They lay side by side in their bed, the snow blowing over the roof above them and whistling at the windows. Donovan finally stood up to close the thick curtains and then returned to bed and Cade said, “You haven’t said much.”
“I never say much at night.”
Cade moved his long body about in the bed.
“You’re still determined to not have an opinion.”
“Are we still talking about that?”
“Yes,” Cade said. “A little.”
“I feel like I gave you my opinion, and I feel like you’re punishing me,” Don said. “But for something you did. And a you that was a long time ago.”
“It wasn’t even ten years ago.”
“It wasn’t yesterday.”
They didn’t speak and then finally Donovan turned on his side and said, “Would you do it again?”
“Not the way I did it then.”
Then Donovan said, “I think you were a real asshole. I think… if you were one of my girlfriends I would understand it. But it seems like you didn’t give her a chance. It seems like you were just running away from your responsibility.”
“There!” Cade sat up. “There is the opinionated Don I know.”
“You asked,” Donovan said, tonelessly.
“I asked, and I wanted to know and I wanted you not to pretend you didn’t think anything. How could you not think anything when you’re always thinking about right and wrong? And what I did… Well, what I did was wrong.”
“It was the way you did it,” Donovan said. “Please tell me that… No… I know you wouldn’t do it that way again.”
“Everything about me was different. I know she hated me. She must hate me to this day. You know, I never offered to help. I never asked her how she felt. I had to tell you. There’re so many things about myself that… Well…”
“Cademon, I don’t know that person. I don’t know the you who would do that.”
“You do, Don,” Cade said. “That person is me.”
“I think,” Don said, almost right away, though he was silent a while after that, “that who you are is who you decide to be.”
“Do you think you’d ever want to make a baby with me.”
“I think I’m forty, and I think I don’t really want children, and I think it’s impossible for two men to make a baby.”
“It’s just,” Cade said, lying back down in the covers, touching Don, “once I did that. Once I made a baby, and here I am in love with you and we both love kids and… I don’t know.”
“I don’t know either,” Donovan said, letting Cademon Richards wrap his arms around him, leaning into the warmth of him, surrendering to sleep.
“How did it end?
“End?” Donovan said while they were eating lunch. Now that he remembers, this was three days before he met Cade Richards.
“How did we end?” Ezekiel Anders asked. There was grey in his hair which made Don wonder, if he didn’t shave his hair every few days, would there be grey in his too? After all, Ezekiel wasn’t that much older. Brian Vaughn, whom Ezekiel had never met, was older than them both.
“I don’t think it was with a bang,” Ezekiel continued. “It must have been with a whimper.”
“We didn’t end,” Don had differed while he slowly moved a fry through ketchup. “We changed. Into what we are now.”
“Then why didn’t we change into marriage?” Ezekiel said. “Permanence.”
“That’s on you,” Donovan told him. “It’s on you, and I don’t blame you. You had to have a career and to get that tenure you have to go where you have to go, to get those grants you’ve got to do the same. And I was in college, and well, if I had been a woman, or the type of man with nothing to do, I suppose I could have followed you all over the country, and then to Europe, but that wasn’t possible.”
“Or practical,” Ezekiel said with a sigh.
He placed his hand lightly over Don’s.
“Well, how’s that Brian?”
“You ask like you’re merely interested, but I feel like you think he’s competition.”
“Isn’t he?”
“He’s just like you. He’s around sometimes, and then mostly he’s gone.”
“And you?” Ezekiel had turned Don’s hand over and brushed the center of Don’s palm with his thumb.
“I’m just like me,” Don said. “So I’m fine.”
They went back to Don’s apartment.
“It’s like home,” Ezekiel said. “It always feels like coming home. Who would have known when I met a boy just turned seventeen that he’d be this wise man—?”
“Wise is a bit much—”
“With this beautiful home.”
Ezekiel’s bags were in the living room. He’d come two days ago and never put them away. They hadn’t stopped making love and didn’t stop now, in that bed, legs stretching, hands grasping, toes curling, limbs linking together. The sun was bright that day, and Ezekiel’s lovemaking was as strong as Don’s desire. He felt as if, toward the end of that afternoon, they were both disappearing into the twinkling light of the springtime sun, melting.
“Did I ever tell you,” Ezekiel said, bending down so that Don saw his hair was still bright, even though paler, “that my grandmother was a palm reader?”
“That sounds like a lot of bullshit.”
“Yes, yes, mostly likely,” Simon brushed it aside, his finger running along the lines of Don’s palm.
“But I predict for you someone coming, someone who is going to be the one. The one.”
“I don’t believe in a the one.”
Ezekiel looked at Don, his blue eyes serious.
“You should,” he said. “You were my one. Only I was too busy being Dr. Anders to know it.”
TOMORROW NIGHT, THE CONCLUSION OFTHE SKIN OF THINGS
