choking up.

  “I am an ass,” he repeats, reaching out to grip my upper arms. “But I am not an ass who is willing to give up eight more years with you because of it. Please forgive me. I do not want to lose you again, mijo. Not you or el hijo de mi corazón. Johnny, the son of my heart, no?”

  I want to forgive him. I want him back, too. But not wanting to lose me isn’t the same as accepting me, yeah?

  “We’re a package deal, Dad,” I say tightly, and we both know I don’t just mean me and Johnny. “This is real for me. They’re my forever. Both of them.”

  He sighs, letting go of me to pinch the bridge of his nose.

  For a minute, he doesn’t just look older… he looks old.

  “I know this, Mateo,” he finally says, looking up at me. “Nick and I, we come here. We do not know what to say or how to say it. I watch you with Johnny and with your Eden. I do not understand, but I see that what you say is true for you. You love them, and with love… well, it does not matter what I think, no?”

  “It matters to me,” I say, because no matter how much I might wish it weren’t true, it does.

  To my surprise, that makes Dad smile. The tension eases out of his shoulders and he claps me on the shoulders again. “I do understand this. It matters to me what you think, too. I will not give Nick up or live a lie for myself—”

  “I don’t want you to!” I cut in, because hello, I’m over that. I thought he was clear on that.

  Dad’s smile gets even wider. “Sí, sí, I see that this is true now, Mateo, and it means so much. So I will try to understand, too. To believe that it will work out and not hurt you, this love with so many people, no?”

  I snort back a laugh at that. I know the laughter is just my nerves, but for real, Dad makes it sound like I’ve got a harem or something. So many people? Last I checked, it was just Eden and Johnny.

  “It will work out,” I tell him, because that’s just God’s honest truth.

  Nothing else is gonna work for me, so whatever it takes, it’s going to happen.

  Dad shrugs one shoulder, but he’s still smiling. “I hope so, I do. And I am only telling you the truth right now, mijo. I don’t understand, but I will try. And more importantly, I know that I do not need an understanding. I just need to love my son, and that is something I have never stopped doing. It is why I don’t want things to be hard on you, not when it comes to who you love.”

  My turn to shrug. “Got no choice, do I?”

  Can’t have been any easier for him. Different, sure, but not easy.

  He laughs, and his eyes seek Nick out, out on the dance floor making even Johnny’s spastic moves look smooth.

  “Oh, shit,” I say, laughing as I catch sight. “Did you know about this?”

  “You see that I know about how things can be hard?” Dad jokes. “Taking him dancing causes injury.” Then he gets more serious, gripping my shoulders again. “I was scared of how it would be for you when you told me of your love, but I was wrong. You will get looks. You will get judgment. I know how this feels, but I was wrong. You have to do what makes you happy. You have to be with who makes you happy. Living any other way eats at you from the inside out.”

  I swallow. Dad’s saying that he felt it too, the thing Johnny said—that hiding it felt like cancer, growing inside him every day.

  Doing this today, letting the chief see where things stand with Eden and Johnny and me—letting everyone see—hands down, it was the right choice, no matter what comes at us in the future from some of the less open-minded guys around here.

  “Thanks, Dad,”
I say, meaning it. Pulling him to me and hugging him tight. “Thank you.”

  “You forgive me, then?” he says after a minute, sounding choked up, too.

  “There’s nothing to forgive,” I say, realizing it’s true. “I love you, Papa. I should have been the one to come to you. I’m the one who wasted eight years. I should have tried harder to keep you in my life this time.”

  “Pfft,” he says, waving me off as he blinks away the shine in his eyes. “With age comes wisdom, no?” He winks, then sighs, adding, “All love can be hard, Mateo, but it is even harder when we love different than others. That is all I wanted to protect you from, mijo. I still do, even though I know I cannot.”

  “But it’s worth it,” I say, looking back at the dance floor. Spastic moose or not, these people we both love look happy out there, and that’s what matters. I turn back to my father. “Right, Papa? It’s worth it?”

  He’s looking out at the dance floor, too, and guess I don’t really need an answer, not when it’s written so clearly on his face.

  “Sí,” he says simply, giving me that answer anyway. “It is worth every second of it. Every single one, Mateo. Don’t give up even one of them.”

  And I won’t.

  Not even one.

  Not ever.

  Epilogue

  Johnny—One Year Later

  Eden gives my hand an excited squeeze as Matty stands up to give his toast as best man. He looks sharp, kinda making me think we need to get him in a nice suit more often. Of course, the problem with that idea is that if he wears a suit, then it probably means I’ll have to, too—and just the thought of it makes me wince.

  “Stop tugging at your collar,” Eden whispers, taking a second to press a kiss against the side of my neck since she’s right there whispering and all.

  Best.

  Girlfriend.

  Ever.

  And no, I’m not just saying that because of the emergency blow job she gave me before the ceremony to help settle my nerves. There’s a ton of reasons, and hand to God, over the last year? Feels like I fall a little bit more in love with her and Matty both, every single day.

  Although, fine, if I’m being totally honest, the emergency BJ definitely makes it onto the leaderboard.

  I tug at my collar again without realizing it, and Eden laughs softly, taking my hand in both of hers this time. I already popped the top two buttons and loosened the stranglehold of a tie I had to wear as soon as the ceremony was done, so it’s not really that I’m actually feeling short on air, it’s just more nerves I guess. And not even my nerves… I’m just feeling it for Matty, since I know he was stressed about coming up with a good toast for his dad, you know?

  And… great. Now I’ve been fussing with this damn monkey suit so much that I missed the first bit of his speech. Not that I haven’t heard him practice it about ten million times over the last few weeks, but still, I do sort of feel like a shitty boyfriend for zoning out when I should be at a hundred percent, for like, supportive purposes and all.

  Matty looks like he’s got this, though.

  He looks solid.

  He looks hot as fuck, actually, but I mean, on the emotional front, he looks like he’s gonna make it through.

  “I wasn’t around the first time Nick asked my father to marry him,” Matty’s saying, and yeah, his voice goes a little husky, but he’s not bawling like a baby or anything, so I’m pretty sure he’s good. He clears his throat and goes on: “And that… that was my fault. The way I hear it, though, he put Nick off with a weak excuse that Nick chalked up to cold feet. Nick didn’t give up, though—”

  “Never,” Nick interjects, raising Santi’s hand to his lips and kissing the tips of his new husband’s fingers.

  The room titters with happy laughter, and Santi smiles at Nick like the two of them are the only people on the planet.

  And shit, seeing that? I’ve been teasing Matty all week about the possibility of him losing it mid-speech, but now it looks like I’m gonna?

  Unfair.

  Pretty sure he must’ve planned it this way.

  “Nick didn’t give up,” Matty repeats, smiling at the newlyweds—so big that it seriously starts to fuck with my ability to hold it together, what with him looking so happy and all. “And he asked Dad to marry him all over again a year later.”

  Matty pauses for dramatic effect, and Eden—a.k.a. Best Girlfriend Ever—pushes a tissue into my hand.

  “Dad said no,” Matty says, shaking his head in obvious disbelief at the poor decision. “Nick didn’t give up, though.”

  “Never,” a few people call out, laughingly repeating Nick’s earlier interruption.

  Matty laughs too. “That’s right. Nick may look unassuming, but that mild-mannered exterior covers a stubborn heart of gold. He asked my father to marry him again the next year, and again the year after that, and then the year after that, too. And every single time, Santiago Lopez said—”

  “No,” I mouth, right along with half the wedding guests.

  Santi’s laughing, cheeks a little red, but Nick’s looking at him like he hung the moon, and the two lean together and whisper something to each other that of course I can’t hear, but I kinda don’t need to, you know? Because it’s not the words that matter, it’s what I see on their faces. And since it’s exactly what I feel every single day for Eden and Matty? Catching a glimpse of that private moment’s got me dabbing at my eyes with that tissue Eden gave me, dammit.

  I mean, it’s dusty in here, just sayin’.

  “You’re such a sap,” Eden says, leaning against my arm with a happy smile.

  “You’re a sap,” I say back automatically, to which she smiles and laughs and gives me a happy sigh and whispers “I know” under her breath, like I just complimented her or something.

  Which, fine, not saying it’s a bad thing.

  I turn my head and press a kiss to her temple, since that’s all I can reach while sneaking it in on the sly in front of everyone like this, and besides, this isn’t the time or place for anything more. But it’s enough, you know? Enough to tell her I’m thinking of her, I hope. That I love and appreciate her. That she’s my sap… which, I mean, if you’re gonna go and get all technical about it, I suppose actually just proves her point about me being one in the first place.

  She looks up at me and smiles, and… yep. Fine. I’m a sap.

  “When Nick first told me how many times he’d asked my father to marry him, he was sitting at zero-for-six,” Matty’s going on. “I asked him if he was going to let it go. Because not great odds, yeah?”

  The guests chuckle as Matty goes on.

  “I asked Nick if he couldn’t just be happy with the life they’d already built together. If it was really so important to him to make it legal, to get a piece of paper with their names on it, to be able to use the word husband.”

  Matty’s been looking at Santi and Nick this whole time, but now his eyes find me and Eden and his voice gets quieter. Softer. Kinda makes it sound like he’s talking just to us, even though he’s got the whole room leaning forward to hear.

  “I asked Nick whether ‘husband’ would mean they loved each other any more. Whether getting married would change things. And do you know what he said?”

  “I do not know what he said,” Santi calls out, eyes sparkling. “I know that I was a fool for saying no so many times when my heart belongs to this man, to my love, but tell me, Mateo, ¿Qué dijo mi marido?”

  “What did my husband say,” Eden leans in and translates for me, since her Spanish is about two billionty times better than mine, even though she’s only been practicing for less than a year and I practically grew up on it.

  Well, you know, around it, anyway.

  “Nick told me that getting married wouldn’t change the things that matter,” Matt says, talking straight to his dad. “He said that being your husband wouldn’t make him love you any more. He said that that was impossible, because he already loved you with every breath. With every beat of h
is heart. That he had from the beginning and would until the end, and that whether or not you had a ring on your finger when that final day came, Nick planned on being by your side on that day—and every single one leading up to it, God willing.”

  “Damnnnnnnn,” I whisper under my breath, kinda feeling like I should be taking notes.

  Matty and Eden like to tease me about never shutting up, but truth is, when it comes to telling them what they mean to me? Which would be everything, thank you very much. Anyway, when it comes to that shit, truth is I’m not always the most poetic. I pretty much rely on the L-word to do the heavy lifting, and then go for things like trying to make them come a lot to get my point across a little further.

  I’m gonna have to remember that “every breath” and “every heartbeat” stuff, though, because you know what? That’s it exactly. Nick nailed it in one. Pretty much wouldn’t need either breath or heartbeat without these two, because what would be the point, you know?

  Eden squeezes my hand. “I love this part,” she whispers, dabbing at her eyes. “Santi’s so lucky. Nick’s such a romantic.”

  And okay, so two things here. One, guess I zoned out a little during the five gagillion times Matty practiced this shit because I don’t really remember this part of the speech, if I’m being honest, and since Eden does, guess that’s on me. And two, mental note: Eden wants more romance. I’m gonna have to give Matty a heads-up so we can do some planning, you know? Up our sap quotient and make our girl happy.

  Well, happier. Just sayin’, seems like the three of us do pretty damn good on the happy front, most days.

  Eden gives a happy little sigh again—happy, see?—and wipes at the corner of her eye, and I can see Santi doing the same. Oh, God. We’re a whole family of saps, aren’t we? How’d that happen?

  “Nick told me two more things,” Matty’s saying, still staring right at his dad. “He told me that he’d never stop asking you, even if it meant getting sixty no’s, because he never wanted you to doubt that this is forever for him.”