“You’ve been looking at me like this all night, and then you said that. I don’t entirely understand what it’s allabout.”
He smirks. “A culmination of so many things. Do you really need to know what it’sabout?”
“Maybe not.” Eric offers a tender kiss, and I eagerly receive it. “All I know is that regardless of what happened back then, I’m glad my life turned out the way itdid.”
“Me too. Me always,Jesse.”
We kiss again, and there’s comfort in knowing that it’s just like this, just us doing our thing until the end oftime.
20
Eric
“You excited about PV?”I ask Ty as we slip into our harnesses at the rock-climbinggym.
Ty’s off school, and I’m taking the week off work for the beginning of our trip on Wednesday, so we made a little time that Monday for eachother.
“Hell yeah,” Ty says. “I’m just glad to have some of those credits done with. I mean, I won’t know for sure until we get grades, but I’m feeling pretty good. Not like back in the day when I was barely studying. Amazing how good you can feel about tests when you actually give adamn.”
“Yes, that’ll always help, for sure. Maybe if you’d figured that out a little sooner, your mother wouldn’t have stressed out somuch.”
“Eh, it’s like my job to make her stress,right?”
I shake my head, but he has a point, and speaking of stress, there’s something weighing on my mind—something I’ve been considering a lot recently. As much as I typically choose to barrel forward with an idea without regard for anyone else’s opinion, in this case, I don’t wantthat.
“So…Ty, you’ve been amazing about me andJesse.”
“Damn straight I have, but why are you saying that like you’re about to give me bad news? Something wrong? Did you guysfight?”
“Nothing like that. This isn’t a bad conversation. A good one,really.”
I just need to get the words out and accept my fate the way we did when we told Ty about what we’d been doing behind hisback.
After the Christmas party, there’s no turningback.
“I’ve been thinking something over recently,” I add. “Something I really want, but I’m not moving forward without talking to you aboutit.”
He waits, and it takes me too long to spit the words out. “I want to ask Jesse to marryme.”
“Marry?” he follows, looking like he’s taking some time to process it. “Like a wedding? Wow. I mean, obviously that’s what would happen.” He laughs uneasily. “Weddings and marriage kind of go together, don’tthey?”
He’s blushing, as though that was an embarrassing fuckup, but I imagine it has more to do with it being a lot toprocess.
“Is that okay with you? I was hoping to ask him when we went to PV, but I didn’t want to do anything without talking to you about it first. Didn’t want to surprise you withit.”
“Well, this isn’t ahugesurprise,” he acknowledges. “It’s sudden. Are you sure Jesse’s down for it? Sorry. What am I saying? Of course he is. Why wouldn’t hebe?”
“You think he wouldn’tbe?”
“No. I’m sorry. I was projecting my own feelings about how quickly you guys move. If I met someone and not even a year later told you I was going to ask them to marry me, you don’t think you’d be a littleconcerned?”
Not if he’d shared everything with her the way I did withJesse.
He can’t know all we’ve been through, how Jesse’s helped me just by being in my life, so I understand why he’s confused by the timing, but there’s also the matter of it being a lot for him to handle when he’s still adjusting to usdating.
He shakes his head. “Eric, it’s great that you’re doing that. It’s gonna be weird going to your wedding, but it’ll be weird whether it’s in a few months or a few years. You have my blessing, though,” he says. He didn’t need to say that, but it means the world tome.
“Thank you,Ty.”
