100 Days (43 page)

“A touchstone in my shoe, my heart in your hands; we’ve lost too much but not this love unplanned.”

And then there’s Aiden: telling him he had a teenage crush on him in Ken­tucky; pushing him to sing in Michigan; saving his life in Indiana; forgiving him in Minnesota; confessing his feelings in Wyoming; making love to him in Colorado; holding him together with a single Band-Aid in New Mexico. For all his faults, he’s the best person Jake has ever known, and love will either tear them apart or give them a lifelong happiness.

He loses himself—in chasing the sun, in complex, layered butterfly and flower formations, in barrel rolls and windmills and threading the needle—until he’s nothing but music and flame.

What lies just around the corner, or in six months from now, or in ten years… none of it matters when Jake is here and Aiden is—

Standing right in front of him, just out of reach of the poi as they flicker out with the song’s final fade, watching Jake with a soft, awed smile, as if he’s something sacred to behold. There is applause and cheering over the perpetual crackle of the campfire, but Jake’s world narrows to Aiden, in the kind of silence that can only be found in the wake of a storm.

It’s that small measure of peace he’s needed. Some people fall quickly and easily into love, inhaling it like air. Jake has fumbled and tripped his way to the edge of a cliff. He doesn’t know what waits at the bottom besides Aiden, but it doesn’t matter.

He jumps.

“I love you,” he breathes, the extinguished poi hanging limply from his hands.

Aiden freezes. His eyes widen and his lips part, a single puff of white the only sign he’s breathing at all. Seconds seem bottomless, and Jake watches and waits for something—anything—to let him know that he hasn’t just cast himself into oblivion.

And then Aiden steps forward and pulls Jake to him with crushing force. He rocks onto his toes, presses his forehead to Jake’s temple and whispers, “I love you, too.”

And Jake lands.

12,464 miles

Day Eighty-eight: Nevada

If Aiden’s life were a movie, their time in Vegas would be the montage scene.

He can see it all as clear as crystal, so perfectly formed in his mind that he knows every shot, every transition and every angle. He even knows the kind of music he’d use—acoustic, starting with quiet strumming and heart­felt lyrics and building into something thumping and powerful. It would soundtrack the meeting of their lips by the campfire, as Jake drops his extinguished poi to the ground and links their fingers, neither of them heeding the wolf whistles and catcalls of their audience.

The first verse would accompany their hustle back to the RV, fires stoked and engines starting. Fade into smiles across the cab, Aiden’s hand riding the air outside the window as they speed west along I-40, a panoramic shot of the hotel room he booked on a whim. Stock shots of the lights and sights of Vegas itself. Jake running down the Strip with Aiden’s hand in his, looking for all the world as if this is the happiest he’s ever been.

The song’s quiet heart and perfect sentiment would help juxtapose shots of soul-deep kisses in dark corners of casinos with fast entrances and exits to each and every gaudy attraction they could find, and the cameras would capture them splitting their sides laughing as they took stupid photos of one another at Tussaud’s, Jake complaining about the smell of elephant dung inside the Adventuredome at Circus Circus, them sitting in the mezzanine at Showgirls and loosely holding hands over the armrest and them getting tossed out of the Neon Museum for ditching the guided tour in favor of a heated makeout session behind the dead Stardust sign.

And as the song reached the hushed interlude, the scenes would be of a darkened hotel room and hands knotted in sheets, in hair, tangling before a tight squeeze of release; the gentle caress of Jake’s fingers against Aiden’s cheek, bringing him drifting downward, back to the earth.

One last series of shots would accompany the song’s coda: Jake smiling softly at him from the bathtub through the open bathroom door; splitting a bottle of too-expensive champagne in the bar before returning to their room; fast kisses, laughing kisses, desperate kisses. Everything about the film in his head would be disgustingly cheesy, and Aiden would love every perfect second—because perfect is exactly what the last three days have been. It makes him miss filmmaking in a new way, one that has him scribbling stray thoughts and notes on scraps of paper, humming the riffs and hooks floating through his mind and wanting more than anything to fulfill his and Jake’s dream of creating beautiful things together.

“We must be the only two people ever to come to Vegas and not gamble a cent,” he muses to a sleepy Jake, who has only just awoken from the doze he fell into after they came back to the hotel room. They were almost drunk, rutting against one another before the door even closed behind them; some­how, they managed to make it to the bed, with a trail of clothes in their wake. Now they lie beneath soft sheets and blankets with all of the lights off but the drapes drawn back from the windows in the hope that they will see the Geminid meteors streaking by. Their hotel is on the outskirts, and the view from the room is nothing but highway and desert, so there’s a chance.

“The house always wins,” Jake replies. “And besides, I already gambled a lot the other night.”

“Nah,” Aiden says, scooting down and turning onto his side. “I was a sure thing.”

“Exactly,” Jake says, looking at him through one eye. “The house always wins.”

The pause is comfortable, knowing, the kind that doesn’t need to be filled with awkward glances or tentative touches—so much is out in the open, now. The walls have crumbled, leaving not rubble, but a foundation upon which they can build whatever they want. Even without the champagne, Aiden feels giddy.

“So,” he says. “We’ve had two days in Vegas, done every tacky tourist thing we could think of, and you’ve fucked me every which way to Sunday—and it’s only Thursday.”

“That about sums it up, yeah,” Jake replies. He traces Aiden’s lips and kisses each one in turn.

“There isn’t anything left that we haven’t done?” Aiden asks.

“Not that I can think of.”

“No fantasies about going to that drive-through chapel?”

Jake’s bark of laughter is music. “Sure, Mr. Cliché, let’s do it. I think I have a condom in my wallet from graduation that could be my something old.”

“And we have blue M&Ms,” Aiden supplies.

“Oh! Maybe you’ll let me borrow that tie of yours that I’m never allowed to borrow.”

“And I can wear the scarf you bought yesterday.”

“Ah, Nevada.” Jake sighs almost wistfully. “If only.”

“If only,” Aiden echoes.

Jake looks at him with a soft, tender smile. After a moment, he licks his lips and asks, “What, are we playing Relationship Chicken now?”

“Well, we both clean up,” Aiden jokes, and scoots forward under the covers, sliding his thigh between Jake’s.

“Mmm, you in that suit at the wedding,” Jake trails off and shuffles up into the contact.

“Yeah?”

“You really have no idea how gorgeous you are, do you?”

Aiden turns his warming face into his pillow, but just as his air is starting to run out, something occurs to him. Grinning, he looks at Jake and says, “You said ‘relationship.’”

“Shut up,” Jake mutters, dropping his eyes, but his own smile betrays him.

“So… are we boyfriends now?” Aiden teases, ducking to look into his eyes again.

Jake surprises him with a firm kiss and even more with his answer. “That’s completely the wrong word for what you are to me. But if we have to use conven­tional terms, yeah. You’re absofuckinglutely my boyfriend.”

“Because you love me, and I love you,” Aiden murmurs, leaning forward and whispering against his lips, “and we’re totally fucking screwed.”

“That about sums it up, yeah,” Jake repeats, and pulls Aiden in for another of those desperate kisses that have marked the passage of so many moments over the past two days. It’s dizzying and disorienting, how Jake claims his mouth as if he never wants to stop, as if he’s taking as much as he can because he doesn’t know if he’ll still have it the next day, week, month, year.

Aiden is breathless when he pulls back, shivering as the AC kicks in, and asks, “So you’re sure there’s nothing else you want to do while we’re here?”

Jake looks thoughtful. He toys with the corner of his pillowcase and says, “There was this art show last year at The Cosmopolitan that I wish I could have seen. I read an article about it.”

“Go on,” Aiden prompts him.

Jake shifts, extricates his legs from Aiden’s and turns around to settle his back against Aiden’s chest. “Have you ever noticed that the longer you look up, the more stars you see?”

“We had this exact conversation in July at Thomas Point,” Aiden reminds him, slipping one arm beneath his neck and the other around his waist. “What is it about this art show?”

At length, Jake answers, “It was called
Confessions.
The artist set up little booths where people could write their secrets on slips of paper. It was all done anonymously, like voting booths. She collected all of them and pinned them up on the walls. There were hundreds, maybe thousands.”

“Sounds pretty cool,” Aiden agrees, biding his time; Jake wouldn’t bring it up without a reason.

“What would you confess?” Jake asks softly.

“That my life hasn’t been the same since they stopped making Double Dip Crunch,” he replies blithely, earning a sharp pinch on the thigh. He clears his throat and, as he looks out the window and catches the first meteor darting across the night sky, he hooks his chin over Jake’s shoulder and answers honestly, “I realized that I was in love with my best friend while we were watching meteors together in Louisiana.”

He expects Jake to tense in his arms, as he has done almost every other time Aiden has whispered the words; it feels almost too good to be true that instead, he simply relaxes further into Aiden’s hold, hums happily and says, “That’s a good one.”

“What about you?”

“We might be here a while.”

“I’m listening.”

“Okay, well,” Jake says, taking a deep breath as if to brace himself. With a small, self-deprecating laugh, he begins, “I once walked in on my best friend jerking off and used it as masturbation fodder for a month.”

Prodding him in the ribs, Aiden says, “So I give you this deep confession—”

“Your first one was about
cereal,
so don’t even.”

“And you respond with, ‘I used to jerk off to you.’”

“You were fucking hot, okay? I’m not sorry,” Jake says.

“Come on, sweetheart,” Aiden says, giving him a cajoling squeeze. “Tell me something real.”

“That’s my line,” Jake jokes. “But okay, um…”

Heavy moments of silence pass, punctuated only by the steady sound of their breathing and the occasional set of footsteps passing by outside the door. When it seems like almost too much time has passed, Aiden says, “It doesn’t have to be something monumental.”

“I just can’t think of anything that you don’t already know about me,” Jake finally says, his voice quietly surprised. “You were there for so much of it. And I’ve told you about last year, so…

“Aiden, you—” Jake stops short to face him. His eyes are shrouded in dark­ness, but Aiden can feel the weight of them, as if his gaze is some­thing tangible. “You know me better than anyone, better than I know myself, some­times. And I think what took me so long was that I was terrified of losing you but also terrified of not losing you, of what all this would mean if I let it in.”

“We were both scared,” Aiden says. “Do you really think I would have let you off the hook in Delaware if I hadn’t been?”

“I know, but… if you haven’t noticed, I’m kind of obsessed with you.” Jake’s words come out stilted, almost clumsy, as if he’s trying to make sense of them as he speaks. “And it… it made me feel so unsafe, because I’ve never been like this with anyone else. I’ve never felt like this, I never thought I was the kind of person who pins their everything on somebody.”

“You don’t—”

“Dan, can you… just let me try and get this out?”

“Of course.”

Jake takes a deep breath and continues, “Some of the things I’ve put you through on this trip, and you were so patient with me… even the idea of get­ting to have this with you felt too good to be true, like everything would just go to shit if I let myself think it was a possibility, let alone have the reality. And I’m still kind of terrified, honestly, but it’s always going to be you. I couldn’t tell you all those years ago, but now? I can’t
not
tell you. There’s never going to be anybody else. I’ve been so stupid, and so blind, and I’m sorry it took me so long to get here.”

Slowly, eyes fixed on Jake’s, Aiden takes Jake’s wrists and straddles his hips, pinning him to the bed. Jake is miles of body and skin beneath him, skin that makes Aiden suddenly wish they had factored in a stop at the beach in Goleta for when they get to the West Coast. He would love to drag Jake out swimming and then find his old hideaway cove along the cliff wall, where he could take his time licking the salt from Jake’s freckles.

Instead, he entwines their fingers and leans down with parted lips: close, close, closer, and then he is consumed. The door between them is finally open, swinging on its hinges in the wake of a hurricane, and Aiden can feel the brave new world just beyond. Their lips barely brush, but Aiden’s heart is racing and there’s a tug in his stomach that feels like jolting awake to the sensation of falling. It’s panic, pressure, realization; it’s hitting the ground running, willingly tumbling headfirst into love.

He kisses Jake, and everything slows down. He can feel Jake’s eyelashes against the apple of his cheek, Jake’s lips soft and pliant under his own and a fanfare in his heart. He pours his every last drop of hope and fear and adoration and regret into Jake, silently apologizing for the wasted years.

“I love you,” is his answer when he pulls back, his voice thick, and his eyes wetter than he can stand.

“I love you, too,” Jake breathes, eyes wide and dark as he blinks up at him. “And my confession is that I realized I was in love with my best friend in an abandoned train station in Indiana. Right before he turned into a superhero.”