44. Davis

Boyfriend.

Boyfriend.

Boyfriend.

The word rang through Davis’s skull like a dining bell at a camp cookout. It wasn’t that he was scared of the word or didn’t think that it was the appropriate word for how he felt about Jeremy. It was a word that he knew, in theory, could apply to him with another man, but here it was. He’d had a few girlfriends, and he imagined that what he had with Henry could have been called dating, even if they never used the word. But Davis’s life had been centered around working toward his career and taking steps to fashion himself into a man he was proud of. He had never had time for a boyfriend, it seemed.

And it wasn’t just the fact that Davis still couldn’t believe that he had pulled a guy like Jeremy who, daily, stunned him with his beauty and grace. It was the fact that he was thoughtful, too. Previous dates or even friends had learned to tolerate or deal with his sobriety, but it always felt like something that was a burden or an afterthought. Jeremy, however, factored it in and ensured that it was smooth and natural. And what was even more surprising was that Jeremy didn’t even think twice about it and seemed to not believe the fact that no one else had done this for Davis.

Jeremy led him into the brewery, which was a comfortable space, less like a bar and more like a coffee shop or a social club. It was smaller than he had anticipated, and it still smelled like a brewery, but it also had a comfortable-looking couch. There was a stack of games and puzzles that looked well played, not like they had been picked up from the Goodwill. The DVD menu of The Sandlot showed on the wall of a small side room, with well-designed posters with the names of the beers hung throughout. Davis tried to remember the names of Jeremy’s friends, out of costumes and less hungover than they were the morning he had spent the night with Jeremy. He recognized Emmy and Ryan immediately, not only by the way they seemed to be bickering as foreplay, but by the way they were both tall and took up space. Another couple— Phoebe, laughing, and Dec, tattooed— joined the two. Phoebe’s laugh echoed through the entire brewery, while Declan’s blackwork tattoos on pale skin made a statement of their own. Davis had spent a lot of his life trying to disappear, and here were these people, and Jeremy wanted them to see Davis. See them together.

Davis was beginning to think he wanted that, too.

“Hey!” Jeremy said, dragging Davis along.

“Hello,” Ryan said, pulling his hand away from Emmy’s neck and waving. “We have spots over here.” His eyes flicked down to where Davis held Jeremy’s hand like it was a life ring tossed into the ocean. “Jeremy, do you have news?”

“Shut up, Andersson,” Jeremy said, rolling his eyes. Davis suppressed a smile. “You all remember Davis?” Nods all around. “Well, this is Davis. Again. This is Davis as my boyfriend.”

“Hi.” Davis gave a weird wave. “I’m Davis. The boyfriend.”

“Cute,” Phoebe said as Davis slid into a chair next to her. She was nice. She had been welcoming.

“Baby, what do you want to drink?” Jeremy asked, placing a hand on Davis’s shoulder.

“Diet Coke?” Davis said, his cheeks warming.

“Oh!” Phoebe said, looking toward Dec with a smile. “A Diet Coke sounds great for me, too. Can you get me one?”

“On it, Feathers,” Dec replied, walking away with Jeremy. Walking away with his lifeline and stable force here in this tiny corner of a brewery.

“You should go, too,” Emmy said to Ryan.

“Huh? Why?”

“Because, Doc, you love me and want to get me a beer,” she replied. Ryan scoffed jokingly but leaned down and placed a light kiss on Emmy’s forehead before joining the other two men.

“So, Davis,” Emmy said, turning back to Davis and interlacing her fingers under her chin. “How’s it going?”

“Good?” Davis got the impression that every question with Emmy was a challenge, a chance to say the right or the wrong thing. “Fuck, I dunno. I’m nervous. I like Jeremy, so I want his friends to like me.” Always a bit too honest, the minute that he decided to open up.

Emmy quirked her lips up, but her face didn’t soften with the smile. “We like Jeremy, too.”

“She can be a lot,” Phoebe said, pressing a kiss to her friend’s shoulder. “But she means well. Jeremy has been happy recently. I’ve noticed a change in him. He’s calmer?”

“He’s super efficient at work, too. Are you the reason he shows up on time now?” Emmy laughed.

“I wish,” Davis said. “He’s horrible in the mornings.” Was he allowed to admit that they slept together? That he knew exactly how Jeremy was in the morning, all rumpled hair and sleepy eyes? At least he didn’t tell the women what he usually did to Jeremy after he saw him wake up. “Jeremy could sleep through a foghorn or a tornado siren, I’m sure of it.” That was better.

“Phoebe’s a disaster in the morning, too,” Dec said, coming back with a beer for himself and a Diet Coke placed in front of his partner, pressing a kiss to her temple. “I think the last time I checked her phone, she was setting, on average, five alarms each morning.”

“Excuse me,” Phoebe said, crossing her arms. “I enjoy my sleep.”

“You enjoy high-powered edibles after you stay up too late reading,” Dec replied. “But I enjoy you when you’re in my blankets.” He leaned down and pressed a kiss to her shoulder, mumbling something in her ear that resulted in a squeaked laugh.

“He’s an early riser, too,” Emmy said, pointing her beer at Ryan.

“My college coach insisted on morning swim practices, even in the depth of winter in Minnesota,” he whined. “It’s been beaten into me.” Ryan faked a swoon, knocking his glasses off in the process. “Take pity on me, Davis.”

“You’re on your own,” Davis replied, pointedly not picking up Ryan’s glasses. He peeked at Emmy and was rewarded with a small, feline smile from the taller woman, a hearty laugh from Dec. They might like me. “I had to get up early all the time for work growing up, and even now, so I don’t even need an alarm.”

“Were you like that in college?” Emmy asked, picking up Ryan’s glasses and turning toward Davis.

Davis’s mind scrambled for an easy answer, even as he opened his mouth, hoping that the words would miraculously appear. In the Forest Service, in state parks, it was a motley crew of rangers. Some had served in the military and had then chosen to serve their country in the silence of nature, in a way that was kinder to their mind. Some had gone to vocational school and found their way to parks and forests because of their ability to tinker, to fix whatever was broken away from the hustle of civilization. Some were scientists who hated being in a lab or at a university. And some, like Davis, took a bit longer to figure things out, did school on their own schedule.

Not like Jeremy, who had jumped into the conversation, telling a story about a time he slept through a poli sci final, whatever that meant. Emmy was talking about her time in undergraduate and how she had to wake up early to open a coffee shop. Phoebe joined in, adding a story about how, during her freshman year, there was a lemon poppyseed muffin that was the only thing that got her out of bed for her chemistry lab.

And Davis, having taken a tiny step toward making himself visible, felt himself slipping back into the sides of the room, like a wallflower in those old romance novels his aunt used to read. Back to the safety of not being noticed.

“Hey,” came a softer voice at his elbow. Declan was standing there, holding a pint of beer. He nodded toward the bar. Davis, still having nothing to contribute to the conversation, followed him to where a woman was standing behind the bar, a riot of tight curls spilling out from a scarf wrapped around her head.

“Flo, this is Davis. Davis, this is Flo. She brews the beer here.”

“Nice to meet you. I’d ask for one but, uh, I don’t drink,” Davis said quietly. He felt like the wind had gone out of his sails.

“No sweat,” she said. “Seltzer or Diet Coke?”

“I have a drink back—” he began, but Dec cut in, telling her Diet Coke. “Thanks,” he said, reeling from the roller coaster of emotions, of new faces.

“Sorry. We had to escape. All the academics were chatting again,” Dec said, pulling a face.

“College talk?” she asked, clinking a beer against Dec’s glass.

“Always,” Dec said. “I love Phoebe so much it’s stupid, but I can’t sit there and listen to all that school nonsense when I have nothing to add.” Dec could have stolen the words right out of Davis’s mouth. “Sorry if I dragged you away. It’s just, as a bartender, you get a sense of when people are uncomfortable.”

“No, I uh— thank you. I mean, I went to school, like, I have a degree in forestry. But, you know, I went to community college first and worked. It took me years to get my degree.” Davis looked over at Jeremy, his honking laugh joining in with his coworkers and friends. They belong together, and I don’t fit there.

“Hey, better than me,” Dec snorted. “I’m a dropout. Flo didn’t even start.”

“Excuse me,” she said, drawing out the syllables. “I participated in an apprenticeship, like an old-timey blacksmith.”

“You know,” Davis said, getting a tiny bit of courage back. “I have some great stories from community college. Like, back in West Virginia, my study group consisted of a retired coal miner, a former football star, and a bar back. We took turns making dinner for our study sessions until we got to Sam, the coal miner, and found out that he could make the best pierogies. He worked it out so that for every question we got right, we got an extra pierogi.” Davis laughed, then added, “We destroyed that biology final, along with our digestive systems.”

“I just hated school,” Dec said. “It seemed like a waste of time and money.”

“Community college was all I could afford,” Davis said. “And, well, my grades weren’t good enough to get into a four-year school.” Something he wouldn’t have admitted to Jeremy or the people laughing across the bar. He flicked the tab of the pop can with his thumb. “Sometimes I think I’m too dumb to be around Jeremy, not to mention his friends.”

Dec raised his eyebrows. “I know the feeling. I’ve known that group for what, six years now?” Flo nodded in confirmation, and Dec continued. “They’re all brilliant, but sometimes they forget that there are other ways of being smart.”

“What do you mean?” Davis, oddly, wanted to defend Jeremy, to tell Dec and Flo that he had never felt that from Jeremy. But it was close to a feeling that he had felt before, the way Jeremy referred to design and art history like he had an encyclopedia in his brain. Davis knew a lot about forestry, loved what he did, but he also spent a lot of time confirming that he was right before he spoke. Quiet searches spoken into his phone or googled facts as he was in meetings on his computer.

“I mean, I know more about beer from making beer than anyone who has never set foot in a brewery,” Flo said. “You can study it all you want in these new college programs, but nothing replicates doing it.”

“I don’t have a business degree,” Dec added. “But I’ve been managing a bar for almost a decade now, and I’ve owned it for five. What can school tell me that experience hasn’t?” He took a sip of his beer and looked back, and Davis knew that he was looking at Phoebe from the way his smile grew fond. “The best combination is when you understand each other and know that you’ve got different paths, but somehow those paths work together.”

“Bringing out the ole Irish blessings, Dec?” Flo joked.

“I want that,” Davis said. “But how much difference is too far to bridge?”

“I think anything can be bridged with enough work and communication,” Dec said. “I mean, it might take time, but it will.” Davis thought of the New River Bridge, the steel arch that spanned the gorge, how it made the valley even more beautiful and accessible to people.

Flo gave a sarcastic smile. “It took you six years to stop being an idiot.” Dec picked up the beer she had been drinking and pointedly moved it down the bar.

“I know we just met, and excuse me if I’m speaking out of turn,” Flo said, turning to Davis. She cleared her throat, and Davis felt an immediate kinship, as if she was someone else who was beginning to stand on her own and be confident. “But I’ve never known Jeremy to be judgmental, and that’s saying something, because his best friend is my idiot brother.” She reached for her beer and took a hearty sip and a deep breath. “There are people who accept you for who you are, warts and wrinkles and all, and there are people who will constantly try to make you get plastic surgery.” She sighed. “Choose the ones who love your wrinkles.”

“Phoebe loves my wrinkles,” Dec said, preening. Flo threw a bar rag at him.

“Jeremy has no wrinkles,” Davis said, too honest again.

“Everyone has wrinkles, honey,” Flo said. “It shows we’ve lived.”