Abbott doesn’t say anything. For a moment we’re just two dark figures, standing face-to-face in the darkness. The next wave thunders to the shore and laps over our ankles. It soaks the hem of my jeans and my Converse but I don’t move. “I want you to be happy.”
It’s a standard Abbott Barlowe, post-breakup line. He’s recited it to me about a hundred times since I was seventeen and ended it with him. And I fucking hate it more and more every time it leaves his lips.
“Do me a favor, Abbott. Don’t,” I tell him, my voice so cold I’m surprised it doesn’t turn the sea water at our feet to ice.
“Don’t what? Don’t hope you’re happy?” Abbott questions and his confusion is frustrating him and I’m glad. “I want the best for people who matter, Deck. And you matter to me. Always have.”
“Not enough, though, right?” I ask and thankfully he knows it’s rhetorical and doesn’t try to answer. Either that or he can’t. God, I am so sick of this dance. I rub the back of my neck and tip my head up to the stars for a second before focusing on his shadowy face again. “Don’t hope or want or anything for me, okay? Just forget me. I’m the past. Go live your future and I’ll live mine. They don’t include each other.”
I storm down the beach, away from him and his house, the ocean crashing in darkness beside me. I don’t look back or stop moving until I reach the dock again and the uneven concrete stairs that lead up to it from the beach. I pause and sit on the hard, bumpy second step to pull off my drenched shoes. There’re less people on the beach than when I started. It’s basically empty now except for a solo person walking along the tide and someone on a bench.
Still carrying my shoes, I make my way gingerly across the cracked pavement. I use my cellphone flashlight to help ensure I don’t step on a pointy pebble or a piece of glass or something. I climb the stairs to the apartment, leave my sandy, soaked shoes on the landing, and unlock the door. The air inside the apartment is stuffy and warm. I forgot to leave a window open. I drop the keys on the counter in the kitchen and proceed to open every window in the place, front and back. Then I yank off my shirt and throw it into the corner of the bedroom in the general direction of the hamper. Old Declan would have carefully removed it and placed it in the hamper properly. Old Declan wouldn’t have been wearing a t-shirt. He’d be in a crisp button-down shirt or a perfectly pressed polo. Old Declan also wouldn’t be coming home from a gay bar.
Sometimes, like now, I miss Old Declan. I was really good at keeping myself in a tight little closet. It was easier, in some ways, to hide myself from the world. To channel all my energy into being what people expected. Be a loyal husband. Be a smart business manager. Be an asshole sibling. Because that Declan didn’t get to think of Abbott. That Declan didn’t have to move on either. It’s pathetic when faking it is easier than being yourself.
I open the fridge door, enjoying the cool air that smacks me in the chest when I do. I’m about to reach for another beer, figuring if I have one more, I’ll be tipsy and maybe sleep better, when there’s a hard knock on my door. I shut the fridge and crinkle my brow. Who the hell is here so late? I leave the kitchen and make my way toward the door, which is in the living room. The frosted glass window shows me only that, by the height and width of the shadow, it’s a guy. Maybe Finn or Logan came back? Not tall enough to be Jake.
I swing open the door and Abbott barges in. I stumble backward because I wasn’t expecting him to be there let alone storm right into my apartment. Abbott is a fierce, territorial lion on the ice, but he’s never been that way with me. And that’s always disappointed me, so the way he’s acting now as he aggressively paces my small entry, is filling my chest with a feeling it shouldn’t … hope.
“You’re the most unfair person I know, you know that?” he announces. “You don’t fucking let me win. Ever. Everything I do is wrong.”
His wide hands are balled into fists by his sides and his broad shoulders are an inch higher than they should be. He’s barefoot like he was on the beach and his size eleven feet are coated in sand, which is depositing itself all over my scuffed wood floors. He’s not looking at me. He’s looking all around the apartment like he’s never seen it before. But he has. He’s been in here when it was Finn’s and before that when it was Jake’s for a while when we were kids. “I act like I don’t care, you get pissed. I act like I care, you get pissed. Declan just tell me what the hell you want and I’ll do it. But mean it this time because we both live here now. For good. And we need to get over this or through this or whatever.”
“I didn’t tell you, you could come in,” I reply, like that matters. He spins to face me where I’m standing half-naked next to the small teak coffee table in the living room. He blinks like he’s looking at me for the first time.
I watch those stormy eyes of his, always so full of whatever it is he’s feeling, whether he likes it or not, wander over my body. He’s just realized I’m shirtless. And my skin is glistening from the heat… and sadly, not just the heat from the weather. Abbott’s aggressive energy is turning me on, and there’s not a damn thing I can do about it. His eyes land on the undone button on my jeans and lock on. “Well, I’m not leaving.”
“Abbott, fuck,” I hiss, and I want to be angrier than I am. What is coursing through my veins is frustration and half of it — maybe more — is sexual. I sigh and shake my head. “We need to ignore each other. If you’re living and working here, that’s the only way this is going to work. So you need to get the fuck out of my apartment.”
He steps towards me instead of towards the door. Every hair on my body seems to stand on end, like they’re all straining to get closer to him. My heart feels like it’s reaching too so I cross my arms over my chest as if to block it somehow. “We’ve spent almost an entire decade trying to ignore how we feel. How’s that worked out for you? Because for me it’s been a long, shitty, difficult road that almost ended my career and my life if I’m honest about it.”
“No,” I say in a rough whisper. I can’t hear this. He really wasn’t that close… was he?
“No what? You don’t think I was at the end of everything?” Abbott’s voice is growing in strength. He’s no longer timid, like he’s the one trying to earn forgiveness. Now he’s the one who’s been wronged. At least he thinks so, judging by the anger in his eyes and that tone. “You weren’t here to see it but trust me, I was down and about to be out. I was injured, drinking, and mixing in some pain pills. I couldn’t focus on rehabbing my injury or saving my career or anything other than the fact that you’d disappeared, and I wasn’t sure I would ever see you again.”
I had heard that Abbott was in some kind of spiral. What he doesn’t know is how I heard or how I reacted. And I am not telling him Aspen tracked me down and showed up begging for help. I told her I didn’t know how to help, and she said all I needed to do was come home. “I’m back. You’ll see me around. I just don’t think we can force ourselves to be buddies. Some people aren’t meant to stay in each other’s lives forever. I know Ocean Pines is small but we’ll have to learn to live around each other.”
“You still talk to Nova. You hang out with her.”
“She’s family,” I remind him. “She’s going to end up marrying my brother. And also, she was my wife. I know Mrs. Green called it a green card marriage on her trashy town blog but it became more than that. For a heartbeat or two. I did honestly love her.”
I see the pain ripple over his rugged features, and I try not to feel guilty about it. Nova happened because Abbott and I couldn’t happen. He’s got half the responsibility in that. He takes another step toward me. I’m working so hard to ignore the warmth growing inside of me at his proximity that the room feels like it just got ten degrees hotter. “So, you’re bi?”
“I identify as gay now,” I reply honestly. “Because I don’t want another woman… I don’t see that in my future. I want a relationship with a man. One as strong and loyal as the one I had with Nova. But with...”
“Passion?” His voice is low but certain. He knows what I was missing. He knows it because heisit.
“Yeah.” I’m so frustrated and annoyed I have to have this conversation with him. Because I knowheknows what I want and he knows he has it all. I uncross my arms and drop them to my sides, like I’m giving up. Baring my soul to him feels like defeat. “I want to want someone so much I can’t keep my hands off him.”
He takes another step and he’s ridiculously close. If I take a deep breath, my chest would brush the soft cotton of his t-shirt. But I can barely breathe. His hands start moving up the outside of my arms, calloused fingertips leaving goosebumps in their wake. I take a step back and he takes a step with me. He cocks his head and his eyelids get heavy. “So just touch me already.”
“Abbott.”
“Please.”
I’m like a drunk who’s been sober the good part of a decade but suddenly finds himself alone in a bar staring down an open bottle of tequila. And the tequila is begging him. Just one taste…
My hands lift, grazing the hem of his t-shirt as they rise. I press my right one, palm down, into his chest like I’m going to push him away, but the left one cups the back of his neck. My fingertips slip through the soft edge of his hairline and our heads come together. I’m fighting the urge to kiss him, but it’s futile. Especially once Abbott confesses. “I’ve wanted to kiss you every waking hour since the last time I kissed you.”
