CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The tropical conservatory at the Mercy Janeck Botanical gardens is massive. It’s a huge glass house with full-size trees, meandering pathways, and all kinds of nooks and corners. To get to the conservatory, you enter the gardens through the main house, and then make your way through the winding garden path. Normally, this happens during daylight, but with the nighttime bloom of the Cereus Cactus, this special event happens after dark. The pathways have been lined with flickering lights that mimic candles, and the gardens are unlit.
A Cereus cactus blooms once, from midnight to dawn and tonight is that night. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Actually, it’s happening all week, because technically each bloom performs once, but they don’t all bloom at the same time, so each night the event repeats itself. Of course, you can’t think too deeply about this because it loses its mystery, so for me, and hopefully Martin, this is the night. Tonight. In ten minutes, my watch is saying.
I’m standing on the outskirts of the path, halfway in the light, but not half enough to be creepy, waiting for Martin. I know he’ll figure out my clues. He’s a master Googler, and he’ll be driven by the puzzle of it all, and he’ll be here. I know it.
People are traversing the dimly-lit path in pairs and groups, in an elegant assortment of couples, not feeling like a crowd. They make eye contact with me as they pass and enter theconservatory, finding their way to their once-in-a-lifetime moment.
As the pathway empties, I see a single figure round the corner and my breath stops. It’s Martin. He sees me in the half-light and his walk switches from his where-am-I-going gait to his I’m-just-taking-a-stroll pace. He locks eyes with me at this distance, smiles, and doesn’t look away. His hands slide into his jacket pockets, then reappear, then disappear again into his jacket.
I don’t move. Except for maybe my ever-growing smile, which I can’t contain. “You figured it out,” I say.
“A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. I wouldn’t miss it,” he says, approaching.
I instinctively take a step further into the darkness, and he follows, never breaking eye contact.
I reach down to grab his hands, which he slides from his pockets and offers, palm down. I hold them gently, rubbing my thumbs across the tops. I feel him trembling gently, or maybe it’s just me, I can’t tell. I realize I’ve looked down at our hands and force myself to look back into his eyes. The blue ocean looks back at me, glistening in the shadows.
I maybe had some ideas about what I wanted to say, but my mind is both blank and full, and so words just flow, but in a slow-motion kind of way. “You are the most important person in my life, Martin. I don’t know what I would be without you, and I don’t ever want to find out. You mean so much to me.”
He doesn’t say anything, but his eyes glisten more, blinking slowly.
My right hand drops his, and makes its way to his neck, then slides up into the hair behind his ear. He doesn’t flinch or turn, but I feel the muscles of his smile in my hand. I don’t really know what I’m doing, but I just keep pressing on, “Can I ask you something?”
He nods, his free hand sliding onto my side.
I’m hoping my eyes are communicating more eloquently than my words. “Can I kiss you?”
Before I know what’s happening, Martin’s lips engulf mine, hungry, then light, his hands are on my neck, under my ears, and my vision goes blurry, then dark. I feel the world around us disappear into starlight and I can’t cling to him hard enough, can’t get enough of a finger-hold, like he might slip away. I feel his tongue on my lips, his breath igniting me, and my spine flares like a sparkler. We’re moving instinctively backward into the darkness, my hands moving from his waist to neck to ribs and back again, like we’re trying to close in whatever space there might be between us. I feel the heat from his chest pressing into me, heaving, and I realize I’ve backed into the conservatory itself, clear off the main path.
Our lips slide together, and his breath fills me. The warmth is transporting. I can’t get enough. His muscles twitch in my grasp.
His lips leave mine and head for my neck, kissing and breathing a path down to my collar bone. My skin ignites and my knees weaken. He’s gasping, and kissing, and speaking all at once. It overloads my senses. “I’m so sorry, Liam,” he breathes, then nibbles lightly on my collarbone, “I just wanted you to have some fun. Just an adventure. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
My vision is blurring, and my hands are tingling, sliding under his jacket. “It’s okay.” I’m groaning. “I’m okay.” I can’t think straight.
I reach a hand behind his neck and pull him back to me, I feel his lips part for my tongue and he presses into me. I grab him through his jacket, under his arms and flip us around, pressing his back into the building. I think this wall is actually a window, but I don’t care. My hands slide to his waist under hisrising shirt, I feel the heat of his core in my fingertips as my lips travel down his neck, under his ear.
He tilts his head back to expose his neck to me, gasps and grunts: “It was all just fun until you stole that book. That changed everything, Liam. I’ve never seen you that way.” He moans in a way that makes my back tingle, and I feel his hands sliding into my shirt. I’m intoxicated by the pull of his fingertips on my ribs.
“I wasn’t going to let that moment slip away.” I breath into his neck. I never want this moment to end. “I felt like I was starting to be real for once.”
He moans again when I nick his Adam’s apple with my teeth, and kiss along the other side of his neck. He’s breathing hard between his words. “And then you just inspired me, Liam. At every turn. You blew me away and I felt like your adventures were changing me.”
I pull his torso into me, knees to knees, chest to chest, and come up to meet his eyes, kissing him hard, and then looking back into his eyes. “What do you mean?”
“I became alive,” he breathes, “I was finally living for real. By being with you, by hearing about what you were doing, by seeing you like I’ve never seen you before.” He presses his lips into mine in a long, hard pull. The moment is hungry and slow. I feel my soul catch fire, and we seem to be out of words. He spins me around again. I’m worried about this window, now. Is it a window?
He presses in for another kiss, and I stop him with a look. “It bothered me a lot that I was following this guy, and that guy wasn’t you.” He looks from my eyes to my lips and I feel his fingers rise up my back. Mine are moving too. “It’s you, Martin. It’s always been you.”
Suddenly his lips are on mine in a whole new way, soft and slippery. Slow and deep, like a new language that we bothsuddenly know how to speak. I take it all in, the slow curling of his fingers up my back, the soft brush of stubble against my chin, the breath that stokes the fire igniting my brain. We stay like this for a while, letting our souls merge into a single, slow mass of molten something.
Slowly, he pulls away, only a fraction, and looks me in the eye. His pupils are blown, and his eyes are sparkling. “I love you Liam.” The words are soft and real. And not a demand for a response. Just like he’s stated something the universe has posted as obvious. His lips are on me again, and I kiss him back, allowing the sensation to run through my body, letting this moment settle into the crevices of my life, feeling it puddle in all the gaps. I lose grip on the world and my mind clears, leaving only him and me and this perfect moment holding us together.
“I love you, too, Martin,” I breathe, in-between long kisses, but the words seem futile compared to the way he kisses me. I’m lost in it.
After what seems like both forever and not enough, his lips release mine and he leans his head into my shoulder and neck. We both breathe softly and chuckle in the realization that we are welded together in the garden darkness. We catch our breaths and don’t let go.