Sam gave him a five-minute head start, timing the interval on his phone. Then he eased open the screen door he’d just closed, walked around the house, and raced down six flights of steps. The young man—Gabe, Sam reminded himself—was waiting at the bottom. His eyes had gotten wide during Sam’s descent. They got even wider as he inspected Sam’s face.
“Oh, God,” he said. “You’re…”
“Ruby’s uncle.”
He kept staring. “No way. Does Ruby know that…”
“Nobody knows!” Sam grabbed the young man’s shoulder harder than he’d meant to, clutching it in a panicky grip. “Not Ruby, or my sister. Or my mom. Or my son.” Who is probably awake by now, Sam realized, with a sinking feeling. “I don’t even know your name,” he said. “Is it Anthony, or Gabriel, or what?”
“It’s Gabe,” said the boy. “Gabriel Anthony Andrews.” He touched Sam’s arm. Sam flinched, and Gabe pulled his hand back. “Look, I’m sorry,” he said, in a soft voice. “I know this is super weird, but we didn’t do anything wrong. I didn’t lie to you about anything.”
“Except your name,” said Sam. “And that you weren’t breaking up with a girlfriend, you were breaking up with a fiancée.”
“Yeah,” Gabe agreed. “Except for those things.” He looked away, out at the water, then back at Sam. “But I want to see you again,” he said. “I didn’t lie about that.”
Sam tried to steel himself against Anthony’s—no, not Anthony—Gabe’s charm, even as he felt himself yearning, swaying, ever so slightly, toward the other man’s chest. “We can’t have this conversation now,” he made himself say.
“No,” Gabe agreed, and looked at Sam from underneath his long, curling lashes.
Sam took a deep breath and tried to sort through his roiling emotions. Anger, chagrin, disappointment, shame. Lust—plenty of that. And hope, unfurling in his chest a small and tender flower.
“So, let me understand this,” he said. “The wedding’s off?”
Gabe nodded. “Ruby left me a note and said she couldn’t go through with it.”
“And is she okay?”
Looking shamefaced, Gabe said, “I haven’t seen her yet. I thought I’d let her, you know, make first contact.”
“So Ruby dumped you, by note, and she canceled your wedding and you haven’t seen her yet.” Sam heard his voice rising as he enumerated the events of the previous night, before he’d met Gabe in Provincetown. “What if she thinks you’re furious at her? Or miserable?”
Gabe shrugged. “Ruby knows I’m not mad at her.”
Sam shook his head, feeling sorry for his niece. And her parents—Eli and his sister. Did Sarah even know yet what had happened? “Who has she told?” he asked, his voice short.
“I don’t know,” Gabe said. “Maybe just me.”
Sam put his hand on his forehead, wishing he’d slept even a little bit, wishing he had the mental capacity to sort through everything that had happened, and what it meant for Ruby, and for his twin sister, and for him.
“How old are you?” was what he finally asked.
“Almost twenty-three,” Gabe answered. Sam covered his eyes with his fists and groaned. “My mom says I’m an old soul,” Gabe said helpfully. “How old are you?”
“Old,” Sam said. “Older than you.”
“I like older men,” Gabe said softly.
“We should go back,” Sam said. Sarah and Eli needed to know what was happening; if they didn’t already… but he could hear there wasn’t quite as much force behind the words as he’d intended.
Gabe looked toward the stairs. Sam followed his gaze to the staircase, and the space underneath the landing, shadowed and semiprivate with its screen of hedges, a cozy nook just big enough for two.
No, Sam thought… but when he opened his mouth to say it, nothing came out. Gabe reached for his hand, and instead of shaking him off, telling him he was crazy, that this entire thing was insane, Sam let himself be pulled into the darkness, for the dizzying, bewildering pleasure of Gabe’s mouth against his.
Rosa
Eli led Rosa out onto the deck, and they walked down the six flights of beach stairs in silence, Rosa in the lead and Eli close behind her, hurrying, making sure there was nowhere she could go but down. She thought she heard rustling in the bushes behind the last landing—male voices, low laughter—but Eli took her arm as soon as her feet hit the sand, and pulled her along, walking her quickly away from the house, toward an inlet where motorboats were roaring through the rock-lined channel into the open water. The sky was a clear, pale milky blue, and the beach was still mostly empty. Families were just starting to trickle out, children racing for the water, parents behind them, burdened by armloads of tote bags and towels and umbrellas.