It was mid Monday morning, which meant that Grind was largely empty. Hale sat at one of the tables, swirling a stir stick lazily through his coffee, while Michael was at the counter trying to sweet-talk Doris into bringing out the good honey. Their conversation was lost to Hale, but he was pretty sure he saw some tip money enter the tip jar, and suddenly the honey appeared. Michael had switched to tea recently, and allegedly, tea without honey was unpalatable. Hale wouldn’t know. Tea wasn’t really his thing.

“Got it,” Michael said when he returned with his mug.

“How much did it cost you?” Hale asked with a smirk.

“The details are unimportant. What’s important is that it’s done, and I can finally drink something without it tasting like a dirty pile of leaves on a hot fall day.”

“Why drink something if you don’t like it?” Hale asked. “At least coffee tastes good.”

“No it doesn’t. You sweeten the shit out of yours. And adding cream?”

Hale snorted. “Okay. Fine. I get your point. But I’m still not sure I understand.”

“It’s supposed to be better for me. I’ve been talking with my addiction therapist and she’s recommended that I try to make other small changes in my life so that I don’t fall back into habits. I’m trying my best to make sure that I’m forming new associations and avoiding troubled places. It’s hard to do that living in a town as small as Hidden Creek. There’s only so many places you can go, you know? Trying to dodge them all is almost impossible. I’ve been thinking about moving.”

“Moving?” Hale blinked. “Really?”

“It’s been on my mind. I haven’t made a decision one way or the other. I keep thinking about signing up for another tour with the Navy, but I’m not sure if that would be good for me or not. I used to do a lot of gambling there, and… well, I guess I’m afraid of falling back into old habits again. That’s not something I want to do.”

“I’m not going to pretend I know the first thing about how easy it is to get involved in something like that, but… you do what’s best for you. If that means finding a job somewhere else and relocating, I’m sure all of us would understand. We all only want what’s best for you.”

“And I want what’s best for me, too—and what’s best for you guys. I know that it hasn’t been easy dealing with me since it really got black. My therapist has been helping me see just how much my behavior changed, and how I was hurting the ones I loved without realizing it. It’s… pretty sickening.” Michael sighed. “I don’t think I can ever say sorry enough for all the shit I put you through. I’m so grateful that you’re still here waiting for me, even after I made it clear that my priorities lay elsewhere. I won’t be making the same mistake again. Family comes first.”

“I believe in you,” Hale said. He sipped at his coffee, then set it down again. “I’m… well, I guess I’ve been a little distant, too.”

“No, you haven’t. What do you mean?”

“Over the last few weeks, with the Austin stuff…” Hale looked over Michael’s shoulder, focusing on an arbitrary point on the wall. “I’m really starting to fall for him, but it’s… I mean, it’s what I’ve wanted since high school, but I’m afraid. I’m afraid that he’s going to wake up one day and remember that he likes women more than he likes me. I’m worried that some tense moment when we’re out together in public will trigger him, and he’ll decide I’m not worth the emotional pitfalls. And I guess, when it comes down to it, that I’m afraid that things will unravel, and my teenage dream will come to an end. I never want to wake up, but I’m having a hard time believing that there’s a silver lining at the end of all of this. I wish that I could have more confidence, but I’ve been told all my life that I’m sinful and an abomination and that I deserve to be alone if I don’t want to walk the ‘right’ path that I guess I’m afraid I will be alone.”

“That’s stupid.”

“But it’s what I feel.” Hale pushed his coffee away and slumped down on the table, defeated. Most of the time, he was able to hold his head high and shrug off the bigoted comments that came his way, but this was his first time in an actual relationship, and it was with someone he cared about deeply. “I don’t know how to get over it.”

“Have you talked to Austin about it?”

“I don’t want him to know that I think he’s going to leave me,” Hale said softly. He glanced up at Michael from where he was slumped. “That’s kind of a shitty thing to say to someone. ‘So, I’ve been having these feelings like you’re going to leave me. How about you tell me how pretty I am, and how much you want to bone me, and how you’ll never reach your breaking point and abandon me?’ That’s so shallow and gross. I don’t want to put any pressure on Austin at all, and I don’t want him to think I don’t have confidence in him—I do, but these thoughts are invasive and I don’t know what to do about them.”

“No lying on the tables!” Doris squawked from behind the counter.

Hale jumped up and shook his head. “Sorry.”

She went back to doing whatever she was doing, leaving Hale upright. He looked over Michael’s face, trying to figure out what was going on inside his head, but he found himself clueless. There was too much to process, and he couldn’t begin to guess where Michael was starting from.

“Well,” Michael said after a long pause. “I can see your reasoning behind that. It’s a valid concern. But in any relationship, you have to be honest not only with yourself, but with the other person. I think that Austin would be glad to hear your concerns and talk them over with you. What you’re saying isn’t exactly accusatory… why don’t you let him put your fears to rest?”

Hale knew that it was the right thing to do. He nodded, but courage to follow it through was harder to come by.

“Austin has been working hard on making sure that he’s healthy for you. I think that it’s important that you work on making sure your relationship with him is healthy in exchange,” Michael said. “You know that it still weirds me out a little that you two are together, but I can see how happy you are with him, Hale. And I can see how happy he is with you, too. You have no idea how much of a different man he is since he’s met you compared to the one I knew when we were in the Navy together. I’d have to be blind not to see it. The change in his attitude is so drastic—for the better, of course—that if he cut his hair and changed his name, I never would have figured out that he was the same guy.”

“You really think he’s that happy?” Hale blushed. He looked down into his coffee shyly. “I… I thought I noticed that he was laughing and smiling a lot more than when I first met him, but we’ve only been together a really short time, so I wasn’t sure if it was true, or if I was just imagining things.”

“You’re not imagining anything. It’s true.”

It was a small comfort, but Hale took it. His smile grew. “I… I’ve never had a relationship before. You were away for a while, and we were out of touch, but it’s… I’ve been with a few guys in a non-serious way, but this… this feels a lot more like commitment, and I don’t want to mess it up. I don’t want it to be fake. I feel like I’ve got my heart invested in this, and I’ve wanted Austin for such a long time that I… if he left, I don’t know what I’d do.”

“You’re going to be fine, twerp.” Michael chuckled. “I get the feeling that Austin isn’t looking to give up on you. Has he told you about what he went through in his last relationship?”

“He, um, mentioned an Eleanor,” Hale frowned. The conversation felt like it had happened a long time ago, and he couldn’t recall detail in the way he wanted to. “I don’t remember what he said about her, if he said anything at all.”

“Shortly after he joined the Navy, he married this girl he just must—Eleanor. I’d told him not to do it, because she was the type who seemed to prey on uniforms like us. But he told me that he was in love, and that he was going to go for it, and so he did… and after he was hurt in the crash, she left him. The doctors said he might never regain functionality on one side of his body, and she didn’t even let a day go by before she served him divorce papers. She took half of everything he had and split. It was hard on him. He’d been loyal to her, and she stabbed him in the back.”

Hale’s heart broke. “Are you serious?”

“Dead serious. I found out through the grapevine, but… I kind of knew that it was going to happen. It was the kind of person she was, and we all knew it. The only one who didn’t see it was him.”

“How is that supposed to make me feel better?” Hale asked, aghast.

Michael chuckled. “Well, maybe it won’t… but the way I see it, even if something is obviously bad for him, Austin doesn’t give up on it. He’s tenacious, and he wants to make everything in his life work—even his mistakes. Now that he has someone like you? Someone’s who’s actually good for him, and who makes him smile all the damned time? You don’t have anything to worry about, Hale. Even if he’s hurting, and even if you fight, he’s not going to give up on you. He’s going to love you for the rest of his life if you let him do it.”

Hale let a breath out from between his teeth. “You think he loves me?”

“I know that he loves you. The way he acts proves it.”

The blush burned in Hale’s cheeks hotter than ever. “I think I love him, too.”

“Then you should tell him,” Michael suggested. “Get these feelings off your chest. Let him know everything you feel, and let him prove to you what a good man he is. He’s good for you, Hale, but you’re good for him, too. Don’t let this hold you back or cloud your thoughts anymore.”

Hale nodded. He glanced up at Michael, grinning. “You know, for someone who’s been such a dick to me the last handful of years, you’re certainly changing your tune.”

“Love does crazy things to people,” Michael replied with a smile. “I’m learning to love myself better, and it shows.”

“It does. And… I’m happy for you.” Hale reached out and squeezed his hand. “After I finish drinking this coffee, I’m going to go find him.”

“I hoped you would.” Michael lifted his mug of tea. “To love.”

“To love,” Hale replied. He lifted his coffee, and they clinked glasses.

He’d found hope that his teenage dream would never end.