“Yes, they have,” Don replied. He didn’t think. He just acted. Reaching up and unbuttoning his shirt. The first, the second, the third, the fourth, the fifth, the sixth. Not cold, but borderline. His skin marbled, stomach, chest, arms as he slid off his shirt and let it fall to the ground.
He felt Rodney looking at him. “Seriously.”
His trembling hands went to his pants, the button, the zipper.
Rodney said, “You will catch acold.”
Don laughed. “By the time it hits, we’ll be gone.” How wonderfully liberating that was! To act impulsively, to not worry about what could come. Why hadn’t he done this more? Ah, wasn’t that the rub.
He shoved down his pants and underpants in one smooth motion. No one looked at him aside from Rodney. No one cared. Leaning on Rodney’s shoulder, he stepped out of his shoes, his socks, his pants and underpants. His bare feet touched sand. He breathed in as much as his lungs could take. His ribs creaked. He let it out. And then began to march toward the water, determined.
And he only made it two steps before a hand wrapped around his wrist. He turned, ready to snap at Rodney, to tell him he wanted to do this, that nothing could stop him, and that was that. He should have known better.
Rodney looked resigned. “Hold on a goddamn minute,” he muttered. And then he began to undress.
How giddy that made Don. He thought that maybe love—a well-worn love, like a cherished old sweater—could still be exciting, surprising. Extraordinary, even. Was it sexual now, between them? Yes and no. Don admired Rodney’s body as a lover, but it went beyondthat. You love someone long enough, their bodies become comfort, a home in blood and bone. The scar from his bypass. The constellation of small moles on his left shoulder. The wiry gray-white hairs on his chest. Outie belly button. Lovely, soft skin, sagging slightly in the chest. Bony hips, pubic hair the same gray-white, skinny thighs, knobby knees. Long toes, especially on the right foot. Don hadn’t lied when he’d told the women the lines and wrinkles were memories. He’d worshiped at the altar of Rodney for four decades. Beautiful, obstinate man. How breathless he made Don feel, even now. Even after all this time.
“You old fool,” Rodney said fondly, knowing Don’s thoughts like he always did. “Same as I always am. Busted but upright.”
“Tonight,” Don said. “When we go to bed, I think I’m going to ride you into that shitty mattress. Well, as much as my back will allow, anyway.”
With that, he turned back to the water and marched toward it. If he put a little wiggle in his hips, well. That was for Rodney, and Rodney alone. And if the choked noise behind him meant anything, mission accomplished. He still had it, even after all these years.
The water was cold, and brutally so. It hurt, but in an almost indescribable way. Good pain, followed by encroaching numbness and the dulling of the mind. Don’s head cleared when Rodney yelped from somewhere behind him. Don turned, up to his knees, not daring to go into the Forbidden Zone quite yet. Rodney was hopping from foot to foot, water splashing onto his bits and bobs. People cheered from farther into the lake. Don heard Amy shout, “Those are my queer elders! I love those guys!”
“I hate this,” Rodney said as he stalked toward Don, water rising around him. “So, so much.” But he did not stop when he reached Don. Instead, he continued on. The water rose to his thighs, then his upper thighs, and he yelled when it hit his crotch, but he kepton going. To his hips, to his stomach, to his chest. Before he sank underneath the water, he turned to Don and called, “I know you too. Everything there is to know. Come on, slowpoke. You and me have a date after this. I’m going to make you cross-eyed.”
And then he sucked in a breath and went under.
Don didn’t wait. Moving as fast as he could, ignoring the wild sensation against his penis and testicles, he awkwardly dove into the water a few feet away from where Rodney had disappeared maybe five, ten seconds before.
The shock was enormous, all-consuming. He couldn’t think, mind a sheet of static. Time had no meaning. Flinched slightly when something brushed against his face. Relaxed against the fingers, the palms. He opened his eyes. It hurt, the cold biting, and he could only keep them open for a second or two at a time. But what he saw in those brief moments—Rodney before him, blinking, blinking the same way, bubbles sliding out of his nose and up, the water so clear they looked like they were floating—he felt down to his old bones. Beauty in a broken world. He was kissed, then, under the water. Frozen lips against frozen lips. Rodney’s air, Don’s air, all the same.
He felt Rodney smile against him.
They both kicked up off the rocky floor, up and up and up, bellowing at the night sky, the stars, the moon, the universe.
True to his word, Don loved on Rodney that night, slow and sure. Started with a massage, getting his muscles warm, rubbing in lotion. Music from the cassette player in the RV, the only tape they had:Rumours, Fleetwood Mac. No candles, but then they didn’t need them. The weird color of the sky, the moon, cast enough light.
Rodney groaned in appreciation when Don rubbed his feet, hisankles, his calves. By the time Don reached his thighs, Rodney was more than up for the challenge. It was lovely, between them. Gone were the days when it was fast and hard. In bathrooms at parties. In a park if they were feeling daring. Frantic, as if they were addicted to each other and chasing that next hit. But like all things, that had changed into something quieter, something so much stronger. There was pain, brief though it was. Don sighed and Rodney gripped his hips, fingers dimpling the skin.
It lasted, this quiet moment. It went on and on, neither ready to let it end. They kissed and mumbled against each other’s lips. Don thought they might have even dozed for a bit, but then Rodney would rock his hips and Don would moan into his shoulder.
The climax wasn’t shattering for either of them. It wasn’t an explosion of fireworks. Perhaps it was transcendent.
They slept curled around each other.
Amy and Becca knocked bright and early. Both looked flushed, eyes wide.
“What is it?” Don asked, Rodney’s chin hooked over his shoulder.
Amy said, “Mars is gone. The moon is next, and then it’s so long, thanks for all the fish.”
CHAPTER 6
The radio no longer worked. It turned on, the dial lighting up as it always did, but there was nothing but static across the bandwidth. A brief moment on the AM radio side of things: “Clair de Lune,” again, sounding far, far away, the piano like a ghost before it, too, faded away.
Their phones were useless. No internet. No connection. Even emergency calls didn’t go through. Don looked at his phone, knowing it’d been years since their son had answered their calls, but something about the phones no longer working cemented it in ways he wasn’t ready for.