Come Home

by Raleigh Ruebins

  I helped him get the rest of his shirt off. “You need sleep,” I said. “But I promise you—promise—I will not be forgetting a word of what you just said to me. And I’m going to need you to make good on those words.”

  I helped him into bed, and he sighed happily as his head hit the pillow.

  “I love you, Pepper,” I said.

  “I love you so much,” he replied.

  “Now, Gavin, this does have a little bit of salt in it. And—I wasn’t going to admit it, but there is some butter, too.”

  Caleb slid the plate onto the bar. It was a gorgeous display of roasted potatoes with rosemary and a small but perfect filet mignon.

  “I think I could die right now and I’d end up right here, because this is heaven,” Gavin said.

  “Oh, so you think you’re definitely getting into heaven, huh?” Caleb said with a smirk. He was in his black apron, the only required uniform in Luna’s Diner. We were here for a celebratory dinner—celebrating a little bit of everything, really: my birthday, albeit a week late, Gavin’s new plan of action with Alto Ventures, the end of my teaching year, and last, but not least, Gavin finally being allowed into Luna’s again.

  That was something to celebrate, indeed.

  The diner was busy as ever, and as we walked in, more than a few people had made it a point to get up and give Gavin congratulatory slaps on the back and high-fives. It had been a full week since his appearance on All Around Kinley, and slowly but surely, the island was lavishing him with praise. We’d managed to find two free blue leather seats at the bar, the perfect spot to perch and bug Caleb as he worked.

  “I didn’t know he actually cooked here,” Gavin said in my ear as Caleb made his way back to the cooktop.

  I nodded. “Two days a week, when the main cook isn’t here. The other days he waits tables.”

  “Christ,” Gavin said, putting down his fork after tasting the roasted potatoes. “That is one of the best things I have ever eaten. And I haven’t even tried the steak yet.”

  “Caleb is good,” I said. “It was a struggle for him to convince Marcie to start buying filet mignon, but when she finally relented, the things have been selling like hotcakes.”

  “I imagine the hotcakes also sell like hotcakes, here,” Gavin said.

  “Oh no. You’ve only been in Kinley this long and you’re already making dumb jokes like I make,” I said with a groan. “I’m such a bad influence.”

  He smiled at me, reaching out to squeeze my thigh under the bar.

  Gavin looked better than he’d ever looked. His bruise along the side of his face had mostly healed, and though he’d always been attractive, he looked genuinely relaxed for the first time ever. He was wearing a loose linen white button-down and tight dark denim, but he also seemed comfortable in his own skin. Not a practiced, effortful attempt at positivity and relaxation, but the real deal.

  And it was an amazing feat, because in the week since Gavin’s TV appearance, things had only gotten more hectic. I had my final week of school, which was a flurry of final exams and lab reports and students begging for extra credit. The last of the final exams had been turned in yesterday, and though I still had a mountain of grading to do, I was for all intents and purposes free for the summer.

  Gavin and I had both been so busy that we’d barely seen each other other than in the evenings, where one or both of us would inevitably pass out long before eleven o’clock. He’d spent the night in my bed every night, though—even now that he had a perfectly fine bed at his own place.

  Being able to turn over in the middle of the night and nestle into his arms made me happier than I could ever admit.

  “So, is Royce still trying to kill you?” I asked. “And can I please perform a citizen’s arrest on him, already?”

  Royce had quit his position, effective immediately, the night of the TV appearance, but he’d still been sending Gavin unsolicited messages almost daily.

  “He’s not worth your time, or mine,” Gavin said, shaking his head. “He kept threatening to continue on with the bridge project without me—told me he was going to get a position with one of the other firms investing in the project. Mayers-Carr Investments. But I know one of the owners, Carolyn Carr, and she never liked Royce. She always used to tell me to fire him, but I… of course, was trying to be positive about everything.”

  “You always do,” I said.

  He nodded, rolling his eyes. “Being positive has helped me with a lot in my life, but with Royce, I should have known a rotten egg when I smelled it. He always had good numbers and amazing productivity, but he was… so impersonal. He didn’t care about people.”

  “No surprise that he’s friends with Marshall Barrowfield, then,” I said.

  “But Vance told me some good news this afternoon,” Gavin said, turning to me after having a piece of steak. “At least two of the other firms are out of the bridge project. They saw what I said on TV and they don’t want to get involved in something ‘volatile,’ apparently. And Mayers-Carr was already out the second I pulled out, because Carolyn respects me.”

  “Shit,” I said, a smile spreading over my face. “So maybe… even if Royce tries to continue on with the project, he probably won’t have enough funding.”

  Gavin nodded once. “My firm was the one willing to pony up the most money. Mayers-Carr wasn’t long behind us. So if all Royce has is a few smaller firms, and none of the contacts that were mine and mine alone… he probably doesn’t stand a chance.”

  “That’s amazing,” I said. I leaned over, pressing a kiss to Gavin’s cheek.

  “Oh!” a shout came from behind the bar, over by the shiny espresso machine. We looked over and saw that Marcie had walked in from her break. She was looking right at us, a huge smile on her face as she approached. “I’m sorry,” she said, popping a hand over her mouth for a second. “I just—it’s too cute. The two of you. It’s picture perfect. I wish Barbara were here to see this.”

  Gavin smiled, his cheeks a little red. I realized that even though I’d just kissed him on the cheek, it was the first time that I’d made a gesture like that in public, in open view of the whole diner.

  “Welcome back in, Gavin,” Marcie said. “This meal is on me.”

  “Not a chance,” Gavin said.

  “Oh, but it is,” she said, nodding. “I’m so glad to have you back. And you get a free slice of pie, too. Or maybe a cup of fresh-cut strawberries. I respect your health goals, you know.”

  “And it’s that kind of support that makes me love you, Marcie.”

  “I love seeing you two together,” she said. “I always thought you’d make good boyfriends, but when Gavin moved to the city… I didn’t know. You’re both cute as a button.”

  “Oh, we’re not—” I said, looking to Gavin awkwardly, and then back to Marcie. “We’re not boyfriends.” My face had gotten burning hot.

  “No?” she said, furrowing her brow. “My mistake.” She winked at me before disappearing back into the kitchen.

  I was silent for a moment. It wasn’t that I was upset by Marcie’s words—quite the opposite. As soon as she’d said it, I’d wished it were true.

  But I’d been careful not to ask any questions like that of Gavin. So much had changed so quickly, and I knew he had better things to think about than me asking if he wanted to go steady, like some high schooler with a crush.

  It was stupid to rush things.

  “I know I’m old, but can Marcie adopt me?” Gavin asked.

  I let out a long breath that I hadn’t realized I was holding. Gavin was sidestepping the boyfriend thing, and it was as much a relief as it was a disappointment.

  “That is a great question. I’m sure she’d be willing to,” I said. “Especially because you’re the hero of the island now.”

  “I hate that,” he said, grimacing and waving a hand at me. “Don’t call me that.”

  “What? It’s true,” I said. “The hospital plans, the new ferries…”

  “Oh! I have go
od news on that, too,” he said, perking up. “I reached out to the owner of Seattle Wakefield Hospital. Firstly, he’s still willing to speak with me, which a lot of my old business contacts are not, right now. But he’s also going to put me in touch with the people I need to speak to for the hospital plan. It’s going to take years and years until it’s finally built, but it’s going to happen, Hunter. I’m going to make it happen.”

  “I believe it,” I said. “You could make anything happen. The bridge project would have happened, if you’d wanted it. That’s why we were all so scared.”

  He nodded. “I have so much cleanup to do in the next few weeks. Months, maybe, even years. I… don’t regret pulling out of the project, but I do regret the connections I may have lost.”

  “I understand that completely,” I said.

  “It was a necessary sacrifice, though,” he said. “Worth it.”

  Marcie appeared again a moment later with two small glasses in her hands. She set them down in front of us, nodding once. “On the house. In celebration.”

  “Apple juice?” I joked, picking up one of the glasses. It was an amber liquid with a single clear ice cube at the center—undoubtedly some sort of whiskey.

  “If apple juice costs as much as this does, there’s something I don’t know about apples.”

  I clinked my glass to Gavin’s and we both took a sip.

  “Mmm,” Gavin said, furrowing his brow as he looked at the glass. “Marcie, what is this?”

  “That’s a gift from me to you,” she said as she walked away again.

  “Does she ever stop being amazing?” Gavin asked, taking another sip.

  “Not that I’ve seen.”

  We finished our meals, and without even asking, Marcie came around another time to refill our drinks. I had a buzz going after another twenty minutes, and that was a dangerous thing.

  “So,” I said, leaning over close to Gavin’s ear. “Are you gonna kiss me a lot tonight?”

  One side of his mouth quirked up in a smile. “What do you mean, am I gonna kiss you a lot?”

  “When you drink you tend to do that,” I said, swiveling on my chair toward him.

  “Is that right?” he asked, reaching out to brush back a lock of my hair. “Or maybe I always want to and the drinking just loosens me up.”

  His eyelids were just the slightest bit lowered as he watched me, looking at me like I was the only thing he cared about in the world.

  “Well, I love it when you’re loosened up,” I said.

  He bit his lower lip, pausing for a moment. “Come dance with me,” he said, standing up quickly and taking my hand in his.

  “What?”

  “Come on,” he said, nodding over toward the jukebox.

  I shook my head. “Oh, no, no, no,” I said. “Not gonna happen.”

  “Except it’s totally going to happen,” he said.

  I groaned, getting up from my seat reluctantly. Luna’s Diner had a jukebox at the back of the room, with a tiny little “dance floor,” complete with a mini disco ball above it. It usually was only used by older people dancing to country western music late at night, teenagers having fun out past curfew, and the occasional bachelorette party that somehow ended up in the diner after a long night of drinking.

  I was certainly not a person who would frequent any dance floor, let alone one in a diner where I probably knew at least half of the people at any given time.

  But Gavin didn’t seem to care. He was pulling me over there fast, and his hand in mine felt so good that I didn’t even protest.

  He slid a few quarters in the machine and came back over to the corner, taking my hand. A song I didn’t know started playing, a slow, calm seventies jam.

  And then Gavin’s arm was around my waist, pulling me in so close, and he started to sway back and forth. I’d already felt bold when I’d kissed his cheek at the bar, but this… this was a whole new level.

  “I’m not much of a dancer, I admit,” Gavin said. “But I just wanted to be close to you.”

  I let my arms rest on his shoulders, and leaned against him. “Well, I was mad about you dragging me over here until you said that,” I said.

  He kissed the top of my head, and I sighed softly. The rest of the diner continued on around us, but there really was something special about this little corner—the lighting was lower over here, and the disco ball revolved slowly above us, casting little colorful glimmers along the wall. The window at our side looked out onto Hill Street, where the sun had set and the glow of the traffic lights illuminated us in green, yellow, and red.

  “Gavin,” I said.

  “Hmm?” he hummed.

  I leaned back a little, looking up in his eyes as we swayed. “We are in public, dancing together, on Kinley Island,” I said.

  “We are indeed.”

  “And this was your idea.”

  He laughed softly running a hand through my hair. “It was a damn good idea, too.”

  “No arguments there,” I said. “But… wow. If you had told me even last month that this would ever happen, I would have laughed in your face.”

  “Me too, honestly,” he said. “But it feels like a dream.”

  “I told Caleb when you came back to the island that it was going to be the end of the world. I guess I was kind of right. Just wrong about how the world was going to change.”

  “You know what was the weirdest thing about the night of the hearing?” Gavin asked.

  “I don’t want to talk about the hearing while your body is pressed up against mine,” I murmured against him.

  He ran his hand along the small of my back. “Trust me, I don’t either. But I’m telling you… that night, thinking I’d lost you hurt about ten times more than any of the public outcry. Even the people who flipped the bird at me and told me to eat dirt. I didn’t think about a single one of them later on. I was thinking about you.”

  “That’s very flattering, Gav.”

  “I mean it. You were the only thing,” he said. He looked down at me now with intensity in his eyes. “I don’t want to feel that way again. Ever. I don’t want… I can’t… lose you.”

  I squeezed him tighter. “And you won’t,” I said.

  He bit the inside of his cheek, still looking down at me.

  “What’s up?” I asked. “I know that look. That look means that there’s still something nagging at you. You gave me that look once in high school when I was eating a plum and it got near you.”

  He shuddered. “Ugh. Don’t talk about plums. That’s disgusting. This is nothing that awful.”

  “Good,” I said, moving up a little closer to him. “Then what’s up? What’s on your mind?”

  “Well, I… I wanted to ask you something, but I should probably wait.”

  “Well, now you have to tell me, otherwise I’ll be forced to imagine the worst possible things it could be. You’re a secret assassin? You’re moving to Indonesia?”

  “God, I wish I were a secret assassin.”

  I cocked my head to one side. “You know you can ask me anything you want.”

  He nodded, taking a long breath. His hand tightened on my lower back. “I know all of this has been… fast. But another part of me doesn’t care. You’re the most important person in my life. And…”

  I bit my lower lip, waiting for him to speak. “...And?” I said.

  “And I like what Marcie called us, earlier,” he said quickly, like it was tumbling out of him. “Hunter, it’s not weird to me. I wanted to know if you’d ever want to be…”

  “Boyfriends?”

  He nodded quickly, his eyes wide. “Boyfriends.”

  My heart felt like it was full of fizzy soda. Like as soon as he’d said it—confirmed it—I started floating on air.

  He laughed. “God, we’re adult men, why does that feel so weird to say?”

  “Because we’ve been best friends for so long,” I said. “It’s just a change.”

  His eyes searched my face. “Why can’t we be both?”
he asked simply.

  I ran my hand along the back of his neck. “Please, let’s be both.”

  “And I know you don’t usually do relationships, and I’m not trying to force you into anything—”

  “Are you kidding me?” I said. “Gav, you’re already the longest relationship I’ve ever been in. I’m… I’m not afraid.”

  As I said it, I realized that for the first time, it was true.

  With other guys, I had always been some level of secretly afraid in relationships. It was why I’d never had anything that lasted very long, nothing that ever amounted to more than a long-term hookup.

  It was because those guys weren’t my best friend. None of them were anything close to something I’d want for the rest of my life.

  And I knew Gavin was.

  “You mean it?” he said. “Because Jesus, Hunt, I’m terrified.” He laughed nervously, clutching me a little closer.

  “Don’t be,” I said. “I’m not going anywhere if you aren’t.”

  “Never again,” he said. “Never.”

  He dipped to kiss me, gently but lingering with his lips on mine.

  In front of the whole diner, Gavin was kissing me, dancing with me, asking me to be his boyfriend. In this same diner, so many years ago, he’d been scared to even let me put my arm around him, as friends. It felt like I’d somehow won the lottery, like the most improbable, beautiful thing.

  “I can’t wait to get you home,” he whispered in my ear after breaking the kiss. He ran his hand along the bottom of my back, and I breathed in his scent, still more intoxicating than any drink had ever been.

  And for the first time, I knew that he meant it when he said the word home.

  16

  Gavin

  “Gee, Gav, when you said you couldn’t wait to get me home, I have to admit, this is not what I expected,” Hunter said. He was in a downward dog position, his hands stretched out in front of him on the yoga mat.

  “You know I don’t skip my night-time stretches,” I said, leaning into the same position on my own mat. I was still the slightest bit tipsy from the whiskey Marcie had given us, and more than a little lust-drunk for Hunter. “And I like watching you move like that.”