“As goes Henry Montague, so goes the nation.”
Now that I’m steady, I think he’s going to pull away, because the last time we toppled into each other it ended in shouting. But instead he puts his arms around my neck, and though my vision has settled, we sway together as a wave strikes us, soaking the knees of our breeches. It’s something like dancing.
When I can’t think of anything else, I say, “It’s gorgeous here.” Then immediately wince because, oh God, have we reached such a barren spit of land in our relationship that I’m reduced to making observations about the surroundings just for conversation? And if so, I’ll have to find a sharp shell upon the beach and slit my wrists right here.
But Percy just smiles. “The Cyclades weren’t really on our itinerary.”
“Oh, I think we’re well off track now. We’ve had an adventure novel instead of a Tour.”
He reaches up and pushes a loose thread of my hair behind my ear. “What will everyone say, do you think? We’ll be the shame of our families.”
“Oh, I think my father holds that title. Turns out, I’m rather a bastard.” When Percy gives me a quizzical look, I supply the details of my father’s abandoned French bride. “If anyone knew, he’d lose everything,” I finish. “The estate, the title, the money, his standing. Probably be jailed as well. Even a rumor of it would wreck him.”
“So, what will you do?” Percy asks.
A flock of seagulls take flight from the beach and settle upon the sea, bobbing like sailboats upon the current as they complain to each other. I’ve been thinking about it a good deal in the space between Venice and Santorini, this question of what might happen if I turned up the bodies my father has buried in our garden. The damage I could do to him, fitting retribution for the years he’s spent beating me down.
“Nothing,” I say, because I’m not the only one who’d have to live with those overturned graves.
“So, you’re just going home? Like nothing’s changed?”
“Well, I was thinking . . .” I swallow hard. “I was thinking about not going back. At all. And maybe you and I could go somewhere together instead.”
His eyes drop from mine. “You don’t have to say that.”
“I want to—”
“Wait, listen. I shouldn’t have asked that of you—running away together. That was too much. Asking you to throw away your whole life on a whim like that. I just got excited that we might have similar . . . sentiments about each other and there might be a chance for me to not be put away and see if perhaps those sentiments might play out into something. But it’s all right. I promise. I know it’s too much to walk away from. It’s your whole life.”
“But I would. For you.”
“You don’t have to—”
“I want to. I mean it. Let’s run away.”
He smiles, though I’m not certain he believes I’m in earnest. “All right. Where will we go, then?”
“London, maybe. Or move to the country. Live like bachelors.”
“Drive the local girls wild?”
“Something like that.” The wind catches the strand of my hair Percy pushed away and pulls it over my forehead again, right across my burns. It stings faintly. “Though I think first I should sober up a bit. Stop mucking around so much and get my head on straight.”
“That’d be good.”
Percy smiles again, and I turn my face away from his, toward the sea and the spotty fishing boats gathered at the horizon. A few tall ships with their bowsprits pointed to the Aegean cant in the cradle of the waves. “Why’ve you stuck by me?” I ask. “I’ve been such a mess for a while now and . . . Holy Christ, Perce, I could hardly stand to be around myself. It’s still really hard some days.”
“Because that’s what you do when you . . . for your friends.” He flinches a little, a crease appearing between his eyebrows, then amends, “When you love someone. That’s what I meant to say. When you love someone, you stand by him. Even when he’s being a bit of a rake.”
“More than a bit.”
“Not all the time.”
“For the better part of the last few years—”
“Perhaps, but you had—”
“I would have left me long ago. Kicked me into a ditch and been done.”
“Monty—”
“Stopped answering the door, at the very least—”
“Shut it, will you?” He nudges the side of my head with his nose. “Just take it.”
I put my cheek to his shoulder, and he rests his chin against the top of my head. We stay like that for a while, neither of us speaking. The Aegean presses us together, the water sun-warmed and soft as court velvet.
“You don’t have to come with me,” he says quietly. “If you think you have some obligation to me because—”
“It’s not an obligation. Perce, I love you.” It trips out of me, and I can feel my neck start to burn, but I’m in this thick now, so onward I press. “I love you, but I don’t know how to help you. I still don’t! I’m an emotional delinquent and I say wrong things all the time, but I want to be better for you. I promise that. It doesn’t matter to me that you’re ill and it doesn’t matter if I have to give up everything, because you’re worth it. You’re worth it all because you are magnificent, you are. Magnificent and gorgeous and brilliant and kind and good and I just . . . love you, Percy. I love you so damn much.”
He looks down into the water, then back up at me, and it lifts my heart like a rising tide. His gaze makes me feel brave.
“And I need to know,” I go on. “I need to know where your head’s at. I don’t care what the answer is—if you want me to walk away now and leave you be, I can do that. Or if you want a bachelor flat together with separate bedrooms, or if you want . . . more than that. I know it would be hard—because we’re both lads and we’d be starting with bleeding nothing—but if you’ll run away with me, let’s run. I’m ready.”
He doesn’t say anything for what is likely only a minute but seems to drag across several years. His hands slide from their loop around my neck and down my arms before they finally settle upon my wrists, and it feels suddenly like he’s edging away, the waves pushing us apart. Dread begins to snake through me like smoke between floorboards, because this determined avoidance of my eyes is looking like the prelude to a very kind no, thanks. I missed my chance in that rain-slick alley in Venice.
I brace for my heart to be shot from the sky, but then he says, “Monty, I will always care for you. I hope you know that. Perhaps if we had been more forthright with each other, or perhaps if we had trusted each other more, it could have been something sooner. But we weren’t. So now we’re here.”
Good Lord, I think he’s trying to let me down gently and instead it’s like he’s starting my execution by pulling out my fingernails. I’d take the bullet again over this. I’d catch that bullet with my teeth a dozen times over this.