Larkin considered, for precisely three seconds, set his fork down, then reached across the table. He took Doyle’s hand in his own, gave it a firm squeeze, then let go.
“You know you’ve never told me how you and Noah met?”
Larkin paused midgrab of his utensil. “Why do you want to know.”
Doyle shrugged. “He was a huge part of your life. And for a long time.”
“Seven years.”
“Right. I just don’t want you thinking you can’t acknowledge that around me.”
Larkin said, “Monday, May 6, 2013. There had been an uptick in petty thefts at Union Square, enough that an increase of police presence was requested. My partner and I were put on the beat. A woman was robbed as she walked through the Greenmarket that evening, and while I didn’t see the act itself, I did see a man run down the subway stairs at the south end of the park, holding an orange and pink Kate Spade tote. I’m certainly not going to judge a man who enjoys adding a pop of color to his wardrobe,” Larkin continued, briefly putting a hand to his chest, “but it wasn’t his style. I ran after him, jumped the turnstile, and went down the stairs to the Uptown 6. The train was experiencing signal problems.”
“Of course it was.”
Larkin grunted in acknowledgment. “The platform was shoulder-to-shoulder. I couldn’t push my way through fast enough. And there was Noah, holding a bag of apples he’d just purchased at the market. I grabbed one—much to his protest—and threw it into the back of the suspect’s head. I got the purse back.”
“And a date.”
“Yes. I told him I wanted to buy him a new apple.”
“Smooth.”
“It worked.”
“You really should try out for the department’s baseball team.”
Larkin smiled lopsidedly and stabbed at the chicken and lettuce on his plate.
Doyle asked quietly, “It didn’t bother you to talk about that, did it?”
Larkin shook his head. “It’s a good memory,” he answered simply.
They finished their lunches not long after and stepped back into the afternoon heat and blazing June sun. Doyle put on his sunglasses and fished a lemon candy from his suit coat pocket.
Larkin said, unprompted, “Declarations of—”
Love.
“—adoration have never been my strong suit.”
Doyle lowered the hard candy from his lips. “That’s okay.”
“No. Not really. The disconnect I feel with established love languages has always been a problem. I don’t want to go through that anymore. I don’t want the man who I deeply care for to not know how I feel. I don’t want you to have toassume.” Larkin frowned, studying the busy foot traffic and its synchronized to-and-fro before the front door of the diner—all of these strangers lost in a fleeting moment of their own lives, each a master of words, touch, gifts, service, or time, and Larkin stood among them like a rocky outcropping, breaking wave after perfect wave until one day he’d erode and be but someone else’s memory.
And then, just like that, it was as if Larkin had found the missing puzzle piece he’d spent the last eighteen years searching for.
“I understand, by their very nature, that associations are difficult for you to talk about. But I want you to know that they don’t scare me.”
Doyle hadn’t been asking Larkin to learn a foreign language on his behalf. He’d been asking Larkin to love him in the only way that made sense for him.
Remembrance is the greatest act of love there is.
“I know it’s safer for you, Evie, keeping a certain amount of emotional distance—”
Larkin grabbed Doyle’s hand and interrupted. “I never explained this to you, but I access memories like a Rolodex, spinning to the exact reference, where it’s like a stream of unending consciousness before another compulsion turns the Rolodex again. Most of the time, I hate it. I fucking hate it. But….” The street corner, the block, the entire city, seemed to suddenlyfreezearound them, like a jammed film projector, the people lurching, as if the scene were caught between frames. Larkin closed his eyes. He drew his thumb back and forth across Doyle’s knuckles. “You touch my arm with only fingertips, and make the hairs stand straight up, and my heart lurches like it’s being resuscitated with an electrical shock. And you’re so quiet and so careful not to wake me, but it still does every time, and I don’t want you to stop because I’ve never felt so safe being touched, but I can’t ever seem to verbalize, before you get up and go on your jog, that there’s nothing more I want than for you to stay in bed just one more minute.” Larkin opened his eyes.
Doyle had pulled back his sunglasses to rest atop his head—pyrite eyes far too bright—and he stared at Larkin like there was no one,absolutely no one, he’d rather be in love with.
