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Neil hears the sliding door open and shut behind him, a murmured excerpt of the Jeopardy credits in between, then footsteps following on the deck. He holds out his hand without looking up and is bestowed a beer with an orange slice wedged down inside the neck of the bottle, the way he likes it. From the corner of his eye, he watches Vincent settling cross-legged in the recliner by his side.
“Category is ‘Names in Plays,’” announces Vincent.
Neil sips his beer, finishes the page he’s reading, dog-ears it, and looks over. “All right,” he says, setting the book face-down in his lap. “Lay it on me.”
“The name of the Montecchi, a noble family of the 13th century, was anglicized to this.”
Neil has to think about it for a minute.
“Montague,” he says.
“We have a winner,” says Vincent. “But you got to phrase it like a question next time. Salut.”
They knock their drinks together. Neil glances accusingly at the off-putting neon substance in Vincent’s glass.
“I don’t know how you drink that stuff,” he says.
“Easy. It tastes good. Want some?”
Neil has to flinch away to avoid a straw going up his nose. “No thanks.”
“Your loss. I make a mean tequila sunrise.”
“I’ll take your word for it.”
“Ah! Fuck.”
Vincent sets the glass down, grimacing. Neil stares at him questioningly.
“Brain freeze,” Vincent explains.
A tequila sunrise for a Florida sunset. Neil has lost count of them now, the days, the nights. He’s gotten lazy, time-drunk with the way it passes down here, slow and easy. Paradise, like prison, blurs everything together. The difference is akin to heaven and hell.
They end many of their evenings out here, sometimes with a cocktail in tow, or a joint Vincent’s rolled, a meal Neil has prepared. Always picturesque, and always together. Tomorrow, perhaps, they’ll fire up one of those fancy cigars: Chris sent them a package for Neil’s birthday last week, and he included Vincent’s initials on the note this time. Even Chris is starting to come around. Maybe he and Ana will finally join them for Christmas this year, though Vincent frets nervously about the possibility, and Neil has to reassure him, remind him that it’s all water under the bridge by now. If it weren’t, they wouldn’t be here.
For Neil, L.A. is just a memory, the asphalt bloodied and salted behind him. For Lauren’s sake, Vincent still visits from time to time, and from the sound of it Justine has made some tentative overtures of civility. Neil has no idea what he tells them, and doesn't trouble himself with asking. A fragile peace maintains itself in spite of unimaginable odds, and even more unbelievable circumstances.
Three weeks, twice a year. That was how it started. Vincent’s vacation days allotted to this shared fantasy in Key Largo, a bizarre and miraculous dream Neil can’t help but feel he cheated out of the hands of fate, that he hasn’t rightly earned. They lasted two springs and one winter before Vincent announced at the dinner table that he had retired and was already collecting his pension. The question was implicit in the way he dropped his silverware to the table, looking at Neil with his fingers threaded in front of his mouth, casual despite the finality at stake.
Neil had not hesitated except from the shock, nodding demurely through the reverberations of his pounding heart, the euphoria pulsing through him, folding his napkin neatly beside his plate.
“OK,” he had said.
That May, Vincent did not return to L.A.
That was how it started. Somehow, it has not ended yet.
It has been more than two years.
They cohabitate easily, unexpectedly so, and though Vincent trails chaos wherever he goes, Neil never minds picking up the mess. It’s evidence that Vincent is actually here, his presence real and tangible.
They’re still learning things about each other, from each other. Neil has taught Vincent how to fish, and they take the boat out when the weather permits, if the mood strikes them. They’ve sailed up as far north as Cape Hatteras in the Carolinas, charting out more ambitious expeditions as the need arises, feeding Vincent’s adventurous appetite. Neil still won’t allow him near a stove, but he’s gotten awfully good at catching and filleting what winds up in a sauté pan on the burner later. And he washes the dishes afterward.
At the moment, Vincent is teaching Neil how to dance. It’s taking a while, since Neil’s got two left feet, but Vincent is never discouraging, always undaunted by the outbursts of frustration, so devoted in his patience that Neil can’t bear to let him down. He’s mastered the basic steps, at least. Vincent will seize him spontaneously for practice, usually while he’s cooking or reading or otherwise indisposed, and Neil will protest but never resist, because secretly he loves it. Secretly, he’s proud.
The sex is still fantastic, and frequent. It has mellowed with time, relaxing into the luxurious, unhurried rhythms of domesticity, though sometimes Vincent will reach for him with such dire urgency that Neil finds himself dazed as much as sated after, as breathless and electric as the first time they’d coupled on the couch right there in the living room.
Neil is surprised every morning he wakes and the wild creature he’s snared is still beside him in his bed, softly snoring while the light of another day fills the room. Fearful of when the constancy of his affection becomes too plain to hide, too frightening in its depths, and Vincent will find out, start itching restlessly to flee. Neil anticipates the loss, because loss is the inevitable coda to every joy, the only certain ending he’s ever known. Vincent will want to leave, and Neil will let him, because love means an open door above all things. He knows that now.
“Oh, shit!”
Suddenly Vincent bolts out of the recliner and jogs up to the lip of the porch, pointing emphatically out at the water. Neil sits up, puzzled.
“Look, look, look! Did you see that?”
“See what?”
Vincent beckons furiously. Neil keeps squinting into the sultry evening light, at the dark surf lapping gently over a chocolate-colored beach, trying to figure out what could warrant such excitement. Eventually he is forcibly summoned, tugged over by his arm.
“Oh, come on. You got better eyes than mine. Watch closely.”
“I don’t know what I’m watching for.”
“Shh, shut up, just look!”
Neil does, seeing nothing but the same breathtaking view that greets them every evening, the sun diving below the horizon line, a cloudy sunset winding down to purple twilight.
“You’re not going senile on me already.”
Vincent shoves him, his attention still fastened on the water. Neil staggers sideways, smirking.
There it is right after, way out where the waves return and lose distinction, six vertical jets of mist like oceanic steam engines, six glistening black bodies and blade-like fins that slice through the surface and then sink down out of sight. Vincent clutches hard at Neil’s wrist.
“There, right there!”
“I see them,” says Neil, now gripped by the same enthusiasm. He’s got goosebumps all the way up and down his arms. He’s never seen whales like that except on television, in books and magazines.
“Yeah! I told you!” Vincent claps his hands once and cheers, fists flung straight up in the air. “Take that! That’s Shamu, baby!”
Neil starts to laugh. Such an ordinary thing, and yet the sensation of it is always surprising to him. He never laughed all that much before. With Vincent, he laughs every day.
“Crazy! Wow.” Vincent bumps back up against him, grasping at him, quieter. Leaning in close, like it’s a secret. He smells like orange juice and tequila, faded cologne mixed with faded sunscreen. “Beautiful, aren’t they?”
“Yeah,” Neil agrees, nodding.
They remain there for a while, waiting to see if the group will reappear, leaning shoulder-to-shoulder on the wooden banister. After a few minutes of focused, reverent silence, Vincent takes Neil’s hand and clasps it in both of his. He brings it to his mouth and presses a kiss to the bolts of Neil’s knuckles.
“What happened to your watch?” Neil asks, just noticing, frowning slightly.
“Say again?”
“Your watch. You’re not wearing it. Did you lose it?”
He takes it off when they bring the boat out sometimes, but they haven’t been on the water today. The handsome silver timepiece is an otherwise permanent fixture, along with the pair of necklaces, the gaudy Jerusalem cross bracelet, the signet ring. Vincent examines his wrist, eyebrows arched in acknowledgment, his fingers still laced with Neil’s.
“Look at that. I didn’t notice. No, it’s upstairs on the nightstand somewhere. Just forgot to put it on this morning. Maybe you’re right. Maybe I am going senile.”
He beams at Neil, crinkling the faint stripe of a sunburn across his nose. He’s got a smile that lights up his whole face, all mischief, no menace to it anymore—Neil can’t remember the last time he saw that side of him. The darkness, the emptiness. Gone. Washed away by the tide, filled up with the sun.
Neil sweeps him into his arms and kisses him something fierce, daring the dream to come apart. Half expecting it to collapse when confronted by the force of its own absurdity, this grandly cinematic gesture of passion, uncensored by reason or shame. Vincent’s contented hum of surprise breaks up into more desperate, throaty sounds, and when Neil finally pulls away his eyes are wide and dreamy, his mouth agape and raw. He blinks fast, stunned, and a few halting gusts of laughter puncture his goofy grin. He takes Neil’s face in his hands and regards him as seriously as he can muster—not very.
“Are you OK?” he asks slowly.
“Yeah,” Neil says honestly, smiling, running his tongue along the inside of his lower lip. “Will you make me a tequila sunrise?”
Vincent scoffs theatrically, pushing him away with a hand smashed over his face. Neil, smirking again, makes an unsuccessful grab for Vincent’s backside as he dodges away.
On his way inside, Vincent stops, turning around at the threshold of the house, bracing his arms out across the door frame. Fixing himself with a coy expression, playfully seductive, though the pause before he speaks is long and loaded, suggestive of something else entirely. His eyes have that piercing heaviness behind them, the x-ray vision. There’s a gentleness to the way he trains it on Neil. An acuity of sight and a purity of sight, without judgment. Looking and truly seeing; enjoying the seeing for its own sake.
“On one condition,” he offers. “Will you come upstairs with me after?”
Neil allows himself to feel this new glimmer of hope. For once in his life, for now, he won’t try to crush it out. Doesn’t question it.
“Yeah,” he says again, happily giving up his leverage. “I was planning on doing that anyway.”