Page 64 of Just for Me
“I know,” Luke went on doggedly, “that I want to … I need to see what we have together. If we’re in the same place. If we’re willing to give it all we’ve got, and if that’s enough.”
“I can …” Hayden had to stop and take a breath. “I’d like that. In fact …” He tried to laugh. “It’s all I want.”
Luke’s smile started slowly, then grew. “Yeh?”
“Yeh,” Hayden said.
“The question is,” Luke said deliberately, “where.”
“Oh. Where.” Hayden thought,You have to tell the truth. You have to be yourself.“I can’t work in France,” he forced himself to say. “Or in the UK. Law’s very … region-specific. That’s all law is, in fact. I want to be with you, too, but I like what I do. I know it’s not exactly glamorous, but it suits me, I’ve trained hard for it, and I like it.”
Luke was smiling again. “Well, you see, that’s why I’d be moving there. To En Zed.”
“Oh.” Hayden sagged against the balustrade and tried to catch his breath. “OK, then.”
“But no worries,” Luke said, “I’m going to ask you something hard anyway. Does it have to be Auckland, or …”
“It’s not a big country,” Hayden said. “And I don’t think I’m that picky.” He felt like he was climbing those stairs again, because his heart was galloping. “But I’m abitpicky. I don’t want to live in … Gore. Invercargill. Hamilton, for that matter. Bulls, where you have to name your business some awful pun, or you don’t fit in. What would I call my law practice? ‘Feas-i-bull?’ ‘In-del-i-bull?’”
Babbling again.
Why was it so hard to believe?
Why was it so hard to hope?
* * *
Luke shouldn’t be laughing,but he was anyway, even though he was also more nervous than he could ever remember being in his life. “Cheers for the list of duds. I was thinking, more … could we travel around a wee bit, maybe? See what appeals to us? D’you think you could …” He looked down at his hands.Fingers like sausages,Nyree had said,and knuckles like ping-pong balls.It was true. He was no prize, in so many ways.
“I probably can,” Hayden said, “if you ask me. I’m flexible. There’s my sign, for when we move to Bulls. ‘Flex-i-bull.’ Course, it makes me sound like I’m running a yoga studio.”
He was joking, but he probably wasn’t, inside. Luke knew that brittle look. He took Hayden’s hand and asked. “D’you think you’d want to quit, too? You’ve said that they’re a bit hidebound there, at your work. Pretty buttoned-down. Maybe we could try something more … casual. Have a life. Or a lifestyle, maybe.”
“The gay lifestyle,” Hayden said, still trying to joke. “I’m still trying to figure out what that is.”
“I think,” Luke said, “that it’s being together. Being happy. Being ourselves. Living somewhere beautiful and relaxed, and maybe with more than farmers around, so they may not be quite so shocked by us. Someplace where you can still wear shorts in a restaurant, though.” He smiled, and wished it were steadier. “Want to toss everything else aside with me and try to find it?”
Hayden took a breath, and then he smiled as, behind him, the swallows soared. “Yes,” he said. “What’s life, after all, if it’s not an adventure? And what could be better than taking that adventure together?”
26
EPILOGUE
Luke had never imaginedhe’d have a wedding day,much less a flash one.
He and Hayden—and George, the marmalade cat—had settled on living in Wanaka, in the end. In his opinion, the most beautiful place in the world, in his home soil of Otago, pretty cosmopolitan for New Zealand, and with a healthy population of rich people needing both luxury homes and contracts. All good, and living with somebody who loved you—reallyloved you—was even better.
And still, on the early-autumn day when he’d got down on one knee on the shores of Lake Wanaka at sunset with the Southern Alps ranged in the background, he’d asked the question with his heart in his throat and nothing in him believing he could be this lucky.
But Hayden had said yes.
Luke had suggested, when they’d got around to discussing the actual “wedding” part, which took some time, because he’d had to be giddy for a while first, “Keep it small and simple, probably, so there’s no fuss.”
Hayden had looked at him searchingly. At least Luke thought that was what it was, though Hayden could just have been enjoying his crème brûlée with passionfruit pulp and mango and coconut gelato. They were in Bistro Gentil at the time. Modern French cuisine with New Zealand meat and produce—what could be better? Especially if you didn’t have to pretend it wasn’t romantic.
“Is that really what you want,” Hayden asked, “or what you think your parents would want?”
So—searchingly, not just excellent crème brûlée.
