Page 68 of The Night I Lost Him

“Caden!” Jesse cried, “Wait! Come here. I got you something.” I wasn’t surprised when the something was a sex game for our honeymoon. He was grinning, all proud of himself. I was just proud of him for not sticking it with the other gifts like he probably wanted to.

Our friends, just like they never failed me at my lowest, had never failed me or Jamie at all. Amber had been a huge part of the proposal, even though they’d all had a part in it. We surprised Jamie with a private planetarium show for his twenty-fourth birthday, the entire show catered to all his favorite things to look at in the sky. All those things we’d pointed out to each other way back on the nights I was still hiding, and we cuddled together on a dark planetarium observation room floor. I saved Orion for last, because it was the one I’d pointed out every time. It was also the tattoo he’d chosen when we went to get tattoos together, because it reminded him of me. I’d gotten a kaleidoscope. Our friends had looked at me strangely, but it made Jamie laugh.

Jamie gushed about the planetarium show, and how sweet and thoughtful a gift it was, not suspecting a thing. He really thought it was his whole present, until the sky lit up with the words “Will you marry me?” and when he turned to me in confusion, I was in the aisle on one knee. Amber was running the show, Caitlin was recording it, and Jeff and Jesse were behind us with champagne and glasses respectively because despite my nerves, they all told me there was no way he was going to turn me down. He was still in school, but they were correct. It was one of the few times he failed to remain stoic. I saw tears in his eyes even as he grinned and hugged me while whispering, “Hell, yes.”

Amber had just graduated with her master’s degree and a job already lined up at NASA. She would only be living a couple hours from campus, and she was about to be doing some really big things. Jamie was happy for her, and he was also happy that his best friend wasn’t going to be far away from him.

We were going to stay where we were, or at least somewhere close by. I’d already found my mission in the city nearby. I’d graduated with my own master’s in Political Science, and I was currently the director of an LGBTQ youth center. It was similar to the one in town that Jamie volunteered at, but it was much bigger, and I had plans to expand it even further. We provided emergency shelter to youth and young adults who were kicked out of their homes or otherwise found themselves alone with nowhere to turn. We also provided a warm and safe environment for kids after school, on weekends, or any time one was needed. We were staffed with doctors for well-checks and STD safety lessons, as well as psychiatrists for those who needed someone to talk to, all pro bono. We had tons of activities and day trips for the kids to enjoy, and some of them had told me it was the only place they got to have fun and be happy. I felt like what I was doing was important, especially for those who had no other safe space in their lives. It was a place to meet people similar to them, and a place they were allowed to be themselves. That was something I hadn’t been able to do until I was twenty-one and met the person who’d finally brought me out of the box I was hiding in. He volunteered at my center sometimes, as well as the one he’d volunteered at all through college. I was pretty proud of what we did at the youth center. My parents were proud of me too, and they volunteered there every time they came down to visit.

Jamie was still in school, going for his PHD. He was the assistant manager at the rescue aquarium near us while he finished his degree. The aquarium was privately funded, and they took in sick and injured animals. The only ones that stayed permanently and weren’t reintroduced into the wild were the ones who could no longer survive out there. He went on research and rescue trips sometimes, and while I hated it when he was away from me, I knew he was out there saving the planet. I was so proud of him.

I went with him on the local rescues sometimes if I had the time off. I’d gotten a taste of saving the earth in that oil spill, and I wanted to do everything I could to help. I also liked to fanboy over Jamie when he was working.

There was a dolphin that seemed to follow around the aquarium’s boat almost every time they went out. He’d told me about her, because he thought it was cool she followed them around so often. They assumed she had a pod nearby and was just exceptionally curious. They would have assumed it was a different dolphin each time, if not for the small notch on her dorsal fin from a recent, minor injury she’d already recovered from.

I finally got to see her when I went out with them one evening as they were looking for a reported injured manatee. Jamie had his hand right above the water, pointing at some sea grass as they slowly approached the area. He was talking to his colleagues and not paying much attention to the water below him, but the dolphin with the fin notch suddenly appeared and bumped the palm of his hand with her head, then nudged it with her nose.

My own mouth dropped open, but it was nothing compared to the look of shock on Jamie’s face. He stared at her for a minute, his hand still above the water, then whispered, “Amphitrite?” She nudged his hand again and then swam in a little circle, and if I hadn’t seen it myself, I probably wouldn’t have even believed it when he told me.

I stepped up to the railing beside him. “I told you she loved you, too,” I said with a little smile. He looked at me with that still-amazed look. We weren’t close to where she was released, but with the range she could have travelled, it was entirely plausible. I hugged him as we watched her leap out of the water in the distance and join a pod as they swam away.

I smiled at all of our amazing memories as I hid the game Jesse had gotten us in the room we’d be staying in. A man in a captain’s uniform approached Jeff. “I think the last of the guests just boarded. Good to set sail?”

“Good to go,” Jeff told him, and the man nodded and headed up the stairs in front of us.

“You’re the freaking best, man,” I said, which was why he was my best man, I supposed. It was only right, we were on his yacht, after all, heading out for a sunset wedding in the gulf. Jamie and I would be spending the night onboard, along with our wedding party, after the other guests left. We were leaving for a honeymoon in Paris in two days, but we were going to shut it down with our friends first. They might regret the fact that there was only one hallway of bedrooms on this boat, but they probably had ear plugs, anyway. I wasn’t planning on Jamie and I being quiet for their sakes. Especially after he sent me that picture. Our wedding night might just be our next record breaker.

I’d realized the year after Jamie had been abducted that hockey wasn’t really my dream. I liked playing it, but it was one of those things I’d pursued because it was fun, and it helped the facade I’d put on. It wasn’t something I wanted to make a career of. I hadn’t ruined my chances with my coming-out-on-tv stunt, but recruiters were eyeing both Jeff and myself, and it was Jeff’s dream. I backed off a little bit. I continued playing for the school, but Jeff was drafted and lived in Minnesota during the season. In the off season he lived in Florida, on a freaking yacht. He had all kinds of wild parties that always involved our friend group, but I had a feeling my wedding night was going to be my favorite.

Caitlin and Jesse were both still in school. Caitlin mainly because she kept switching majors. She’d changed her mind, again, and had gone into criminology. She didn’t like the way the reporters had treated Jamie, but she did realize she liked solving crime.

Jesse was rooming with her in an apartment off-campus, close to the building Jamie and I lived in. We found our place first and lucked out with it because it was definitely way nicer than theirs. We were constantly at each other’s places, anyway.

Jesse was getting his doctorate in neuroscience. He was still dating Luke, who was usually at his apartment, as well, and his plus one at our wedding. I was so proud of all of us.

I walked behind Jeff through the reception area, and I had to admit the wedding planner had outdone herself. I stopped behind our wedding party at the entrance to the deck where our guests waited in their seats. The sun was starting to set, and the boat anchored on the water. It was private and with a minimal number of guests. My parents and sister were there, of course, along with my extended family who were totally cool with the pairing, which wasn’t all of them. My close friends from home who, it turned out, weren’t all that surprised when I came out on TV. Some good friends we’d made along the way, Jamie’s mom and sister, and of course, our besties in the wedding party.

“See you on the other side,” Jesse said with a grin at me as the music started. He held out his arm for Caitlin. She grabbed it, blowing me a kiss as they headed down the aisle.

Jeff stepped up to the entryway, giving me a pat on the arm before holding out his own for Amber. We were sharing them at our wedding. They were all best friends to both of us, but it wasn’t a traditional wedding, and we weren’t doing things traditionally. Amber and Jesse would stand beside Jamie, and Jeff and Caitlin would stand beside me. Jamie and I were going to walk together, and we’d written our own vows.

Amber took Jeff’s arm, and I was a little surprised at the way she looked at him when she did so. Even more surprised when he returned the look. I wondered briefly if it had anything to do with the rumors I’d heard that he was being traded to Florida, but I hadn’t gotten to ask him about that before the ceremony, and I had more to ask about after seeing those looks.

As Jeff and Amber reached the front, someone touched my shoulder. I turned to find him standing there, and my heart exploded as butterflies fluttered in my belly just like when we’d first started talking. He was the most beautiful person I’d ever seen, and that would never change. As much as he said I was his hero, he was mine. He’d overcome so much in his life, and his first tattoo said it all. Again I rise.

He still had a slight limp and a nasty scar on his shin. There was a little notch out of his tattoo from where he’d slid down the highway, God knew how fast. But he never let any of it slow him down or scare him from living. He’d fixed his bike and though we had a car, too, we still rode it a lot.

Jamie had gone back to work at the club as soon as the doctor told him he didn’t need crutches all the time, and that he needed to walk some even with the cast. He would never stop pushing himself, never stop proving to the world that it could not hold him down. His regular fans had, according to Tristan, been beside themselves when they’d found out he was ok, and they absolutely lost it when he appeared on stage again the first time.

He managed to dance on a pole with a cast on his leg, even though he was a little bit limited, and it probably hadn’t been exactly what the doctor had in mind. I was there the night he went back. The crowd went crazy over him, and he went home with more money that night than I made in a month. I was there every time he danced after that, since hockey season was over, and I had no reason to hide my interest any longer. I really wasn’t being that jealous boyfriend, I was being the boyfriend who’d literally lost him the one time I wasn’t looking. It wasn’t going to happen again. I let him do his thing, but I was also his personal bodyguard, and everyone there knew it. He didn’t get upset about it. Especially since he knew that at least a third of the reason I was there every night using the excuse of protecting him was that he was really fucking hot and I liked watching him up there.

He left there for the job he really wanted, but he put a pole in our living room, and I got private shows all the time because he wanted to stay in shape. He also popped into Club Adonis every once in a while and danced a set or two on a whim. The club loved it when he did that, and it made us some extra cash.

We talked about having our reception there, but my parents gave us one of those looks parents are great at, the one that tells you they aren’t angry, just disappointed. “Your great aunt Connie is surprisingly happy for you and attending your wedding to another man. She’s bringing you a huge check as a wedding present. Do not ruin her day by having your reception at a strip club.” So, we had our bachelor party together there, instead. We did end up utilizing the bathroom again that night, similarly to the way we’d used it when we were dating, except I was on my knees on that nasty floor, too. And Jamie promised me that the third dance at our reception, after ours and our dances with our mothers, was going to be a lap dance.

He took my hand, and we started down the aisle together. I was ready with my vows. I hadn’t called him a beautiful kaleidoscope of amazing things since I was drunk in a planetarium, but I was getting ready to do it again. I hadn’t been wrong, after all. Looking back on it, I thought I was pretty insightful, even though I knew I was going to make him laugh at our wedding. The room full of smiling faces we passed by told us that everything was going to be ok, and that maybe there were happily ever afters, even when you thought your chance at happiness was over.

Those weeks in which Jamie was missing seemed like a nightmare, but they still lingered in our minds. And sometimes in real nightmares, for both of us. That’s when we held each other tight and told each other that everything really was ok. Because it was. We were ok. We were together, with our own place and our own careers and an orange cat we’d adopted from the shelter. We were together, getting married on our best friend’s yacht. We were living life the way we wanted to, and I was finally able to live the way I’d wanted to since the moment I tried to hand him those scattered pearls in the quad. We were together, being who we wanted to be.

If Jamie wanted to wear a dress when we went out, he did. If I felt like kissing him in a crowded place, I did. Because no one was going to put the real Caden back in the box he’d escaped from. The box he’d been trying to break out of the whole time but couldn’t until the most amazing person in the world had come along and started unraveling the bow.

Jamie hadn’t even meant to release that Caden. He’d done nothing but be himself and love the person I really was. The person who, for a long time, only he could see. But even when I hid that Caden from everyone else, Jamie stayed right there. Waiting for me.

I thought my life was over the night I lost him, and I kept it all in the back of my mind as a reminder to never take anything for granted. A reminder to live life to the fullest like he always had, to love hard, and never assume tomorrow was promised. It reminded me to never give up, just like neither of us had given up back then, determined to get back to each other. Everything had brought us to where we were. I would never give up on him because I loved him. And I always would.

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