Chapter Five

Hank

Now

Smearing a large lump of bread around his plate, soaking up as much gravy as possible, Hank didn’t miss the hesitant glance that Henry threw at Colton. It wasn’t like the younger guy to look this worried, his usually serene features now obstructed by a concerned frown. Nibbling at his bottom lip, Henry reached for his coffee cup and blew at the hot liquid. Tilly had just blown by with their second refill and it never ceased to impress Hank at how she’d mastered her run and pour to perfection.

“So…” Henry murmured, eyeing Colton. “There seems to have been a break-in at the clinic…” He hardly managed to finish the sentence before Colton turned in his seat, the wooden diner chair squeaking ominously beneath his large frame. Henry quickly held up a hand in warning before Colton went into full-on protective ex-soldier boyfriend mode. “Now, don’t freak out, babe,” Henry spoke firmly, placing his hand on Colton’s broad shoulder, eliciting a mix between a growl and a sigh from the larger guy. “They didn’t take anything aside from some antibiotics and some antiseptic.”

“What do you mean ‘ don’t freak out ?’” Colton gritted out, a strained expression on his face. “How can I not worry, sweetheart?” A subtle blush spread across the veterinarian’s cheeks at the endearment and suddenly Hank felt like an outsider looking in on their private moment. “What if it’s some of them meth people? They’re not exactly Boy Scouts, and with you being all alone at the clinic…” Colton’s voice came out rushed, clipped, like he’d just completed a military exercise course in half of the assigned time.

“I’m hardly alone,” Henry spoke gently, his eyes calm as he squeezed Colton’s shoulder in reassurance. “There’re patients all the time and this was clearly done at night.” Henry’s steady voice seemed to calm Colton just a tad.

“I just wish you weren’t there all by yourself in the mornin’…” Colton spoke. “Maybe if you shared the practice with someone… I mean, this town could use a real doctor, that’s for sure,” he trailed off, scratching at his unruly hair.

“I am a real doctor, baby,” Henry corrected fondly. “And it’s not easy to convince a medical doctor to uproot their life in the city and settle in our little far-off corner of the world. You know that.” Colton growled something inaudible as he reached for his coffee mug, avoiding Henry’s gaze.

“How did they get in?” Hank interrupted, his thoughts drifting to the padlocks in Vernon’s kitchen for some reason. An indecipherable expression coasted across Henry’s face as the blush increased, spilling down his neck and disappearing behind his sky-blue button-up.

“Uhm… through the back door,” he answered, his gaze flickering between Hank and Colton.

“Shit,” Colton cursed. “I’ll come around later and fix it for ya. Put on an extra lock, too.” Henry squirmed in his seat, playing with his paper napkin absentmindedly.

“Itdoesn’tneedfixin’,” he rushed out before getting up from his chair, adding, “I’ll settle the bill.” A strong arm grabbed him around his midsection and stopped him in his tracks. Glaring at his boyfriend, Colton spoke, his deep voice just an octave higher than usual.

“Not so fast, sweetheart. What do you mean that it don’t need fixin’? How come?” Henry threw a quick ‘ get me out of this, will ya ?’ at Hank, who just shrugged a ‘ you’re on your own here, kid. ’ He was just as eager to find out where this was heading. Realizing there was going to be no backup from Hank and that Colton was hardly going to let this go, Henry sighed.

“Because the door isn’t broken?” he offered Colton a weak apologetic smile.

“Are you askin’ or tellin’?” Colton thundered, which in itself was a rare occurrence. But it wasn’t so much the volume of his voice as the fearful expression in his eyes that revealed the seriousness of the situation.

“I might’ve forgotten to lock the back door…” Henry replied. “I’m sorry, baby, but this is Hayley’s Pe—”

“More coffee, gentlemen?” Tilly chirped, interrupting Henry’s attempt at explaining himself. Taking in their serious faces, she stopped mid- run and pour and looked at the trio questioningly. “What’s wrong?” she spoke rapidly, glaring at Hank. “Is it the catfish? For the love of God, please don’t tell me that it’s the catfish. Wilson assured Vern this morning that it was freshly caught and…” Hank held up a hand, interrupting Tilly’s rambling.

“It’s not the catfish. Everythin’s great with the food, Til,” he reassured her.

“Oh, thank God,” she deflated as soon as Hank called off the Armageddon. Then her eyes landed on Colton’s unusually pale complexion. “What is it then?”

Colton cleared his throat, his eyes not leaving Henry’s for one second.

“There seems to have been a break-in at the clinic,” he spoke, his deep voice neutral aside from a slight underlying tremble.

“A break-in?” Tilly gasped, clutching at her apron. “My, my… in Hayley’s Peak?” Shock was displayed across the older woman’s face before it was replaced by worry. Reaching out a hand, she patted Henry’s shoulder. “Are you alright, honey?” Henry nodded slowly, a glimpse of a smile showing at the corner of his mouth.

“Yeah, I’m fine, Til. It happened overnight,” he explained, shooting Colton a quick glance.

“Oh, thank God. What a scare, though.” She shook her head in disbelief. “What is happenin’ to our small town?” she murmured in front of her. “First the raccoons and now this. What is it all comin’ to?”

“Raccoons?” Henry bit at his lip. “What about the raccoons?” When he repeated the word, Louis finally looked up from the spot on the linoleum floor that he’d been licking obsessively long after he’d swallowed the three-maybe-five-but-who’s-counting slices of bacon in one go. The pup started his manic polka dance, his beaver tail wagging all over the place.

“No,” Henry chuckled. “No raccoons. Settle down, boy.” At the sound of his boyfriend’s carefree chuckle, Colton seemed to relax a tad—just a tad—in his seat. Crossing his beefy arms in front of his chest, he turned toward Tilly, a brow raised in question.

“Raccoons?”

“Yes, they’ve been going into the trash lately,” she nodded. “But Vern ain’t havin’ none of that. Bought them heavy padlocks down at the hardware store.” There was an almost comical finality to her words, and Hank buried his smile behind his hand. “You should get some, too, honey,” she spoke at Henry.

“He will,” Colton stated matter-of-factly, his gaze softening somewhat as he rose from his seat. “We’ll get ‘em right now,” he spoke at Henry before he handed Tilly a handful of bills. “Here you go, Til. Please tell Vern that it was the best darn catfish I’ve had in ages. The puppies, too.” Louis rushed to his owner’s side at the word puppies, and Tilly blushed at Colton, who was more than twenty years her junior.

“I sure will, honey.” Turning toward Henry, she cooed, “You take care now, hon. Who knows, it might be them city folk with their drugs and guns and such…”

“Now, let’s not get ahead of ourselves, Til,” Hank hummed. “No need to get all worried over nothin’. For all we know, it’s just them darn raccoons,” he said.

“I sure hope you’re right, Hank,” she clutched the wad of bills in her hands. Smiling at the three of them, she turned toward the counter while throwing over her shoulder, “Don’t forget to stop by, boys, before you go on that trip, now! I made a little somethin’ for ya.”

“We won’t, Til,” Henry smiled as they headed for the door.

“I’ll see you back at the shop, Hank.” Colton nodded once they were outside in the street. “I’ll just walk Henry back to the clinic.”

“Yeah, he might just be a while,” Henry grinned, a sedated look in his sky-blue eyes.

“Be quiet, brat,” Colton murmured against the top of his head, while Louis ran in frantic circles around them.

Suddenly, a different pair of blue eyes manifested before him, and Hank recognized the familiar sting in his chest. He was happy for the two young guys who’d found love when it had seemed unlikely, perhaps even impossible. And still, he couldn’t seem to let go of the melancholy that sometimes overtook him when witnessing Henry and Colton’s happiness. All his fondest memories had an edge of sadness attached to them. He didn’t revisit them often because they mostly resulted in at least a few days of a depression-like state, but sometimes it was just too tempting to not go there.

His favorite memory swept through him, small fragments gathering like pieces of a puzzle coming together, painting a picture of happiness, all-consuming and infinite. During Eugene’s third summer in Nebraska, when they were still riding a wave of lovesick infatuation and couldn’t be apart for more than a few hours at a time, Hank had taken Eugene on a road trip to the Badlands National Park in South Dakota. He knew how much Eugene wanted to see the unique stone formations, and Hank was keen on revisiting the rich fossil beds himself.

‘ Babe, just imagine the photos I’ll be able to take,’ Eugene had beamed at Hank when he’d realized where they were going. ‘ The display of light and shadows is supposed to be sick,’ he’d spoken excitedly, his West Coast dialect seeping through, and, in that moment, Hank would’ve handed Eugene the goddamn world on a platter if he could always have him smiling like that. Hank had just nodded solemnly, always the more serious of the two of them, as he’d blinked back the tears pressing behind his eyes. You are the light and the shadows and everything in between, my love, he’d wanted to say, but like so many times before and after, Hank had remained quiet. He’d never been great with words like that. Anyway, Eugene always seemed to understand that an entire world of want and love lay in the silence between them. And that seemed to be enough; Eugene never asking for something Hank found it hard to give him.

They’d stayed at small B&Bs on the road, Eugene snapping pictures of almost everything, Hank continuously joking that he couldn’t have been any more of a city guy even if he’d tried. Eugene had just smiled at him, sticking out his tongue teasingly, before going back to documenting every small detail of their time together. The days when their entire life together was seen through a camera lens, through the eyes of Eugene, lay hidden away in the attic, stacks of photo albums collecting dust. Since he’d mostly been behind the camera, there were very few pictures of Eugene, but Hank had his favorite tucked away in the bottom drawer of his office desk at the shop. Hank had snapped the picture when Eugene had been deep in thought, gazing across the vastness of the grass prairie in South Dakota, not realizing Hank was taking his picture.

‘ What’re you looking at, babe?’ Hank had murmured against his ear after taking the picture.

‘ Rhinos,’ Eugene had breathed, his slender fingers twisting through Hank’s dust-covered hair and beard.

‘ There ain’t no rhinos here, you silly man,’ Hank had chuckled. ‘ They’re long gone by now.’

‘No, listen,’ Eugene had whispered, the tips of his fingers drawing small circles across Hank’s sensitive scalp. ‘ Just listen, my love, they’re here. Always have been. Always will be.’ And for a moment, Hank had seen them, too, the large, majestic creatures roaming across the great plains, ancient horses blowing past them in a never-ending race against the setting sun. ‘ Do you see them? Do you see them, Hank?’

Later, much later, when the sun had finally set behind the rock formations in the land of stone and light, Hank had had that one moment of clarity where the rest of his life was laid out before him. A life that had seemed like such an impossible dream during those lonely teenage years when he’d realized that he liked boys instead of girls.

I love you, Eugene, he’d wanted to whisper out into the stillness that was only interrupted by the occasional coyote and the flickers from the fire, but something had held him back. Something always held him back. Eugene’s face, one side half covered in shadow, one lit up by the orange flames, had smiled back at him. I know, he’d seemed to say.

‘ One day,’ Hank had said, suddenly urged on by an inner fire that he’d never felt before, ‘ when it becomes legal for men like us to marry… I want us to do that, Eugene. I want us to stand before man and God and know that you’re mine. For everyone to know that you’re mine.’

‘I’m already yours, Hank,’ Eugene had spoken, his voice wistful, the flickering flames reflected in his indigo eyes. ‘ I don’t need a piece of paper or some man-made law to tell me you belong to me. Like I belong to you, too.’ He’d hesitated for a moment before continuing. ‘ Besides, in the eyes of God, we’re every bit as married as any other couple.’

‘How do you know that?’ Hank had asked, his heart almost pounding its way out of his chest. He knew Eugene was not a man of faith, and neither was he.

‘ Just look at us, sweetheart. How could any divine power not approve of us?’ When Eugene had continued, there had been a bitter edge to his voice that very seldom appeared. ‘ Make no mistake, Hank. It’s not some god that doesn’t approve of our love. It is man and man alone. It is man who puts words into the mouth of some divine entity because he’s too cowardice and weak to speak them himself.’

‘ But what if it matters to me?’ Hank had whispered, and there must’ve been a rare vulnerability to his voice because Eugene’s features had once again softened as he rose from his seat on the ground and went to Hank. Reaching him, Eugene sat down next to him, grabbing his hand and playing with Hank’s rough fingers like he usually would in the evening at home.

‘ Then we’ll do it,’ Eugene had spoken against Hank’s temple, his sweet breath causing goose bumps to erupt all over Hank’s neck and arms. ‘ Anything you want, my love. Anything.’

Watching Henry and Colton head towards the clinic, Hank forced himself out of his memories, brushing at a stray tear that he hadn’t realized was making its way down his stubbled chin. Then we’ll do it. Eugene’s promise echoed through him, intermingling with regret and anger. In June of 2015, only a couple of months after Eugene had died, the state of Nebraska finally passed a law that allowed same-sex marriage. Too little, too late. Too damn late.