2

  IN THE end, she went with them.

  3

  AND SHE lived.

  She decided against the mastectomy, which was directly against the advice of her doctors and Lucas’s appeals.

  “I’ve made up my mind, and that’s it. Now you decided to move in with Dalton—which was against my advice—but what did I do? I shut—my—mouth. And you know what happened. I was wrong. Well, this is my decision. I want to keep my breast. If the lump was as big as my cousin Shelly’s, which was as big as a plum, then I’d do it. But this really is BB-sized, and I’m taking a chance. No, I’m not going to be luring too many men these days with my boobs—”

  “Mom!” he cried, shocked.

  “—but I’ve got a nice rack—”

  “Mom!”

  “—and even though I’m not winning any beauty contests with my face, never could, and especially not at my age—”

  Lucas’s face had blazed at the conversation, and he found he could no longer respond.

  “—what chance do I have of finding me a man otherwise?”

  Lucas wanted to point out that if all a man wanted was a nice rack, he didn’t want her marrying him.

  But then he really didn’t have any say, did he?

  So he shut up, and she stuck to her guns, and yes, there were days where he held her head while she puked in the toilet and bought her pot to give her an appetite and even shaved her head for her because she couldn’t stand to find her hair in clumps on her pillow in the mornings.

  And she survived.

  More than survived.

  She thrived.

  She got that minister’s license too.

  2010—2014

  1

  NOT ONLY that, but she fell in love with the RN who administered her chemo—a man five years her junior named Marcus DeWolf—and got engaged. She fell in love with him because even he told her she should have gotten the mastectomy, and any man who married a woman because of her breasts was a scum ball who deserved to get cock cancer.

  She accepted his proposal without a second thought.

  She accepted it as he kneeled on the floor in a restaurant with Lucas and Dalton in attendance. He wouldn’t think of doing it any other way.

  But she didn’t marry him.

  She told everyone that she was not getting married until her son could, and did.

  “Mom,” Lucas cried in exasperation. “Marry him! Just because I can’t get married doesn’t mean you shouldn’t! I can’t live with that!”

  “You can and you will!” she shot back.

  “But people don’t care that you aren’t getting married because I can’t,” he countered. “It’s not going to change anything. It’s not going to change the laws. Please, Mom. Marry him! A good man doesn’t come along every day—believe me, I know.”

  “I’ve made up my mind, and if there’s anything you should know, it’s when we Arrowoods make up our minds, they’re made up for good. If he’s the good man you say he is, he’ll wait.”

  Luckily he was a good man.

  Marcus waited.

  2

  DALTON’S JOB was the answer to unspoken and even undreamed fantasies. Exactly what he had always been suited for, and it paid beyond anything they had ever imagined combined. And the icing on the cake was that he loved it.

  They bought a little Eichler house in a neighborhood of Oakland called Sequoyah Hills (although Lucas wasn’t sure why, since the plant life was mostly yuccas and palm trees and the like). But they loved it—the candles on the cake. The front door opened onto an enclosed small courtyard with a hot tub (they had to get it fixed, and that took a few months) and yuccas and an awning that could be pulled out during the rainy season (Oakland’s answer to winter). Most of the rooms had glass doors that gave access to the courtyard. They found a wonderful cement whale that they positioned next to the hot tub, so that it breached rounded garden stones instead of the ocean, and it was all quite lovely. Their home was, like Dalton’s job, unlike anything either of them had imagined, but they almost immediately couldn’t envision living anywhere else.

  If there was anything better than the cake and the icing and the candles, it was that Dalton was making enough that the house would have been paid for in less than ten years on his salary alone.

  Lucas’s job assured it.

  It started as a fluke. He saw a Help Wanted sign at a local bakery. He got the job. His old manager gave him a glowing recommendation. And before he knew it, they were allowing him to try his recipes.

  That was when his business degree turned into something he’d never expected.

  Within a year he was looking at his own store.

  He didn’t even have to worry about his first employee.

  His mother was there for that.

  2015

  1

  ON THE morning of June 26, Lucas took the old TV—the one from that first apartment over the garage in Terra’s Gate, back before they could afford a fifty-inch flatscreen television—to work with him. He set it up on the counter near the register, heart in his throat, hoping for the best. His customers certainly didn’t mind. More of them were GLBT friendly than not. Customers of On the Rise, Lucas’s thriving bakery, pretty much needed to be. Lucas was very out—not that he was capable of being anything else—and often featured baked goods that made it clear that his shop was GLBT friendly as well, especially this time of year, when Gay Pride was being celebrated across the country. The cases were filled with rainbow cookies and muffins, and because of the possible SCOTUS decision, lately cupcakes with two artificial rings stuck into the icing and wedding cakes with two grooms or brides atop them (not that he hadn’t made plenty of them over the last year—Prop 8 had been overturned three years before, after all).

  So anyone offended by things gay rarely stepped through the front door unless it was because they just couldn’t resist Lucas’s specialties—cheesecakes, key lime pie, and his coconut cream, all made from the scratchiest of scratch. Not to mention his crème brûlée, which was to live for.

  And of course his mother’s favorite—baklava. They would always associate it with his coming out.

  In fact, many of his most loyal customers were hanging around that morning—which was saying something considering it wasn’t yet seven o’clock—and it was a surprisingly large crowd. The front of On the Rise was only big enough for four small tables and the front counter. It made Lucas incredibly grateful, despite his nervousness. These people could have been anywhere, but they were here.

  His mother was there too, even though he’d insisted she didn’t need to be there on her day off (which, with the size of the standing-room-only crowd, turned out to be untrue).

  “Nonsense,” she told him when she arrived shortly after him at five that morning. Tying on her apron, she began setting bread out to rise. “Did you think I wasn’t going to be here with you when the good news comes down?”

  “If it’s good news,” Lucas said, unable to shake his worry.

  His mother tsked at him. “Lucas, what other decision can be made? Especially with Justice Kennedy on our side? Look at everything he’s done for the gay movement. He voted against DOMA. He helped strike down the antisodom—”

  “It takes a majority, Mom,” he replied, cutting her off. He was blushing. Hearing his own mother talk about sodomy was too much, at least right now. “It’s not just one judge’s decision.”

  Yes, the almost certain (but not totally certain) outcome was that this was the day that everyone in the United States—at least matrimonially—would at last be equal. But again, no one could really be sure: witness the lesson that liberals learned when they didn’t get up and go vote against Prop 8.

  Lucas would never forget that day. Who would have ever thought that hateful, incredibly discriminatory bill would pass, and by such a small percentage, or that it would take so long to be overturned?

  Yes, the right decision should come down, but would it even be today? There were those who thought it could be days before it happened. But how wonderful would it be to enter Gay Pride weekend with the right to marry!

  It didn’t help that Dalton wasn’t with him. Lucas had tried to be understanding. They didn’t know if the decision would come down today, after all. And Dalton had made it clear that “a piece of paper” meant little to him. And as world-shatteringly important as Dalton’s job as a brilliant microbiologist might be, Lucas still thought Dalton should be able to take one frigging day off to be with him on this possibly momentous day.

  At least now Lucas had some idea of what Dalton actually did for a living. He helped figure out the basic workings of infectious microbial cells so that drugmakers could develop new medicines. Hopefully that had nothing to do with creating zombies.

  And dammit, everyone was here! Why not his man? Husband in heart if not in legal deed.

  “Wait,” someone shouted and pointed to the little television. “Look!”

  The screen showed the huge crowd in front of the Supreme Court Building, but now—now there were people running down the vast white steps! What? What?

  The crowd began to shout. To roar!

  The cheer that rose up was deafening. Lucas thought his heart had actually stopped. He couldn’t believe it. Was it? Was it?

  And then the CBS News special report came on, and the room, which had been filled with cheers, went silent as journalist Charlie Rose and then journalist and attorney Jan Crawford told them that all their dreams had come true.

  Same-sex marriage was now the law of the land.

  Then, like a firework streaking up into the sky then bursting into gorgeous display, Lucas’s heart soared as well, and it felt as if it too had exploded.

  Gloriously—just like that firework.

  He was shouting, screaming, dancing for joy, crying, laughing.

  His mother threw herself into his arms, and he hugged her fiercely. Then there was somebody else hugging him, and someone else, and someone else. Wait! Was that her boyfriend, Marcus, hugging him? When had he gotten here? Then there were more hugs. Lucas found he couldn’t stop crying. Every fear and every hope he’d had for… how many years? Twenty? Twenty-five? No. Twenty-four. Since kindergarten. That was it. A day he could still clearly remember—being told that boys couldn’t marry boys, even if they were in love.

  God. If only Dalton were here. If only. A different kind of tears threatened, and he shook his head and told himself, No, no, I won’t go there. Dalton, if you need to be looking into a microscope right now instead of—

  “Lucas?”

  He almost didn’t hear his name at first because he’d heard it shouted a dozen times in the past few minutes. But when his name was said again—

  “Lucas?”

  —he jumped. Because wasn’t that…?

  He pulled away from the young lady he was currently hugging—her head full of rainbow dreads—and turned to see…

  Dalton.

  His eyes went wide.

  “Dalton,” he cried, and his heart jumped. Dalton was here, and it was too good to be true! Like something out of a movie, and he started to hug him but…

  Dalton dropped to one knee.

  “Dalton?” Lucas said again, and although it was barely a whisper, his voice seemed almost to echo since—except for a few gasps—a hush had fallen over the room. Even the TV had gone mysteriously silent.

  Dalton reached into his pants pocket, and although there was certainly some part of Lucas that realized what might be about to happen, that part of him felt as if it were very far away—on the other side of a canyon, the Grand Canyon perhaps, or ever farther. Miles. The moon. The planet Altair IV, even.

  Because could this really be happening? After all these years, was the impossible happening?

  Dalton pulled his hand out of his pocket to reveal a small black box. The kind that could really hold only one thing.

  And that part of Lucas that felt like he might be on Altair IV was quite suddenly a whole lot closer. Maybe even in the room.

  “Lucas Arrowood,” Dalton said, his voice clear and strong (but still cracking slightly on “row”) and his beautiful brown eyes shimmering with tears (Dalton? Tears?), “you are the love of my life. For years I said I would not marry you unless it was legal across this entire country to do so. And now it is. Therefore, Lucas, it is long past time for me to ask. I shouldn’t have waited for the Supreme Court to give me permission.”

  And now Lucas was coming out of the fog, the high, whatever it was that had numbed him for that endless moment because—oh God—years from now he would want to remember every single second of this.

  “That young man loves you so much,” came the echo of his mother’s voice from years before. “And it’s going to work, baby. It’s going to work. I know a year seems a long time, but years and years from now when you look back, you will know it was worth it.”

  Dalton opened the box, and yes, it was a ring. A man’s ring. A gold band. And Dalton knew him; there was some bling too, wasn’t there? He looked up from the row of small diamonds and into Dalton’s handsome face.

  “Lucas, will you marry me?”

  And thank God he could speak, and the words came out of his mouth even as his vision blurred as tears filled his eyes.

  “Oh, yes. Yes, Dalton. Yes!”

  A cheer filled the room.

  It joined the one echoing across the world.

  2

  “WE ARE gathered here today,” said the Reverend Alice Arrowood, “to bring these two men together in legally wedded—”

  (and there was much emphasis on the word “legally”)

  “—and what I know to be holy matrimony.”

  Lucas’s heart began to pound. Began? Hell, it had been pounding all day and all last night as well. He hadn’t slept but an hour or so. Partially it was Mother’s and Marcus’s very uncomfortable sofa bed—she’d insisted he and Dalton not sleep together the night before they were to be wed—

  “I don’t care if you’ve slept together for ten years. It’s bad luck. And unseemly!”

  —and in part because he’d been way too nervous to sleep.

  He was so nervous right then he didn’t know how he was standing.

  No. He knew.

  He glanced next to him. Sam was right there. His “best person.” Who else should stand next to him?

  Then he shot a quick look at the man standing next to Dalton.

  Diego Hernandez. At one time, that was the last man Lucas would have wanted to see there on this very important day. But life changes people; Diego’s husband was sitting in the front row.

  Lucas looked up at Dalton now, and a rush swept over and through him, and his heart skipped a beat. Dalton was so incredibly handsome in his tux. And the way Dalton was looking at him! Lucas thought he might faint.

  He forced himself to turn to his mother, who looked radiant in her robes and stole. She’d made them both and designed a stole with symbols, religious and otherwise, sewn down either side. Christ believer she still was, but she’d accepted New Age teachings with open arms, and she wanted all people to feel comfortable when she performed their weddings. It was the reason she’d nixed using rainbow fabric. All people meant all people—straight as well as any other orientation, sexual or otherwise. So instead the long scarf-like piece of deep blue fabric had a pink triangle—point upward—among the other emblems.

  “But you know,” Lucas’s mother continued, “these two men became bound a long time ago with one little boy teaching another little boy how to tie his shoes. More than Keds were tied that morning. I think that maybe their hearts were as well.”

  Lucas turned back to Dalton, his focus shimmering in and out, and he thought he could almost see that boy right now.

  “‘Mamma,’ Lucas said to me, ‘I’m going to marry that boy someday.’ It caught me by surprise. This was 1990…’91?” She nodded. “Yes, 1991. And not 2015, and I was all discombobulated.”

  Laughter rippled gently across the room.

  “‘But boys can’t marry each other,’ I foolishly said, and Lucas looked me in the eye and asked why not, if they love each other.

  “And now, today, a far wiser woman, I am blessed to preside over the celebration that recognizes that love. Today they promise before us all to dedicate themselves to each other completely. In body. In words. In mind. And in heart.”

  Lucas wiped at his eyes, saw Dalton do the same, and—God!—the love shining in his eyes! Unbidden, Lucas’s filled again and tears spilled down his cheeks. My love!

  “These two men already have love and a wonderful relationship. So now I only remind them of what they already know. Lucas? Dalton?”

  They both turned to look into her shining face.

  “Your marriage today is one that you created. I do not do this. You create. I tell you to create something wonderful. Something good. A good marriage is in the small and in the big and knowing that in God’s eyes, in Love’s heart, there is no small or big. It is all the same. It is listening to everything your partner says… and hearing it. It is never being afraid or too old to take each other’s hand in your own, no matter where you are. It is saying ‘I love you.’ Every. Single. Day.”

  For one second her eyes flashed to the front row. He knew who she was looking at. Marcus DeWolf, the man who insisted she had no more than a week to marry him after today.

  And right next to Marcus was Diego Hernandez’s husband. And next to him, a surprisingly adorable young lady named Jill. She had an orange streak in her hair, and from what she had told Lucas, she loved Sam very much.

  Boy! You never knew what could happen in life.

  In the end, it made Lucas all the happier.

  “Loving someone is never going to sleep while you are angry,” Lucas’s mother continued. “Kissing every time you part. Every time you see each other again. Standing together against a world that at times will not understand you. It is forgiving… and forgetting. It’s allowing each other to be separate as well as together. Letting them grow into what they will be and not be encased—frozen in time. It is not only taking the right person unto you, but being the right person for him.