Open Road (23 page)

The days had blurred into this spinning kaleidoscope of amazing sights and food and kissing and sex. It was almost as hard to say good-bye to New York as it had been to New Orleans. It meant the end was near, that he and Reece only had a few more stops until they flew home. He knew reality was coming in just a few short days, but he didn’t want it to. He didn’t want it to end.

“I believe we’d be springing. It is only May, after all. And sadly we’re only going to be here a day,” Reece said.

It was beautiful, the highway going on to the Cape. Angus and Reece had rolled down the windows and let the sea breeze flow through the car.

“We’re on the freaking Atlantic.”

“We have been since we hit New York,” Reece said with a chuckle.

“I know. It just…. We’re on a completely different ocean. It’s just been like this blur of land and people, and I can’t believe we actually did it. We crossed the whole country.”

Reece reached across and pulled Angus’s hand into his lap. “I know this is going to sound really dumb, but I kind of feel like a different person than I was when we left Portland. I’ve tried things I never thought I’d try… and some I always hoped I’d get the chance to try.”

Angus’s heart raced. He knew what Reece meant. The last two nights had been two of the best of his life, and he’d been reliving moments in his head all day as they drove. “I am a completely different person than I was when we left home.”

“Like night and day,” Reece whispered. “I can’t believe I get to have you back.”

He
was
different. Different from when they left. Different even from when he’d been with Brad. He was light… and
happy
. Legitimately, wholly, enthusiastically happy.

And he was in love.

Which, yeah. That sounded crazy to him too, but how could what he was feeling be called anything else?

“I’m a little scared to go home,” he told Reece. “I don’t want to lose this.”

“What?”

“I don’t know, all of it. How I feel about myself, how I feel about you. I just…. I’m really fucking happy.” He laughed because it felt like that was all he could do. The air felt amazing, and he had an ice tea in a plastic cup, and he had the man he should’ve been with since he was a teenager, and he was happy. Like he’d never known what it was like to be happy before kind of happy. Like the word stopped having any meaning because he thought it so many times. There just wasn’t another word for the feeling coursing through him—heady and giddy and like his skin was stretched thin over it.

“I kind of want to call our families and tell them we’re not coming back. Keep going. See more. There’s so much out there that we missed.”

“I know. I don’t want it to be over either.” Reece pulled Angus’s hand up to his mouth and kissed it.

“But reality beckons.”

“Not quite yet. We have a couple more days.”

PROVINCETOWN WAS
exactly what Angus had pictured in his head—similar to New Orleans, in a way, a lot like it actually, with little old buildings and narrow streets. But there was something rugged about the seaside town, like it had weathered years of storms. The houses were small and clapboard, for the most part, and the people were dressed for the warm spring weather. It was crowded, although he imagined that by summer it would be a zoo of beachgoers and couples like them. People like them. Like him and Reece. Like
Reece.

Sometimes Angus had to stop and think. Marvel at the fact that he’d missed such a huge part of his best and oldest friend, maybe feel a bit selfish that he’d been so oblivious not to see. But mostly he liked to revel in it. Reece was like him. They were together. They kissed, they had beautiful, amazing sex, and he wanted so much more of it.

“Hey. You want to get lobster for dinner?”

“What?”

Reece grinned. “You’ve been spacing out a lot, goof. What are you thinking about?”

“What do you think?” Angus raised his eyebrow.

“Oh. Um, wow. Okay.
Damn.
I asked if you wanted lobster for dinner.”

“We’re not in Maine yet,” Angus teased.

“Yeah. But we can get it there too. And I don’t think we’ll have a lot of time there. I found us a flight—”

Angus cringed. “Don’t say flight. Not just yet.”

“Okay.”

“I give lobster a definite yes, though. Maybe we can get it to go and eat it on the beach.”

“That sounds pretty spectacular.”

It sounded pretty spectacular to him too.

THEY FOUND
their little inn and checked in for the night. They’d be leaving in the afternoon the next day, one of their shorter stops, but it was theirs for the night. They parked the car and took off on foot through the tiny town. It was adorable.

Angus had seen so much during the trip, he would’ve thought he was tired of seeing by then, ready to go home and be in the familiar. But he marveled at little seaside cabins and rainbow flags and the quaint trolley just as he’d marveled at gazillion-dollar town houses in Manhattan.

“I wish we had longer here,” Reece said. “This seems like our kind of place.”

“Maybe we can come back in the summer,” Angus said. It was tentative. He didn’t know if he and Reece were making plans like that. When Reece tightened his arm around Angus’s shoulders, he breathed a sigh of relief.

“I think we should.”

REECE GOT
his lobster dinner, and Angus got his sunset on the beach. They sat there for a long time, even once the beach was dark and all they had was the light of the buildings along the shore and a glowy, luminescent moon that seemed to hover protectively right over them. Angus yawned, and he tipped his head onto Reece’s shoulder.

“You want to go back to the room and go to sleep?” Reece asked. He slid his hand up the inside of Angus’s thigh. It had become a thing they both seemed to do. A place to anchor their connection or something.

“First part yeah. Second part, maybe later.”

Reece chuckled. “I think that sounds pretty amazing to me.”

They wandered down the beach and through the main part of town and back to their little hotel. Angus definitely wanted to come back and spend more time in Provincetown. It seemed like the best of both of their worlds—colorful and busy but still not a huge city. He loved it. He’d loved basically everything he and Reece had done after he’d gotten his head out of his ass and decided to live and have a good time again.

THEY SHOWERED
together in their room, although the shower wasn’t nearly as huge and luxe as the one in New York had been. He didn’t mind. The closeness was just as good as shiny tiles and a shower the size of his old apartment’s whole bathroom. Then they got into bed together and had slow, intimate sex with the sliding door open so they could still hear the waves and smell the sea breeze. Angus knew he’d never been so happy before. He wanted to hold on to it with everything he had.

“You ready to head to Portland tomorrow?” Reece asked when they were relaxed against the pillows. They were both still a little breathless. Angus wound his body around Reece and dropped a kiss to his sticky, sweaty chest.

“I want to live here forever and never leave the beach,” he answered. It sounded kind of nice. “Even better. Never leave this bed.”

“We have to go home sometime,” Reece said with a chuckle.

“I know.” Angus groaned. “It’ll feel so weird to go home after all of this.”

“I know. Our little house will be so boring, won’t it?”

Our house….

Angus shimmied into the covers and tried to hide how pleased he was. He doubted he’d managed to. He couldn’t ever hide much from Reece.

“Off to Portland in the afternoon. And then home. From Portland to Portland.”

Reece chuckled and dragged his knuckles down Angus’s back. “I like it. Seems like a full circle somehow.”

“Portland to Portland,” Angus repeated. “And back to Portland again.”

“You sound like Bilbo Baggins.”

Angus snorted. “And you sound like a big huge dork. That’s a hobbit, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” Reece said with a fond sigh. “We should probably go to sleep.”

“Yeah. We should.”

Somehow they still ended up lying there staring at each other for a long, long time.

EVEN AFTER
Reece fell asleep, Angus had a hard time sleeping himself. The thought of flying home hit a little hard, but it wasn’t as bad as he’d thought. He had a new place to look forward to, that was still familiar and still felt like home, he had
Reece
in whatever way they were together. Sure, he had to find a job, figure out what the hell he was going to do with the next step of his life, and he was still thirty, but it wasn’t so bad anymore. He was actually kind of looking forward to it.

Portland… and Portland

ANGUS DECIDED
he’d grown addicted to the smell of the ocean. It reminded him of home, of days on the sand playing with Reece and Cherry and even baby Peyton once he was old enough to participate. Those times had been some of his happiest. As much as he’d thought he wanted to escape small-town life, nothing had been the same since they’d moved to Portland. Every so often, especially lately, Angus thought about going home. He wondered if Reece would go home with him.

The four-hour drive had mainly been up the coast, full of sea vistas and dunes and bleached-out oceans of sea grass. Angus felt like the salt had sunk into his skin. Reece had both hands on the steering wheel, Angus had one hand on Reece’s thigh, the windows were down, the radio played softly in the background, and the whole thing was a hazy watercolor dream.

He curved his hand more tightly around Reece’s leg and flopped his head back against the seat.

“Tired?” Reece asked.

“You kinda wore me out last night,” Angus muttered before he realized he wasn’t sure if Reece was completely comfortable talking about it. He supposed he should be. He’d done it after all, but Angus was still a little shy when it came to their physical relationship. It was so new and so beautiful. It almost felt like he was holding a fragile piece of glass in his hands, full of sparkle and depth, swirls of colors, and an almost aching beauty. He was afraid to drop it, that it wasn’t strong enough yet not to break.

“You’re not the only one,” Reece said in return. Angus didn’t open his eyes, but he could hear the blush in Reece’s voice. “I didn’t want to get up this morning. It was the best feeling, though. So good.”

“Really?”

“Of course.”

“Reece—” They still hadn’t talked about what they were, exactly. They were moving in together. They were best friends. But was all of this just a vacation thing? Angus didn’t think so, not after the way they’d looked at each other and kissed like they never wanted to stop, but he and Reece needed to define it or else one of them would end up getting hurt. And Angus had a feeling who that someone would be.

Reece covered Angus’s hand with his own. “Can we wait until we get there?” he asked. “Like, not in the car?”

They were flying out in the afternoon the next day. Angus could barely believe their adventure was nearly over. He wanted to know what they were going to be before he sank back into familiar spaces and places. He wanted to know how Reece felt about what had happened beyond their friendship and liking how it felt when they were in bed. But he figured if Reece wanted to wait, then maybe he didn’t know what to think just yet. Angus was willing to give him another few hours.

“Yeah. I can wait.” Angus paused, then said, “I can’t believe we’re here. At the end.”

It felt like he’d been gone from home for a lifetime. Angus reached over and threaded his fingers through Reece’s and squeezed. It felt so
right
. Every time he tested the idea, the feeling of touching him, it always felt like exactly what Angus was meant to do.

“What do you mean by ‘here’?” Reece asked.

Angus wished he knew. “I guess here, like the other Portland. Or maybe here like… us. We should’ve figured it out years ago. Or maybe again, this is the right time.”

Reece gave Angus a wry smile. “I figured it out years ago.”

“
What
?” Angus didn’t have a clue what to say to that.

“Um, we need to unload the car, drop our stuff in the room, and then drop the car off.”

“Yeah. Okay.”

DROPPING THE
car off, their little world for over two weeks, felt strange—that cutting off a limb kind of strange.

“I liked our car,” Angus said when they were back in the hotel room with their overstuffed bags. He already missed their little cocoon. Getting rid of it felt like one more step closer to the real world.

Reece chuckled. “Doesn’t it sound nice to get home, though, sleep in—” He stopped talking.

“It’s okay. I’m very comfortable with the fact that the place I lived in for six years is gone.” He wasn’t. Really. But he had to be.

“You didn’t call it home,” Reece said. “Your apartment… you didn’t call it home.”

“I suppose I didn’t,” Angus said. “It never really felt that way.” Even he was surprised by that. But he was telling the truth. When he was with Brad, the apartment had felt like somewhere he had to be perfect. And he wasn’t perfect. After Brad left, he didn’t even want to look at the place.

Reece reached over and squeezed his shoulder. “Well, you’ve got a home as long as you want it.”

“You don’t think it’ll be weird with… what’s happened?” Moving in as Angus the best bud was one thing. After the past few days, that was so far out the door he doubted they’d ever get it back. Angus wasn’t sure he wanted to.

“I think….” Reece was quiet. “I think it’ll be the opposite of weird. I think it’ll be everything I’ve wanted for years.”

“What are you trying to tell me?”

Reece sat there silently for a minute, then took a long, deep breath. “I’m in love with you. I have been for a really, really long time.”

“How long?” Angus croaked out. In that moment, he remembered the touches, the cuddles, how
close
he and Reece had been before Brad butted his way into their lives. Reece had already told Angus he wanted him, but wanting and in love were two different things. His chest suddenly got all light and happy, but he felt a little nauseated.