Chapter 5

CHAPTER 5

Rafael

Luke's downcast blue gaze and slightly flaring nostrils flattered me. The set of his lips and the clenching of his teeth that tensed his cheeks were a cherry on top. Not that I was happy to disappoint him. Far from it—it felt like a cruel twist of fate.

Two hours ago, when I'd spotted him entering the train ahead of me, my heart thrashed in my chest every which way. I had to sit still for a while before making up my mind to approach him. The sight of his blond curls, so unchanged, took away my ability to move, speak, and breathe. Just by being here, he knocked me out of my orbit.

"Won't he mind you being late because of me?" Luke asked in a deceptively calm tone.

I scratched the back of my head with the need to do something with my restless fingers. I owed Robbie nothing. Not after what had happened this weekend. "Nah, we're good," I said. "Who can complain about the hand of fate meddling, eh?"

Luke nodded stiffly and didn't ask questions about my boyfriend after that. Instead, he busied himself by repacking a bottle of water. For my part, I researched some accommodation options in Kufstein. It was a small place, but travelers enjoyed stopping for the castle on the hill and the funicular to the top of the mountain peak. The views had been awesome in the truest sense of the word when I had first visited on my solo trip.

Every now and then, I would glance at Luke, his slender fingers or his high cheekbones or the wavy locks flying in all directions. Since the first moment I had spotted him reaching for the top of a bookcase, I had had his face etched into my memory. Some faces came and went; some faces you forgot as soon as they were out of your sight. But some, like his, refused to be erased. And if I didn't think of him for long enough, he would knock on the doors of my dreams and let himself in.

I could remember times when I thought of him, seemingly at random, because a certain ice cream flavor or a specific scent sparked those memories. I could remember wondering where he was. I could remember the lonely ride to Budapest when I indulged in the admittedly lame daydreaming of an alternative timeline in which we had gone on that trip together.

The cut on my eyebrow stung, and I realized I had creased my forehead in thought. "Ts." I pressed a finger against it soothingly.

"What happened there?" Luke asked. His tone was conversational again, sweet and light and pitched higher than mine.

"I was being clumsy," I said, the bitter taste of guilt over lying coated my tongue, but I wasn't going to tell him that.

"Like the first time we met," Luke said, accepting my explanation. Why wouldn't I be clumsy?

"Something like that," I said, grinning with relief. "But it didn't turn into an amazing night." Far from it. It was one of the worst nights of my life . "I got us a room at a small inn at the foot of the hill where the castle is."

Redness blossomed on Luke's cheeks as he contained a smile. "Okay." The airy tone made him redder still.

I know what you're thinking , I thought. It had crossed my mind, too. Briefly, very briefly, I had imagined what it would be like to spend the night in the same room. I had imagined what it would feel like to sit still and gaze at the floor while he undressed for bed. There was a righteous vindictiveness in me when I entertained those ideas, but also guilt. Luke wasn't a tool for me to settle some score. I wouldn't do that to him.

The simple fact that I had run into him again distinguished him from the most special people I had ever met.

"Why Paris?" I asked as the train rocked left and right, making my leg touch his once or twice. I let myself be swayed toward him. "Was returning there something you wanted?"

Luke rolled his shoulders. Now, I noticed that they were broader than two years ago. The jacket was concealing most of his torso, but I couldn't be so mistaken. He had been working out. "There were Paris, Berlin, and Rome on the list. I picked what felt familiar." The low pitch told me there was more to it, but I didn't press him any further. "And you? Still in London?"

I nodded. "Officially, yes, but I spend just as much time in trains and busses."

He laughed at that. Whenever he laughed, I felt like I won a prize.

"Life's good," Luke said.

After a few minutes of silence, something crossed my mind. And when it crossed my mind, it rolled off my lips. "There's this man living in my building. He's sixty-something, tall, gray in a stylish way, always looking very neat. He's lived there since long before I moved into the unit below. You know me, I talk to people when I see them. But this guy…" I shook my head. "He wouldn't talk. Not like he just ignored me or told me to bugger off. He would speak at length about weather and potholes and London traffic, but he never talked about himself. Until last week. I did a grocery run for him because he injured his ankle, so he invited me in for tea."

Luke nodded with only a hint of a smile. "And now you're going to ski together."

I narrowed my eyes at him in mock offense. " Actually , we're not." We laughed a little before he nudged me to continue. "It made me sad, to be honest. Back in '69, he went to the States to visit a friend. Three weeks of fun and a chance to watch the moon landing on an old, boxy black-and-white TV another friend had in her shared apartment. Can you imagine that? Going to someone's home because they had a TV so you can see something as historic as that? Anyway, my neighbor fell in love with a young man from upstate New York."

"In '69? That's so sweet," Luke said. But a moment later, he put the pieces together. "What happened that made you sad?"

I cocked my head to one side. "It didn't work out. And he returned to England, planning to continue his life as normal, but…" I shrugged slowly. "He never moved on. I mean, he didn't say those words, but I saw the Polaroids on his wall. It was like looking at history. No. Actually, it was like looking at fantasy. Like it wasn't real. This refined gentleman was a hunky Brit in New York with this twink boyfriend. And forty years later, he's all alone, those photos hanging on the wall of his living room. Isn't that terrifying?"

Luke's lips pressed into a line as he considered everything. "Missing opportunities is always scary. You never know what could have been."

"Yeah," I agreed. "I'd hate to find myself wondering if I'd made all the wrong choices."

The silence that followed was thick and heavy. It was there, suffocating us. Lately, I had been wondering about my choices. I had been wondering about the mistakes I had made. I had been wondering about my place in life.

The train pulled into the central station in Kufstein while Luke was telling me about the various projects he'd been a part of over the last six months. "A huge part of this whole thing is simply doing something, anything, just to have a portfolio. I've added to various online comics, did an anthology that was printed by the university, and I'm always running a few little projects for myself just to have something ready if anyone asks. Oh, is this it?" He looked out the window, hands pressed against the glass as he gazed up at the mountain and the castle on the hill before it. "Holy crap, Rafael," he whispered, his breath misting the window and disappearing nearly instantly.

"That's it," I said, pride inflating the size of my heart to ridiculous levels.

We grabbed our things from the overhead rack and got out of the train. My pass let me move pretty much anywhere in Europe, but we had to go to the desk and get Luke a new ticket for Salzburg for the next day.

When that was settled, I turned to him. "What do you want to do first? We have the whole day."

"And the whole night," he mused, looking around. The station was out in the open with a roof over the platforms and air moving freely from three sides. Snow still capped the mountains, but the town was free of the white blanket that had decorated most of the places we had gone through.

I knew Luke referenced the fact that the last time we had been together, we had stayed out the whole night, but hearing those words from his lips did something to my stomach that was hard to explain. A night with you… I had thought about it so many times in the last two years that it was almost a lullaby for my sleepless nights.

A blunt question balanced on the tip of my tongue, but I held it back for a while longer .

Luke and I picked up coffee to go from a corner shop and headed straight for the castle. It was an imposing structure with its walls rising from the hill itself. Its round towers didn't shoot very high, but they made me feel tiny nonetheless.

The old town at the foot of the hill was paved with cobblestones and housed an array of artisan shops in rows of short buildings that seemed frozen in time. And when we reached the path that would lead us inside the castle walls, I couldn't chitchat any longer. I had to know. "Do you ever think about that night?"

Luke stopped talking abruptly, but he didn't trip over his foot as we walked on. A gust of wind lifted a few of the wavy locks of his hair, and they fell over his right eye. He swiped them away with his slender hand absent-mindedly while looking at me. "The night we met?"

I nodded. He was stalling by asking me that, but I found him too sweet to care if he was buying time for a measured answer.

Luke stopped walking and closed his eyes for a short time. When he opened them, the sweetness was there twofold. "I think about it all the time," he whispered. "Rafael, I would have come with you. I swear."

I didn't need him to swear. In fact, the entire question was masochistic in nature. I needed to know just how badly I had fucked up in the years that followed. I needed to know if there had ever been an alternative or if we had simply been destined to part ways.

"I didn't have the courage. When morning came, I…I started believing my mother was right. I thought that I mu st have been projecting, you know? That you weren't really what I imagined. You…were too good to be true." He turned away from me as another breeze kissed our faces. We started walking simultaneously. "I regret not coming," he said. "But that opened a door to a whole different life. I'm here because of you."

I didn't want to take credit for that. He was talented, but more than that, he was stubborn and determined to prove everyone who doubted him wrong.

"That chance encounter made me own up to the fact that I'm…gay." He hesitated before letting the last word leave his lips. "And I learned that some people didn't always have my best interests at heart. Sometimes, what I wanted didn't fit into the greater plans."

"I'm sorry," I said.

The bitterness remained in his tone when he said, "Don't be. I was lucky to learn that so early."

We climbed in silence as the wind intensified. I longingly thought of the room at the inn somewhere down behind us. It was going to be wonderful to return to it when it was warm and cozy and have a glass of wine. It was going to be so nice to get a little drowsy with the heat and just enjoy the moment of being close again.

But first, I wanted to amaze him. So we climbed on and on until we reached the wide-open gates of the castle. "Let's go in first," I suggested, and Luke happily followed.

The castle walls sprawled around the top of the hill at over fifteen hundred feet above sea level. It overlooked the town and the river below, and its main building served as a museum. The vast grounds and the many pathways inside the fortress walls gave us enough to do after the visit to the museum. And a funicular was perfectly positioned to take us not too far from the inn at the bottom of the hill.

We explored the interior for a little while. The castle was almost deserted at this time of year, so we had it all to ourselves as we inspected its many rooms. Stuck in the Middle Ages, the rooms were said to be exactly as they would have been, refurbished without any modern technologies. They displayed the many coats of arms and tapestries on the stone walls, dark brown hardwood floors in many rooms, and full-body armors positioned along the hallways like ever-watchful guards serving their lord and lady.

Luke and I took selfies with everything that could reasonably fit into the frame between our smiling faces. We explored the particular way a soldier's polished armor was polished and sculpted in the more intimate region, deciding that it was very important to protect the vulnerable area and that the armor did a sufficient job. "But it looks like everything would be hanging a little too freely," Luke said, pointing at the size of the armor.

"Hmm. I think it's better if you're fighting in a battle if it's dangling than if it gets stuck." Luke cringed at my words.

"You might be right," he whispered huskily.

"Besides, going commando is great for ventilation," I said, encouraged further by the color spilling over his cheeks. "Don't you agree?"

Luke glared at me, sufficiently embarrassed .

Aside from the military history of the Middle Ages, we got to see various archeological findings in the museum before we tired ourselves of learning about the region. And by the time we were finished, we had galleries full of photos of each other, faces aching from laughter, and an in-depth discussion on the benefits of wearing underwear.

Outside, when we ran out of things displayed for us begging a conversation, we let the silence go on for a while. The ground around the paved footpaths was drenched from melting snow, so we followed the pebbled path to the walls. New leaves were beginning to bud on the trees all around us, but their branches were mostly bare, dark against the darkening sky, almost gothic and spooky at this time of day.

"Does your boyfriend know what you're up to?" Luke asked me. I couldn't determine if he was trying to be playful or direct.

I shook my head. "He hasn't asked."

"Must be a really strong relationship if he's not…concerned," Luke said carefully.

I looked at him bluntly. "The last time I met you, it was just us—you and me and a small mountain of books. And philosophy and stars. I liked it."

Luke bit his lip and shook his head. "I'm sorry I asked."

We walked a little further along the walls. That had been the wrong thing to say. "I'm sorry, Luke," I tried, but my voice wasn't steady. "You have every right to ask. It's not fair that we're doing this—whatever this is—and I'm pulling you by your nose. So, if you want to ask me something, go ahead."

Luke was silent for a while, and our pace slowed down to a lazy stroll. Finally, he looked at me. "What is this?"

And he had every right to ask that. "I don't know," I said honestly. "Two friends catching up?"

"We're hardly friends," Luke said. It wasn't meant to offend me. It was an accurate way to put it. "When I first met you, I didn't mean to go off as friends."

I gritted my teeth and focused on the muddy ground off the path. "No. Me neither." I'd gotten obsessed with Luke in the span of an evening. Budapest seemed like the perfect way to see more of him. To see all of him in all the ways he wanted to share. That inexperienced, shy boy with eyes so full of wonder and with endless admiration of my antics; who wouldn't have fallen for it? It was flattering, but it was more than that. He had genuinely made me feel important and interesting. Everything I had said to him that day and night had made his eyes grow with curiosity.

"And when I said I would get off the train with you…" Luke stammered there and went quiet. A frustrated sigh lest his nostrils just as a stronger gust of wind rolled over the courtyard. "We flirted. That time in Paris, we flirted all evening. That's what you said. And when you invited me to Budapest, that wasn't just two boys checking out a historic city. Not to me. So when you asked me to spend today with you, I thought…I don't know what I thought, Rafael. But you are taken. "

"You're right," I said. "I'm sorry. I should have said so earlier."

"But that's not…" He shook his head with growing agitation. "It's fine if we're just acquaintances catching up. But you knew that wasn't what you were inviting me to."

"What do you want me to say?" I asked in a surprisingly desperate tone. We halted and faced each other, Luke's gaze sliding off me once before he forced himself to look into my eyes. "I saw you, and I wanted to escape for a while. I wanted to put my life on hold. And it was so easy to do that with you the first time. I didn't invite you here with some hidden plan. I just…wanted to be with you. Here. Now."

Luke gazed into my eyes, and I held the contact for a while. Neither looked away until Luke said, "Okay."

"Okay?" I asked. I had to be reassured that we were good.

He gave a firm nod. "Okay. Escape. We're good at that."

A knot tightened in my throat. In the last few months, it had gotten almost impossible to lean on anyone. To trust was to lose a part of yourself. Yet here was someone I barely knew—someone I enjoyed more than I strictly should—letting me lean on him. No questions asked, he offered what he could.

Didn't I owe him the truth?