What It Takes (22 page)

“You’re right,” Milo says softly. Andrew’s breaths are ragged and loud; he wipes tears off his face with his sleeves, a no-nonsense movement. “But not because I didn’t love you.”

“I think that might actually make it worse.”

“I never wanted to hurt you. I can’t feel what you went through. But you don’t know what it felt like for me, either. I didn’t know how to love you without leaving.”

“We could have learned,” Andrew says, sniffling. Crying always makes him congested.

“You told me you didn’t want me to always be that boy. You said you thought it was for the best.”

“I didn’t know—” Andrew starts, then takes a breath and modulates his voice.

“Can you promise you wouldn’t have always loved me as that broken boy?”

“I don’t know, okay?”

“I did it for you, too. I’m angry that we said goodbye like we did, and you’re right that it was high-handed. But I’ve been sitting here for a while, thinking, and I think that…that that’s on both of us. So yeah, I’m pissed about the years we could have had,” Milo says, trying to choose his words. “But who I am now? I’m different. You are too; we can’t say what might have been, and we can’t erase our pasts. I’ve learned a lot. And one thing I learned… is that I want to stop wishing for a different past. I want to start looking
forward
.” He takes a deep breath, on the edge of a cliff with roiling water below. “Andrew,” he says softly and looks at Andrew as plainly and honestly as he can, “I could be better for you this time.”

“This time? Is it that easy?” Andrew tilts his head. Milo can’t read his tone.

“That love I had that I didn’t think I could trust, that I didn’t deserve? I—” Milo swallows. He wants to touch Andrew so much, his palms tingle with the memory of Andrew’s body in them. “I have that to give, now.”

“
Fuck
,” Andrew says, then puts his head on his knees. His shoulders shake, but his tears are silent.

“Andrew.” Milo scoots in, takes that chance and puts his hands on Andrew’s shoulders. “Please let me love you. Please give me the chance.”

“I wished for this,” Andrew says, sobs breaking the air and Milo’s heart. “I wished and wished; I broke myself apart for you. For so long I was resigned to having you any way I could, because loving you was like breathing; it was what I needed.”

“I couldn’t give it to you then,” Milo pleads, “not the way you deserved. You had so much beautiful love, and I was sure I would destroy you. I’m sorry about this afternoon. That I blamed you for it all.”

“You did destroy me.” Andrew’s cheeks are blotched and wet and his lips are trembling. “I wasn’t exaggerating earlier, Milo. After I went back to school… there were days I didn’t leave my room. When I cried so much it came to a point it wasn’t physically possible any more. Nat and Damien would find me staring at walls. I didn’t eat; I couldn’t sleep. I barely went to class and I lost my job. I held onto hope for months. My friends finally staged an intervention.”

“Andrew,” Milo says, helpless, self-recrimination lacing his breath and words, “I’m so sorr—”

“It was kind, what they did,” Andrew continues without acknowledging Milo. “It was hard, but done with my best interests in mind. If I’d thought… if I had any hope that you really loved me—”

“Andrew, how could you not know? I told you—”

“You told me and left. You pulled me in and pushed me away for years, Milo.”

“I know,” Milo says. “I didn’t mean to—I was so scared, all the time, and I didn’t know how to let myself be loved.”

“Yeah well, I didn’t either.” Andrew looks up at the ceiling. “If I’m being honest with both of us, I don’t know that I could have trusted you even if you’d stayed, or I had.”

Andrew looks at him then, finally. The only remnants of his tears are a dampness along his lashes and faint streaks down his cheeks.

“I wouldn’t let myself be loved for years, Milo, because I didn’t know how to be loved without paying in the devotion I gave you.”

Milo winces and pulls away. Said like that—baldly, words ugly but not without truth—brings him back to a time when he struggled daily with guilt that edged on self-hatred.

“I’m not blaming you, exactly,” Andrew says. He puts his hand on Milo’s arm. “I know you loved me, the best way you could. But not the way I wanted. I guess it wasn’t healthy, for either of us.”

“No, it wasn’t.”

Andrew takes a deep breath and folds his hands back on his knees. “I want to be angry with you right now. I don’t really know why, except that you make me feel like I’m seventeen again, and that hurts. I don’t want to say that maybe we were right, and I don’t want to admit that it was both our faults. I don’t want to wonder if I made a mistake when I made myself say goodbye. I tried it, really loving someone, with Dex. I don’t want to think that those years were a waste, or that I never really loved him. Because falling in love with him really was beautiful and I saw our future together clearly.”

“I’m so sorry,” Milo says.

“But then you were here, your beautiful stupid face and everything between us that never went away. I fooled myself into thinking what I’d severed was gone.”

“I know. I felt that too,” Milo says, quietly, and takes a risk, kisses Andrew’s knee.

“And I couldn’t help falling out of love with him, because no one is as bright as you, and I can’t think of anything that could eclipse what I have inside for you.”

“Andrew,” Milo says helplessly.

“Milo, please,
please
don’t hurt me.”

“Come here.” Milo pulls him forward, so awkward and not really fitting on his lap. “Please give me a chance. Please let me love you.”

“Milo, I don’t know.” Andrew buries his wet face in Milo’s neck.

“I’ll love you every way you want. The ways you dreamt I could. The ways I wanted to be able to before. I’ll love you like the man I’ve become, not like that stupid boy who thought the world wanted to hurt and break him.”

Andrew takes his face into his hands and forces Milo to look at him. “You always deserved every ounce of love. You were worthy of it.”

“But I didn’t think so, then. And I do now.”

Andrew shudders in Milo’s arms, then tilts into a tender kiss that Milo deepens into a drawn out plea with his body. It’s delicious and full when he feels Andrew unlock, when he feels the acquiescence and visceral
yes
exchanged between their bodies.

°

“What about this?” Andrew gestures toward the woods behind them and the beach before them. Their hands are clasped tightly between their bodies, hard, as if letting go would untether something incredibly fragile.

“What? It’s a beautiful day.” Milo glances up at the ash gray sky, fascinated by the texture of the clouds, bubbling and lumpy.

“It’s about to rain.”

“I don’t care.” Milo stops them to drop kisses like the promise of those raindrops on Andrew’s lips.

“But still.” Andrew pulls away with laughter spilling out.

“Still?”

“You can’t stay here and work,” Andrew says. “Where will you live?’

“Anywhere you are,” Milo says simply, immediately.

“I can’t do that,” Andrew says. “Keep you somewhere that will make you unhappy. You can’t work here.”

“Andrew, I’m not unhappy here. And before you say it, it’s not only because of you.” Andrew leads them to the sand sits and pulls Milo down.

“You know what I learned in the last few years about my past?”

“That it sucked?” Andrew tries to joke.

“Well, that too,” Milo says wryly. “But also that all that resentment and rage tied me down. They exhausted me, my shame and self-hatred and everything I couldn’t let go of.”

“Your bag of rocks,” Andrew says, remembering the day when Milo had spoken of forgiveness.

“Yeah.” Milo squeezes Andrew’s fingers where they are clasped again. “Well, a lot of those were
his
fucking rocks. I had to figure out how to let them go. Then I had to find my way inside me, and to reach that anxiety and anger that I thought were
me
.”

“You amaze me,” Andrew says. “And it worked?”

“And it’s a work in progress,” Milo admits. “Coming home set me back a little. But I had a handle. I had skills I learned. Every day, at first, I had to go for walks, had to force myself to look around and notice every detail, to focus my brain anywhere other than on what made me anxious or mad or overwhelmed. I came down to the beach and meditated.”

“You really did become a hippy,” Andrew jokes. “You should write a self-help book.”

Milo shoots him a fond look. “I think I’ll leave the writing to you.”

“Well, if you insist.” Andrew’s smile is flirtatious and fond. “Without the balanced chakras, though.”

Milo smiles, but continues his original train of thought. “You—it was...that was like really coming home. Coming home without the same need. I could really feel you, for the first time. Differently.”

“Oh—” Andrew looks at the water and bites his lip.

“But you had Dex, and I couldn’t take what you had found away from you.”

“Milo—” Andrew says softly.

“I’m sorry if I did.”

“You didn’t, no. I felt like that too. Maybe it would have worked with him, but compared to this...Everything with you fits without trying...”

“God,” Milo puts his forehead against Andrew’s.

“I’ll go anywhere you want,” Andrew promises.

“No.” Milo pulls back and Andrew’s eyes are chocolate in the lack of sun. He starts to laugh.

“What?”

“I can’t believe I forgot to tell you.” Milo takes a breath. “I applied for a job at the Cape Preservation and Development Foundation when I wasn’t sure what would happen with Mom. I wanted to tell you; that’s why I came looking for you.”

“Because you were thinking about it?”

“Yeah, I was. But god, right now, I’m not just thinking about it.”

“Why, why would you chose this place when everything—”

“This is where your heart beats happiest,” Milo whispers. They’re nose to nose, hands clasped still. “And where yours does, mine does too. You’re teaching me to love this place like it’s new, and I want that, with you.”

epilogue

“
Daddy, Daddy,
Daddy
!” Margo turns in his arms and chants repeatedly until Andrew has to turn away from his conversation with Milo.

“What, what,
what
?” Andrew says. Margo’s eyes brighten at the teasing tone.

“Don’t be sassy,” she says in a prim and dead-on imitation of his voice. Next to him Milo cracks up.

“You were saying?” Milo reminds her. He tugs at one of her pigtails that’s falling apart from rubbing against her wool scarf. She turns toward the water, wiggling her butt more firmly on Andrew’s lap, and points to the horizon. To the west, the sun is finishing its inexorable slide into night, and to the east the sky is plum to lilac and magnolia pink.

“That’s Venus. They told us in school.” She points at the faintest twinkle of a star just beginning to prick through.

Andrew takes her little hand, cold from the October wind on the beach, and kisses it. “I think that one is Venus, honey.” He extends both their hands and points in the right direction, where it’s bright and big and low in the sky.

“Connor!” Milo calls out, “Uh-uh, not by the water.”

Connor turns to shoot them a smile over his shoulder. “No.” He says it clearly, and very firmly. Andrew hides a smile behind Margo’s shoulder. Connor’s fair hair catches in the breeze and Andrew knows his cheeks are pink from the sun he caught earlier that day. Connor squeals and runs away from the waves when they wash over his toes. He giggles and runs back in, but Andrew’s not really worried. The water is too cold for him to go in too far. His toes might suffer, though.

“Hey, mister, you listen to your father,” he calls out, perhaps not as seriously as he should.

“Nope,” Connor says, popping the ‘p’ sound and laughing. Milo sighs when Andrew tries to hold back a laugh. Milo groans when he stands, but he’s smiling too.

“You have no defenses against his cuteness,” Milo calls over his shoulder.

Margo looks back at him over her shoulder and nods knowingly, as if she’s in this with them. She’s only six, but in many ways she is. Connor is a hysterical little handful, a complete contrast to Margo’s serious and quiet nature.

Andrew kisses her cheek and hugs her close. By the shoreline he catches the low tones of Milo’s voice as he catches up to Connor and laughs, scooping him out of the water. With the light fading, they’re little more than silhouettes. The night sighs and lets go of the sun. Water droplets arc from Connor’s feet when Milo scoops him up. He shrieks with laughter when Milo holds him close and tickles his neck with kisses, and the image and sound are an indelible stamp in Andrew’s chest. Margo turns and tucks her face into Andrew’s neck for warmth. Her nose is cold and she’s putting one of his legs to sleep. Her sweet, trusting weight and the heat of her body alone keep him warm.

It’s one of those perfect moments, a snapshot he’ll always remember, even when every other detail from this night may be lost. Andrew will carry it tucked with so many more: the look on Milo’s face when Andrew proposed on a star-filled night in their tiny fort; the palest blue of the sky above him and the beautiful indigo of Milo’s eyes when he laid Andrew down on a blanket in the sand and, between kisses, finally, finally told Andrew he was ready for children. Ted toasting them at a bonfire a few nights before Margo came into the world. Connor, too, early and tiny in Milo’s cupped palms.

Milo carries Connor up the sand, cradled in his arms, and turns him upside down to make him laugh harder before depositing him on the blanket.

“Bud, you have to listen to your fathers,” Milo says seriously, drying his little feet.

“Why?” Connor asks.

“Because we don’t want you to lose your toes,” Andrew says, pushing wisps of Margo’s long red hair away where the wind tosses it across his face.

“Why?”

Milo bites back a smile and kisses the top of Connor’s head. For all of the fear Milo harbored that he would damage any children they would have, Andrew is constantly moved by how beautifully Milo loves their children. “Because you need them.”

Connor spreads out his toes and looks at them with the seriousness of a three-year-old trying to solve a puzzle. Finally he looks up at them. “Why?”

On his lap Margo giggles. “Because he loves you, silly,” she says. “Remember, he loves your heart and your fingers and toes. He loves you to infinity—”

Andrew chimes in with her with the phrase they use at bedtime, when they tuck them into their rooms under glowing stars in the shapes of Andrew’s invented constellations—each child with their own, and one for Milo on both ceilings: “He loves you more, the most, and always, always, always.”