“I want to help you. I care about you.”
“You want to fix me. So what if that’s not possible?”
Scott was quiet.
“That woman back there,” Carver said, pointing at the clubhouse where it sat twinkling on the hill behind them, “knows me. That woman gets me. That woman, in her fucked-up, insane way, cares about me.”
“Carver,” Scott said, “you are herdog.”
“No, I’m not, you prick! That’s your interpretation from spending one weekend with us, a weekend where I capped off months of depression by passionately fucking my high schoolboyfriend before I crawled back into bed with her, then fucked her over mid-deal!”
“Fine, put aside how she feels about you, just tell me if you actually love her.”
Carver was brought up short by this. “Yeah, I love her,” he said.
“In what way?” Scott said. “You’re in love with her? You’re really into her, sexually? You’re crazy about her?”
“We’ve been married for like, five years.”
“So?”
“Shit cools down,” Carver said, sounding lame and false even to himself. His head was starting to pound.
“Okay,” Scott said. “But did you ever feel that way about her?”
A silence stretched out between them, enveloping them and then spreading across the entire golf course.
There was a hard lump in Carver’s throat. He opened his mouth, closed it, then opened it again. “Did you ever feel that way about me?”
Scott inhaled, then drew closer to him, closing the gap between them. Carver waited. The lump grew more painful.
“Yeah,” Scott said, nodding. “Yeah, I think I did.”
“Okay,” Carver choked out.
“Why do you think I asked you to come with me to California? Why do you think I said I love you when we had sex?”
This was fucking unbearable. “I don’t know,” Carver said, bringing his fingers to his temples. “I don’t know.”
“And I thought you felt the same way, and that’s why you said it back.”
“I don’t know.”
“I think you know.”
Carver did know. He still didn’t remember sayingI love youto Scott, but he remembered the soaring, reckless thrill of doingso. He remembered the sensation of being held in something all-powerful and deathless.
“I have to go,” he said, fixing his gaze on the bright clubhouse. “I can’t do this.”
Scott stepped in his path as he walked forward, and kissed him. Carver kissed him back. It was the most natural act possible. They pressed their bodies together, gripping and pulling each other. Carver pressed desperately into the heat of Scott’s mouth.
Scott broke the kiss to breathe, and Carver made a needy sound he was embarrassed by. A moment later, he said, “What the hell is that?” then nudged Carver and pointed over his right shoulder.
Carver turned and looked heavenward, where he was pointing. There was a small pinprick of light with a long plume inching across the black, star-speckled sky, sloping downward at a diagonal. It passed in front of the visible stars, looking almost like an airplane — a lovely falling airplane made of light.
“It’s the comet,” he said. “I forgot about it.”
“I didn’t even know there was supposed to be one,” Scott said. He sounded thrilled. “I thought you needed a telescope to see comets.”
