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Eddie Diaz is not having a good week. He is not having a good week on top of not having a good month on top of not having a good year. And now, as the echoes of his doorbell ring through the house, he has just poured his orange juice onto his cereal.
“I got it,” Chris yells, moving far more swiftly down the hall than Helena Diaz would believe possible.
Eddie contemplates the cereal bowl. He thinks about dumping it in the trash. He thinks about eating it as is. He thinks about flinging the whole thing out the window. He thinks about opening his mouth and screaming until everything that feels sharp and jagged and broken inside of him flies out of his mouth. He is, in fact, too deep in contemplation to notice the soft voices coming from the living room. Doesn’t realize his day is about to be completely upended until Chris’s voice breaks in.
“Look who I found, Dad.”
He looks up to find his teenage son, arm looped through one Buck Buckley’s as though afraid Buck might bolt at any moment. Buck, meanwhile, looks slightly trepidatious. Which hurts in a way Eddie can't name. But things have been…off between him and Buck since the move back from El Paso. No. Since Bobby’s funeral.
“Hey Eddie.”
“Buck.”
There’s a long pause. Chris gives Buck an entirely unsubtle nudge.
“I was thinking, um,” Buck clears his throat, “it—it’s such a beautiful day, maybe we could all go to the beach?”
“The beach,” Eddie says in disbelief. He and Buck haven't really been talking. Buck rang the doorbell, for christ's sakes. And now he expects Eddie to, what, forgo all his adult responsibilities to go to the beach?
“Uh, yes. The beach.”
“The beach? Are you kidding me? I can’t go to the beach! I have to go to the grocery store and meal prep and do laundry and clean the house and mow the lawn and follow up with the home owner’s association and reschedule this dentist appointment and—”
“Please Dad,” Chris cuts in, which is patently unfair. No, no, if he’s being reasonable, what’s unfair is keeping Chris and Buck separated just because Eddie and Buck fell apart.
Eddie sighs down to his toes and scrapes a hand over his face. “You two go to the beach,” he says. “You don’t need me.”
“No.” Buck’s voice is shockingly firm.
“No?” Eddie asks.
“No, you’re coming too.”
Eddie’s pretty sure he refused, but he somehow finds himself an hour and a half later sitting on a beach blanket under an umbrella wearing board shorts and eating a breakfast sandwich while gazing out at the Pacific Ocean as Buck puts sunscreen on his son’s back. There’s a chilled orange juice half buried in the sand next to him. He’s pretty sure he’s going into shock. He can’t remember the last time he just sat. It feels like he’s been stuck on a hamster wheel for ages, and nothing, not moving back to LA, not even Bobby turning up alive in a government lab, has stopped it.
“Done,” Buck announces. “Alright Eddie, your turn.”
“What?” Eddie looks over sharply.
“You're not getting skin cancer or a sunburn on my watch.”
Before Eddie can really process it, Buck’s moved behind him. He has just the briefest of moments to realize the last time they touched was when they hugged goodbye before he drove to El Paso. Feels a sudden and unexpected wave of panic wash over him that if Buck touches him, he’s going to dissolve like sea foam.
And then Buck's hands are on Eddie’s back. And Eddie doesn't explode into a million particles. The world doesn't shatter apart. Lightning doesn't fork down from the sky. It's just his best friend’s work-callused hands working sunscreen into his back. Honestly it feels more like a massage than a sunscreen application, and Eddie’s mind drifts. For however many minutes they sit there, the only thing that exists is the points at which Buck’s hands touch Eddie’s back. The next thing he’s really aware of is Buck gently, almost playfully jostling him and saying “all done.”
“Can we go in the water now?” Chris asks.
“You got it! You coming, Eddie?”
Eddie shakes himself out of his stupor. “Wait, what about your back?”
Buck’s head tilts slightly to one side, the way it always does when he’s worried about Eddie. “Chris did it for me already.” The right in front of you goes unsaid.
“Oh, right, of course.”
“You gonna come in with us?”
“I think I’m gonna stay here for a bit.” He watches Buck and Chris walk down to the water, wade in, swim around together—the dedication and attentiveness Buck pays to Chris. He watches them until his vision blurs, then he lays back down under the umbrella, squeezing his eyes closed, breathing carefully through his nose. He must fall asleep, because the next thing he knows he’s startling awake to Chris’s voice telling him it’s time for lunch.
They eat sandwiches that Buck made, carefully packed in a cooler. Then Chris recognizes some of his friends, and goes to join their group a few yards away, leaving Buck and Eddie under the umbrella. They pack up the lunch detritus together in a silence that feels easier than it has in…months. Then they sit, almost shoulder to shoulder, watching Chris and the beach and the waves.
“Want to tell me why we're all at the beach together?” Eddie finally asks. “Not that I don't appreciate it,” he hastens to add. “I think I…didn't know how much I needed this.”
For a minute, he thinks Buck isn’t going to answer.
“Chris called me,” Buck finally says. “He’s worried about you, you know.” Buck’s eyes dart to Eddie and then back to Chris.
“What?”
“Says you’re working too hard. And you’re not getting enough sleep.”
“That’s not—what?”
“He’s your kid, Eddie. Of course he notices. Of course he wants to fix it.”
“Think he gets the wanting to fix things from you,” Eddie murmurs. Next to him, Buck inhales sharply.
“He’s not my kid,” Buck says. And oh, that's an unexpected sting.
“You, more than anyone else, have helped me raise that kid,” Eddie says, trying to breathe around the sudden open wound in his chest.
When Buck turns, his smile is gentle, but it doesn't quite reach his eyes. “I mean, yeah, alright. But he's not my kid. And your not my—” He cuts himself off, shakes his head slightly. “You guys aren't mine.”
Eddie isn't even sure what Buck’s trying to say, just knows suddenly and absolutely with every fiber of his being that it’s wrong.
“Yes we are,” he insists.
Buck’s laugh is hollow. “You guys moved to Texas without me.”
“I couldn't ask you to choose—”
“No, I get it, I couldn't ask you to choose between me and Chris, but Eddie I never wanted you to! I wanted you go with—”
“No, you're not listening, I couldn't ask you to choose, not between your whole family and—and me.”
“Eddie, what—”
“How could I ask you to leave behind Maddie and Jee and Bobby and Hen and Chim and—and Ravi? And while Maddie's pregnant, after everything that happened after Jee was born? And move to a broken-down house in Texas, with no guarantee Chris would even see us, and no job prospects, and my parents? My fucking parents. It destroyed me and Shannon, and I—fuck, I couldn't, Buck. I couldn't lose you like I lost Shannon, it would kill me.”
“Eddie, what—what are you saying?”
It's a realization that planted itself in his mind like a grain of sand in an oyster shell the very first time the three of them had sat together on this exact beach seven years ago, having a picnic, a whole day out, not unlike this one. And then he just…didn't consider it. It was just a closed up shell somewhere in the back of his brain. But now it spills out of him, grown over seven years into a pearl of truth:
“I love you. I am…in love with you.”
“Eddie—I—what?” Buck says faintly.
“You don’t have to say it back. You don’t have to feel it back. I just—”
The rest of the sentence is swallowed by Buck’s mouth on his.