“I didn’t know who I was yet,” Jase said. “I’ve lived half my life in the closet, terrified to come out because of what people would think. I only rented the apartment in your building so I could drop out of sight for a while and get to know myself. I had no idea I was going to meet you and fall in love with you. It was the last thing I expected. I just thought I’d take some time off to learn how to be gay. And I couldn’t do it unless I dropped out of sight for a while and kept my identity hidden. I know it sounds lame. But for men like me, it’s not easy to openly admit we’re gay.”
“No one cares if you’re gay nowadays,” Luis said. “Stop making excuses.”
“Seriously,” Jase said, lowering his voice. “What fucking planet do you live on? The Planet of Celestial Hope and Goodness? I have two close female friends who have been a couple for more than twenty years. They have no idea I’m gay. At least, not yet they don’t. One is an employee of mine and the other is a schoolteacher about to retire. The schoolteacher took her partner to her retirement party this past June. This was a big thing for them, because it’s the first time they’ve ever gone out in public together, in a professional situation, as a gay couple. No one knew she was gay or that she had a partner all those years, and she was a teacher. Coming out would have been too risky.”
Luis sat back and folded his arms across his chest. He pouted and thought about what Jase had said. He’d been living such a carefree open lifestyle in Manhattan it hadn’t occurred to him there were still thousands of other gay people in America who didn’t have the luxury of being as openly gay as he’d always been. For some gays, not coming out of the closet merely meant they were missing out on a lot of fun and great sex. For others, not coming out of the closet meant they were protecting their livelihoods, their families, and their jobs. Luis, like most of his other vapid, clueless friends, had never had anything to lose by being openly gay.
“But I don’t want to live my life hiding anymore,” Jase said. “I love you and I want to be with you.”
“Stop telling me you love me,” Luis said. “I don’t want to be loved by you or anyone else for that matter. I want something stable in my life, not love.” Then he leaned forward and tapped the driver on the shoulder. “Please take me to LaGuardia,” he said.
“LaGuardia?” Jase asked.
“I don’t care if Melvin dumped me,” Luis said. “I have a free ticket to Vancouver and I’m going to use it. I’m getting out of this town and I’m starting over. New York has a way of knocking people down and smashing them, and I’m not going to let it happen to me. The minute I get to Vancouver, I’m going to find a list of the richest men in town and I’m going after them one by one. This time I’ll get one who’ll appreciates me. And I’ll do whatever I have to do to get him, too.”
“Luis,” Jase said, “I’m not going to let you do this.”
Luis laughed. “You don’t have anything to say about it. It’s not your concern.” He laughed in Jase’s face.
Jase rubbed his jaw. “I’m in love with you. I’ve been in love with you since the first day I met you. And I have more money than anyone in Vancouver.”
“But you lied to me,” Luis said. “You can’t be trusted. And, just so you know, I’m not interested in your money. There are plenty of nice men out there with money.” For the first time in his life, money didn’t matter to him. He’d rather be poor than have someone make a fool out of him twice. “At least I knew where I stood with Melvin and the others. With you, there’s no telling what to think.”
“I love you,” Jase said. His voice grew deeper and his eyebrows furrowed.
“Who cares?” Luis smiled and adjusted his position.
“I care,” Jase said. “And I want you to be with me. I want to share my life with you. Even though we can’t get married legally, I want to live with you as if we were a married couple.”
Part of him desperately wanted to believe Jase was telling the truth. The love Jase was talking about had been the thing Luis had loved most about Elena’s blog. For a second, he even felt safe and warm.
But Luis wasn’t going to let anyone stomp him into the ground again. He was tired of setting himself up, only to be disappointed in the end. So he took a quick breath and looked Jase in the eye. “I don’t believe in happy endings,” he said. “Maybe there’s a reason why gays can’t legally get married, and that’s because they aren’t set up to spend the rest of their lives with one person. They try hard, but they never last for more than a few years at the most. I read an article about it in Time magazine once. It was written by a respected gay journalist, too.”
Jase waved his arm. “You don’t believe that and you know it. And any gay journalist who’d write something as stupid as that in Time deserves a good old-fashioned kick in the ass, and then he deserves to be fired on the spot.”
Luis’s eyebrows shot up and he tapped the driver on the shoulder. He wasn’t fooling around and he was determined to prove this to Jase. “Pull over,” he said. “Stop the car.”
When the driver pulled over, Luis reached across Jase’s lap and opened the back door.
The rain was coming down in heavy sheets by then. It pounded the roof and slid down the windows. The car had stopped in front of an alley between two brick buildings. The dark alley was strewn with discarded boxes and trash cans. Luis grabbed his little dog and said, “We’ll show him how tough we are, dog. This looks like a good place for you to start all over again.
You’ll be just fine.” Then he pushed the dog out of the car and into the gutter. For a moment, his heart sank. The poor little hairless Chinese Crested ran between two trash cans and cowered. His thin body trembled with fear and the shaggy mop of blond hair on his head became drenched with rain.
Luis bit his bottom lip and slammed the door shut. He sat back in his seat and said, “Let’s go. I don’t want to miss my plane.” His voice was even but his hands felt shaky.
When the car pulled away, Jase didn’t speak. His face tightened and he clenched his fists on his lap. And at the end of the next city block, he leaned forward and said, “Driver, pull over here. I’m getting out.”
When the car pulled over, Jase got out. Before he slammed the door, he bent down and said, “Go ahead, run to Vancouver. I know what it’s like to run. I ran from who I was all my life, but I just kept running into myself again in the end. And that’s what you’re going to do, trust me.