and he will never let you go
right back where you started from, boys. here we go.
Table of Contents
Pictures courtesy Jen's Baseball Page and Getty Images. Used without permission.
The Rest of Your Life
By Candle Beck
Part the Fourteenth: Down to the End
(stand up)
Three weeks after Munson gets back to Detroit, Eric Chavez calls to invite him to his wedding.
Munson says, “Fuck you,” and hangs up.
Ten seconds later the phone rings again, insistently. Munson ignores it, staring at the page of his magazine where all the letters have smeared into complicated hieroglyphics, and the machine clicks on, their friendly out-going message making the apartment sound happy for a moment, and then Eric Chavez’s pissed-off voice: “You know, I coulda been best friends with like seven million people, but I chose you, goddamn it, so don’t make me go back in time and change that, you little bitch. Pick up or I’ma keep calling until your wife comes home and then I’ll talk to her, how’dja like that, Eric, punk, little punk hiding from your best friend, you under the bed yet, Munce, you in the closet, oh what am I saying, of course you are, come out and answer the phone, motherfucker, pick up, pick up, pickuppickuppickuppickup-”
Munson snatches it up. “You fucking cocksucker, what the hell is the matter with you?”
“Aw, Munson, I thought you liked me being a cocksucker,” Chavez says snidely.
“Hanging up now. Unplugging the phone too,” Munson replies tersely, and the phone’s halfway back down when Chavez’s voice catches him:
“Okay, I’m sorry, c’mon, man!”
Munson stops, and looks at the phone in his hand for a long time, long enough for Chavez to say, “Eric?” in a quiet muffled way that Munson can barely hear and that makes it impossible for him to hang up again.
“What.”
Chavez sighs loudly into the receiver. “I’m not allowed to invite you to my wedding now?”
“When you haven’t talked to me in fucking months and didn’t even tell me you were seeing somebody? No, you’re not allowed to invite you to your goddamn wedding.”
Munson pushes his knuckles into his forehead, and he’s pretty fucking angry.
“Look, it was . . . it’s complicated,” Chavez tells him with a feign of apology in his tone, but really he’s just trying to get himself off the hook, and yeah, Munson knows what that sounds like, really really well.
“Shit’s always complicated with you, isn’t it, man? Never do anything the easy way, god no,” Munson says, and he can see Chavez with perfect sight, that new haircut of his that Munson saw watching him in the playoffs, grown out enough to half-cover his ears and brush his collar. For four years now, Eric Munson has seen his friend more often on television than in person.
“Look, if you’re just gonna be an asshole, and not even let me explain, then what-the-fuck-ever, dude. I don’t gotta listen to it.”
“You moved out,” Munson says suddenly, surprised to hear his voice falter, almost crack. He presses his fist against his throat, working out the thickness. “You moved out and you didn’t even tell me. I gotta find out from Mark fucking Mulder?”
Chavez makes an indistinguishable noise, then says woodenly, “He said you stopped by.” Chavez is quiet for a moment and Munson’s whole body aches to hang up again and not hear any more. “I wanted to tell you. I wanted to call, and tell you about Alex and everything, but I kept . . . not, and then it was like all this time had passed and it woulda just been weird.”
“As opposed to waiting until there’s a wedding to invite me to? Oh yeah, this is much less weird.” Munson pauses. “Just to, um, clarify. Alex is a girl, right? ‘Cause I know there’s that new mayor guy out there with the super-tolerance-and-equality or whatever, but just ‘cause it might be legal for you to marry guys soon doesn’t mean you necessarily should-”
Chavez cuts him off with a quick little laugh. “No. She’s a girl. Definitely a girl. Got all the parts and everything.”
Munson smiles, but it doesn’t last. “Anyway. You’re the worst best friend ever.”
Chavez sighs again. “I know.”
“I mean, what the fuck, man? I thought you weren’t supposed to get married until I approved of the chick.”
“Yeah, because it was such a smashing success last time.” Chavez sounds tired, and Munson thinks nobody does guilt and remorse quite like his best friend.
“Look, if one of us is gonna get bitter and sarcastic, I think I got the right, okay?”
“I’m not bitter. I’m just . . . I want you to be there.”
Munson doesn’t say anything for awhile. He’s looking across the room at the small framed pictures on the mantle, too far away to make out the faces, but he knows well enough what’s there. His family, Shanda’s family. Their wedding, and Eric Chavez’s hand on his shoulder. California and the ocean, bare feet in the surf. His little niece holding a puppy and grinning in the purest expression of delight he’s ever seen.
“Why?” Munson asks.
“You. You want me to give you a reason?” and Chavez sounds like he just can’t believe that.
Munson closes his eyes. “Yes. Goddamn it. Yes. A reason. You don’t care enough to let me know that your life’s totally changed again, but now, you, you just. You call and you expect me to be all fucking psyched and on your side and. Give me a reason why.”
He waits and he can feel his heartbeat, dashing away in his ears. His hand is tight in a fist on his leg, and he can feel his pulse there, too, he can feel it everywhere.
“I. You’re. It wouldn’t . . . it wouldn’t be real if you weren’t there.”
Munson wishes he hadn’t asked. He breathes out, and asks hoarsely, “When is it?”
Chavez blows out a breath of his own, sounding relieved as he says, “December. In Hawaii. On my birthday.”
Munson thinks tropical thoughts, tries to hit the appropriate level of flippant and cool. “You’re getting married on your birthday? That’s pretty lame, man.”
“Says the guy who got married at Disneyworld. Anyway. I figure, I’ll be able to remember anniversaries, right?”
Munson snorts, doesn’t think before he says it: “Oh, so you’re planning on actually making it to an anniversary this time?”
Chavez inhales sharply, a little hurt gasp, and no one does wounded like Eric Chavez, either.
“Fuck you so hard for that, dude,” Chavez tells him, right back to angry again.
Munson sneers, because he can be that way too. “Promise?” he answers, all kinds of cruel and feeling cut loose.
Chavez is the one who hangs up, this time.
Munson hits the off button and throws the phone into the couch with enough force that it bounces onto the ground, turning on again and droning the dial tone at him. He puts his hands over his face and reminds himself to breathe, and doesn’t move until the phone starts beeping impatiently and he goes to put it back on the charger before it drives him crazy.
The plane ticket arrives in the mail a couple of days later. There’s no note, no nothing, and only one ticket in the envelope. Munson starts figuring out how to explain to Shanda that she’s not going to be coming with him, and thinks that at least the son of a bitch booked him first class.
*
(chain-link)
The sky over Molokai is densely overcast, the tips of the volcanoes poking up through the cloud cover as Eric Munson’s plane sails down. He’s been imagining blue skies and unimaginable green, a Hollywood movie kind of island paradise, but it’s December and it looks like he could reach up and touch the clouds, they hang so low.
Chavez doesn’t meet him at the airport, but then, Munson certainly didn’t expect him to. He takes a cab to the hotel and it’s plenty green, after all, Irish green or outfield green or something like that, everything flush because apparently they don’t really have winter in Hawaii anymore than they do in San Diego.
It’s close to seventy degrees outside and as humid as Florida in the spring. Everybody hurries around the streets, eyeing the sky anxiously. The air smells like sulfur and asphalt, the moisture so thick his throat feels slick.
At the hotel, Munson is anxious and desperately trying to catch sight of Chavez before Chavez catches sight of him. He wants the upper hand and maybe a minute or two to duck behind a pillar and prepare himself and stop being such a fucking punk, jesus.
He does spot Chavez first, but it’s the wrong Chavez. Cesar’s at the concierge counter, animatedly discussing some brochures with a uniformed man. Cesar looks older than he did the last time Munson saw him, deeper lines on his forehead and at the corners of his eyes, but he’s still talking with his hands and still making the concierge grin back at him.
Munson taps him on the shoulder and can’t hold back a grin of his own when Cesar turns, widens his eyes, and immediately grabs him in a joyful hug.
“Eric!” Cesar pulls back, beaming, and rattles Munson. “You forget how to use a phone, or what? Forgetting all about your old friends now that you’re a big famous baseball player?”
Munson shrugs, ducking his head down bashfully. Cesar always makes him feel like a little kid again, more even than his own father, but it’s in a good way. It’s the safe kind of feeling like a kid, like when you hear your dad come home from work and go thumping down the stairs to meet him, like when you’re eating cereal on a Saturday morning with your socked feet swinging and porcupining hair and he asks you if you want to go see the Padres play that night.
“Sorry. Been kinda busy, I guess.” Munson takes a look around the lobby, his overnight bag still on his shoulder, the strap digging in.
“So how’re you doing, kid, how’s your life?” Cesar asks, brightly curious and it’s not so strange, this day and age, to have two fathers, it’s not anything like unheard of.
‘Well, I’m still in love with your son and yeah, that pretty much sucks.’ For one panicked moment, he’s not sure if he said that out loud or not, but Cesar’s face stays curious and clean of shock, so Munson bites his tongue and answers, “Good. Mostly good. Is everybody here?”
Cesar bobs his head in affirmation, grinning broadly again. “We’ve taken the place over. They love us here.” He pauses, his smile dimming almost imperceptibly. “I wasn’t sure if you’d be coming. Eric, he hasn’t . . . well, I mean, he just didn’t mention-”
Munson swallows, interrupts him, “Yeah, it was kinda . . . happened pretty quick.”
Cesar raises his eyebrows. “And where’s Shanda?” he asks, peering around Munson as if his wife might be hiding back there or something.
Munson cuts his eyes away, flushing. “She couldn’t make it. Work stuff.”
“Oh.”
He looks up to see Cesar regarding him skeptically, but before the older man can ask anything, Eric Chavez comes careening around the corner and stumbles into his father’s back.
“Dad! You have to help me get Mom and Brandy away from the pool, there are these lifeguards-”
He stops abruptly as he catches sight of Munson, his eyes getting big and the laughing expression sinking off his face. Chavez’s lips say ‘Munce,’ but Munson can’t even hear the hiss of it.
Chavez is wearing the faded gray Mt. Carmel High School T-shirt that Munson knows very well, the one that used to be a little too big and now fits him perfectly, with the rip in the sleeve that Munson knows even better, Chavez against a chain-link fence and Munson’s hands on him making him jerk and catch his sleeve on a rusty twist of metal, the soft tearing sound and nothing that Munson should remember quite so well.
Chavez has got the corner of a twenty dollar bill sticking up from his jeans pocket and a new gonna-get-married haircut that makes him look older than he usually does. He looks rested, and happy a moment ago, but now just weird and uncertain.
“You . . . you came,” Chavez says, and Munson sees Cesar’s eyes dart back and forth between them questioningly.
Munson makes a smile. “Wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
Chavez’s face falls into a brief glower, and his hand is on his father’s shoulder, half-turning to say painstakingly, “Dad, could you. Give us a minute?”
Cesar nods, looking somehow knowing and confused at the same time, and claps each of them on the arm, squeezing Munson’s affectionately, before heading out to the pool.
They stand there looking at each other for a long moment, until the concierge subtly clears his throat, and Chavez jerks his head to the side, walking away and trusting that Munson will follow.
So he does. He pushes through the revolving door and thinks about getting stuck in the glass triangular wedge and the oxygen running out, but the door flips him outside without a hitch and Chavez is standing there with his hands in his pockets, head tilted up to scan across the sky.
Munson stands next to him and mirrors his pose, waits for Chavez to start talking. Munson’s hands in his pockets want to fly out and do some damage, do something. Chavez stays silent and Munson has never been one to tolerate an awkward pause.
“So. Hawaii, huh?”
Chavez nods, still looking up at the sky, the same worried look on his face that all the natives have. “It’s supposed to rain. Later. But it’ll clear by tomorrow.”
The wedding’s tomorrow. Munson thinks of how the sky will look once it’s been scrubbed clean by the rain. But he’s pretty sure Chavez didn’t come out here to talk to him about the weather.
“What’s going on, Eric?”
Chavez glances at him out of the corner of his eye, quick flash of his eyelashes and then nothing. “I, um.” He kicks at the ground, watches taxi cabs pull up to the stand, another man in a maroon uniform with gold buttons opening the door for the guests, half-bowing as they smile their thanks, his shoes shiny black mirrors.
“I’m glad you came.”
Munson blinks. He didn’t expect that. “Yeah?”
Chavez nods emphatically. “Yeah man. I meant what I said. When we talked before. I meant it.”
Munson lets his shoulders curve in a bit, protected. “I didn’t mean what I said.”
Chavez sighs. “I know you didn’t.”
Munson watches Chavez’s profile, new short hair like right before Labor Day when they were kids, right before school started, because picture day always happened in the first week. Munson wants to touch Chavez’s neck, his arm where his shirt is ripped.
“Listen, we’ve got to talk about this-” Munson begins, and Chavez throws him a look of utter terror, so undiluted that it almost knocks Munson down, kills the words in his throat. It doesn’t matter anyway, because right then a pretty blonde woman comes out of the hotel and joins them with a sweet laugh and an arm winding around Chavez’s waist.
Eric Chavez jumps when she touches him, but she doesn’t notice because she’s smiling at Munson and saying, “You’re much better-looking than your pictures.”
Munson’s mouth is open but no sounds are coming out, staring at this pretty girl with her neon-blue eyes and kind mouth. He pulls himself together and stammers, “Thank you?”
She lets go of Chavez to go and kiss Munson on the cheek, and Munson can see Chavez’s hand on her back, his fingers closing possessively in her shirt. Munson smiles down at her, a sweet kid, the kind of girl Eric Chavez does not deserve, and she says, “I’m Alex.”
Which he pretty much figured out, but whatever.
Chavez snaps out of it, grinning and sliding his hand around his girlfriend’s hip. “Yeah, she’s Alex. He’s Munson. Um. Eric. Eric Munson.”
Alex rolls her eyes at him, but if there’s one thing Munson knows as well as he knows anything, it’s what a person looks like when they’re heart-struck crazy for Eric Chavez, and that’s what Alex is without a doubt.
And Chavez is smiling as he looks down at her, and the other thing Munson knows pretty goddamn well is what Eric Chavez looks like when he’s so in love he can’t think straight.
Blood rushes to Munson’s head and he puts his hand on a fake-marble pillar to steady himself. He closes his eyes until the stars fade and hears himself saying, “God, it’s good to meet you.”
He opens his eyes and Alex is smiling at him and Chavez’s eyes are big and pleading and fearful. “You too,” Alex says happily. “The mysterious best friend, at last.”
Munson grins. “The mysterious fiancée.” Chavez shoots him a warning glance, but Munson ignores it.
Alex laughs, a fine clear laugh and Chavez’s fingers drumming nervously on her hip. “I’m so glad you could make it. It wouldn’t have been the same without you, Eric would have been a total wreck.” Chavez makes an embarrassed sound of protest, blushing and flicking his eyes to Munson’s and away again, and Alex elbows him lightly in the side. “It’s true, you would have been.”
Munson doesn’t take his eyes off Chavez’s face, tells Alex, “He’s the best friend a guy could have.” Chavez stares back at him, and Munson tightens his jaw, smiles easily at Alex.
Chavez clears his throat, says with an uneasy strum in his voice that Munson wonders if Alex can recognize, “Babe, could you go ask my mom what time we have to leave for the dinner?”
Alex kisses him, smiles at Munson and touches his arm, and then disappears through the revolving door, leaving the two of them alone again.
“You call her babe,” Munson says and then immediately regrets it.
Chavez winces. “Guess I do, yeah.” They don’t say anything and it gets pretty fucking uncomfortable. Chavez pulls at the hem of his T-shirt and scowls at the ground. “So, there’s, like, the rehearsal dinner tonight? Which you should be at. If you want.”
The humidity is on Munson’s shoulders, gathering in the small of his back and the crooks of his elbows. “We still have to talk.”
“We are talking.”
“Goddamn it-”
Chavez cuts his hand through the air, a short abbreviated burst of anger that he covers as well as he can. “Not here. Not here, not fucking now.”
Munson rolls his head back and he can feel the air heavy like fingertips on his eyelids, honestly, it’s amazing. “Well, we’re off to a real good start.”
Chavez glares at him. “Don’t you dare ruin this for me, Munson.”
Munson laughs, harsh and broken-off. “Since when have I been able to ruin anything of yours?”
Chavez doesn’t answer, turns on his heel and stalks inside, and Munson stays outside for awhile, thinking of Alex’s soft kiss on his cheek and Eric Chavez twisting against a chain-link fence.
*
(never had a leg to stand on)
It’s gonna be a family wedding, for which Munson is absurdly grateful, not having to see any of the Oakland Athletics milling in the hallways and raiding the mints from the housekeeping carts, none of the pitchers who fucking own him or the infielders who know Eric Chavez’s double-play move like clockwork.
Munson is surprised at how good it is to hang out with Eric’s brothers and sister again, Casey who’s finally as tall as his wiry arms and legs promised when they were kids, Chris who greets him with a headlock and a noogie, Brandy who’s turned out so pretty Munson has to blush and trip over his words and remind himself that he most definitely should not be thinking such thoughts about his best friend’s little sister.
Ruby’s thrilled to see him and tells him stories about his mom, because she talks to Dora more often than Munson does. Cesar rounds them up, Chris and Casey and both Erics, and introduces them to the priest who will be officiating, saying proudly, “And these are my boys.”
Munson is back with his other family, the door that was always open to him, and it would be a perfect kind of homecoming if Eric Chavez and Alex weren’t there every time he turned around.
Alex’s family is there too, her overjoyed parents and shy high-school-aged sister who’s got a pretty blatant crush on Casey Chavez, and her older brother Jake who spends the evening scowling at Eric Chavez as if he’d like to beat the crap out of him. Eric Munson likes the way Jake thinks.
Chris’s wife is there, and Munson misses Shanda badly when he sees them snickering together, sees Chris lean over to press a kiss on her forehead. Munson’s the only other one who’s not a blood relation, but it doesn’t bother him. Brothers of heart, matching scars on their palms, and their life is still more one than two, even after everything that’s happened. Munson belongs here, it’s a terrible thing, but he belongs here with this second family of his.
They head out for the rehearsal dinner, just a short hop skip and jump down to the shore, a nice restaurant and not too far from where the big white tent is already set up and waiting like a ghost, chains of pale Christmas lights strung up along the angles.
Munson wants to make some joke about maybe getting married on the beach again isn’t the best of ideas, considering what happened last time, but he’s not actually fucked up to say that out loud with Cesar and Ruby there, not yet.
And Eric Chavez is wearing a crisp white shirt and a black jacket, the only thing missing is the bowtie and a flower sprig woven through a lapel button, and Eric Munson, putting down shots of whiskey with Jake and Casey, trying not to get drunk and not doing a very good job at it, keeps seeing his best friend all shiny and pressed, keeps forgetting whether Chavez is married yet.
Munson’s having trouble. Everything he tries to do seems nearly impossible. He keeps thinking, ‘but we already did this, it already happened.’ Not much makes sense.
Out the big bay windows, it hasn’t started to rain yet, but the beach is all in dented shadow and they can see the white caps on the waves, the lightning flashes way off, above the clouds. Nobody goes outside for too long, quick cigarettes smoked with a hand pressed to the door, arms held out to test the weather, and the wind is bad, racketing around and making a wreck of everything.
They eat dinner but it doesn’t taste like much to Munson, sawdust maybe, line-chalk. Some toasts are made but he’s not paying attention. He’s watching Eric Chavez and Alex, the flit of their hands, the silver look in both their eyes. Black hair and blonde hair, the contrast and the way they fit, handsome young man and beautiful young woman, and they could be out of a fairy tale.
Eric Munson watches and he wishes he could be drunker than he is, because he got through this once before by the grace of alcohol. But nothing’s the same now. None of his old tricks are gonna work.
He waits for the fog to come over his eyes and it never does, so he catches Chavez’s elbow when he comes to the bar and whispers in his ear, “Come talk to me for a minute,” and walks away, not at all sure that Chavez will follow.
Munson goes to a tiny back hallway with a service elevator and big metal carts filled with wrapped pastries. The walls are gray and the exit sign above the back door makes red shadows everywhere. He waits for Eric Chavez and fiddles with everything in reach.
Chavez slips in like he made sure no one was looking, and the pneumatic door hushes shut behind him. He stops, a yard or two between them and Chavez is all black and white in the dim light, his formal clothes and glassy tired eyes.
“I never said congratulations,” Munson says, leaning on his shoulder against the wall, feeling the brace of it and thinking about hotel rooms, airports, duffel bags under the bed and plastic cups of water on the bedside table.
Chavez shows Munson his teeth in a strange expression that’s like a sneer and a smile all at once. “Didn’t expect you to.”
Munson moves towards him and Chavez flinches back. The red falls on his face, a hollow sort of glow around his cheekbones and tinting the collar of his shirt a dingy pink. The light is behind Munson and he lifts his hand to see the cut-out of it on Chavez’s chest.
“I’m not gonna watch you get married again after tomorrow. This is the last time.”
Chavez tilts his chin up and it’s eerie as fuck, because the exit sign light catches in his eyes and Christ, Christ.
“I’m not gonna get married after this, so you don’t have to worry about it.”
Chavez’s lip pulls up again and there are his teeth, and Munson reaches out, takes Chavez’s hand. He links their fingers, and Chavez doesn’t pull away but doesn’t fold his fingers down around Munson’s hand either. Munson presses his wedding ring hard into the webbing between Chavez’s fingers, wanting to make a cold burn there, a scar that will last.
Chavez is looking at him suspiciously and scared, his hand tense and unmoving in Munson’s, and Munson says, “You’ll say that every single time, you don’t think I know you better than that?” and then he kisses Chavez.
He kisses Chavez and pushes him back against the wall and Chavez is kissing him back, which is a good thing, a brilliant thing, but it’s all teeth and harder than it should be. Chavez tastes like champagne and lemon, carbonated and too clean. Munson bites Chavez’s lower lip to hear him gasp, and shakes his hand free to slide it down and hook under Chavez’s knee, drawing his leg up and pressing their bodies together. He holds Chavez’s leg bent against his side and places his other hand on the side of Chavez’s face, his fingers in claws and the fragile skin of Chavez’s temple under Munson’s nails.
Munson breaks away from Chavez’s mouth and drops his head to Chavez’s neck, Chavez craning back and arching his body into Munson’s, one hand on Munson’s shoulder and the other flat on his chest.
Munson says, mumbling and a spiraling fall in his mind, “You love her, you love her more than you love me.”
Chavez’s hand wrenches in his shirt. “Shut the fuck up, Munson, don’t say that.” He pulls Munson up to kiss him again, and Munson says it right into Chavez’s mouth, this time:
“You don’t want this, you only want her because you love her and you’re such a jerk, I hate you so much, man, I hate you,” and he kisses Chavez deeply, pushing against him and his hand spread out on the outside of Chavez’s knee, feeling the scrape of the fabric and the warmth under his palm.
“Shut up, quit saying that,” Chavez begs him, holding tight and his arm around Munson’s neck, and for some reason Munson is terribly aware of the strict flexed tendon in Chavez’s elbow drawing a line of heat on the skin between Munson’s collar and his hair.
“It’s true,” Munson says, and licks Chavez’s ear, slides his hand down to Chavez’s stomach, grinding against him and Chavez starting to moan quietly. “You’ll get married and fuck her and you’ll be thinking of me and I’ll hate you, hate you forever because you’ve done this to me, you don’t even know what you’ve done.”
Chavez shakes his head, unable to keep from moving against Munson, an old rhythm and one they’ve perfected. He bangs his face against Munson’s neck, hides his eyes and tries to pull him even closer. “You love me. You’ve always loved me.”
Munson kisses him as hard as he can, and when he’s got Chavez finally, at last, where he wants him, he bites down on Chavez’s lip, feels the skin break and tastes blood, and Chavez yanks backwards in shocked pain, and Munson tells him in an awful whisper, “Yeah I love you, but only because you never gave me any other choice.”
Chavez stares at him, red on his lips and dotting onto the clean cotton-white shirt, and Munson is not prepared for how beautiful Eric Chavez looks with blood on his face.
Then something important collapses in Chavez’s eyes, his face lashing black and enraged, and he shoves Munson off him, only to a moment later twist his hand in Munson’s collar and punch him in the face.
Munson falls into the pastry cart, slamming his head on the metal corner and the resounding clatter is huge in his ears. Now he can’t tell if the blood in his mouth is Chavez’s or his own, and he’s numb, which is good, very good, the best he could have hoped.
He clenches his hands on the cart, frozen tight edges on the veins at the undersides of his wrists, and he starts to shake. The cart rattles and he lets it go, forces himself to look back at Chavez, who’s standing there breathing rapidly and looking so completely stunned that he might never move again.
Munson licks the corner of his lip, which is starting to swell and the rusted nauseating taste of copper in the back of his throat, and Chavez half-reaches out, his hand faltering, wanting to press his fingers to Munson’s face and clean away the blood.
Munson’s chest caves in and he sobs, but just once, batting away Chavez’s hand and barely managing to say, “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” before he spins and runs out the back door, runs out into the weather, onto the sand.
Chavez stands there alone for a moment, staring with total incomprehension at his left hand and the struck red marks appearing on the knuckles, because he just punched Eric Munson in the face, and he’s pretty sure he didn’t mean to.
He wipes the back of his arm across his mouth and takes off after his best friend.
Munson is already a good stretch down the shore, running fast with sand kicking back behind him. The tail of his shirt is flagging from under his jacket, pulled free of his belt by Chavez’s hands. There’s lightning over the ocean and a roar in his ears, a static-blood rush.
Chavez is chasing after him but he’ll never catch Munson, Munson’s always been faster. The sand gives no purchase under his feet, and he thinks about what they must look like, two men in expensive clothes with blood on their mouths, running down the beach and the storm getting closer every second.
The wind is very bad, burning in Munson’s eyes, and he stumbles, trips, his hands flying out as he crashes into the sand. Chavez sees him fall and thinks ‘good,’ because that’s the only way he could ever catch up.
Munson lies there and doesn’t even try to get up. He screws his face into the sand and it snuffles into his nose, paints his tongue and makes him cough, grates harshly down his throat. He can hear the beat of the waves and that’s it. His mouth hurts and he never wants it to stop hurting; it will be a good reminder.
Eric Munson is thinking, ‘this is as far as i go.’
Chavez gets to him and skids to his knees, not particularly caring about ironed pants or the bits of shell that slash through to his skin. He puts his hands on Munson’s back, on Munson’s head, Munson’s hair slicked down from the spray and drying carefully, the color getting lighter as Chavez watches.
Munson moans and tries to push away, but Chavez rolls him over, won’t let him stand up. Munson keeps his eyes shut tightly and Chavez strokes his hands on Munson’s face, brushing away the worst of the sand, cautious over Munson’s eyelids, and Chavez is whispering, “I didn’t mean it, you know I didn’t mean it, I’d never do that on purpose.”
There are grains of sand stuck to the blood at the corner of Munson’s lip, stuck to the wet places under his eyes.
Munson tears himself away, sitting up and half-turning his back on Chavez, saying like it’s got to be ripped out of him, “I can’t do this with you anymore.”
Eric Chavez goes still, staring at him. The wind blows Munson’s collar up, plastered on his jaw, and Munson has got one leg pulled up so he can rest his face against it and not look at his best friend.
“What?” Chavez asks helplessly.
Munson shakes his head, and maybe he’ll never open his eyes again, that sounds okay. “I can’t, I won’t. I’m . . . I’m telling you to stop.”
It’s strange. It’s . . . Chavez can hear it happen. The thing that snaps inside him when Munson says that. He can hear it.
A moment later he thinks it must have just been a lightning crack, though he doesn’t remember seeing the flash, but he was kind of preoccupied and it must have been lightning, because there’s no way he could really have heard his heart break.
Chavez leans forward and fits his hands on Munson’s shoulders, cups his neck. He’s shaking his head furiously and keeping Munson from pulling away again. “No, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have hit you, I’m really fucking sorry, man.”
Munson wraps his hand around Chavez’s forearm, pressing his fingers hard through the sleeve of his coat and shirt. “That’s not why,” he says, his voice torn up by the sand, crunching between his teeth. “I can take a fucking punch, you’re the one who taught me how to take a punch. Hit me again, I don’t fucking care. I’m just . . . it’s killing me, man. I’m so ready to be over this.”
Chavez’s hands clench, balling up in Munson’s jacket, and his knees are starting to ache, the dig of the sand and the wind flattening on his back. He’s thinking about nine years, twenty-one years, he’s thinking that he’s never done anything for as long as he’s been in love with Eric Munson.
“No, okay?” Chavez says. His fingers slide on Munson’s neck, damp and sticking with salt. “Don’t be stupid. This, it’s. It’s no big deal, we’re okay. I swear, Munce, we’re okay, you’re not leaving me because we’re fine.”
Munson tilts his head back and laughs, his throat burning and Chavez’s hand caught on the back of his neck. “How the fuck can I leave you, man? We aren’t even . . . it’s barely even real enough to actually end.”
“So don’t end it. Don’t.” Munson can feel Chavez’s panicky grip on his neck, and he pushes at Chavez’s arm, makes him let go. He doesn’t look over.
“You don’t even know why you want me anymore. This is just a fucking habit.”
Chavez’s eyes widen, feeling wet even though he’s not crying. “No, that’s, that’s not how it is. I. I didn’t mean to fall in love with you again but I did, okay. And it’s for real. Swear to god, it’s for real this time.”
Munson covers up his eyes, shaking his head. There’s sand on the heels of his hands and he can feel it rasping on the skin of his face.
“It’s never been for real. Not since we were nineteen years old. You’ve only ever been in love with me when I was your only option.”
Chavez’s hand crawls up Munson’s arm again. He can’t stay back, and Munson lets him because it’s the last time and maybe Munson wants something to remember too. Chavez’s voice is breaking pretty badly, at this point.
“I was in love with you when I got married, what the fuck are you talking about? I definitely had another option then.” Chavez holds onto Munson’s elbow and wishes Munson would look at him.
Munson watches the ocean, feeling Chavez’s heartbeat in the palm of his hand, through the layers of coat and shirt, something so unlikely it’s probably not even possible. “Yeah, but you never took it. And, like, excuse me if you’re still not aware of this, but your marriage was a fucking exercise in self-destruction to begin with.”
“That. That’s not true,” Chavez manages to say, and lets Munson’s arm go.
Munson sighs, barely able to swallow past the thickness in his throat. He thinks about being in shock, how it can kill you. He’s not sure if he’s still numb.
“It really is, dude. Your life was falling apart and you figured, hey, get married, that’ll solve everything. But how else was it gonna end other than the way it did? You should have seen that shit coming a fucking decade ago.” Munson twists his hand in the sand, scoring his knuckles so that people will think he was in a fistfight.
“You didn’t see it coming either.”
“I didn’t care!” Munson stops, and takes a deep breath. His blood feels hyperactive, skimming through his veins. “I knew what I was doing. Knew what you were doing. I knew that you fucking around with me while you were married meant you weren’t gonna be married that long. I just. I didn’t care.”
Chavez wings his hand through the air and spits to the side, sand and blood. Spitting out blood makes him feel tough, invincible, something, and he says sharply, “Okay, but you’ve been married and fucking around with me for the past two years now, and it doesn’t seem to have fucked up your life.”
Munson laughs without humor. “Oh no, my life isn’t fucked up at all. God, I’m a fucking textbook of not being fucked up. You fucking idiot.”
Chavez blinks at him, Chavez with his fucking dark eyes and the doubt in there that Munson stopped seeing five years ago. “But you. You never said.”
“I said it a million times, you never heard. I, I did everything to try and tell you.” Munson pauses, and clears his throat carefully. He knows he sounds like he’s about to break down, which is far from the truth, he’s pretty sure. “Eric, I’m . . . I’ve been so lost for so long now. And I tried to tell you, I swear to God I did.”
His lip curled up, Chavez shakes his head quickly, lines on his face. “What, calling me the worst thing that’s ever happened to you, that was you trying to tell me? Calling me a fucking bad habit?”
Munson shrugs, feeling his suit jacket shift over his shoulders. The ocean’s cutting back on itself, over and over again. “You know I’m no good at . . . saying stuff. You used to be able to, like, get me. Even if I was making no sense, you could still understand.”
“This isn’t like when we made up our own secret language, dude. You can’t just be all fucked up and not tell me and expect me to figure it out.”
“You should have figured it out,” Munson whispers.
“Fuck you,” Chavez says bitterly. “I’m so fucking tired of you playing martyr.”
“Playing what?” Munson repeats in disbelief, thinking, ‘this fucking shit again.’
“No, seriously. Being all betrayed and injured and shit and acting all self-righteous. Letting me be an asshole because it gives you something to be better than me at. But there’s always been two of us, goddamn it.”
Chavez tears his hand through the sand, loses grains down his shirt sleeve. There is a scatter of it on his cufflinks, cool ivory and gold posts. Chavez keeps forgetting that he’s as rich as he is, and soon he’ll sign a new contract and it’ll be forever.
He continues, “Just because I’m a bigger fuck-up than you, that doesn’t mean that everything is my fault. All you ever had to do was say, I’m done. That’s all you ever had to say and you didn’t, so don’t fucking pretend that I’m the only one who’s done wrong here.”
Munson feels sick, and wonders if he’s about to throw up. That would be pretty perfect. He glances over at Chavez and Chavez is staring at him, the side of Munson’s face. Chavez’s expression is taut and fierce, but his eyes are so scared Munson wants to shield him with his body.
“You keep coming back,” Munson tells him. “You won’t leave me alone.”
“I don’t know how,” Chavez says, and he’s breathless because fuck, that’s true, he never learned that trick, nobody told him.
“You’re going to be twenty-six years old tomorrow, Chavez.”
Chavez glares at him, swipes his arm across his nose. “I know how fucking old I am.”
“So you should have learned by now,” Munson says, exhausted with his shoulders and head weighted. “Twenty-six years old and you’ve been making the same mistake since you were sixteen.”
Chavez jerks his head to the side, something pulling hard in his neck like when you sleep wrong, a crick, a strain. “Don’t just. You can’t say you knew any better than me. You never stopped it either.”
Munson lowers his eyes. The beach is wet and cold beneath his hands. “You called me from a roof and it was like you’d jump if I said no,” he whispers.
Chavez stares at him, mouth slightly open. “I never-”
Munson cuts him off, steel-metal ocean and the salt in the air. “Everything you’ve ever said to me has been, please don’t leave me alone, Munce. You say nothing’s real if I’m not there. You know what you do to me. You know that I can’t turn you down.”
“You’re turning me down now.”
Munson nods, and every part of him hurts. “That’s right.”
Chavez presses his hands tight against his legs, his heart flagging like a candle. “You motherfucker. You fucking. You can’t just do this, man, it’s not right.”
Munson shivers, briefly, spurring through him and he can taste blood and sand and liquor, he’s not crying but he probably should be. Everything’s echoing and Chavez’s presence beside him is very important, warm and steadying, but he won’t lean into him.
“It should have ended years ago,” Munson says, and he’s not sure if that was a pained inhalation on the part of Eric Chavez, because it sounds the same as everything around else. “We were so stupid, I was . . . jesus, I was so fucking stupid. Just waiting around for you to show up and fuck me again. Pretending it meant something.”
Chavez’s hand latches onto his neck again, drawn back like a magnet, and his fingers tighten. Munson can feel the railed bones cracking against the knobs of his spine. “It does mean something, don’t just start lying now,” Chavez insists, holding himself back and squeezing Munson’s neck. “It means everything, I love you, that means everything.”
Munson jerks, his hands up and knocking Chavez’s arm, breaking the hold. He lifts his head and his eyes are all white-light.
“Yeah yeah yeah. For fucking years you’ve been telling me how it doesn’t count, but now you love me, oh you love me so much. You love me, you love Amber, you love Alex. You love everybody. You’ve spent years being fucking miserable because you can’t decide who you love the best, so I’m just gonna make the choice a little easier for you, all right?”
“You think this’ll make it easier?” Chavez cries, hollowed in the wind. “You think I’ll be able to stop wanting you if I don’t have you?”
Munson closes his hands into fists and half-buries them in the sand. The wind sails past and the humidity was blown off awhile ago. Munson keeps watch on the water as if he expects it to change.
He says, “You’ve never had me. Not since we were nineteen years old. I fucked up and you got rid of me and that was the last time, that was our last chance. You never really wanted me after that, not the way we were.”
Chavez shakes his head so hard his neck pops. “I did, I just . . . I couldn’t. Everything was different. There was Amber, and the team . . . how the fuck could you expect it to be like it was when we were nineteen?”
“I didn’t. I knew better than that. But I never thought it’d be like this.”
They don’t say anything for awhile. Eric Chavez fidgets miserably next to him, and they watch the ocean, the skewer-flash of the lightning.
“You never told me,” Chavez says, talking by rote and almost repeating himself. He’s pleading his case, reaffirming his best arguments, and he’s not looking at Munson. “You just . . . you let me do it all even when I'm telling you it's wrong.”
“I don’t need you to tell me that it’s fucking wrong,” Munson snaps. “And please quit trying to blame your need to fuck me up on my inability to tell you no.”
Chavez swallows. Munson’s lip is swollen and Chavez wants to run his tongue over it, and it suddenly hits him that he’ll never do that again, and his chest aches deeply.
“I’m not trying to fuck you up.”
“Fucking tell that to my wife, man.” Munson thinks, ‘fuck, my wife,’ thinks about Shanda, who let him lie to her about why she couldn’t come to Hawaii, let him come here alone and kissed him before he left. Shanda will be the only one waiting for him, and this is the way it should have always been, and he’s suddenly terrified that she won’t be good enough.
He thinks about a son, a daughter, unfocused in his mind’s eye, half him and half her and Eric Chavez’s dark eyes impossibly set in a small face.
He pushes that away.
Munson exhales, a long breath that empties his chest. “I can’t be your excuse anymore.”
“My what?” Eric Chavez asks incredulously.
Munson snags his hand in the space between them, clipping Chavez’s shoulder and thinking that it would be very easy to curl his fingers around Chavez’s arm, it would be very easy to push Chavez’s jacket off his shoulders and lean over to press his mouth to Chavez’s skin through the white fabric. Take it all back.
“Your excuse for being fucked up.” And Munson watches his friend carefully, watches the refusal pull across Chavez’s mouth and the muscles of his neck held stiffly.
“Nice fucking ego, man,” Chavez sneers, wondering if he just puts a hand on Munson, anywhere, his face, his shoulder, his wrist, if they touch just once, maybe this will all fall apart again and they can forget about it. “Who says I need you to be fucked up?”
“I saw it happen,” Munson says. He’s not really drunk at all. All that whiskey, the second-hand champagne and his mind is so clear. His face throbs, low on his jaw and the corner of his mouth. “You didn’t used to be like this. You used to be okay and then you weren’t anymore, and I. I couldn’t do anything, I couldn’t stop it, even though I know, I, I know . . . You blame me for everything going wrong, and you keep me around just ‘cause, like, the devil you fucking know, right?”
Chavez doesn’t say anything. He stares out and he doesn’t want to be on this fucking beach anymore.
Munson sighs. “Look, I get it, all right? It’s easy. To say all the stuff that gets ruined, it’s just ‘cause of what . . . what we are. Were. It’s easy, but it’s not true.”
Lowering his head onto his knees, Chavez rolls his forehead back and forth, still denying it. “How can you say that, man? I didn’t . . . I’m not using you as a reason for why I screw everything up.”
“Not anymore, you’re not.”
Falling quiet for a moment, Chavez tries to fight his way through this, looking for something to brace against. He sees Eric Munson’s collar against his throat, particular bits of Munson’s hair slanting on a diagonal, the shallow pink scraping on his face, the sand in his eyelashes. Munson’s a mess. Chavez wants to clean him up, put him back together again. If Chavez is the one who ruined it, then it’s only fair that he be given a chance to fix it.
“We can. Listen. We can try again. Okay? I’ll. I’ll go tell Alex, I’ll tell her everything, anything you want me to say. I’ll tell my parents and my brothers and everybody.”
Munson stares at him in shock. Chavez touches his face, and Munson doesn’t pull away, searching frantically for any of the million things that Chavez does when he’s lying. Chavez forces himself to swallow, brushing his fingertips on Munson’s cheek, he feels gravity give way and he says it anyway:
“I’ll quit, Eric. Swear to god I will. I’ll come to Detroit and we can do it for real. I won’t . . . I’ll n-never play again.”
Eric Chavez, for a moment, sees a life in his future that makes no sense to him. It breaks like ice in his chest. What the fuck will he do if Munson says yes?
But Munson is already shaking his head, mouthing ‘no’ over and over again. His hands are wrung between his knees. “Don’t ever say that again,” he says softly.
“Munce . . .” Chavez tries, shifting closer. He can feel Munson warm in the idle chill of the wind. Hawaii in December doesn’t feel like much of anything.
Munson’s still shaking his head. “I, all right,” he says haltingly. “I just spent a full season getting my heart broken every single day. And I, I was thinking, a little while ago, that the only thing worse than that would be if I wasn’t . . . if I’d never made it. I don’t know if that’s true or not. But I think it is.”
He might have said more, but he ends up just saying nothing. Chavez shivers, goosebumps creeping up his arms. His eyes hurt bad enough that he keeps waiting for the slow hot crawl of blood down his face.
“Can’t we just-” Chavez starts, and Munson cuts him off, closing his eyes like he’s in pain too.
“No.”
“You don’t even know what I was gonna say.”
Munson’s face is angled down, all profile and hair falling across his forehead. “It doesn’t matter. We can’t. We can’t be in love and be married. We can’t fuck around and not be in love. It doesn’t work. You know that.”
“It’d be different,” Chavez whispers.
Munson makes a scoffing noise, scrubbing a hand across his face. “It’s never different. Please, okay, please for my sake understand that. Because I’m, I’m not sure how much longer I’ll be able to keep saying it’s over.”
Chavez doesn’t answer, his eyes far far off, searching for boats, or Japan. All those little islands out there in the Pacific, stuff that maybe never even got discovered. Beaches without footprints. Trees with the bark still on.
Munson watches him for awhile, and then that makes it kinda hard to breathe, so he stops. He looks at the sand and says dully, “I mean, just because we were in love doesn’t mean being in love was a good idea.”
“I know.” Chavez draws in a long slow breath, scratches at the cuff of his pants. “So I guess you’re not in love with me anymore.”
Munson wonders how much honesty this deserves. This, the truest thing that’s ever happened to him and finished now, or close to finished, close enough to taste it in the air, and it seems like it calls for all the truth left in him, but he can’t really tell.
“I can’t,” Munson begins, and it hurts to talk, the sand in his throat, something else, too, something best left unexamined. “I can’t just stop being in love with you. If I could, believe me, I would have done it seven years ago. But I’m not gonna let you do this to me anymore. I’m not gonna do this to you anymore. My whole life used to be you, but it’s not anymore. I got Shanda, you’ve got Alex, and it’s never gonna be like it was. We can’t keep fucking around and expect to wake up some morning and be nineteen years old again and have another shot.”
Chavez pulls his legs up and lowers his forehead onto his knees. “I don’t understand,” he whispers, and Munson has to tilt closer to hear him. “I’m in love with you. You’re in love with me. I don’t understand why that’s not good enough.”
Munson reaches out, and touches his hand to Chavez’s face. He taps his wedding ring three times against Chavez’s cheekbone and doesn’t say anything.
Chavez is shaking, flickering in the wind and the inconstant light. “I can’t believe we came this far and you’re just gonna end it,” he says with his voice all choked.
Munson takes his hand away, makes a bad smile. “I can’t believe we came this far at all,” he admits. “I’ve never even told anybody.”
Chavez presses his mouth against his knee and winces at the sting of his bitten lip. “I told a priest once.”
Raising his eyebrows, Munson wishes Chavez would lift his face, let Munson see him. “You told a priest you were sleeping with a guy? Is that even allowed?”
For a moment, Eric Munson trying to make him smile or laugh, dumb jokes and goofy faces, it’s terribly clear to Chavez why he fell in love with his best friend in the first place, but that’s only a moment.
Chavez keeps his face against his knees, his back rising and falling in the way that means he’s measuring out each breath, because this is as bad as it will ever feel, right here, right now, and if he keeps breathing, eventually it will get better.
Munson sees it all and wants to curl up around him, be good cover, safe passage, but he can’t anymore, and Munson breathes out painfully.
“We weren’t going anywhere, man. We’ve never been going anywhere, not together.”
“That’s not true.” Chavez looks up then, his face warped in a scowl, because he doesn’t want to just go down without a fight and leave this to be redrawn, re-imagined as fits convenience and conscience. “Everywhere we’ve been, we’ve been together. You’ve been my best friend for almost twenty years. Everything I’ve ever done, I’ve done with you somewhere nearby. And it’s gonna be like that forever, whether you keep fucking me or not.”
Munson runs a hand through his gritty hair. “What are we supposed to do, Eric?” he asks roughly. “Be married and have kids and live two thousand miles away from each other and keep sleeping together on the rare occasions when we’re in the same city? Phone sex and dirty emails like fucking kids? Until we get caught or get our picture taken and everything gets ruined anyway? I mean, fuck. That’s how you want your life to be?”
“I want to be in love with you.” Chavez bites the inside of his lip. He doesn’t take his eyes off Munson’s. “All I’ve ever wanted is to just be in love with you.”
Munson’s mouth twists but he doesn’t cry. It’s unexpected, but neither of them is crying. Neither of them will be the first to break down, and so neither of them does.
“That’s not really true, but whatever.” Chavez opens his mouth to protest that, eyebrows pulling together, but Munson holds up a hand to cut him off. “It doesn’t matter. I’m tired of being fucked up. Tired of being ashamed. Tired of trying to hurt you. I’m, really. I’m so tired of all of this.”
Eric Chavez looks away, his throat moving up and down, his eyelids fluttering. “I never meant. I never meant for it to be like this.”
Wanting to rest his hand on Chavez’s back, his neck, his head, somewhere, Munson says quietly, “It’s not all your fault. I know you’re real big with the guilt and all, but you’re right. There’s always been two of us.”
“Not anymore,” Chavez answers, a bitter taste on his tongue.
Munson does touch him then, winds a hand in Chavez’s collar and tugs enough for the shirt to rasp on Chavez’s neck, cut off his air but just a little bit.
“What do you think I’m doing here?” he asks, curious and kinda impatient. “You think I’m saying we’re not gonna be friends anymore? That I’m not gonna be around, not gonna let you call me at three in the morning, not gonna tell you when you’re being dumb? Because that’s, like, my most favorite thing to do, I think you know.”
Chavez’s mouth twitches slightly, and Munson smiles kinda sadly. “I don’t have any idea how to not be your best friend,” he tells Chavez. “I’m not gonna fuck around with you anymore and maybe someday I won’t be in love with you either, but there’s always gonna be two of us, man.”
Chavez sniffs, wipes his nose on his sleeve. He likes Munson’s hand pulling the collar of his shirt tight, likes feeling his Adam’s apple meet resistance and push past it. “If I . . . if I wasn’t getting married tomorrow-”
“No.” Munson jerks his collar, snapping Chavez’s head back so that Munson can meet his eyes. “You’re getting married tomorrow. You love her.”
“I love you!” Chavez cries, too loudly and yeah, there’s lightning, there’s thunder, there’s a natural disaster and they’re not afraid of storms but they probably should be.
Munson hauls him closer, wraps his arm around Chavez’s shoulder and burrows his face in Chavez’s shoulder. “I know, I know,” he murmurs, his lips on Chavez’s ear and Chavez trembling. “I love you too, you’re my best friend, I love you.”
He moves back because Chavez’s hand is tripping up his chest and Munson doesn’t want to feel Chavez’s fingers on his jaw, doesn’t want to fall down again when he’s only barely gotten to his feet.
“But if we keep doing this, we’ll end up hating each other for real and. I can’t. I’m not gonna live without you. We end it now, we get everything back. I promise.”
Chavez is shaking his head, his eyes squeezed shut and he doesn’t want to hear this. Munson’s hand is caught around his and pressing both down to Munson’s chest so that Chavez can’t move, can’t pull Munson into a kiss and make him forget. Munson clasps his hand hard enough that Chavez’s knuckles crack, and he rests his forehead against the side of Chavez’s head, breathing out.
“You’re a better man than you ever gave yourself credit for,” Munson tells him, everything moving very slowly and the world coming to an end one more time above them. “You don’t need me to fuck everything up for you anymore. You, you got the rest of your life, you don’t need me.”
Chavez makes a fractured sound and turns his head too quickly for Munson to pull away, kisses him, presses their lips together and Munson lets him, his hand burying into Chavez’s hair, licking into Chavez’s mouth and the heat of it, the thing he knows best.
When they break away, Chavez hides his face in Munson’s shoulder and Munson can hear him whispering, “I’m sorry,” over and over again, and Munson smooths his hair, makes unintelligible comfort sounds, because it’s nothing to apologize for, really, the way they’ve been, what they’ve known, it’s nothing to regret.
Chavez breathes him in, this strange hard moment, and Eric Chavez would think of all the time it took them to get here, and he would ask what the fuck he’s supposed to do without him, how he’s supposed to wake up tomorrow with the knowledge that he’ll never again get to feel his best friend all around him and laughing into his arm and teeth against his throat, hot skittering breath on his stomach, he would try and figure this out, but it’s too much for him and it’s enough, right now, it’s enough to have Munson’s arm around his shoulders and Munson’s hand running over his hair.
Munson kisses him on the forehead, and draws him up, smiling at him and brushing the heel of his hand across the tender skin under Chavez’s eyes. Chavez blinks, stunned and quiet, and in Munson’s mind Eric Chavez is five years old, putting the baseball in his hand and running away across the grass, farther than he thought Munson could throw.
Chavez coughs weakly, feeling broke open and a field of calendar days before him, just waiting, the rest of his life. Munson doesn’t take his arm from around Chavez’s shoulders, still strong enough to lean against, and Chavez asks hoarsely, “What happens now, man?”
Munson shakes his head. Eric Chavez is against him, Eric Chavez is safe. It’s all he’s ever wanted, really.
“Now we start over.”
They stay on the beach together, looking at each other in amazement, and it finally starts to rain.
THE END
(epilogue: sleep outside in tents upon this unfamiliar land)
Chavez didn’t really have to talk Alex into letting him go out to the desert for New Year’s with Munson. He told her, “We’ve been doing it since we were kids, babe, just me and him,” and she understood that, because she understands everything.
They drive out with a stash of Otter Pops in the cooler in the backseat, Chavez’s mouth smeared purple and Munson’s green. Munson makes Chavez change the CD before they even get past the park. Chavez watches the skinny shadows of the streetlights roll over Munson’s hands and face, Munson lit from behind with his knee up on the dash.
Temperatures drop in the desert and Chavez’s hands are totally numb by the time they’re done putting up the tent. Munson wanders off to look at the cactuses and stuff, and Chavez tries to call Alex or his parents, pacing around with clean brown dust on his shoes, but he can’t get a signal.
They play catch over the hammered sand until the sun goes down, and they’re alone for five miles in every direction. They talk about next season.
Munson’s shoulder is nestled against his own as they eat take-out deli sandwiches for dinner, and Chavez feels him jump when the first coyote howl rips out of the canyon like an air raid siren. Chavez presses back a bit, thinking about equal and opposite reactions, and murmurs, “Got your back, dude,” and Munce relaxes, the coyotes looking for blood and not finding it.
They’re sitting Indian-style on the ground as the year turns, a small guttering fire before them. Munson feeds it pieces of the phonebook, until all that’s left is just the flapping posterboard cover, every page finally gone after two decades of being cold and happy in Death Valley, and he tries the snapped-off knuckles of Joshua tree branches instead, and the flames cough and gnash, angry little flags of orange and yellow.
Chavez watches the gleam of Munson’s wedding ring, caught like a firefly against the dull shine of the bottle glass, and he looks down to see his own ring, silver and frozen, the slight, never-thought-twice weight of it on his hand.
“It’s crazy, Munce, huh,” he says, tracing across the carved-smoke landscape.
Munson doesn’t ask what he’s talking about, just nods and takes a drink. “Yep.”
Chavez’s mouth crooks, and he sneezes, pulls his legs up against his chest, rubbing his hand briskly up and down his shins, friction, warmth. He rolls his head back, the salt stars and every year more than he remembers.
He sneaks a look out of the corner of his eye, and Munson’s got his head back too, UFO-searching, his neck exposed and pale in the night, sandpaper shaded by stubble under his jaw.
And Eric Munson turns, his gaze falling down out of the sky and finding Eric Chavez’s, and Munson smiles at him, smiles at him like he’s been doing for twenty years, like he’ll do forever, Eric Munson smiles at his best friend, all white teeth and calm eyes, and it’s seven minutes past midnight in the desert, and they’re all grown up.
THE END (for real this time)
September-November 2004
thanks, y’all.
Table of Contents
Pictures courtesy Jen's Baseball Page and Getty Images. Used without permission.
The Rest of Your Life
By Candle Beck
Part the Fourteenth: Down to the End
(stand up)
Three weeks after Munson gets back to Detroit, Eric Chavez calls to invite him to his wedding.
Munson says, “Fuck you,” and hangs up.
Ten seconds later the phone rings again, insistently. Munson ignores it, staring at the page of his magazine where all the letters have smeared into complicated hieroglyphics, and the machine clicks on, their friendly out-going message making the apartment sound happy for a moment, and then Eric Chavez’s pissed-off voice: “You know, I coulda been best friends with like seven million people, but I chose you, goddamn it, so don’t make me go back in time and change that, you little bitch. Pick up or I’ma keep calling until your wife comes home and then I’ll talk to her, how’dja like that, Eric, punk, little punk hiding from your best friend, you under the bed yet, Munce, you in the closet, oh what am I saying, of course you are, come out and answer the phone, motherfucker, pick up, pick up, pickuppickuppickuppickup-”
Munson snatches it up. “You fucking cocksucker, what the hell is the matter with you?”
“Aw, Munson, I thought you liked me being a cocksucker,” Chavez says snidely.
“Hanging up now. Unplugging the phone too,” Munson replies tersely, and the phone’s halfway back down when Chavez’s voice catches him:
“Okay, I’m sorry, c’mon, man!”
Munson stops, and looks at the phone in his hand for a long time, long enough for Chavez to say, “Eric?” in a quiet muffled way that Munson can barely hear and that makes it impossible for him to hang up again.
“What.”
Chavez sighs loudly into the receiver. “I’m not allowed to invite you to my wedding now?”
“When you haven’t talked to me in fucking months and didn’t even tell me you were seeing somebody? No, you’re not allowed to invite you to your goddamn wedding.”
Munson pushes his knuckles into his forehead, and he’s pretty fucking angry.
“Look, it was . . . it’s complicated,” Chavez tells him with a feign of apology in his tone, but really he’s just trying to get himself off the hook, and yeah, Munson knows what that sounds like, really really well.
“Shit’s always complicated with you, isn’t it, man? Never do anything the easy way, god no,” Munson says, and he can see Chavez with perfect sight, that new haircut of his that Munson saw watching him in the playoffs, grown out enough to half-cover his ears and brush his collar. For four years now, Eric Munson has seen his friend more often on television than in person.
“Look, if you’re just gonna be an asshole, and not even let me explain, then what-the-fuck-ever, dude. I don’t gotta listen to it.”
“You moved out,” Munson says suddenly, surprised to hear his voice falter, almost crack. He presses his fist against his throat, working out the thickness. “You moved out and you didn’t even tell me. I gotta find out from Mark fucking Mulder?”
Chavez makes an indistinguishable noise, then says woodenly, “He said you stopped by.” Chavez is quiet for a moment and Munson’s whole body aches to hang up again and not hear any more. “I wanted to tell you. I wanted to call, and tell you about Alex and everything, but I kept . . . not, and then it was like all this time had passed and it woulda just been weird.”
“As opposed to waiting until there’s a wedding to invite me to? Oh yeah, this is much less weird.” Munson pauses. “Just to, um, clarify. Alex is a girl, right? ‘Cause I know there’s that new mayor guy out there with the super-tolerance-and-equality or whatever, but just ‘cause it might be legal for you to marry guys soon doesn’t mean you necessarily should-”
Chavez cuts him off with a quick little laugh. “No. She’s a girl. Definitely a girl. Got all the parts and everything.”
Munson smiles, but it doesn’t last. “Anyway. You’re the worst best friend ever.”
Chavez sighs again. “I know.”
“I mean, what the fuck, man? I thought you weren’t supposed to get married until I approved of the chick.”
“Yeah, because it was such a smashing success last time.” Chavez sounds tired, and Munson thinks nobody does guilt and remorse quite like his best friend.
“Look, if one of us is gonna get bitter and sarcastic, I think I got the right, okay?”
“I’m not bitter. I’m just . . . I want you to be there.”
Munson doesn’t say anything for awhile. He’s looking across the room at the small framed pictures on the mantle, too far away to make out the faces, but he knows well enough what’s there. His family, Shanda’s family. Their wedding, and Eric Chavez’s hand on his shoulder. California and the ocean, bare feet in the surf. His little niece holding a puppy and grinning in the purest expression of delight he’s ever seen.
“Why?” Munson asks.
“You. You want me to give you a reason?” and Chavez sounds like he just can’t believe that.
Munson closes his eyes. “Yes. Goddamn it. Yes. A reason. You don’t care enough to let me know that your life’s totally changed again, but now, you, you just. You call and you expect me to be all fucking psyched and on your side and. Give me a reason why.”
He waits and he can feel his heartbeat, dashing away in his ears. His hand is tight in a fist on his leg, and he can feel his pulse there, too, he can feel it everywhere.
“I. You’re. It wouldn’t . . . it wouldn’t be real if you weren’t there.”
Munson wishes he hadn’t asked. He breathes out, and asks hoarsely, “When is it?”
Chavez blows out a breath of his own, sounding relieved as he says, “December. In Hawaii. On my birthday.”
Munson thinks tropical thoughts, tries to hit the appropriate level of flippant and cool. “You’re getting married on your birthday? That’s pretty lame, man.”
“Says the guy who got married at Disneyworld. Anyway. I figure, I’ll be able to remember anniversaries, right?”
Munson snorts, doesn’t think before he says it: “Oh, so you’re planning on actually making it to an anniversary this time?”
Chavez inhales sharply, a little hurt gasp, and no one does wounded like Eric Chavez, either.
“Fuck you so hard for that, dude,” Chavez tells him, right back to angry again.
Munson sneers, because he can be that way too. “Promise?” he answers, all kinds of cruel and feeling cut loose.
Chavez is the one who hangs up, this time.
Munson hits the off button and throws the phone into the couch with enough force that it bounces onto the ground, turning on again and droning the dial tone at him. He puts his hands over his face and reminds himself to breathe, and doesn’t move until the phone starts beeping impatiently and he goes to put it back on the charger before it drives him crazy.
The plane ticket arrives in the mail a couple of days later. There’s no note, no nothing, and only one ticket in the envelope. Munson starts figuring out how to explain to Shanda that she’s not going to be coming with him, and thinks that at least the son of a bitch booked him first class.
*
(chain-link)
The sky over Molokai is densely overcast, the tips of the volcanoes poking up through the cloud cover as Eric Munson’s plane sails down. He’s been imagining blue skies and unimaginable green, a Hollywood movie kind of island paradise, but it’s December and it looks like he could reach up and touch the clouds, they hang so low.
Chavez doesn’t meet him at the airport, but then, Munson certainly didn’t expect him to. He takes a cab to the hotel and it’s plenty green, after all, Irish green or outfield green or something like that, everything flush because apparently they don’t really have winter in Hawaii anymore than they do in San Diego.
It’s close to seventy degrees outside and as humid as Florida in the spring. Everybody hurries around the streets, eyeing the sky anxiously. The air smells like sulfur and asphalt, the moisture so thick his throat feels slick.
At the hotel, Munson is anxious and desperately trying to catch sight of Chavez before Chavez catches sight of him. He wants the upper hand and maybe a minute or two to duck behind a pillar and prepare himself and stop being such a fucking punk, jesus.
He does spot Chavez first, but it’s the wrong Chavez. Cesar’s at the concierge counter, animatedly discussing some brochures with a uniformed man. Cesar looks older than he did the last time Munson saw him, deeper lines on his forehead and at the corners of his eyes, but he’s still talking with his hands and still making the concierge grin back at him.
Munson taps him on the shoulder and can’t hold back a grin of his own when Cesar turns, widens his eyes, and immediately grabs him in a joyful hug.
“Eric!” Cesar pulls back, beaming, and rattles Munson. “You forget how to use a phone, or what? Forgetting all about your old friends now that you’re a big famous baseball player?”
Munson shrugs, ducking his head down bashfully. Cesar always makes him feel like a little kid again, more even than his own father, but it’s in a good way. It’s the safe kind of feeling like a kid, like when you hear your dad come home from work and go thumping down the stairs to meet him, like when you’re eating cereal on a Saturday morning with your socked feet swinging and porcupining hair and he asks you if you want to go see the Padres play that night.
“Sorry. Been kinda busy, I guess.” Munson takes a look around the lobby, his overnight bag still on his shoulder, the strap digging in.
“So how’re you doing, kid, how’s your life?” Cesar asks, brightly curious and it’s not so strange, this day and age, to have two fathers, it’s not anything like unheard of.
‘Well, I’m still in love with your son and yeah, that pretty much sucks.’ For one panicked moment, he’s not sure if he said that out loud or not, but Cesar’s face stays curious and clean of shock, so Munson bites his tongue and answers, “Good. Mostly good. Is everybody here?”
Cesar bobs his head in affirmation, grinning broadly again. “We’ve taken the place over. They love us here.” He pauses, his smile dimming almost imperceptibly. “I wasn’t sure if you’d be coming. Eric, he hasn’t . . . well, I mean, he just didn’t mention-”
Munson swallows, interrupts him, “Yeah, it was kinda . . . happened pretty quick.”
Cesar raises his eyebrows. “And where’s Shanda?” he asks, peering around Munson as if his wife might be hiding back there or something.
Munson cuts his eyes away, flushing. “She couldn’t make it. Work stuff.”
“Oh.”
He looks up to see Cesar regarding him skeptically, but before the older man can ask anything, Eric Chavez comes careening around the corner and stumbles into his father’s back.
“Dad! You have to help me get Mom and Brandy away from the pool, there are these lifeguards-”
He stops abruptly as he catches sight of Munson, his eyes getting big and the laughing expression sinking off his face. Chavez’s lips say ‘Munce,’ but Munson can’t even hear the hiss of it.
Chavez is wearing the faded gray Mt. Carmel High School T-shirt that Munson knows very well, the one that used to be a little too big and now fits him perfectly, with the rip in the sleeve that Munson knows even better, Chavez against a chain-link fence and Munson’s hands on him making him jerk and catch his sleeve on a rusty twist of metal, the soft tearing sound and nothing that Munson should remember quite so well.
Chavez has got the corner of a twenty dollar bill sticking up from his jeans pocket and a new gonna-get-married haircut that makes him look older than he usually does. He looks rested, and happy a moment ago, but now just weird and uncertain.
“You . . . you came,” Chavez says, and Munson sees Cesar’s eyes dart back and forth between them questioningly.
Munson makes a smile. “Wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
Chavez’s face falls into a brief glower, and his hand is on his father’s shoulder, half-turning to say painstakingly, “Dad, could you. Give us a minute?”
Cesar nods, looking somehow knowing and confused at the same time, and claps each of them on the arm, squeezing Munson’s affectionately, before heading out to the pool.
They stand there looking at each other for a long moment, until the concierge subtly clears his throat, and Chavez jerks his head to the side, walking away and trusting that Munson will follow.
So he does. He pushes through the revolving door and thinks about getting stuck in the glass triangular wedge and the oxygen running out, but the door flips him outside without a hitch and Chavez is standing there with his hands in his pockets, head tilted up to scan across the sky.
Munson stands next to him and mirrors his pose, waits for Chavez to start talking. Munson’s hands in his pockets want to fly out and do some damage, do something. Chavez stays silent and Munson has never been one to tolerate an awkward pause.
“So. Hawaii, huh?”
Chavez nods, still looking up at the sky, the same worried look on his face that all the natives have. “It’s supposed to rain. Later. But it’ll clear by tomorrow.”
The wedding’s tomorrow. Munson thinks of how the sky will look once it’s been scrubbed clean by the rain. But he’s pretty sure Chavez didn’t come out here to talk to him about the weather.
“What’s going on, Eric?”
Chavez glances at him out of the corner of his eye, quick flash of his eyelashes and then nothing. “I, um.” He kicks at the ground, watches taxi cabs pull up to the stand, another man in a maroon uniform with gold buttons opening the door for the guests, half-bowing as they smile their thanks, his shoes shiny black mirrors.
“I’m glad you came.”
Munson blinks. He didn’t expect that. “Yeah?”
Chavez nods emphatically. “Yeah man. I meant what I said. When we talked before. I meant it.”
Munson lets his shoulders curve in a bit, protected. “I didn’t mean what I said.”
Chavez sighs. “I know you didn’t.”
Munson watches Chavez’s profile, new short hair like right before Labor Day when they were kids, right before school started, because picture day always happened in the first week. Munson wants to touch Chavez’s neck, his arm where his shirt is ripped.
“Listen, we’ve got to talk about this-” Munson begins, and Chavez throws him a look of utter terror, so undiluted that it almost knocks Munson down, kills the words in his throat. It doesn’t matter anyway, because right then a pretty blonde woman comes out of the hotel and joins them with a sweet laugh and an arm winding around Chavez’s waist.
Eric Chavez jumps when she touches him, but she doesn’t notice because she’s smiling at Munson and saying, “You’re much better-looking than your pictures.”
Munson’s mouth is open but no sounds are coming out, staring at this pretty girl with her neon-blue eyes and kind mouth. He pulls himself together and stammers, “Thank you?”
She lets go of Chavez to go and kiss Munson on the cheek, and Munson can see Chavez’s hand on her back, his fingers closing possessively in her shirt. Munson smiles down at her, a sweet kid, the kind of girl Eric Chavez does not deserve, and she says, “I’m Alex.”
Which he pretty much figured out, but whatever.
Chavez snaps out of it, grinning and sliding his hand around his girlfriend’s hip. “Yeah, she’s Alex. He’s Munson. Um. Eric. Eric Munson.”
Alex rolls her eyes at him, but if there’s one thing Munson knows as well as he knows anything, it’s what a person looks like when they’re heart-struck crazy for Eric Chavez, and that’s what Alex is without a doubt.
And Chavez is smiling as he looks down at her, and the other thing Munson knows pretty goddamn well is what Eric Chavez looks like when he’s so in love he can’t think straight.
Blood rushes to Munson’s head and he puts his hand on a fake-marble pillar to steady himself. He closes his eyes until the stars fade and hears himself saying, “God, it’s good to meet you.”
He opens his eyes and Alex is smiling at him and Chavez’s eyes are big and pleading and fearful. “You too,” Alex says happily. “The mysterious best friend, at last.”
Munson grins. “The mysterious fiancée.” Chavez shoots him a warning glance, but Munson ignores it.
Alex laughs, a fine clear laugh and Chavez’s fingers drumming nervously on her hip. “I’m so glad you could make it. It wouldn’t have been the same without you, Eric would have been a total wreck.” Chavez makes an embarrassed sound of protest, blushing and flicking his eyes to Munson’s and away again, and Alex elbows him lightly in the side. “It’s true, you would have been.”
Munson doesn’t take his eyes off Chavez’s face, tells Alex, “He’s the best friend a guy could have.” Chavez stares back at him, and Munson tightens his jaw, smiles easily at Alex.
Chavez clears his throat, says with an uneasy strum in his voice that Munson wonders if Alex can recognize, “Babe, could you go ask my mom what time we have to leave for the dinner?”
Alex kisses him, smiles at Munson and touches his arm, and then disappears through the revolving door, leaving the two of them alone again.
“You call her babe,” Munson says and then immediately regrets it.
Chavez winces. “Guess I do, yeah.” They don’t say anything and it gets pretty fucking uncomfortable. Chavez pulls at the hem of his T-shirt and scowls at the ground. “So, there’s, like, the rehearsal dinner tonight? Which you should be at. If you want.”
The humidity is on Munson’s shoulders, gathering in the small of his back and the crooks of his elbows. “We still have to talk.”
“We are talking.”
“Goddamn it-”
Chavez cuts his hand through the air, a short abbreviated burst of anger that he covers as well as he can. “Not here. Not here, not fucking now.”
Munson rolls his head back and he can feel the air heavy like fingertips on his eyelids, honestly, it’s amazing. “Well, we’re off to a real good start.”
Chavez glares at him. “Don’t you dare ruin this for me, Munson.”
Munson laughs, harsh and broken-off. “Since when have I been able to ruin anything of yours?”
Chavez doesn’t answer, turns on his heel and stalks inside, and Munson stays outside for awhile, thinking of Alex’s soft kiss on his cheek and Eric Chavez twisting against a chain-link fence.
*
(never had a leg to stand on)
It’s gonna be a family wedding, for which Munson is absurdly grateful, not having to see any of the Oakland Athletics milling in the hallways and raiding the mints from the housekeeping carts, none of the pitchers who fucking own him or the infielders who know Eric Chavez’s double-play move like clockwork.
Munson is surprised at how good it is to hang out with Eric’s brothers and sister again, Casey who’s finally as tall as his wiry arms and legs promised when they were kids, Chris who greets him with a headlock and a noogie, Brandy who’s turned out so pretty Munson has to blush and trip over his words and remind himself that he most definitely should not be thinking such thoughts about his best friend’s little sister.
Ruby’s thrilled to see him and tells him stories about his mom, because she talks to Dora more often than Munson does. Cesar rounds them up, Chris and Casey and both Erics, and introduces them to the priest who will be officiating, saying proudly, “And these are my boys.”
Munson is back with his other family, the door that was always open to him, and it would be a perfect kind of homecoming if Eric Chavez and Alex weren’t there every time he turned around.
Alex’s family is there too, her overjoyed parents and shy high-school-aged sister who’s got a pretty blatant crush on Casey Chavez, and her older brother Jake who spends the evening scowling at Eric Chavez as if he’d like to beat the crap out of him. Eric Munson likes the way Jake thinks.
Chris’s wife is there, and Munson misses Shanda badly when he sees them snickering together, sees Chris lean over to press a kiss on her forehead. Munson’s the only other one who’s not a blood relation, but it doesn’t bother him. Brothers of heart, matching scars on their palms, and their life is still more one than two, even after everything that’s happened. Munson belongs here, it’s a terrible thing, but he belongs here with this second family of his.
They head out for the rehearsal dinner, just a short hop skip and jump down to the shore, a nice restaurant and not too far from where the big white tent is already set up and waiting like a ghost, chains of pale Christmas lights strung up along the angles.
Munson wants to make some joke about maybe getting married on the beach again isn’t the best of ideas, considering what happened last time, but he’s not actually fucked up to say that out loud with Cesar and Ruby there, not yet.
And Eric Chavez is wearing a crisp white shirt and a black jacket, the only thing missing is the bowtie and a flower sprig woven through a lapel button, and Eric Munson, putting down shots of whiskey with Jake and Casey, trying not to get drunk and not doing a very good job at it, keeps seeing his best friend all shiny and pressed, keeps forgetting whether Chavez is married yet.
Munson’s having trouble. Everything he tries to do seems nearly impossible. He keeps thinking, ‘but we already did this, it already happened.’ Not much makes sense.
Out the big bay windows, it hasn’t started to rain yet, but the beach is all in dented shadow and they can see the white caps on the waves, the lightning flashes way off, above the clouds. Nobody goes outside for too long, quick cigarettes smoked with a hand pressed to the door, arms held out to test the weather, and the wind is bad, racketing around and making a wreck of everything.
They eat dinner but it doesn’t taste like much to Munson, sawdust maybe, line-chalk. Some toasts are made but he’s not paying attention. He’s watching Eric Chavez and Alex, the flit of their hands, the silver look in both their eyes. Black hair and blonde hair, the contrast and the way they fit, handsome young man and beautiful young woman, and they could be out of a fairy tale.
Eric Munson watches and he wishes he could be drunker than he is, because he got through this once before by the grace of alcohol. But nothing’s the same now. None of his old tricks are gonna work.
He waits for the fog to come over his eyes and it never does, so he catches Chavez’s elbow when he comes to the bar and whispers in his ear, “Come talk to me for a minute,” and walks away, not at all sure that Chavez will follow.
Munson goes to a tiny back hallway with a service elevator and big metal carts filled with wrapped pastries. The walls are gray and the exit sign above the back door makes red shadows everywhere. He waits for Eric Chavez and fiddles with everything in reach.
Chavez slips in like he made sure no one was looking, and the pneumatic door hushes shut behind him. He stops, a yard or two between them and Chavez is all black and white in the dim light, his formal clothes and glassy tired eyes.
“I never said congratulations,” Munson says, leaning on his shoulder against the wall, feeling the brace of it and thinking about hotel rooms, airports, duffel bags under the bed and plastic cups of water on the bedside table.
Chavez shows Munson his teeth in a strange expression that’s like a sneer and a smile all at once. “Didn’t expect you to.”
Munson moves towards him and Chavez flinches back. The red falls on his face, a hollow sort of glow around his cheekbones and tinting the collar of his shirt a dingy pink. The light is behind Munson and he lifts his hand to see the cut-out of it on Chavez’s chest.
“I’m not gonna watch you get married again after tomorrow. This is the last time.”
Chavez tilts his chin up and it’s eerie as fuck, because the exit sign light catches in his eyes and Christ, Christ.
“I’m not gonna get married after this, so you don’t have to worry about it.”
Chavez’s lip pulls up again and there are his teeth, and Munson reaches out, takes Chavez’s hand. He links their fingers, and Chavez doesn’t pull away but doesn’t fold his fingers down around Munson’s hand either. Munson presses his wedding ring hard into the webbing between Chavez’s fingers, wanting to make a cold burn there, a scar that will last.
Chavez is looking at him suspiciously and scared, his hand tense and unmoving in Munson’s, and Munson says, “You’ll say that every single time, you don’t think I know you better than that?” and then he kisses Chavez.
He kisses Chavez and pushes him back against the wall and Chavez is kissing him back, which is a good thing, a brilliant thing, but it’s all teeth and harder than it should be. Chavez tastes like champagne and lemon, carbonated and too clean. Munson bites Chavez’s lower lip to hear him gasp, and shakes his hand free to slide it down and hook under Chavez’s knee, drawing his leg up and pressing their bodies together. He holds Chavez’s leg bent against his side and places his other hand on the side of Chavez’s face, his fingers in claws and the fragile skin of Chavez’s temple under Munson’s nails.
Munson breaks away from Chavez’s mouth and drops his head to Chavez’s neck, Chavez craning back and arching his body into Munson’s, one hand on Munson’s shoulder and the other flat on his chest.
Munson says, mumbling and a spiraling fall in his mind, “You love her, you love her more than you love me.”
Chavez’s hand wrenches in his shirt. “Shut the fuck up, Munson, don’t say that.” He pulls Munson up to kiss him again, and Munson says it right into Chavez’s mouth, this time:
“You don’t want this, you only want her because you love her and you’re such a jerk, I hate you so much, man, I hate you,” and he kisses Chavez deeply, pushing against him and his hand spread out on the outside of Chavez’s knee, feeling the scrape of the fabric and the warmth under his palm.
“Shut up, quit saying that,” Chavez begs him, holding tight and his arm around Munson’s neck, and for some reason Munson is terribly aware of the strict flexed tendon in Chavez’s elbow drawing a line of heat on the skin between Munson’s collar and his hair.
“It’s true,” Munson says, and licks Chavez’s ear, slides his hand down to Chavez’s stomach, grinding against him and Chavez starting to moan quietly. “You’ll get married and fuck her and you’ll be thinking of me and I’ll hate you, hate you forever because you’ve done this to me, you don’t even know what you’ve done.”
Chavez shakes his head, unable to keep from moving against Munson, an old rhythm and one they’ve perfected. He bangs his face against Munson’s neck, hides his eyes and tries to pull him even closer. “You love me. You’ve always loved me.”
Munson kisses him as hard as he can, and when he’s got Chavez finally, at last, where he wants him, he bites down on Chavez’s lip, feels the skin break and tastes blood, and Chavez yanks backwards in shocked pain, and Munson tells him in an awful whisper, “Yeah I love you, but only because you never gave me any other choice.”
Chavez stares at him, red on his lips and dotting onto the clean cotton-white shirt, and Munson is not prepared for how beautiful Eric Chavez looks with blood on his face.
Then something important collapses in Chavez’s eyes, his face lashing black and enraged, and he shoves Munson off him, only to a moment later twist his hand in Munson’s collar and punch him in the face.
Munson falls into the pastry cart, slamming his head on the metal corner and the resounding clatter is huge in his ears. Now he can’t tell if the blood in his mouth is Chavez’s or his own, and he’s numb, which is good, very good, the best he could have hoped.
He clenches his hands on the cart, frozen tight edges on the veins at the undersides of his wrists, and he starts to shake. The cart rattles and he lets it go, forces himself to look back at Chavez, who’s standing there breathing rapidly and looking so completely stunned that he might never move again.
Munson licks the corner of his lip, which is starting to swell and the rusted nauseating taste of copper in the back of his throat, and Chavez half-reaches out, his hand faltering, wanting to press his fingers to Munson’s face and clean away the blood.
Munson’s chest caves in and he sobs, but just once, batting away Chavez’s hand and barely managing to say, “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” before he spins and runs out the back door, runs out into the weather, onto the sand.
Chavez stands there alone for a moment, staring with total incomprehension at his left hand and the struck red marks appearing on the knuckles, because he just punched Eric Munson in the face, and he’s pretty sure he didn’t mean to.
He wipes the back of his arm across his mouth and takes off after his best friend.
Munson is already a good stretch down the shore, running fast with sand kicking back behind him. The tail of his shirt is flagging from under his jacket, pulled free of his belt by Chavez’s hands. There’s lightning over the ocean and a roar in his ears, a static-blood rush.
Chavez is chasing after him but he’ll never catch Munson, Munson’s always been faster. The sand gives no purchase under his feet, and he thinks about what they must look like, two men in expensive clothes with blood on their mouths, running down the beach and the storm getting closer every second.
The wind is very bad, burning in Munson’s eyes, and he stumbles, trips, his hands flying out as he crashes into the sand. Chavez sees him fall and thinks ‘good,’ because that’s the only way he could ever catch up.
Munson lies there and doesn’t even try to get up. He screws his face into the sand and it snuffles into his nose, paints his tongue and makes him cough, grates harshly down his throat. He can hear the beat of the waves and that’s it. His mouth hurts and he never wants it to stop hurting; it will be a good reminder.
Eric Munson is thinking, ‘this is as far as i go.’
Chavez gets to him and skids to his knees, not particularly caring about ironed pants or the bits of shell that slash through to his skin. He puts his hands on Munson’s back, on Munson’s head, Munson’s hair slicked down from the spray and drying carefully, the color getting lighter as Chavez watches.
Munson moans and tries to push away, but Chavez rolls him over, won’t let him stand up. Munson keeps his eyes shut tightly and Chavez strokes his hands on Munson’s face, brushing away the worst of the sand, cautious over Munson’s eyelids, and Chavez is whispering, “I didn’t mean it, you know I didn’t mean it, I’d never do that on purpose.”
There are grains of sand stuck to the blood at the corner of Munson’s lip, stuck to the wet places under his eyes.
Munson tears himself away, sitting up and half-turning his back on Chavez, saying like it’s got to be ripped out of him, “I can’t do this with you anymore.”
Eric Chavez goes still, staring at him. The wind blows Munson’s collar up, plastered on his jaw, and Munson has got one leg pulled up so he can rest his face against it and not look at his best friend.
“What?” Chavez asks helplessly.
Munson shakes his head, and maybe he’ll never open his eyes again, that sounds okay. “I can’t, I won’t. I’m . . . I’m telling you to stop.”
It’s strange. It’s . . . Chavez can hear it happen. The thing that snaps inside him when Munson says that. He can hear it.
A moment later he thinks it must have just been a lightning crack, though he doesn’t remember seeing the flash, but he was kind of preoccupied and it must have been lightning, because there’s no way he could really have heard his heart break.
Chavez leans forward and fits his hands on Munson’s shoulders, cups his neck. He’s shaking his head furiously and keeping Munson from pulling away again. “No, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have hit you, I’m really fucking sorry, man.”
Munson wraps his hand around Chavez’s forearm, pressing his fingers hard through the sleeve of his coat and shirt. “That’s not why,” he says, his voice torn up by the sand, crunching between his teeth. “I can take a fucking punch, you’re the one who taught me how to take a punch. Hit me again, I don’t fucking care. I’m just . . . it’s killing me, man. I’m so ready to be over this.”
Chavez’s hands clench, balling up in Munson’s jacket, and his knees are starting to ache, the dig of the sand and the wind flattening on his back. He’s thinking about nine years, twenty-one years, he’s thinking that he’s never done anything for as long as he’s been in love with Eric Munson.
“No, okay?” Chavez says. His fingers slide on Munson’s neck, damp and sticking with salt. “Don’t be stupid. This, it’s. It’s no big deal, we’re okay. I swear, Munce, we’re okay, you’re not leaving me because we’re fine.”
Munson tilts his head back and laughs, his throat burning and Chavez’s hand caught on the back of his neck. “How the fuck can I leave you, man? We aren’t even . . . it’s barely even real enough to actually end.”
“So don’t end it. Don’t.” Munson can feel Chavez’s panicky grip on his neck, and he pushes at Chavez’s arm, makes him let go. He doesn’t look over.
“You don’t even know why you want me anymore. This is just a fucking habit.”
Chavez’s eyes widen, feeling wet even though he’s not crying. “No, that’s, that’s not how it is. I. I didn’t mean to fall in love with you again but I did, okay. And it’s for real. Swear to god, it’s for real this time.”
Munson covers up his eyes, shaking his head. There’s sand on the heels of his hands and he can feel it rasping on the skin of his face.
“It’s never been for real. Not since we were nineteen years old. You’ve only ever been in love with me when I was your only option.”
Chavez’s hand crawls up Munson’s arm again. He can’t stay back, and Munson lets him because it’s the last time and maybe Munson wants something to remember too. Chavez’s voice is breaking pretty badly, at this point.
“I was in love with you when I got married, what the fuck are you talking about? I definitely had another option then.” Chavez holds onto Munson’s elbow and wishes Munson would look at him.
Munson watches the ocean, feeling Chavez’s heartbeat in the palm of his hand, through the layers of coat and shirt, something so unlikely it’s probably not even possible. “Yeah, but you never took it. And, like, excuse me if you’re still not aware of this, but your marriage was a fucking exercise in self-destruction to begin with.”
“That. That’s not true,” Chavez manages to say, and lets Munson’s arm go.
Munson sighs, barely able to swallow past the thickness in his throat. He thinks about being in shock, how it can kill you. He’s not sure if he’s still numb.
“It really is, dude. Your life was falling apart and you figured, hey, get married, that’ll solve everything. But how else was it gonna end other than the way it did? You should have seen that shit coming a fucking decade ago.” Munson twists his hand in the sand, scoring his knuckles so that people will think he was in a fistfight.
“You didn’t see it coming either.”
“I didn’t care!” Munson stops, and takes a deep breath. His blood feels hyperactive, skimming through his veins. “I knew what I was doing. Knew what you were doing. I knew that you fucking around with me while you were married meant you weren’t gonna be married that long. I just. I didn’t care.”
Chavez wings his hand through the air and spits to the side, sand and blood. Spitting out blood makes him feel tough, invincible, something, and he says sharply, “Okay, but you’ve been married and fucking around with me for the past two years now, and it doesn’t seem to have fucked up your life.”
Munson laughs without humor. “Oh no, my life isn’t fucked up at all. God, I’m a fucking textbook of not being fucked up. You fucking idiot.”
Chavez blinks at him, Chavez with his fucking dark eyes and the doubt in there that Munson stopped seeing five years ago. “But you. You never said.”
“I said it a million times, you never heard. I, I did everything to try and tell you.” Munson pauses, and clears his throat carefully. He knows he sounds like he’s about to break down, which is far from the truth, he’s pretty sure. “Eric, I’m . . . I’ve been so lost for so long now. And I tried to tell you, I swear to God I did.”
His lip curled up, Chavez shakes his head quickly, lines on his face. “What, calling me the worst thing that’s ever happened to you, that was you trying to tell me? Calling me a fucking bad habit?”
Munson shrugs, feeling his suit jacket shift over his shoulders. The ocean’s cutting back on itself, over and over again. “You know I’m no good at . . . saying stuff. You used to be able to, like, get me. Even if I was making no sense, you could still understand.”
“This isn’t like when we made up our own secret language, dude. You can’t just be all fucked up and not tell me and expect me to figure it out.”
“You should have figured it out,” Munson whispers.
“Fuck you,” Chavez says bitterly. “I’m so fucking tired of you playing martyr.”
“Playing what?” Munson repeats in disbelief, thinking, ‘this fucking shit again.’
“No, seriously. Being all betrayed and injured and shit and acting all self-righteous. Letting me be an asshole because it gives you something to be better than me at. But there’s always been two of us, goddamn it.”
Chavez tears his hand through the sand, loses grains down his shirt sleeve. There is a scatter of it on his cufflinks, cool ivory and gold posts. Chavez keeps forgetting that he’s as rich as he is, and soon he’ll sign a new contract and it’ll be forever.
He continues, “Just because I’m a bigger fuck-up than you, that doesn’t mean that everything is my fault. All you ever had to do was say, I’m done. That’s all you ever had to say and you didn’t, so don’t fucking pretend that I’m the only one who’s done wrong here.”
Munson feels sick, and wonders if he’s about to throw up. That would be pretty perfect. He glances over at Chavez and Chavez is staring at him, the side of Munson’s face. Chavez’s expression is taut and fierce, but his eyes are so scared Munson wants to shield him with his body.
“You keep coming back,” Munson tells him. “You won’t leave me alone.”
“I don’t know how,” Chavez says, and he’s breathless because fuck, that’s true, he never learned that trick, nobody told him.
“You’re going to be twenty-six years old tomorrow, Chavez.”
Chavez glares at him, swipes his arm across his nose. “I know how fucking old I am.”
“So you should have learned by now,” Munson says, exhausted with his shoulders and head weighted. “Twenty-six years old and you’ve been making the same mistake since you were sixteen.”
Chavez jerks his head to the side, something pulling hard in his neck like when you sleep wrong, a crick, a strain. “Don’t just. You can’t say you knew any better than me. You never stopped it either.”
Munson lowers his eyes. The beach is wet and cold beneath his hands. “You called me from a roof and it was like you’d jump if I said no,” he whispers.
Chavez stares at him, mouth slightly open. “I never-”
Munson cuts him off, steel-metal ocean and the salt in the air. “Everything you’ve ever said to me has been, please don’t leave me alone, Munce. You say nothing’s real if I’m not there. You know what you do to me. You know that I can’t turn you down.”
“You’re turning me down now.”
Munson nods, and every part of him hurts. “That’s right.”
Chavez presses his hands tight against his legs, his heart flagging like a candle. “You motherfucker. You fucking. You can’t just do this, man, it’s not right.”
Munson shivers, briefly, spurring through him and he can taste blood and sand and liquor, he’s not crying but he probably should be. Everything’s echoing and Chavez’s presence beside him is very important, warm and steadying, but he won’t lean into him.
“It should have ended years ago,” Munson says, and he’s not sure if that was a pained inhalation on the part of Eric Chavez, because it sounds the same as everything around else. “We were so stupid, I was . . . jesus, I was so fucking stupid. Just waiting around for you to show up and fuck me again. Pretending it meant something.”
Chavez’s hand latches onto his neck again, drawn back like a magnet, and his fingers tighten. Munson can feel the railed bones cracking against the knobs of his spine. “It does mean something, don’t just start lying now,” Chavez insists, holding himself back and squeezing Munson’s neck. “It means everything, I love you, that means everything.”
Munson jerks, his hands up and knocking Chavez’s arm, breaking the hold. He lifts his head and his eyes are all white-light.
“Yeah yeah yeah. For fucking years you’ve been telling me how it doesn’t count, but now you love me, oh you love me so much. You love me, you love Amber, you love Alex. You love everybody. You’ve spent years being fucking miserable because you can’t decide who you love the best, so I’m just gonna make the choice a little easier for you, all right?”
“You think this’ll make it easier?” Chavez cries, hollowed in the wind. “You think I’ll be able to stop wanting you if I don’t have you?”
Munson closes his hands into fists and half-buries them in the sand. The wind sails past and the humidity was blown off awhile ago. Munson keeps watch on the water as if he expects it to change.
He says, “You’ve never had me. Not since we were nineteen years old. I fucked up and you got rid of me and that was the last time, that was our last chance. You never really wanted me after that, not the way we were.”
Chavez shakes his head so hard his neck pops. “I did, I just . . . I couldn’t. Everything was different. There was Amber, and the team . . . how the fuck could you expect it to be like it was when we were nineteen?”
“I didn’t. I knew better than that. But I never thought it’d be like this.”
They don’t say anything for awhile. Eric Chavez fidgets miserably next to him, and they watch the ocean, the skewer-flash of the lightning.
“You never told me,” Chavez says, talking by rote and almost repeating himself. He’s pleading his case, reaffirming his best arguments, and he’s not looking at Munson. “You just . . . you let me do it all even when I'm telling you it's wrong.”
“I don’t need you to tell me that it’s fucking wrong,” Munson snaps. “And please quit trying to blame your need to fuck me up on my inability to tell you no.”
Chavez swallows. Munson’s lip is swollen and Chavez wants to run his tongue over it, and it suddenly hits him that he’ll never do that again, and his chest aches deeply.
“I’m not trying to fuck you up.”
“Fucking tell that to my wife, man.” Munson thinks, ‘fuck, my wife,’ thinks about Shanda, who let him lie to her about why she couldn’t come to Hawaii, let him come here alone and kissed him before he left. Shanda will be the only one waiting for him, and this is the way it should have always been, and he’s suddenly terrified that she won’t be good enough.
He thinks about a son, a daughter, unfocused in his mind’s eye, half him and half her and Eric Chavez’s dark eyes impossibly set in a small face.
He pushes that away.
Munson exhales, a long breath that empties his chest. “I can’t be your excuse anymore.”
“My what?” Eric Chavez asks incredulously.
Munson snags his hand in the space between them, clipping Chavez’s shoulder and thinking that it would be very easy to curl his fingers around Chavez’s arm, it would be very easy to push Chavez’s jacket off his shoulders and lean over to press his mouth to Chavez’s skin through the white fabric. Take it all back.
“Your excuse for being fucked up.” And Munson watches his friend carefully, watches the refusal pull across Chavez’s mouth and the muscles of his neck held stiffly.
“Nice fucking ego, man,” Chavez sneers, wondering if he just puts a hand on Munson, anywhere, his face, his shoulder, his wrist, if they touch just once, maybe this will all fall apart again and they can forget about it. “Who says I need you to be fucked up?”
“I saw it happen,” Munson says. He’s not really drunk at all. All that whiskey, the second-hand champagne and his mind is so clear. His face throbs, low on his jaw and the corner of his mouth. “You didn’t used to be like this. You used to be okay and then you weren’t anymore, and I. I couldn’t do anything, I couldn’t stop it, even though I know, I, I know . . . You blame me for everything going wrong, and you keep me around just ‘cause, like, the devil you fucking know, right?”
Chavez doesn’t say anything. He stares out and he doesn’t want to be on this fucking beach anymore.
Munson sighs. “Look, I get it, all right? It’s easy. To say all the stuff that gets ruined, it’s just ‘cause of what . . . what we are. Were. It’s easy, but it’s not true.”
Lowering his head onto his knees, Chavez rolls his forehead back and forth, still denying it. “How can you say that, man? I didn’t . . . I’m not using you as a reason for why I screw everything up.”
“Not anymore, you’re not.”
Falling quiet for a moment, Chavez tries to fight his way through this, looking for something to brace against. He sees Eric Munson’s collar against his throat, particular bits of Munson’s hair slanting on a diagonal, the shallow pink scraping on his face, the sand in his eyelashes. Munson’s a mess. Chavez wants to clean him up, put him back together again. If Chavez is the one who ruined it, then it’s only fair that he be given a chance to fix it.
“We can. Listen. We can try again. Okay? I’ll. I’ll go tell Alex, I’ll tell her everything, anything you want me to say. I’ll tell my parents and my brothers and everybody.”
Munson stares at him in shock. Chavez touches his face, and Munson doesn’t pull away, searching frantically for any of the million things that Chavez does when he’s lying. Chavez forces himself to swallow, brushing his fingertips on Munson’s cheek, he feels gravity give way and he says it anyway:
“I’ll quit, Eric. Swear to god I will. I’ll come to Detroit and we can do it for real. I won’t . . . I’ll n-never play again.”
Eric Chavez, for a moment, sees a life in his future that makes no sense to him. It breaks like ice in his chest. What the fuck will he do if Munson says yes?
But Munson is already shaking his head, mouthing ‘no’ over and over again. His hands are wrung between his knees. “Don’t ever say that again,” he says softly.
“Munce . . .” Chavez tries, shifting closer. He can feel Munson warm in the idle chill of the wind. Hawaii in December doesn’t feel like much of anything.
Munson’s still shaking his head. “I, all right,” he says haltingly. “I just spent a full season getting my heart broken every single day. And I, I was thinking, a little while ago, that the only thing worse than that would be if I wasn’t . . . if I’d never made it. I don’t know if that’s true or not. But I think it is.”
He might have said more, but he ends up just saying nothing. Chavez shivers, goosebumps creeping up his arms. His eyes hurt bad enough that he keeps waiting for the slow hot crawl of blood down his face.
“Can’t we just-” Chavez starts, and Munson cuts him off, closing his eyes like he’s in pain too.
“No.”
“You don’t even know what I was gonna say.”
Munson’s face is angled down, all profile and hair falling across his forehead. “It doesn’t matter. We can’t. We can’t be in love and be married. We can’t fuck around and not be in love. It doesn’t work. You know that.”
“It’d be different,” Chavez whispers.
Munson makes a scoffing noise, scrubbing a hand across his face. “It’s never different. Please, okay, please for my sake understand that. Because I’m, I’m not sure how much longer I’ll be able to keep saying it’s over.”
Chavez doesn’t answer, his eyes far far off, searching for boats, or Japan. All those little islands out there in the Pacific, stuff that maybe never even got discovered. Beaches without footprints. Trees with the bark still on.
Munson watches him for awhile, and then that makes it kinda hard to breathe, so he stops. He looks at the sand and says dully, “I mean, just because we were in love doesn’t mean being in love was a good idea.”
“I know.” Chavez draws in a long slow breath, scratches at the cuff of his pants. “So I guess you’re not in love with me anymore.”
Munson wonders how much honesty this deserves. This, the truest thing that’s ever happened to him and finished now, or close to finished, close enough to taste it in the air, and it seems like it calls for all the truth left in him, but he can’t really tell.
“I can’t,” Munson begins, and it hurts to talk, the sand in his throat, something else, too, something best left unexamined. “I can’t just stop being in love with you. If I could, believe me, I would have done it seven years ago. But I’m not gonna let you do this to me anymore. I’m not gonna do this to you anymore. My whole life used to be you, but it’s not anymore. I got Shanda, you’ve got Alex, and it’s never gonna be like it was. We can’t keep fucking around and expect to wake up some morning and be nineteen years old again and have another shot.”
Chavez pulls his legs up and lowers his forehead onto his knees. “I don’t understand,” he whispers, and Munson has to tilt closer to hear him. “I’m in love with you. You’re in love with me. I don’t understand why that’s not good enough.”
Munson reaches out, and touches his hand to Chavez’s face. He taps his wedding ring three times against Chavez’s cheekbone and doesn’t say anything.
Chavez is shaking, flickering in the wind and the inconstant light. “I can’t believe we came this far and you’re just gonna end it,” he says with his voice all choked.
Munson takes his hand away, makes a bad smile. “I can’t believe we came this far at all,” he admits. “I’ve never even told anybody.”
Chavez presses his mouth against his knee and winces at the sting of his bitten lip. “I told a priest once.”
Raising his eyebrows, Munson wishes Chavez would lift his face, let Munson see him. “You told a priest you were sleeping with a guy? Is that even allowed?”
For a moment, Eric Munson trying to make him smile or laugh, dumb jokes and goofy faces, it’s terribly clear to Chavez why he fell in love with his best friend in the first place, but that’s only a moment.
Chavez keeps his face against his knees, his back rising and falling in the way that means he’s measuring out each breath, because this is as bad as it will ever feel, right here, right now, and if he keeps breathing, eventually it will get better.
Munson sees it all and wants to curl up around him, be good cover, safe passage, but he can’t anymore, and Munson breathes out painfully.
“We weren’t going anywhere, man. We’ve never been going anywhere, not together.”
“That’s not true.” Chavez looks up then, his face warped in a scowl, because he doesn’t want to just go down without a fight and leave this to be redrawn, re-imagined as fits convenience and conscience. “Everywhere we’ve been, we’ve been together. You’ve been my best friend for almost twenty years. Everything I’ve ever done, I’ve done with you somewhere nearby. And it’s gonna be like that forever, whether you keep fucking me or not.”
Munson runs a hand through his gritty hair. “What are we supposed to do, Eric?” he asks roughly. “Be married and have kids and live two thousand miles away from each other and keep sleeping together on the rare occasions when we’re in the same city? Phone sex and dirty emails like fucking kids? Until we get caught or get our picture taken and everything gets ruined anyway? I mean, fuck. That’s how you want your life to be?”
“I want to be in love with you.” Chavez bites the inside of his lip. He doesn’t take his eyes off Munson’s. “All I’ve ever wanted is to just be in love with you.”
Munson’s mouth twists but he doesn’t cry. It’s unexpected, but neither of them is crying. Neither of them will be the first to break down, and so neither of them does.
“That’s not really true, but whatever.” Chavez opens his mouth to protest that, eyebrows pulling together, but Munson holds up a hand to cut him off. “It doesn’t matter. I’m tired of being fucked up. Tired of being ashamed. Tired of trying to hurt you. I’m, really. I’m so tired of all of this.”
Eric Chavez looks away, his throat moving up and down, his eyelids fluttering. “I never meant. I never meant for it to be like this.”
Wanting to rest his hand on Chavez’s back, his neck, his head, somewhere, Munson says quietly, “It’s not all your fault. I know you’re real big with the guilt and all, but you’re right. There’s always been two of us.”
“Not anymore,” Chavez answers, a bitter taste on his tongue.
Munson does touch him then, winds a hand in Chavez’s collar and tugs enough for the shirt to rasp on Chavez’s neck, cut off his air but just a little bit.
“What do you think I’m doing here?” he asks, curious and kinda impatient. “You think I’m saying we’re not gonna be friends anymore? That I’m not gonna be around, not gonna let you call me at three in the morning, not gonna tell you when you’re being dumb? Because that’s, like, my most favorite thing to do, I think you know.”
Chavez’s mouth twitches slightly, and Munson smiles kinda sadly. “I don’t have any idea how to not be your best friend,” he tells Chavez. “I’m not gonna fuck around with you anymore and maybe someday I won’t be in love with you either, but there’s always gonna be two of us, man.”
Chavez sniffs, wipes his nose on his sleeve. He likes Munson’s hand pulling the collar of his shirt tight, likes feeling his Adam’s apple meet resistance and push past it. “If I . . . if I wasn’t getting married tomorrow-”
“No.” Munson jerks his collar, snapping Chavez’s head back so that Munson can meet his eyes. “You’re getting married tomorrow. You love her.”
“I love you!” Chavez cries, too loudly and yeah, there’s lightning, there’s thunder, there’s a natural disaster and they’re not afraid of storms but they probably should be.
Munson hauls him closer, wraps his arm around Chavez’s shoulder and burrows his face in Chavez’s shoulder. “I know, I know,” he murmurs, his lips on Chavez’s ear and Chavez trembling. “I love you too, you’re my best friend, I love you.”
He moves back because Chavez’s hand is tripping up his chest and Munson doesn’t want to feel Chavez’s fingers on his jaw, doesn’t want to fall down again when he’s only barely gotten to his feet.
“But if we keep doing this, we’ll end up hating each other for real and. I can’t. I’m not gonna live without you. We end it now, we get everything back. I promise.”
Chavez is shaking his head, his eyes squeezed shut and he doesn’t want to hear this. Munson’s hand is caught around his and pressing both down to Munson’s chest so that Chavez can’t move, can’t pull Munson into a kiss and make him forget. Munson clasps his hand hard enough that Chavez’s knuckles crack, and he rests his forehead against the side of Chavez’s head, breathing out.
“You’re a better man than you ever gave yourself credit for,” Munson tells him, everything moving very slowly and the world coming to an end one more time above them. “You don’t need me to fuck everything up for you anymore. You, you got the rest of your life, you don’t need me.”
Chavez makes a fractured sound and turns his head too quickly for Munson to pull away, kisses him, presses their lips together and Munson lets him, his hand burying into Chavez’s hair, licking into Chavez’s mouth and the heat of it, the thing he knows best.
When they break away, Chavez hides his face in Munson’s shoulder and Munson can hear him whispering, “I’m sorry,” over and over again, and Munson smooths his hair, makes unintelligible comfort sounds, because it’s nothing to apologize for, really, the way they’ve been, what they’ve known, it’s nothing to regret.
Chavez breathes him in, this strange hard moment, and Eric Chavez would think of all the time it took them to get here, and he would ask what the fuck he’s supposed to do without him, how he’s supposed to wake up tomorrow with the knowledge that he’ll never again get to feel his best friend all around him and laughing into his arm and teeth against his throat, hot skittering breath on his stomach, he would try and figure this out, but it’s too much for him and it’s enough, right now, it’s enough to have Munson’s arm around his shoulders and Munson’s hand running over his hair.
Munson kisses him on the forehead, and draws him up, smiling at him and brushing the heel of his hand across the tender skin under Chavez’s eyes. Chavez blinks, stunned and quiet, and in Munson’s mind Eric Chavez is five years old, putting the baseball in his hand and running away across the grass, farther than he thought Munson could throw.
Chavez coughs weakly, feeling broke open and a field of calendar days before him, just waiting, the rest of his life. Munson doesn’t take his arm from around Chavez’s shoulders, still strong enough to lean against, and Chavez asks hoarsely, “What happens now, man?”
Munson shakes his head. Eric Chavez is against him, Eric Chavez is safe. It’s all he’s ever wanted, really.
“Now we start over.”
They stay on the beach together, looking at each other in amazement, and it finally starts to rain.
THE END
(epilogue: sleep outside in tents upon this unfamiliar land)
Chavez didn’t really have to talk Alex into letting him go out to the desert for New Year’s with Munson. He told her, “We’ve been doing it since we were kids, babe, just me and him,” and she understood that, because she understands everything.
They drive out with a stash of Otter Pops in the cooler in the backseat, Chavez’s mouth smeared purple and Munson’s green. Munson makes Chavez change the CD before they even get past the park. Chavez watches the skinny shadows of the streetlights roll over Munson’s hands and face, Munson lit from behind with his knee up on the dash.
Temperatures drop in the desert and Chavez’s hands are totally numb by the time they’re done putting up the tent. Munson wanders off to look at the cactuses and stuff, and Chavez tries to call Alex or his parents, pacing around with clean brown dust on his shoes, but he can’t get a signal.
They play catch over the hammered sand until the sun goes down, and they’re alone for five miles in every direction. They talk about next season.
Munson’s shoulder is nestled against his own as they eat take-out deli sandwiches for dinner, and Chavez feels him jump when the first coyote howl rips out of the canyon like an air raid siren. Chavez presses back a bit, thinking about equal and opposite reactions, and murmurs, “Got your back, dude,” and Munce relaxes, the coyotes looking for blood and not finding it.
They’re sitting Indian-style on the ground as the year turns, a small guttering fire before them. Munson feeds it pieces of the phonebook, until all that’s left is just the flapping posterboard cover, every page finally gone after two decades of being cold and happy in Death Valley, and he tries the snapped-off knuckles of Joshua tree branches instead, and the flames cough and gnash, angry little flags of orange and yellow.
Chavez watches the gleam of Munson’s wedding ring, caught like a firefly against the dull shine of the bottle glass, and he looks down to see his own ring, silver and frozen, the slight, never-thought-twice weight of it on his hand.
“It’s crazy, Munce, huh,” he says, tracing across the carved-smoke landscape.
Munson doesn’t ask what he’s talking about, just nods and takes a drink. “Yep.”
Chavez’s mouth crooks, and he sneezes, pulls his legs up against his chest, rubbing his hand briskly up and down his shins, friction, warmth. He rolls his head back, the salt stars and every year more than he remembers.
He sneaks a look out of the corner of his eye, and Munson’s got his head back too, UFO-searching, his neck exposed and pale in the night, sandpaper shaded by stubble under his jaw.
And Eric Munson turns, his gaze falling down out of the sky and finding Eric Chavez’s, and Munson smiles at him, smiles at him like he’s been doing for twenty years, like he’ll do forever, Eric Munson smiles at his best friend, all white teeth and calm eyes, and it’s seven minutes past midnight in the desert, and they’re all grown up.
THE END (for real this time)
September-November 2004
thanks, y’all.