28
Jack
To say this night has not gone the way I expected implies that I had expectations at all. Taking Damian to the fish house seemed safest. I could see what it was really like to be out in public with him, and we’d both have to be on our best behavior.
What I didn’t expect was for his behavior to be so sincere and heartfelt that I could barely look at him.
We walk down to the harbor. It’s quiet except for a few local kids riding their bikes in circles through the gravel and gulls calling to nothing from the tops of the boats bobbing quietly between their pilings.
It’s still a few hours before the sun dips below the horizon. We’re past twenty-four hours of daylight, but even now, the shadows are only starting to lengthen.
“What do your friends call you?” I ask.
“Damian.”
“Does anyone call you David?”
His face glows in the light. He’s close-shaved now, instead of his careless stubble from the spring. Jaws like his don’t exist in nature.
“My agent,” he says, “when she’s pissed at me. My family would if I still spoke to them. My accountant because that’s the name she has to put on my tax returns, and she says she can’t keep it straight if she calls me Damian.”
“Is it weird? Using different names?”
He shrugs. “It was at first. I used to practice by telling the baristas at Starbucks my name was Damian. But now it’s as much my name as David.”
“So should I call you Damian?”
That draws his attention away from the horizon. “I’d really like it if you called me David.”
That’s good enough for me. I don’t know what our future looks like, but I want to find out. Starting right now.
I reach for him and bring his mouth down to mine to kiss him. He doesn’t resist, not for a second.
Instead, David sighs. “Jack.”
Do I forgive him? It’ll always be a thing between us, that rocky beginning. Am I willing to see what happens next? It might be that he leaves again, and eventually, after a few months of plans and last-minute cancellations as he flies off somewhere exotic while I’m left ferrying tourists around, we both realize it was never going to work out. But at least then we’ll know we tried. That we finally started from a place of understanding, and it turned out our lives really were too different after all.
He slides his hands underneath my jacket. The layers beneath keep me from feeling the heat of his palms. I step between his feet, nipping at his bottom lip and making David groan.
“How long are you here for?” I ask.
“I have to fly back to LA tomorrow.”
“What time?”
He laughs, pressing his hands against my cheeks long enough to still me. “Not until late.”
I kiss him again, and behind us, someone whistles. I glance over my shoulder, and the kids on the bikes have all stopped to gawk. They laugh when they realize we heard them, but then one of them drops his mouth open.
“You’re... you’re...” he says, pointing with a shaking hand.
Two pull phones from their pockets, and David stiffens next to me.
“Is there somewhere we can go? How far is your place?”
“Uh...” I glance over my shoulder. “It’s right there.” And it’s not the place I want to take him. The inside may be even more crowded than the cabin on theHawk. “It’s pretty small.”
“My car’s at the restaurant,” he says.
