Panting and soaked with sweat, my euphoria melted into despair.

  “Let’s try, okay?” Khalid said, his face coated with a sheen of perspiration and his voice raspy with exertion. “Let’s just try. You might be able to do it.”

  I offered him my hands, and he took them, turning to face me. He began walking in reverse, singing a soft rendition of “Icarus” as we took one step then another and then another. The bounce of the boards under my foot set off the first explosion of panic. It flew skyward bright and red as blood as an emergency flare in the dead of night. We got maybe a foot out over the water when the fear crippled me. I gasped and tripped in reverse, falling over my feet, breaths ragged. Khalid held onto my hands, keeping me a little grounded with his touch. When my spine hit the signpost, I folded over, bent completely in half, and began cussing while crying. It was a miserable moment. He rubbed my back, dropping down into a squat to try to see my face, but I turned from him, shamed to my core for ruining what would have been our first time. I could have said the words unspoken as he showed me how a man loved a man. But no, here I was, ready to faint and sniveling like a four-year-old who’s afraid of the monster under his bed.

  “I hate myself right now,” I choked, pulling my hands under my eyes while stumbling from the signpost toward our cabin.

  “Dane, don’t man. It’s okay.” He walked along at my side. Everything was blurry, and my eyes burned with dust and unshed tears. I waved him off. His finger caught a belt loop, and he pulled me off the path, around the back of an empty guest cabin, and pressed my back against the cedar shake siding. He leaned into me, nuzzling at my neck, rubbing his hands up my sides, skimming his fingers under my shirt. “It’s okay. We take things as they come. I’m a patient man.”

  “I don’t want to be patient,” I growled, rolling my hips into him, eager for him to feel how ready I was for him. He peppered my jaw and lips with kisses, his erection lying beside mine. “I’ve been patient for fucking ever it feels like!”

  “We have to be patient with gracious patience.” He kissed me then, deeply and with conviction that all would work out somehow. Gracious patience. What did that mean? How could I be patient when we had five weeks, and I was a mental case who couldn’t walk over a fucking bridge? I clung to him, kissed him madly, tugged and grasped at his shirt until the panic and humiliation began to shift back to my body’s awareness of him and how his touch and taste was easing me back from a full-blown meltdown.

  I eased my body weight into him, pushing off the cabin, my hold less desperate. “I’m losing my heart to you,” I whispered when his lips lifted from mine. His lashes lowered to hide his gaze then lifted, to show me something rich and deep in those dark brown pools. “I have no clue how to be a graciously patient man. Can you teach me?”

  A small smile pulled at the corners of his mouth. “As soon as God passes that knowledge along to me, I’ll share it with you.” His brow met mine. Our eyes met and held. “Tomorrow morning we’ll work on your fear of water. Tomorrow night your fear of crossing over water.”

  I huffed. “That will take forever.” Holy shit I sounded petulant. I hated hearing it spewing out of my mouth. “Fuck my face. I need to shut up now.”

  He gave me a kiss, soft and fleeting, and then stepped away from me.

  “Thanks for the day in town. I’m sorry I fucked up our night alone,” I murmured.

  “We’ll have others.” He reached up to pat the peace sign lying on my chest. “I’m losing my heart to you as well.”

  God. Oh God and the Blessed Virgin. He cared about me too. I was floating in waters that I’d never been in before. Never would I have thought that drowning could be something to long for.

  “What do we do now? Morning feels like a lifetime away.”

  “We go play horseshoes?” His eyes twinkled with latent heat and humor.

  Not knowing what else to do, I barked out a stupid laugh then went to play horseshoes with my parents. They beat us badly. I lay in bed that night, out under the stars, wondering just how one discovered gracious patience.

  Chapter Seven

  Seven days passed, each one marked on the calendar in my mind, a day gone, a page turned, a sweep of the hour hand racing to something neither Khalid nor I wanted to face. So, we didn’t. We spent our mornings in the creek, sometimes with James there to silently cheer me on as I moved agonizingly slowly in my cure. By the Fourth of July, I had progressed to standing on a rock with the water rushing around my calves. Khalid was wasting his time studying how to manage hotels. He should be majoring in social work for he was the most patient and caring therapist I had ever worked with. And yes, I had had a couple. Most did a lot of talking or handing out meds but not a one had ever suggested anything like this. Maybe because it was so fucking terrifying. Yet, for him, for us, for this love that was flourishing like a pampered violet in a hothouse, I made myself slide down that bank into his arms every morning.

  Nights we spent on the bridge when he wasn’t needed to help in the dish room. That was progressing much more slowly. I only had managed to get to the sixth board. We thought perhaps it was the mish-mosh of two phobias that made moving over that forty feet so damn difficult. Yet, he never gave up on me. Never called me stupid or a moron. He didn’t need to. I did that and then was scolded for it by my therapist.

  In between dawn and dusk, I wrote or painted on my ceramic moon. Sometimes I napped or went with Mom to the golf course but never the tennis courts because of the bridge. She never pushed because if anyone knew how scared I was it was my family. My parents had planned trips for us, mapping out routes that avoided any major expanse over any waterway. My mother’s dreams of seeing the Florida Keys? Not happening with Dane in the car.

  Dad arrived on the second, bringing with him a cool front that eased up the humidity that had crept up to disgusting levels. Monday was the fourth, so he spent Saturday complaining about not getting that extra day off. He and Mom went to play cards in the main lodge during the day, and I spent the afternoon lying on the grass by the creek, typing. Bringing Odom and Cyran together sexually was much easier than getting Khalid and me into bed. How sad was it that I was so oversexed and in need of relief that I popped wood every single time my characters got into the sack? One night after a hot scene I had to go take a run around the grounds just to get ripe, so I had an excuse to shower and get myself off.

  Mom and Dad knew about Khalid helping me work through my fears. Hell, they were ecstatic about the progress I’d made in the water. They’d not be so overjoyed if they saw how my lips met my therapists a dozen times per session.

  Sunday morning was upon us. Khalid wasn’t coming this morning. He’d been written into the dish room schedule at the last minute after Bonnie’s friend, Guy One, was canned because he wasn’t changing his gloves between handling dirty and clean dishes, which violated some health standard. Bonnie had stopped speaking to me altogether, and that was fine. Probably I should be reaching out to her to help her see how misguided her feelings were, but right now, my whole being was centered on Khalid. Call me greedy I didn’t care.

  The folks were kind of sluggish. Too much wine with the canasta group last night probably. They moved through the morning on rather short fuses, never really smiling until we were at the lodge and they’d downed a cup of coffee followed with some toast. We milled around, James and me, talking about sports. My clothes, which were just black chinos and a short-sleeved white polo, felt confining after days spent in nothing but shorts and big tank tops. Mom had insisted we look respectable for church services.

  After the coffee and baked goods were ingested, we made our way to the makeshift church. The sun was up but the air was dry. All the folding chairs had been wiped clear of dew or bird crap. Some of the staff were milling around assisting the infirm to chairs. We sat down in the second row. Dad looked tired. Mom was frowning at something on her white sandal while trying to rub whatever was making her scowl off on the grass. James was bored already, and I was staring back at the lodge hoping for a glimpse of Khalid.

  “Can I go sit with the guys?” James asked as he fidgeted.

  “No, you cannot,” Dad replied just as Bonnie appeared at the end of the row, wearing a smile that radiated sweetness. Shame I knew that her smile was a false one. “It won’t kill you to spend an hour with your family. You don’t see Dane begging to sit with his friends.”

  I stared straight ahead at the white pulpit, my senses kicking into overdrive.

  “Where is Khalid anyway?” Mom asked taking the printout with the morning’s psalms and prayers from Bonnie.

  “Oh, you won’t see Khalid here,” Bonnie leaped in before I could hit them with the ‘He’s working to make brunch’ explanation, which was true and unlikely to backfire. As if her words were filthy or salacious, she leaned over one of the chairs in the first row to whisper, “He’s a Muslim.” I winced at the inflection she slathered all over the word Muslim like it was rotted fish on her tongue.

  My fathers gaze fell on me. I could feel it. My sight lingered on the pulpit as I worked on tamping down the urge to call Bonnie words that would shock the gathering congregation. Bonnie went off, her lacy white dress setting off her tan and her smile, to pass out papers to more guests.

  “Dane, is what she said true?” Dad asked on a heated whisper. I nodded. “Dear God,” my father sighed, and it sent me into a rage that shocked me with its intensity. I spun on my father, my chinos making a small squeak on the cool metal seat.

  “What?” Mom asked, slipping her sandal back on her bare foot, her attention just now coming back to the world. “What?”

  “Seems our son forgot to tell us his new friend is a Muslim.” Dad never took his eyes from me.

  “Who? What? When did we find this out?” Mom leaned up to look around my father. My sight darted to her. She was utterly lost. When I looked at my dad, I was ready to fire off a shot that would probably get me grounded for a few months but then I realized I wasn’t James’ age. I was eighteen. A man. Legally an adult and I could say what I wanted, be friends with who I wanted, and love who I wanted without their approval.

  “Yes, he’s a Muslim. So what? The Feldman’s are Jewish, and the Castleman’s over there are Methodist.”

  The wind rustled the paper of psalms and prayers in my mother’s hand. It toyed with the linen being placed over the pulpit, lifting it just a bit, enough to catch the eye.

  James muttered something that I didn’t pick up because of the wind and the rush of blood in my ears. The pastor arriving saved us from what I was sure would be a long-winded discussion heaped full of disapproval and worry. Tension rode like a yoke on my shoulders all through the service. There was no looking to the left for me. I studied the pastor the whole time, reciting the words of the prayers I was familiar with my rote. As soon as the plate was passed to help the pastor pay for gas, I left. Simply stood up, stepped over James’ lanky legs, and stalked away from the congregation and the final prayer. People giving me dirty looks for interrupting the service didn’t faze me.

  I made it to our cabin, stripped off my Sunday at Silver Fir Lodge Go-To-Meeting clothes, and was just zipping my shorts when my father entered the cabin, my mother right behind him, and James following her.

  Dad hit the brakes instantly. I shook my head then tugged my old gray tank top on, the one with the flying pig on it.

  “If you’re going to say something stupid, you can keep it to yourself.” I looked over at him as I pulled my shirt down to cover myself.

  “Dane! Do not speak to your father that way.” Mom threw her little white clutch to the coffee table. “Now would someone like to explain to us how it came to be that our son, our good Catholic son, is friends with someone who is Muslim.”

  “Yes, Dane, please explain that to us. How can you even think of being associated with a man who worships some desert god?”

  “Okay, for starters Muslim’s worship the same God we do. I mean, does anyone over the age of thirty ever read anything so that they don’t sound so fucking stupid all the fucking time?”

  My parents reeled back, literally. They each took a step as if I’d hit them physically with a word punch. They’d never experienced me hurling that word at them before.

  “Dude,” James whispered then dropped on the sofa, his eyes as round as manhole covers.

  “Dane Alexander, you are walking a thin line, young man.”

  I squared my shoulders. “Yeah, well, the truth hurts. You want some other truths?”

  “Dane, I think we all need to just calm down a bit and talk this out,” Mom interjected, stepping around my father.

  “No, let the boy speak.” Dad pushed around Mom, his snapping gaze on me. James shuffled and climbed over the arm of the sofa, disappearing into our cramped bedroom as he usually did when things got ugly. He hated confrontations.

  “I’m not a boy anymore.”

  “You certainly acted like one back at the morning service. Stomping off like a toddler who didn’t get the toy or treat he wanted.” Dad was right in front of me now, maybe six inches separated us, and yes, I was intimidated. The small boy in me was sniffling, scared of upsetting his daddy and not being loved by him anymore but the man in me, the one that was in love, he wasn’t scared. Or if he was, his anger and his long-buried spirit trampled the fear of censure. “Tell me all these truths, Dane.”

  “George, can we just stop being so confrontational and try to talk about this like—”

  “Okay, Dad, here are my truths. Yes, Khalid is a practicing Muslim. Although he says he’s half-assed I’ve seen him praying daily, which is more than I do. And you know what else? Do you want more truths? Khalid is gay. So am I. And we’re dating.”

  There was a delayed reaction as if they were standing at ground zero watching a massive hydrogen bomb falling on them from the clear sapphire sky, knowing that their life as they knew it was over. So, they stood there—horrified—because what else could they do now? You couldn’t outrun incineration, nor could you pray it away. All one could do was close their eyes and inhale the smell of a life forever altered.

  “What?” Mom questioned, the query craggy and rough. “I…what?”

  Dad just looked at me with dull eyes, his mouth a little slack.

  “There are your truths. Your eldest son is in love with a gay Muslim man, and if possible, I hope—no I pray—that we can continue seeing each other when we leave here.”

  The unexpected blitz that had leveled their world completely had left us all with bloody shrapnel wounds. My lungs were working hard but my mind was ground to a halt.

  “What other truths are you hiding, Dane?” Dad took a step closer. Mom, as all mothers would do, placed herself between him and her child. Not for a moment did I think my father would hurt me. He had never raised a hand to either of us even though James and I sorely tested his no corporal punishment rule. See, he’d been whipped by his father and several nuns back when he was in school. “Are you doing drugs? Drinking and driving?”

  “No! Of course not.”

  Mom pressed her back to my chest, her sniffles soft and shaky.

  “Well, who the hell knows? You’re certainly capable of harboring some pretty big secrets, Dane. How can we ever believe a thing out of you now?” Dad was rattled, and hurt, and mentally nothing back but a shadow embedded on a wall like those after the Hiroshima blast. “God only knows what you’ve been doing behind our backs.”

  That one hurt badly. “All I’ve done for eighteen years is try to be the son you wanted, Dad. And I know I’ve failed because of my issues…”

  “Dane, honey, no.” Mom turned and tried to hug me. I skittered away, hands up.

  “Now I want to go see him because I’m mad, and I’m hurt. I need him. I’ll be back tomorrow. We can talk then.”

  “Dane…” Mom reached for me, her hand shaking violently, she grabbed my hand. “We’re just…please stay. Talk to us. Dad and I are—we didn’t know. We’re just…”

  “Let the man go, Carol,” Dad said. “I think some space will do us all some good.”

  Mom began crying. I gave my father a nod then walked into the room I shared with James, grabbed clean clothes at random and shoved them into a backpack. When I was halfway out the door, I turned to tell my brother I’d be back and we’d all talk when the dust settled but James wasn’t hiding in the top bunk. He was gone. Probably off to his friend’s lodge to pretend the ugliness that had just occurred was a bad dream. Wish I had had that option.

  Stepping out the bay doors into what should be a picture-perfect version of a Sunday, I went to the lodge first and was told that Khalid had gone back to the staff cabin to change for his shift at the pool. Young kids were racing around outside under the watchful eye of a Silver Fir Lodge daycare provider. A red rubber ball bounced by. I didn’t spare it a glance. I raced to the bridge, an inch shy of frantic, then began pacing when I could not get my feet to hit those boards. I cussed and pounded the signpost until my knuckles bled. Where had all the newfound confidence gone? I’d been so much better about this phobia and now…now I was back to square one. Hell, I was into negative squares. Fuck this day. Fuck this bridge. Fuck water. Fuck my life.

  Dejected and desperately in need of Khalid, I began wandering downstream, Cranberry Creek on my right, looking for a place to cross. There had to be a spot where the water wouldn’t touch my knees. It was a creek, not the fucking Mississippi. Slipping past our cabin which I never glanced at, I continued my quest, the weight of the morning, my father’s words, and the backpack on my shoulders pressing down on me. Willing tears to fade never really worked, so I dabbed at my cheeks and stopped a few hundred feet from the golf course boundary line. Peeking around a gnarled elm that was half dead, I saw the neatly-manicured greens with men in garish clothes pretending that there were no greater problems then making this putt.

  The sight of all that middle-class ambivalence disgusted me. I spun from the people who were just like me yet so different. Pushing aside thin saplings, I skirted a mountain laurel bush which snagged on my baggy shirt as I passed. Material rending, I stormed onward, deeper into this thick patch of woods. I found the mossy log I’d rested on that night I’d come to the bonfire with Bonnie. So much had changed. Probably the most profound transformation was mine.