Authors: Mimsy Hale
The unexpected, lighthearted addition to the end of Jake’s confession washes over Aiden and puts him back together where he briefly came apart—he laughs, and rolls off of Jake with no grace whatsoever as his body shakes.
When he catches his breath, he peeks at Jake through one eye and finds him looking back, tenderness crinkling the corners of his eyes as he reaches for Aiden’s hand. His expression is full of warmth, contentment, awe. “This is going to be awesome, right? It’s the start of something really, really great?”
Sobering, Aiden realizes where he’s heard the words before—he said them to Jake over three months ago, sitting on Jake’s back deck and counting the fireflies—and as Jake curls his fingers around Aiden’s thumb, he replies, “I think maybe we’re already in the middle of something really, really great.”
“So what happens next?”
Drawing closer, just as Jake does every night even if they’ve fallen asleep with a gulf between them, he cups Jake’s jaw and slides his hand back. His thumb fits into the groove behind Jake’s ear like it’s a space made just for him, just to be doing this. “You just have to be with me,” he says. “We can figure the rest out later.”
And as Jake meets his kiss, smiling into it with complete abandon, Aiden can practically hear the strains of a love theme picking up. They’re only just getting started.
12,751 miles
Chapter Ten
Day Ninety: California
“I don’t understand,” Jake says as they draw closer to the neon-lit archway beckoning them onto Santa Monica Pier.
“What?”
“I don’t understand. Why isn’t it cold?”
“Sweetheart, this
is
cold,” Aiden says, wrapping an arm around his waist and giving him an easy smile.
“We come from
Brunswick,”
Jake counters. “It’s
December.
This is
not
cold.”
“Okay, you win,” Aiden says. He chuckles and pulls Jake closer, away from the crowds milling on the sidewalk. He asks, “Isn’t it kind of strange, suddenly being around this many people all at once?”
“Sort of,” Jake says, casting his eyes around the pier and attempting to separate the snowbirds and tourists from the locals.
“Doesn’t it feel great, though? Getting out of the RV for a few days, I mean.”
They’re staying at Matthew’s ostentatious home on Georgia Avenue while he’s in New York on business, scouting fresh talent for some new movie his company has optioned. While Jake is happy about the simple prospect of staying still, the rest of it leaves him a little ill at ease. Nothing is different—and yet everything is. They’re happy, yet the ground still moves beneath them. Jake feels oversaturated, filled up and wrung out over and over. He can’t seem to settle inside the love, not until things are certain, until “what happens on the road trip stays on the road trip” is but a distant, laughable memory.
And the crux of the matter: They’re now doing all of this under the laser-focused gazes of everyone they know.
“Well, I don’t intend on setting foot back inside until we have to,” he finally answers; leaving the messy sheets and lived-in surroundings of the RV is a balm.
“Aw, you don’t like my digs? I’m wounded,” Aiden declares, palm to his heart, a comical look of shock and exaggerated hurt on his face.
Jake smiles but doesn’t hold his gaze, focusing instead on the sea of faces and bodies around them as they turn into Pacific Park. Lights flash brightly under the dark sky and music plays from somewhere in the direction of the Ferris wheel.
“Hey,” Aiden murmurs. “What’s up?”
“Nothing, I just…” Jake shakes his head and shoves his hands in his pockets before finally meeting Aiden’s eyes and saying, “We went public.”
Aiden’s tone is cautious as he replies, “We did. Should we not have?”
“No, I’m glad we did,” he says. “It’s just… you saw the texts.”
“I did.”
“
All
of the texts. There were a
lot
of texts. And April won’t stop poking me on Facebook. I mean, who even pokes on Facebook anymore?”
“It’s a lot of pressure,” Aiden says, looking for the first time as if he’s feeling it, too.
“Oh, thank
god,”
Jake groans, unable to suppress the urge to turn and kiss Aiden; he barely cares that they’re surrounded by people, because here they’re wonderfully anonymous. Aiden’s lips still taste of the lemon sorbet they shared after dinner, feeding each other with sundae spoons at the glossy walnut bar in Matthew’s kitchen.
When he pulls away, Aiden asks, “Did you think you were the only one feeling it?”
“Yeah, actually.”
“Why?”
Jake runs his fingers over the soft ridges of the thick cable knit cardigan Aiden is wearing, the one he nabbed from Jake’s side of the closet this morning. “Do you understand why I fought against it all for so long?”
“Of course I do,” Aiden says. “I was scared, too.”
Shaking his head, eyebrows knitted together, Jake says, “But you always seemed so sure.”
“Come with me,” Aiden says quietly, taking his hand and pulling him over to an empty bench opposite the ticket booth; when Jake sits down, his hand clasped between both of Aiden’s own, the wood is still warm from its last occupants. “I was sure of how I felt, that much is true. But sure of what you’d do? Honestly, I’ve never been less sure.”
“So how did you… in Wyoming, you just—”
“I was sick of biting my tongue every time I wanted to say it. I was still terrified of ruining us and what we had, but I couldn’t keep pretending,” Aiden says. His thumb rubs Jake’s knuckles, back and forth, back and forth. “And I don’t think you could, either. Right?”
“Right. I mean, I’ve never been so scared in all my life. Still am, a little bit.”
“Why?”
“It was always more than just putting us and our friendship in jeopardy. It was…” Jake pauses, averts his eyes and then forces himself to confront his instinct to run, and talks. “I was scared that you’d just leave again.”
Aiden’s thumb stops moving, and his grip on Jake’s hand tightens. “Jake, I wouldn’t—”
“Because I honestly think that I’d lose it if you did,” Jake interrupts, words flowing irrepressibly now that he’s started. “It took me this long to trust you again, Dan. And now there are all these people who want to know everything, and all
I
want to know is that… that I’ll still have something to tell them when we get home.”
Aiden stares at him for a moment as a muscle works in his jaw. “You’ve needed to say that to me for a while, haven’t you?” At Jake’s sheepish nod, he shifts closer and says, “Jake, I’m not going home—I
am
home. It’s been right in front of me for nearly seventeen years. It just took me a while to figure it out.”
Shaking his head in near disbelief, Jake’s breath leaves his body in a shaky release he has been building up to ever since Aiden came back from London. His eyes sting and he blinks rapidly, and even as he looks away, Aiden ducks right back into his line of sight.
“Sweetheart,” he says, his tone solemn, “I’ve got you, remember?”
“You really do, don’t you,” Jake says, awed.
Aiden rolls his eyes and tucks two fingers beneath Jake’s chin, gently guiding his gaze upward. Looking at him with an expression so painfully earnest and full of tenderness that Jake worries he might unravel, he says, “Always.”
“I love you,” Jake whispers, pitching forward to wrap his arms around Aiden’s shoulders and pull him close. Aiden’s fingers are still tucked under his chin, and his arm gets caught between them; his laugh is muffled against Jake’s shoulder until they break apart.
“I love you, too,” Aiden says, reaching for Jake’s hand and linking their fingers. “Now, come on. We’ve got a first date to finish.”
Jake wants to poke fun at the idea that this is a first date as they get in line for ride tickets, but as he considers the notion, he realizes that it’s exactly how they’ve spent their day—albeit with a little more spice than most first dates, given that they made out in the back of Matthew’s home movie theater for most of
Fight Club.
Nevertheless, after they’ve bought enough tickets to get them on each ride at least once, he says, “I’m not sure this qualifies as a first date.”
“Dinner and a movie. It totally qualifies,” Aiden replies, swinging their joined hands as they set off toward the Ferris wheel.
“Ah, but we did it backward,” Jake says.
“What haven’t we done backward?” Aiden points out, and Jake smiles despite himself. “You know, I never realize how much I miss California until I come back.”
“You finally got me here.”
“And I can finally go on the Ferris wheel.”
“What?” Jake asks. “You’ve visited Matt about a million times and you’ve never been here?”
“Of course I have. I was just saving the Ferris wheel for you.”
They join the back of the short line beneath the giant wheel and Jake smiles to himself, thinking back to all the years they spent going to the annual bazaar at St John’s. They would hold hands until they got to the top of the wheel, where they would each tell a secret. At twelve, it was, “Tommy didn’t steal that cupcake from your lunchbox; it was me.” At fifteen, it was, “I kinda have a crush on Drake.” At twenty-one, Jake smiled and said, “I missed you,” instead of, “Holding your hand feels strange and different and I can’t figure out why.”
Once they’re seated and the guardrail is settled across their laps, Jake shifts close to Aiden and is reaching for his hand when Aiden’s cell rings, blaring at top volume.
“I thought I’d set it to vibrate,” Aiden says with an apologetic look as he pulls it out of his pocket. His brow furrows. “It’s Matt. Do you mind if I…”
Jake waves him off with a smile, turning his attention to the view out over the bay as they rise into the air and the hundreds of lights sparkling over the water. He rests his head on Aiden’s shoulder and sighs, tuning out everything save for his newfound sense of peace. It all seems to be falling into place
—finally, finally, I love you, finally—
and that torn seam of theirs is already resewn, the stitches doubled and trebled by the last three months.
“Yes, Matt, we got the video message. How did you even—never mind. I still don’t get why you can’t just text me like a normal person…”
He feels Aiden’s fingers thread through his own as they inch slowly higher and considers what he’ll say when they get to the top. He’s already given away all of his secrets.
“No, that’s—Matt, that’s amazing! Okay, I’ll… yeah. Yeah, I’ll talk to Jake and let you know.”
At the sound of his name, Jake sits upright in his seat. The gondola rocks back and forth and he looks at the neon colors playing across Aiden’s face.
Aiden squeezes his hand and asks, “What’s your secret?”
“I don’t have any left.”
“Looks like we need a new tradition, then.”
“What did Matt say?” Jake prompts. Aiden glances down at the park from their vantage point at the top of the wheel.
“That movie he’s just optioned, it…” Aiden pulls his hand from Jake’s and scratches the back of his neck, looking at him sidelong. “He wants us both to come out here and work on it. Production assistants.”
“I—what?” Jake splutters. “But we just graduated.”
“I guess when he said fresh talent, he meant the crew as well as the cast,” Aiden says, his tone full of disbelief. “He said he can’t talk too much about it, but he’ll give us more information if we’re interested.”
This is it,
Jake thinks, his mind suddenly awash in a new kind of hope. He needs a plan, something concrete that doesn’t ebb and flow like the never-ending stream of road lines disappearing beneath the RV. He needs certainty, to know that there is something more for them after they return to Maine on the same itchy feet with which they left.
This is what we’ve been waiting for.
He looks at Aiden with wide eyes, reaching for his hand and finding a loose fist into which he burrows his fingers. He needs a grounding touch to keep from letting the heady drama of Matthew’s announcement get to him.
Then, his stomach drops in a way that has nothing to do with the Ferris wheel’s soft lurch downward. “But we’re going to New York.”
Aiden says nothing.
“I mean… what do you want to do?”
“Do
you
want to do it?” Aiden asks.
No more secrets.
“Yes.”
“What if…” Aiden shifts uncomfortably in his seat for a moment. “What if I told you that I don’t know which one I want more?”
“I’d say that’s okay.”
“What if I told you that I’m scared I’ll fail at whichever one I pick?”
“I’d say that’s okay, too,” Jake reassures him. “Look, we can’t stop each other from failing, but we can pick each other up when we do. I’ve got you just as much as you’ve got me.”
Aiden smiles at that. “I think I might want to, but it’s big. Can you give me some time?”
“Of course, silly,” Jake says, and leans over to press his forehead against Aiden’s temple. For longer than he cares to remember, he’s been picking the lock of his own joy, slowly feeling for the tumblers and gradually letting them click into place. Aiden is the only man who has ever given him joy without that bite of sorrow—he can have all the time he wants.
They’re quiet for a while after that, Aiden obviously deep in thought about the choice before him. They don’t speak again until after Jake has ducked out of the line for the West Coaster to look at a rack of key chains. He finds one so serendipitously perfect that he buys it immediately, not caring about the inflated price, and takes it back to Aiden.
Pressing it into his palm, Jake simply says, “Whatever you decide.”
Aiden examines the keychain: heavy pewter in the shape of the United States, with one heart punched into New York and another into California, a dotted line connecting them.
Jake yelps as Aiden wraps an arm around his waist and dips him, crushing their lips together in a kiss that Jake can feel in his toes.
“I love you so much,” he whispers, and as Aiden straightens, pulls them back upright and silently steps away with a beaming smile, all Jake can dazedly think is,
I am Jack’s heart, grown three sizes bigger.
13,045 miles
Day Ninety-five: Oregon
“Seriously, whose idea was it to try and do this in a hundred days?” Aiden grumbles to his reflection as he struggles with his tie—he can usually do this in his sleep, but all of his attempts so far have been in vain.
“Let me,” Jake says, moving in front of him and batting his hands away. He, of course, is impeccably turned out, his top two buttons open at his throat and his hair swept into an effortless mess of tufts and spikes that Aiden wants to tug. He quickly sets about his task, his long fingers deftly undoing Aiden’s crooked handiwork. “You don’t usually get worked up like this. We haven’t even gone past fashionably late yet.”
“You can’t get an RV from Crater Lake to Portland in four hours,” Aiden mutters, fists flexing uselessly at his sides. “We should have left earlier; fuck what Kathy Bates had to say.”
“That’s why you’re annoyed, yes, but I’ll bet that’s not why you’re nervous,” Jake says, giving Aiden a knowing look. “So what’s up?”
Aiden drops his head to look down at his feet, but Jake gently nudges his chin back up. “Why did he have to make me the guest of honor? I barely even did anything.”
“You gave him the idea.”
“What if he wants me to make a speech?”
“Aiden, come on. It’s just Josh.”