Page 152 of Faithful

Chairs scrape against the floor.

I extend the hand holding the paper tulip out to him and wait.

Several people gasp in surprise.

Kai’s so still, I begin to wonder if he’s even breathing.

The flower is in the air between us and I’m not sure what to do next. I’m basically about to become another meme, and I’m only now realizing the consequences of my impulsiveness. Unfortunately, it’s too late to go back to my seat. Several hundred people, including a few reporters, have already seen Kai and me in close proximity, and there’s a very good chance that some of those people are putting two and two together as we speak.

I’m clearly the mystery guy from the photos taken in the 7-Eleven parking lot during the holidays.

“Are you just going to stare at me?” I ask Kai, my entire body trembling.

He rises, his chin slightly tilted up. A silent challenge.

I step forward.

The distance between us shrinks to a couple of inches.

Kai finally reaches out and accepts the flower, cradling it carefully in the gentle curl of his fingers. He even got fresh nail polish, black as always.

The room gasps again, but this time it’s loud enough to interrupt Gavin’s speech completely.

He stops talking and clears his throat.

Somewhere in the back of my head, I remember that my mother is also watching and that I’m being a very selfish son right now, that I’m not considering her feelings at all. But the heart wants what it wants, and my heart wants for the world to know what Kai Delisa means to me, so I show them.

I kiss him.

In front of everyone.

I kiss him on the lips.

* * *

I was raised a Christian.

It wasn’t my choice. No one ever asked me. I was dunked into a bowl of water as a child and pronounced a new member of the Christian community and that was the beginning of hell on earth for Dylan Watson.

I don’t remember the ceremony since I was too little, but my father once had some photos of me being baptized in the local church he attended for years. Those photos stood on the desk in his study up until the night he found Hayden and me in bed together in our pool house.

Up until the night he hit me for the first time.

I guess what I’m really trying to say is whatever that priest/minister/deacon/bishop did back then wasn’t done right because I can’t remember a single good thing about being a God-fearing son. All I remember is the constant terror of not being enough, not being up to his standards, not being worthy of my parents’ love.

And then Ava died.

And the world split into before and after.

And now that Kai’s presence has filled every corner of my gloomy post-Ava life, now that I’m standing in the rear of a waterfront banquet hall in Seattle, now that I’m surrounded by hundreds of faces that convey mostly numb confusion and/or disgust, now that he’s within my reach and I can freely tell everyone in this fucking universe he’s mine and I’m not backing down, this… this feels like a true sacrament.

I’m only vaguely aware of the tense atmosphere inside the room as I continue to stare at Kai’s eyes. His cheeks are unexpectedly pink, and he looks just as surprised by what I did as the rest of the audience.

Suddenly, I’m transported back to the night he drove me to the bridge, and I chose to dive after him, and I can’t help but wonder if that dive is when it all happened, when I was reborn, and when my sins were washed away and a new life was given to me.

I’m not a religious person, but I want to believe in something–karma, good deeds, the free will to choose what to do with however much time I have left.

A throat clears somewhere in the room, and I realize it’s pin-drop quiet and then hands clap.

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