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You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
– Wild Geese, Mary Oliver
They get up and go for a run in the morning.
It’s what Buck wants to do, anyway, and Eddie’s in this new thing of apparently going with the flow? He’s feeling the ease of it in his body in a way he doesn’t think he ever really has before, at least, and it feels – good.
Felt good to wake up to the sunshine streaming in through his bedroom after staying up late enough for Buck to run himself out, to stretch long and full-bodied under the sheets and wander out into the living room and flop back onto the couch next to Buck with the bunched-up comforter on the cushion between them. Buck who’s sitting there with red-rimmed eyes and a cup of coffee and a pillow line down the side of his face.
“I’m going to go for a run,” he says, staring straight ahead at the TV, which is playing the local news quietly on the other side of the room. “You want to come?”
And – well. Eddie normally says yes or no, knee-jerk. Doesn’t let himself really stop to consider what he actually wants to do.
But he does now, rolls the options over in his head. Two different mornings lived two different ways: stay here and take a shower, let the hot water beat down against the back of his neck, make breakfast and have it ready when Buck gets back so they can settle down at the table together or land right back here with their plates balanced on their laps. Or go change into shorts and lace up his shoes, follow Buck out the door and let the sun bake into their skin while they chase it out toward Melrose to that little cafe a couple miles away that he’s been meaning to try but hasn’t gotten around to yet, the one with a garden out front and a back patio draped in lights.
He hums. Takes a sip of his own coffee, which Buck had left waiting for him on the table. It’s rich and dark and strong and hot, and he lets it work its way into his brain. Takes a breath and stretches himself out again, lets his toes curl into the soft pile of the rug under their feet.
“Let’s go for a run,” he says after a moment.
And so they do.
“Are you like… okay?” Buck asks once they’ve settled down at a table with a shine of sweat still on their faces and trifold menus in their hands.
It’s bright out, but the cafe has gobs of wisteria growing over top of the pergola, so they’re shaded out here, dappled sunlight peeking in through the flowers. Eddie’s wearing his sunglasses anyway, because he wants to and because he likes the way they make the world look sepia-toned and soft.
He extends his legs, and his foot knocks into Buck’s ankle. “I’m supposed to ask you that.”
“You know what’s wrong with me, though,” Buck says, squinting at him as he shakes a sugar packet into the mug that the waitress dropped off when they sat down. He balls it up and flicks it across the table at Eddie, who doesn’t flinch when it hits him in the center of his forehead. “I’m trying to figure out what’s wrong with you.”
Eddie sucks in a breath, lets it out. His shins hurt a little from the run, but they’re not quite splinting, and it felt good to get his body moving, like he was shaking off the dust of something he didn’t even realize he’d been holding onto.
“Nothing’s wrong with me,” he says. Buck narrows his eyes, suspicious, and it makes Eddie laugh, just a tiny thing, like a bubble of last night’s leftover adrenaline escaping his system. He takes his sunglasses off and folds them onto the table next to his menu. “I promise.”
Buck’s eyes search his face. “You shaved.”
Eddie laughs again. Lets his foot nudge up against Buck’s ankle and stay there. “Yeah.”
“And you were – naked. Basically.” Buck glances at the table next to them before leaning forward in his seat. His elbows are propped on the edge of the table, hands laced loosely in front of him. “Last night, you opened the door and you were half naked. And you’re smiling.”
“What, I can’t smile?” Eddie asks, blowing right past the… other thing. “I smile all the time.”
Buck narrows his eyes again, but it’s less suspicious and more – something. Tinged with something else that Eddie can’t quite put his finger on.
“Not like this,” Buck says. “Not usually.”
They study each other for a beat, and then Eddie lets out a breath, takes a sip of his coffee and spreads his hands out on the table.
“I met someone.”
Buck’s eyebrows shoot up. “You – oh.”
“Not –” Eddie laughs again. His foot is still resting against Buck’s ankle under the table, and he applies an inch of pressure there, gives him a little nudge. “Sorry. Not like that. Just… someone to talk to. A – priest. Actually.”
And Buck’s face softens. “You went to church?”
“I went to confession,” Eddie says. He makes a face, feels the hot creep of something up the back of his neck. Shame, he thinks, and he lets himself feel it. Lets it climb up and exist in his body for the barest breath of a second, and then he lets it go. “It was weird. And didn’t help. And I left.” He reaches for the sugar and shakes a packet into his coffee, which he normally never does. “And then I ran into him a couple days later, and he gave me some actually good advice.”
“Okay,” Buck says, like he’s taking it in stride. He’s still leaning forward, eyes searching Eddie’s face. “What did he say?”
Eddie lets out a short breath. “That I should let myself… be happy. Experience joy, I think. Is what he said.” It sounds stupid, saying it out loud, but the shame doesn’t come back even though he waits for it. He clears his throat. “That I can give myself permission. Can – choose things. Or something.”
“That doesn’t sound very Catholic,” Buck says. “From what you’ve told me about Catholics.”
Eddie laughs again, shakes his head a little. “Not really, but –”
But the waitress arrives at their table just then, notepad in hand.
“Sorry that took so long, we’re swamped,” she says, looking between them with a smile on her face. “What’ll it be?”
“I forgot to look at the menu,” Eddie says, cutting a glance toward Buck. “Are you ready? I can just pick something.”
And there’s that look again, the narrowed eyes. The twitch at the corner of his lips. His eyebrow moving up. There’s a gentle tension in the way he moves, in the way his eyes track over Eddie, and Eddie feels his chest twist up at that, just like it did last time he sat at a cafe table across from another man in the sun.
But this isn’t just another man; this is Buck.
Buck, who lifts his chin, settles back in his seat and smiles.
“Choose something for both of us.”
They finish their run as a walk, because they’re both too full of whipped cream and bacon to move at a pace faster than a stroll.
“I guess I was just hoping I’d finally figured myself out,” Buck says as they wander through a flea market on the way home. He stops at a booth to slide a pair of sunglasses onto his face and stoops to peek at himself in the mirror. “Figured it out.”
“What’s it ?” Eddie asks. He takes a sip of his smoothie, which is full of strawberries and bananas and absolutely no protein powder or collagen or anything else remotely approaching health food. “Those look good on you. You should get them.”
“Life,” Buck says as he pulls a ten dollar bill out of his wallet to pay for the glasses. “Relationships. Being… whatever I am.”
Eddie raises his eyebrows. “Which is…”
Buck lifts his new sunglasses to the top of his head and shakes around the ice in his iced coffee as they start walking again. He lets out a big sigh and kicks a pebble on the sidewalk and stares straight ahead. There’s a speaker playing music somewhere nearby, and it floats over the heads of the people wandering through the marketspace.
“Bi,” he says. He clears his throat. “Sexual. Bisexual.”
“Right,” Eddie says. His hands are in the pockets of his shorts and he squeezes a fist around his keys. “Is that – I mean, do you think you don’t have it figured out?”
Buck lets out a hollow laugh. “Obviously not.”
“Buck,” he says. Buck cuts a look over at him, and he draws in a breath. “One relationship isn’t going to – like, you know it’s bigger than just him, right? He’s… whatever. But you’re – you. And there’ll be other guys, other women. If you want there to be.”
“What if I don’t know what I want?”
Eddie tilts his head back to stare at the clouds rolling by overhead in the blue, big and fluffy and white. Their shoulders knock together as they walk, arms brushing, and Eddie sighs.
“Then at least you’re not alone,” he says. Turns his head to smile at Buck, who’s watching him with that same odd look on his face again. “But maybe we can figure it out together.”