The teenage boy looked from me to Angel with dead eyes.
“Ignore him,” Angel told him as he tightened the straps on his, somehow making the vest look hot.
He stepped onto our boat and then held a hand out for me, which I refused at first, but the moment my foot left the safety of the dock, I lost all sense of dignity and allowed him to assist me. I had a keen eye for color, but I’d never claimed to have any sense of balance.
“I’m not really a big fan of water,” I admitted. “Especially being out in the middle of it with no escape.”
“The no escape part is really important actually,” Angel said as he began to pedal and steer our two-person boat.
The pedals spun at my feet, their plastic and metal whirring sounding very judgmental. So begrudgingly, I began to pump my legs up and down to help Angel. “You said we would get fresh air. Not that you’d be subjecting me to manual labor. And in the middle of a body of water! Where I can’t even escape!”
“Well, that’s sort of the point,” he said plainly as he steered us past the large fountain at the center of the lake. “My mom brought my dad out here when she told him she was pregnant with Astrid. She didn’t want him to be able to run away or flip out.”
“Did he?” I asked. “Flip out?”
“Legend says he stood up and dove into the water. Dad says he was so excited he fell in. According to Mom, it was more of a shock response.”
“Teddy’s a good dad,” I told him. My parents never disowned me or anything, but they never really knew what to do with me. We did a short phone call on holidays, with very rare visits, while Teddy side hustles Christmas movies to fund Angel’s and Astrid’s dreams.
My dad didn’t even offer to fill up my gas tank when I drove to LA after high school.
“So I guess you thought I was a flight risk?”
“Well, you did dive out a window into a bush to avoid talking to me.”
I eyed the turtle swimming alongside our swan boat. He was free. Swim, little turtle! Swim! “I don’t know what else there is to talk about,” I said.
“How about we start with this? You broke my heart last winter.”
I gasped. “That’s my line and you know it! How can you even accuse me of being the heartbreaker in this situation?”
He stopped pedaling, and we came to a stop, our boat floating off on our own. “Luca, you literally deleted me from your life. You didn’t even give me a chance to explain.”
“You humiliated me,” I told him. What I didn’t say was that humiliation was right up there with a broken heart for me.
He swiveled toward me and took my hand, refusing to speak until finally I looked up at him. How was he so fucking earnest? How was he so good at tricking me into thinking I was the only person in the world?
“I’m sorry,” he finally said. “You have to know that I am so deeply sorry for not telling you about Paris before I left.”
“Do I have to know?” I said, looking away from him, but not pulling my hand free. “This is the first time you’ve given me a real apology for it.”
The sun glinted off the water in bright, shimmering shards; it was the kind of hot summer mood meant for movie montages and influencer stories featuring micro bikinis and a Hadid sister in the background. We couldn’t be farther away from that month in Vermont right now.
“You’re right,” Angel said quietly. “So here it is. I’m sorry. I found out at the last minute, and I wanted to tell you, but I went into self-preservation mode, and I’m sorry.”
I inhaled and exhaled through my nostrils, a wave of emotions assaulting me. “I—I’ve liked you for so long, Angel. Christmas Notch felt like a miracle. I’ve been terrified of taking that leap with you, because I’d never get my first shot back. But now we’re damaged goods, and I don’t know what to do with that. I don’t know how to forget how you made me feel.”
“Luca,” he whispered. “Nothing is ever wholly good or wholly bad. No place or person or relationship. You really want to throw all this away because we fucked it up the first time?”
My eyes began to burn with tears.
“This feels big. We feel big. I can’t let you give up on us.”
I finally looked back at him. “It felt like you gave up first, and that’s a lot for me to forgive.” I paused. It all came down to one thing. “How could you not tell me?”
Angel let out a long breath. His hand around mine was still there, though, reassuring. Like . . . like we could argue and still hold on to each other. Like we could be uncertain about everything else, but still know that we wanted to be in the same place, uncertain together.
“Do you remember who kissed whom first that night after The North Pole?” Angel asked.
The memory made my cheeks warm—well, even warmer than a swan-boat excursion in July had made them already. “You kissed me. I am whom.”
“And who was it who said they wanted to spend more time together after? And who was it who suggested renting the house and staying in Christmas Notch a little while longer?”
“Objection! Leading the witness!”
“I always made the first move,” Angel went on. “Talked first. Asked first. Was vulnerable first.” He took a long breath, his eyes going down to our linked hands. “And I know part of that is me. That sometimes I can get . . . obsessive about things. Art. People. Whatever. And I was obsessed with you.”
My heartbeat seized; I didn’t even know what to do with myself. I was obsessed with you. He was? Like, really? That was better than anything, better even than love! I’d always wanted someone to be obsessed with me—and not even for Mean Girls quote reasons—but because there was something so bone-hummingly rich about knowing you were preoccupying someone’s thoughts, starring in all of their daydreams. It was satisfying like chocolate cake or the sharp fizz of fresh champagne—a downright sensual experience.
Or so I’d always imagined. No one had ever been obsessed with me before (or admitted as much).
But I didn’t miss Angel’s use of the past tense there. And I also didn’t miss that he still hadn’t explained himself.
“Okay, so I take my time opening up,” I said. “That doesn’t mean I wouldn’t care about someone I’d just spent a month with jetting off to Paris! With their ex! Their stupidly ripped ex!”
Angel turned as much as he could to face me. Our swan was gently rocking now, turning slowly in circles. “Firstly, I didn’t go to Paris with Blake,” said Angel. “I went and he was already there visiting his cousin and fucking his way through Montmartre. He picked me up from the airport, and then when my apartment ended up being a disaster, he took me out for the day while the place was filled with plumbers fixing the broken pipes. Nothing happened between us, and neither of us want anything to happen between us. He wants easy sex with no commitments. I want someone who understands that visual art and computer-designed art complement each other, and who will also get me a heating pad when I have a trapped fart.”
I could see why that wouldn’t be Blake. Even in our very open, very queer circle of art and porn, there were some men who embraced toxic masculinity to the extreme. Blake wasn’t a bad person, but he also wasn’t exactly the listening, care about my lover’s tummy ache type of guy.