Nick only made it as far as the Californian border before he was pulling the junker to the shoulder of the road and rubbing furious palms into his eyes.

It was quiet in the junker. Just the sound of his heavy, uneven breathing as he raggedly inhaled and shakily exhaled, again and again and again, a constant reminder that despite the crushing weight on his entire body, he was very much alive and very much okay.

He didn’t feel okay. He didn’t feel alive at all.

The night fell over him in darkness. He felt suffocated, as if he was underneath the ocean waves and drowning in the water. It was the same feeling he’d had the other night on top of the cliffs, multiplied by the empty sky and flat, dark surrounding. He was wading underneath the water with stones in his pockets and he didn’t want to fling them out. He wanted to slink back to Kansas and lick his wounds and remind himself not to expect things to be bigger and better than reality.

A future in California, a future with Joel, it had looked so—promising and brilliant, bigger than life sometimes. His lips still burned with the bruises that had been kissed into them. His fingers still itched. His ears kept hearing the moans and whines of pleasure again and again, teasing him, reminding him that he would never hear them again.

He would go back to Kansas and settle for someone that was nice and kind and wanted him, but maybe not all the way, and he would love them back, but maybe not all the way. He would go back to a life that he loved but that filled him with all-encompassing loneliness most days.

He would go back and try his damndest every day to forget that he had looked for somewhere where he belonged, forget that he found it, forget that they didn’t want him anyway.

The sound of the blinker broke his wallowing and he slowly pulled back onto the main road until he found an exit that promised a motel. He checked in without really paying attention, only giving the woman there the briefest of glances.

Nick settled into his room and took a shower that he could barely remember by the time he crawled into bed. He felt exhausted. His whole body ached as if he’d been running for days. Maybe he had been, in a way.

He stared at the darkness of the ceiling. There was a bit of light streaming in through the too-thin curtains, the vacancy sign illuminating the cramped motel room. Nick stared until his eyes burned then blinked, staringagain.

He fell asleep like that, staring at the wall and feeling the ocean coming down all around him, the only other thing in the room his aching, pounding heart that wasn’t so much beating as it was breaking. He fell asleep and dreamed of drowning.

The next day started the same as the one before it ended.

Nick didn’t know what to do with this much guilt in his chest. He had always been a kind man. He liked his job and his friends and his mom and he didn’t have enough to complain about to become bitter, the way other men sometimes did. He didn’t mind his shortcomings and he didn’t consider himself a failure.

He felt like a failure now.

His heart felt like a bruise he couldn’t help but keep poking.

He dressed methodically and texted his mom that he was still alive. He didn’t open any of the messages in his group chat. The idea of reading the teasing that was surely in there, because Peter surely told everyone about their talk, sent sharp stabs of pain through his head. It would definitely give him a migraine to deal with. He would just wait.

After all, he would be home soon enough.

Nick froze with his bag in his hand, the backseat to the junker wide open as he was about to throw his things into it and leave.

Was this what he was going to do? Was he going to run back to Kansas with his tail between his legs, his ego bruised? Without trying—really trying, without apologizing, without saying goodbye?

Without saying goodbye to Janie?

“Oh, hell nah,” Nick muttered to himself, throwing his bag and slamming the door shut. He grabbed his cellphone out of his pocket and for once, it was fully charged.

He was a few hours drive away from Mendocino and backtracking would be a little embarrassing, but he didn’t have to tell anyone about that.

He texted quickly and furiously.

Suck it up, Joel. I’m coming back tonight. I want to say goodbye to Janie before I go back to Kansas. I’ll leave you alone.

He reread the message and experienced low levels of guilt. Technically, he was the one who was out of line yesterday. The righteous fury he had today was odd and undeserved.

He shrugged. He hit send.

He climbed in the car and, fueled with determination, started his way back towards Mendocino. He stopped for gas and breakfast and then set the radio to a low level and practiced what he’d say to Janie and Joel.

Nick wasn’t really sure what there was to say. He and Joel knew where they stood.

Potential sat between. Nick wasn’t sure what would have come of that but he knew himself. He knew that it didn’t make sense for him to feel the way he did, but that he did feel it. Nick had gone on a hundred dates in the past year and not one person held half as much interest for him as Joel did with a single wry look. It was potential that made their every furtive glance worth something, but it was something else that made their every touch so much more.

Nick had been on a hundred dates, met dozens of men that were smart and kind and interested and available and would have been perfect. He had met dozens of men that were handsome and sweet and wanted to start a family. He had even met a few that had families started.

But he had never met Joel before.

At Peter’s bachelor party, Nick couldn’t help but ask him how he knew. How was he so certain that this near stranger—and Nick nearly laughed at that now, because at least they had known each other a year—was the perfect man for him.

And Peter had just smiled. “It’s not something you can measure,” Peter had told him. “It’s not a recipe. It’s—calm in the eye of anything else. It’s that Drew walks in a room, and I don’t need to be anywhere else. I’m there, I’m me, when he’s there.” Peter had smiled dreamily. Nick had laughed at him.

He hadn’t gotten it, not then. How could Peter ever not be himself? Not be there?

Nick understood now, with perfect clarity. It wasn’t that he wasn’t himself. It was that with Joel around, and with Janie near them, with a small cut out of a family that Nick fit so snuggly into, there wasn’t room for anything else. Nick never considered not being himself, never consider hiding parts of him away or cleaning up the edges. He was too busy already being there.

He got it now.

His heart ached to think that Joel still didn’t. Or maybe he did—maybe he’d had that with Janie’s mom. But Joel didn’t feel like that around Nick and it stung to consider.

The Californian landscape passed him by. He could barely see it. His body vibrated the closer and closer he got to Mendocino.

Considering he had been there last night, considering the anger that Joel had at him when he yelled at him to leave, to get out, Nick didn’t think it was fair for his body to be so excited at the prospect of being closer to them.

But he couldn’t help it. Even as half of him was still a throbbing, guilty mess that was horrified at the idea of saying goodbye to them, the other half couldn’t wait to see them again.

He wanted to know if Janie passed her chemistry test andwhat she thought of the cake. He wanted to apologize to Joel. He wanted Joel to kiss him again.

He wanted so badly, with so much of himself, that it was a miracle any of his energy was left to driving safely. But somehow, he managed, and within a few hours he was pulling into Mendocino.

Nick glanced at the dashboard clock and clicked his tongue. Only four.

He would wait. Janie might not even be home from school yet. He didn’t want to get there only to have Joel still be furious and not even let him say goodbye to her. He hadn’t replied to Nick’s curt text. The likelihood of getting thrown out on his ass was high, but lower if Janie was there.

He drove around the town pointlessly, winding through the hills and valleys, driving along the coast. It was a beautiful, scenic drive and he drank it all in. This would be the last time he’d be in Mendocino. He ached a little with homesickness for a place that hadn’t been and never would be his home. He stopped at one of the large, gravelly shoulders and parked the junker. He snapped photos to show his mom and a selfie of himself flipping off the camera to show his friends. He hoped if he picked up enough souvenirs on the drive back, they wouldn’t bust him too hard for not sharing too many details.

He didn’t want to relive this heartache when he was back in Kansas.

Nick stared out over the edge of the cliff. The waves were bigger, messier tonight.

He looked out at the water. Would Kansas look the same as it had when he left? Would the fields and golden horizons look like home, or like brown, rolling reminders of the things he left behind him? He wondered if he could ever love home the way he used to, knowing what he did now about other homes that were too far away to ever be his.

It was there, staring at the crashing, rolling waves, the ocean an unforgiving current, when it came to him.

Fuck it, Nick thought. The thought surprised him but then, again, firmer, fuck it!

He knew that Joel was a hard man. He had walls built up and then walls to protect those walls and then more walls, just for decoration. He was unrelenting and hard and he was principled about things that didn’t matter. He knew that Joel had a daughter and that even though he adored her, that complicated things. He knew that it hadn’t been a week since they met.

But Nick wasn’t asking for marriage.

He was asking for the damn truth.

And the truth was, Nick knew himself. He always had. He knew what he wanted. And he was damn sure that if Joel was able to get over himself long enough to see it, he would want the exact same thing.

He wanted a chance. Just one—just one chance to see that their potential, that the bright, brilliant, crashing thing between them wasn’t a singular wave—it was the whole goddamn ocean.

He wanted to belong. And with Joel and with Janie, Nick knew he did. There was a space in their lives shaped like him and Nick was not going to waste it because he happened to want it with a man who was too stubborn to just need one push.

He jumped back into the junker and drove too fast, winding through the now familiar streets of Mendocino. He pulled the car to a startling stop in the driveway of the Cetokavich’s.

Nick took a deep breath.

Well, here goes nothing.