laughed and held up a pair of pajama pants. “You won’t be needing these either.” He tossed them over his shoulder too. I threw a box from my nightstand into my bag and he read the label. “Trojan natural lamb. For a more sensual feeling.” He held it up to me, smiling. “A twelve pack? Are you kidding me? I hope there’s a First Aid kit in here somewhere too.”
Key West—the southernmost point in the United States, a mere six square miles, the last in a string of keys off the tip of Florida, and a place where, as one Web site claimed, closets have no doors. But thankfully, the rooms did, with locks. Ben handed over the key with a slightly amused grin.
“I expect you two to behave.”
Fortunately, our room wasn’t next to theirs after all.
The week was pure magic. We filled our days with long walks on the beach and lazy swims in the ocean. We explored the island on bicycle, taking in the nineteenth-century architecture, dodging the free-roaming chickens, and chatting up barefoot hippies with tiny dogs nestled in their bicycle baskets. We wandered through Ernest Hemingway’s house and speculated about Tennessee Williams’s life as we stood, hand-in-hand, outside the bungalow he’d lived in decades ago. And when we got hungry, we ate Cuban sandwiches or conch fritters at a sidewalk table or sitting on the curb and watched other lovers in fearless public displays of affection.
Our nights we filled with passion and long soft gazes and sweet words. We weren’t behaving ourselves, and we didn’t for one moment feel guilty about that.
On Thursday evening, I paid a street performer twenty-five dollars to borrow his guitar for five minutes. It was the first time I’d played Adam his song, the song I’d written for him as a Christmas present, the song I’d not had the heart to play for him before then. And it seemed right that I’d waited. I played it for him sitting cross-legged under a street lamp in Mallory Square with the crowds and tightrope walkers and jugglers as a backdrop. He cried.
Too soon it was the last day, the sun on the beach just as intense as it had been on the first, but the water cooled our feet as we walked through the surf. Adam took my hand.
“Can I ask you something?” I said.
He smiled and strengthened his grip.
“When were you going to tell me about New York?”
The look on his face confirmed what I’d been dreading. The smile disappeared. He stopped and stared off at the ocean for a long time, then turned to look at me. “How do you know about New York?”
“I know.”
“I’ve been waiting until we got back to talk to you about it.”
“When do you leave?”
“I haven’t even agreed to take the job yet.”
I looked away, down the beach. Two guys who looked like body builders were making out on a striped blanket under a palm tree about ten yards away. A lone woman tossed a Frisbee into the ocean and stood with her hands on her hips while a black-and-white dog bounded through the surf to catch it.
“Come on,” he said, pulling me after him into the deeper water.
We rose and fell with the swell of the ocean, and finally he told me about New York.
“It sounds like a great opportunity,” I said.
“Mom’s not too happy with the idea. She wants me to go to Austin.”
“You have to do what’s right for you.”
He stared back toward the beach. “Just say the word, Nate, and I won’t go.”
I couldn’t do that. As much as I wanted to, I couldn’t. “I don’t want you to stay,” I said.
His face told me he hadn’t expected that. A wave tossed me into him and then pulled him away.
“I don’t believe you.”
“You know what I mean. This is your time. If you don’t do this, then I’ll always feel like I robbed you of your dreams. I can’t live with that.”
“I’ll be a hero for you, Nate. Let me be that. I can chase my dreams here.”
I shook my head. “No, you can’t. Please, go to New York. Be fabulous.”
“I don’t want to leave you.”
I drew in a slow, deep breath to steady myself. He’d saved me when I couldn’t save myself. And it was my time to return the favor.
“I don’t know who I am without you anymore.” True. And then the untruth that I knew would release him. “I need to find out. For me, for you, for us.”
What could he say? We were somber as we headed back up the beach some time later. He dropped my hand and slung his arm around my neck and pulled me snugly to him and sniffed.
Chapter 3
I waited off to the side as Adam took his place in line at passenger check-in. The line wasn’t as long as he had feared, and he seemed to relax a little. He adjusted his backpack on his shoulder, then slipped his cell phone out of his pocket and put it to his ear. He smiled as he talked, then glanced at me and winked.
If I leave here tomorrow ...
I jostled my leg and drew in another shaky breath, then closed my eyes and tried to end the “Free Bird” death track loop in my head. Adam did that to me sometimes—he’d hum a song until I picked up the tune. It was an annoying little trick he liked to play on me, but one that he found endlessly amusing. There was this one song—“Wichita Lineman,” an oldie by Glen Campbell. I used to play it for my grandmother. She loved the song and she loved hearing me play the guitar, but when Adam told me it was about someone who strung telephone lines, it totally killed the romance. At odd times, he’d start humming the song and the next thing I knew I was humming it too (I am a lineman for the county ... ), looping it repeatedly in my head until suddenly I’d realize what I was doing and stop. He got such a kick out of messing with my head like that. I actually would have welcomed “Wichita Lineman” right then, but “Free Bird” played on.
A little kid bumped my hip with her SpongeBob backpack as she bounced past me, her hand tightly gripped in her dad’s. The line behind Adam had lengthened, and I was reminded of how quickly time was running out.
It wasn’t too late. I could tell him the truth. But, God, what was the truth? That I was still so pathetically needy and selfish that I’d let him throw away his dreams just so he could continue playing nursemaid to me? And for how long? He deserved better. He was my hero. But surely even heroes grow weary lugging around the burdens of their heroism.
The ticket agent handed a boarding pass to a man in a suit. Adam glanced back at me, then stepped up to the counter and set his backpack on the floor next to him. One at a time, he heaved his suitcases onto the scale while Lynyrd Skynyrd continued to tear at my heart.
What a waste. Ronnie Van Zant, Steve Gaines, and Cassie Gaines were dead. Gone. Forever gone. The 1977 plane crash had claimed six lives, six hearts that would never know sweet love again. You didn’t get any freer than that.
A
