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It wasn't easy. On the inside I was the guy who could get it for you. Out here. I’d been right, couldn't even get a stick of gum. Though it was for a different reason than I'd thought when Andy and I were having that particular conversation. Spanish was a lot of rolled rs and fast fucking sounds that made no sense.
I floundered for the first couple months with miming or relying on Andy, who'd gotten a halting grasp of the local dialect. Until we found a library.
I don't know why Andy hadn't already found it. When I first brought it up, finding one, he'd gone quiet. Not his usual quiet, calm like a banked fire, but a quiet that made me more aware of the shadows stretching across the room.
But it was a good idea and I wanted one even if he never set foot in it. So I asked around and it only took a couple tries at opening my palms like pages before someone pointed at a building that wasn't the local church.
In a moment that felt like coming home - god some of my happiest memories from Shawshank were in that library Andy'd had built and isn't that just the saddest fucking bullshit you ever heard - I stepped into a small building stuffed to the rafters with books.
I spent some time wandering the stacks. This many books together had a smell that tugged at memory so strong I didn't know where I was for a time. Running a finger down the worn spine of a copy of The Count of Monte Cristo , I guess I knew why Andy had been avoiding this.
When memory finally released me I managed to find a Spanish to English dictionary and a few pulpy paperbacks that looked easy to read and headed back to the hotel.
Andy'd looked at my haul sort of grimly, not saying anything, and then left to work on the boat. He must've cleared out some of those shadows because it was the next day that he sat down at the table across from me, a small stack of tax books of all things and a geology book coming down with him.
It became habit, after that, that after dinner had been cleared we'd sit back down at the table and I'd translate a page or two of a pulp each night while Andy poured over his laws and rocks.
It seemed I might have a talent for it, Spanish. Within a few months I was making nice with the local butcher and green grocer. Getting ins with the woman who ran the general store, good enough that she even took pity on us and got us a part time cook. Gabriella might've been the best damn cook I'd ever seen. She made the fish Andy caught into god damned art. And none of our guests ever left the table hungry after she graced our kitchen with her jasmine scented presence.
Andy hadn't been idle, the months between his arrival and mine. He'd made nice with the neighbors as much as the over-tall, quiet guy could. Over the years I'd known him, he'd grown from the cool, distant man who strolled the yard alone into a sort of, well, warm, distant man that folks welcomed. The prisoners at Shawshank had mostly stopped thinking he was snobby, most respected him, some tried to make nice in ways that had tickled me, like little boys trying to impress a cool, older cousin. Here in Zihuatanejo, the locals didn't know him, didn't know who he was, but the warm confidence had served him well. They hadn't fucked him over, the hotel and the boat were fixer-uppers, like he'd wanted, not junk heaps. But he also wasn't being invited over for supper.
I was pleasantly surprised to find that I did have a place here. I wasn't just sitting idle while Andy lived his dream. We worked together just as well if not better than we did inside. Andy handled the money and the laws, ran the boat, worked with the local government. I got the supplies, the workers when storms tore a hole in our roof, chatted with the guests and got them comfortable and happy. Got us on good enough terms with the neighbors that we'd invite them over when Andy got a good haul and they returned the favor. We wouldn't ever be competing with the resorts up the coast but we made a life that I could never call hard and it sure as shit wasn't boring either.
During the off season. Now that's when things got interesting.
That first year we were too busy with renovating the hotel and the boat. The second year was when the storm tore a hole in the roof. The third year. The third year was when there was enough idle time that we got ourselves in trouble.
Gabriella had an aunt who had a friend who liked the way Andy looked. And it happened that the green grocer had an older sister who liked the way I looked. So, we found a place to dance and took the ladies out on a double date. We were both too old to have much more than a few dances in us but we did those ladies justice. I hadn’t forgotten everything, muscle memory somehow managing to reach back decades to the man who had won a competition or two and it didn’t seem Andy made that poor of a showing himself, at least his partner wasn’t limping as he guided her to the table where my date and I were recovering. The ladies didn’t seem too upset that we sat there for the rest of the evening, making idle conversation over a couple cold drinks (pop for Andy, a local cerveza for me).
We'd agreed a long time ago on a story, figured folks would be less welcoming to a couple ex-cons. So we were navy buddies. Andy'd done a stint during the second world war, had been on a carrier that'd seen a piece or two of action but made it through unscathed. So, he'd primed me and we'd gotten to a point that the story might as well have been true for how easy it rolled out of our mouths.
So we had that and the language barrier and we made it through the evening without spilling any secrets we couldn't take back, throwing stories back and forth like we were playing catch. It was an odd thing though, we'd enjoyed ourselves and it seemed like the ladies'd enjoyed themselves but we didn't go on another date. We asked but both women had said no. The green grocer's sister had even ducked away when I'd tried to give her a kiss after walking her home, avoided my lean then patted my cheek. She'd said something I only half understood, it'd sounded a little sad and sweet, but even the words I knew left me at a loss. She then closed the door to her home and I'd gone to mine. She was friendly when I saw her after that but never flirted again. It was much the same for Andy.
Gabriella had been angry with us the next Monday. Which made no damn sense. She'd stormed around the kitchen yelling at us in a mix of English and Spanish. The most intelligible thing had been “Why didn't you just tell me? Do you think I'm some...” she'd said the rest in Spanish. That'd given me a niggling little idea that made my stomach knot and made what I had been understanding come together. I'd looked at Andy but he looked even more out of his depth, apparently angry women were one thing that could crack his calm confidence.
Instead, I'd stepped in and calmed Gabriella down good as I could, shooed Andy outside which he did quickly and thankfully, apologized to Gabriella for wasting her aunt's friend's time and that very day put in an order for the really good pans she'd been talking over since taking us on. I then spent the next few weeks thinking about what it meant that Andy and I were close enough that folks were thinking we were a couple... and that the idea of it, him and me, hadn't filled me with disgust.
It was my turn to let the shadows grow.
I'd been twenty when I did the first dumbest thing I'd ever done, trapped myself in a marriage I'd fought for. Marriage was what you did, just one step in the path of life and I'd fought tooth and nail for it. Found the most beautiful woman that all the other guys were hot for, though none could touch her as her daddy was a rich, mean son of a bitch. But I wooed that woman so good, said all the right things, danced better than all the other guys, brought her flowers, and she was using every tool she had to override her daddy's desires. Before I could really think about it, we were standing in front of the preacher.
But then, we were married only a few months before the despair started settling in, sinking its teeth into my throat and telling me as it tore my breath away that this was it, this was the rest of my life, constantly struggling to support a life and a wife I wasn't really sure I wanted. That I was more and more sure I hated. In prison I'd had a lot of time to think. If I'd actually loved her, I wouldn't have done the dumbest fucking thing I'd ever done, rigging it so she died, so she died with her best friend and her best friend's daughter in the car along side her. A desperate attempt to escape that ended up condemning four lives instead of just one. I'd thought about where things went wrong, what I should have done instead. But apparently, all that time and I hadn't really thought about why I hadn't loved her.
I thought about it, thought about my childhood, my time in prison, thought about Andy. Everything swirled about in my brain, a chaotic dance of memory, fear, hope, loathing. Everything except Andy. Andy was a beacon. That banked fire behind his eyes guiding me. I've never felt safer or more at peace than when I'm with Andy. I know him better than I know myself, in some ways, yet he still surprises me and makes me want to be better, to be worthy of his friendship, of him. We are as close as two people can be without the touching and fucking. Did I… God it was hard to form the words even in thought. Did I want… that?
I made myself think about it. But in a general sense. Thought about the naked bodies of the men I'd showered beside. You never look. Never look or you're inviting a beating or something worse. But you still saw. And, no. That had never titillated me. I'd never been at risk of rising to that bait. I thought maybe that was the end of it. Proof I wasn't bent. But then an image of Andy stepped clear of the dark, Andy naked and looking back at me with the steady, intense gaze he can get when he's really listening to you, practically looking into the heart of you. And, oh, the warmth that sent through me was like summer sun.
Fuck.
There wasn’t much to it. I may have opened that can of worms inside me but that’s as far as it would go. The man had been through enough, I wasn’t going to put this on him. I was happy. The happiest I’d ever been and more than I ever deserved. We only had a few more decades left to us, if we’re lucky, and I wasn’t going to miss a minute of it because I suddenly realized I wanted to find out what coca-cola tasted like on his tongue.
So, I moved forward, continued on like nothing fundamental had changed inside me.
Well, it turned out Andy had been doing his own thinking. He'd picked up on what Gabriella had said or implied, probably better than me. A week or two after I'd settled my shadows, we were enjoying a cold drink on the beach outside our hotel, watching the sunset turn the Pacific gold, the lull between our last guests leaving and our next arriving allowing us to fully relax into the adirondack chairs. “Would it be alright if I kissed you?”
The question had been asked like 'Would you grab me a pop?'. No build up, no drama, just casual as you please.
I let the moment stretch, not to heighten the tension but because that fundamental change, that had to happen again. Andy didn't once turn his head to look at me. I looked at his profile, cast in warm hues from the setting sun. He really was beautiful.
“It would.”
I was looking at him, so I saw the smile. Soft. Saw the released breath of tension I hadn't realized had been in him. He said, “That's good to hear” and then took a sip of his coca-cola.
I laughed, a bright joy bubbling up inside me. I looked at the setting sun, taking a sip of my own drink, the future unspooling ahead of me, and felt the freest I'd ever felt in my entire life.