Chapter Text
Adam graduates summa cum laude on a cloudy day in early May. He’s not really expecting Declan but he’s not really surprised when he does show, standing in the back. Adam only notices him when he’s on the stage receiving his diploma; he shakes hands, looks out in the audience, and finds Declan immediately. He doesn’t know why.
They haven’t spoken since Adam and Lucy broke up—since Declan paid for a flight and Adam made his way down to D.C. Back then Adam had wanted desperately to stay, but he knew that he didn’t belong there, so he left in just a few days.
Declan gets a hotel room, and it’s quiet when they have sex, neither of them really looking at the other. All of Adam’s college things are left in the corner of the room; he’s found an apartment in D.C., and he’ll stay there until he starts law school in the fall. When the sex is over Adam falls asleep on the bed, and in the morning Declan’s already gone.
In July Adam drives down to Henrietta again for the Fourth, and he hopes to see Declan. It’s raining, the humidity lessened but still stifling, and Adam doesn’t have an umbrella, so he sits by the grave in the wet dirt and lets everything get soaked.
He’s alone, and he says, to the grave, “It’s been five years without you. And I don’t know—I hate to think that I’ve gotten used to missing you but it’s been so long and I’m starting to get used to the gaps in my life where you used to be. I graduated college a month ago, Ronan. We never even graduated high school. I don’t—I’m not the same person I was. And you’re still you.”
The rain slows a bit, and Adam stays dripping by the grave, dirt staining his jeans. He says, after a while, “I don’t want to stop missing you. I—missing you hurts so much that it was the only thing I felt. And it hurt, but it was better than anything else because it was you. I don’t know how to live without the grief.”
He turns when he hears shuffling behind him, and sees Declan making his way up to the grave. He’s holding an umbrella, simple and black, and when he gets to the grave he holds it over both himself and Adam without a word.
Adam says, “I’ll go,” and Declan, voice toneless, says, “Don’t,” because they play this game every time they see each other, a game of chicken of who will admit they’re starving first.
They don’t sit like that for a long time; it’s only been about ten minutes when Declan turns around and asks, “You coming?”
“If you want,” Adam says, standing. His jeans are pretty much soaked through at this point. He adds, “I’m heading back to D.C. now. If you’re not busy.”
“Not busy at all,” Declan says. “I have an extra pair of pants in my car if you want.”
“Really?”
“I thought I might see you, and I also thought you might not have an umbrella.”
Adam doesn’t say anything about how grateful he is, but he follows Declan to the car and strips down to his wet boxers right next to the BMW, aware of how Declan’s eyes follow his every move. The rain has started up again, and Declan holds the umbrella over Adam as he slips on the lent sweatpants. He didn’t even know Declan owned sweats.
He spends most of the drive back to D.C. thinking about Ronan, about what he would look like now, if his face would be leaner the same way Declan’s is, if he would have grown out his hair. Declan follows him all the way to the apartment that Adam’s rented, a black BMW behind him the entire way from Henrietta.
In the apartment Declan presses Adam against the front door and runs his hands over the half-dried t-shirt and sweats, says, quietly, “Why don’t you take these off?” and Adam does.
The sex is brief, distant, aloof. When it’s over Adam lets Declan shower first even though the hot water only runs for so long, waits in bed mostly naked and sweaty, still feeling the rain water on his skin. Declan comes out of the shower, lays down next to Adam, and strokes his hair without a word, and Adam falls asleep to it.
He dreams of burning BMWs and graves made damp with rain, of Virginia dirt beneath him over and over and over again. At some point the dream shifts to the trailer and to his father, a different kind of dirt, mud in front of wood steps, ringing in his ear. When he wakes he swears he can hear something in his bad ear but it goes as soon as it’s come.
The bed is empty, but he hears noises in the kitchen, so he slips out of the sheets and pads out to the kitchen. It’s early, too early, two or three, and it’s dark outside of the apartment. Adam silently watches Declan pour himself a glass of water and drink it in the dim light. Outside something shifts in the darkness; Adam meets Declan’s eyes in the reflection and then looks away. It’s not guilt, not really, but it’s something close.
Declan rubs at his temple, the edges of his fingers catching in dark curls. This early in the morning it hasn’t been styled, and Adam likes the looseness of it. It’s not messy, because Declan Lynch is never anything but polished, but it still feels more human than what Adam’s used to seeing Declan as, even after all this time.
“Are you going to leave?” Adam asks, a little pointed, but not really, because he can’t stand to be alone.
“I’m done playing this game, Parrish,” he says, and Adam doesn’t really know what that means. Neither of them speak for a minute, and Adam can’t look into Declan’s eyes, can’t meet the blueness of them that reminds him so much of Ronan.
Adam opens his mouth, closes it again, finally says, “You can stay.” The admittance comes like a confession, and Adam thinks of priests behind their screens and wonders what Declan would say if they were actually able to tell each other the things they needed to say.
Declan says, “Okay,” because there’s nothing left for either of them to say. Adam wants to kiss Declan, but he doesn’t. He can’t read Declan’s face, but he thinks his expression is almost something affectionate, but it disappears quickly, a passing shadow.
& & &
A few weeks later Adam drives back to Henrietta just to visit Fox Way. He considers calling Blue to ask but he thinks she’s probably long gone from the town, knows that she’d always wanted to leave Virginia. He hasn’t talked to her in a long time. It was a little sour between them, after Ronan’s death, when he realized that she’d wanted Gansey the entire time; they still haven’t really reconciled that. He regrets it but he’s too afraid to reach out.
The house looks the same as it did four years ago, if a little more worn-down, but the houses around it have fallen into disrepair. Adam talks to Blue here and there, a phone call every once and a while, but he’s never told her about Declan.
He does go and knock, and the door’s opened by a girl he’s never seen before, young, probably middle school age, and he’s surprised by how much she looks like the rest of Blue’s family. She says, “Can I help you?” and Adam says, “Can I come in?”
“You want a reading?” she asks.
“No,” he says.
“No solicitors,” she tells him, pointing at a sign. “And no evangelicals, either.”
“I’m not either of those,” he says, and then he sees Maura, who’s graying, and she sees him too, pauses, and then comes to him and wraps him in her arms.
“Hello, Adam,” she says, and Adam is struck by how much shorter she is than him, by how much smaller she feels. He’d always loved Maura, had always seen her as a woman who could do anything, and looking at her he knew she was that same person, but holding her he could start to feel the age, the thinness of her skin and the wrinkles in her face.
The girl has disappeared; Adam goes into the house and sits on a couch that is still familiar after all this time, if more threadbare. Calla comes out of the kitchen, Persephone floating down the stairs, as ethereal as always, and Adam hates that they look older, hates that things are different from how they used to be.
Maura asks how he is, and he tells her about graduating, about law school. Calla’s frowning in the corner; upstairs, people are walking around, the floorboards creaking. The house is humid, and with the half-dim lights scattered around the room it feels like late evening, and Adam is tired, he’s always been tired.
He says, “Is Blue around?” and Maura, with a sort of mournful half-smile, says, “She moved out a year and a half ago. You haven’t spoken?”
“We have,” Adam says, which is mostly a lie, but their calls are short and don’t say much. “Where is she now?”
“Out west,” Maura says, and Calla stands up, mutters something, and then disappears back into the kitchen. “She says she doesn’t miss it here much, but of course we miss her.”
“Yeah,” Adam says, but he doesn’t know what else to say, and being in this house reminds him too much of Ronan and too much of his senior year and too much of everything that he can’t go back to. He adds, “I’m sorry I haven’t come by.”
He’s realizing, in this house, that he is so tired, tired of everything, and he doesn’t know how he’s gotten here and how he’s going to leave and how he’s going to keep living after everything. He says, “I think I’m lost,” and Maura nods solemnly and doesn’t say anything.
After a minute Maura says, “Nobody’s lost, but nobody really knows where they’re going. Your life isn’t how you had wanted it to be, but it’s how you had always thought it should be, and you can’t stand it. Ask yourself what you want.”
“I don’t know,” Adam says, which is a lie, but the things he wants are things that he will never, ever be able to have. He wants Gansey back, he wants Blue back, he wants Ronan back and he doesn’t ever want to let go of any of them. Instead of saying that he says, “This is the life I had wanted. I just—I still don’t think I belong.”
Maura says, “Are you sure it’s what you wanted?”
“Yes,” Adam replies, but they all know it’s a lie.
“I wish you the best, Adam,” Persephone says, quietly, and Adam thinks he might start crying. The house is so similar to how it used to be but everything is older, more worn, and Adam knows that if he looked in a mirror he’d see the same age in his own face.
The drive back is silent except for the rumbling in the car, various parts that are slowly falling apart. Adam wishes he was rich enough to afford a better car. He thinks he might not ever come back to Fox Way, thinks that if it wasn’t for Ronan he wouldn’t have come back to Henrietta ever.
Adam texts Blue when he gets back home, asks how she’s doing, but he doesn’t get a reply. He turns off his phone and goes to bed early, takes some medication so that he won’t dream. It’s for the best—he’s haunted by the past in every waking moment, doesn’t see the need to watch it play over and over again as he sleeps.
& & &
Adam meets Nora through a mutual friend right before winter break starts, and their first date is right after finals. She’s funny, with gold-rimmed glasses and short dark hair that always falls into her face. He watches his bank account drop from their dates and surprisingly doesn’t resent her for it. She makes him laugh, and Adam likes that. He doesn’t take her home on any of the first few dates, thinking maybe this is something worth keeping, even if everything he’s ever had has crumbled apart in his hands.
He tells Declan about her because he wants to, because it’s only been a month and he thinks he loves her. All Declan says is, “I’m happy for you.” They’re in Adam’s apartment, haven’t showered after the sex yet, but Adam doesn’t mind. The window is cracked even though it’s early January, and Adam watches the window instead of Declan because it’s safer.
“That’s it?”
“What else do you want me to say?”
“I don’t know,” Adam says, which is true.
“Are you ending this?” Declan says, gesturing at their two half-undressed bodies, sweaty and sensitive from twenty minutes ago.
“Yes. No. Maybe. I don’t know. Should we?” Adam says.
“Will you stick with it if we do?” Declan asks, as if it’s not both of them addicted to each other, as if they’re not two cars permanently crashing into each other.
“Yes. No. I don’t know.”
“Make up your mind, for God’s sake,” Declan says.
Adam says, because there’s nothing else to say, “I miss kissing you.”
“You ended it before,” Declan replies, like Adam hadn’t said anything at all.
“That was three years ago. We haven’t kissed since then.”
“Maybe it’s for the best.”
“You think?” Adam says, genuinely asking.
Declan doesn’t say anything to that. The summer heat slips in through cracks in the windows and makes Adam sweat, and he tells himself that it’s only because of the weather and not because of Declan.
“I don’t know,” Declan says, which Adam knows is true. It’s the only thing keeping the two of them from thinking this is something real; if they don’t kiss, it’s like they’re not together, as if the distance between their mouths says anything about the distance between the rest of them.
Adam leaves shortly after that without much of a goodbye. He misses Declan when he’s not with him but when they’re face-to-face Adam is reminded too much of what Ronan could have been, and it kills him.
He goes on another date with Nora that night, leaves from the townhouse right to see her, listens to her stories about her family and her siblings. She lives in D.C., too, works part-time at a different firm. She wants to do patent law; Adam’s more on the side of politics, but they have enough to talk about.
Adam doesn’t tell her about his family, other than the fact that his father has passed. When she tries to be sympathetic he just says that it’s not much of a loss, and she doesn’t say much more after that. He thinks she gets the implication, but he doesn’t say anything else about it.
They don’t go back to his place, or back to hers, when the date’s over—Adam wishes her a kind goodbye and then they leave their separate ways. Adam doesn’t consider himself someone who sleeps around, but he’s been on a streak of one-night stands over the past few months, and he’d like to change that with Nora.
She calls him the day after their date, says, “I really enjoyed that, Parrish,” and he smiles before realizing that she can’t see that over the phone.
Adam says, “Well, I really liked that too,” and a tiny bit of his Virginia accent slips out, just the smallest amount, and if she notices she doesn’t say anything, but Adam’s beating himself up over it for hours after. He’s always so desperately careful about it.
“We should do it again sometime,” she says, and Adam knows she’s asking him out on another date, but he still doesn’t say anything for a long minute. She adds, “Only if you want.”
“Of course I do,” he says, because he does, and yet he’s thinking about Declan, about the kind of wanting that he only seems to get when he’s facing a Lynch brother.
“I’ll text you, then,” she says, and Adam could swear he hears a smile in her voice. He does like her; he just thinks, at the end of the day, he likes Declan better. He wants to kiss Declan more than he wants to kiss Nora. He doesn’t like that truth, but it’s true nonetheless, and he doesn’t know how to navigate this kind of relationship while still having the spinning record of Declan Lynch playing its sick tune in the background.
“Alright,” Adam says, and he hangs up, simple as that.
& & &
Adam and Declan’s meetings begin to feel more and more like an affair, meetings in parking lots or in restaurants too far away from everything to recognize anybody or in Adam’s apartment, silent, no eye contact. Adam’s making his way through his first year of law school, Declan’s making his way through his first year in the senator’s office.
He tells Adam in February that Aubrey’s moved in. Adam isn’t surprised; they’ve been dating three years and now both have relatively steady jobs. All he says is, “Okay,” and Declan doesn’t say anything else. They still don’t kiss.
Really, Adam would never admit he was gay. He’d never say that he loved a man. Adam thinks part of it is the Henrietta dirt and trailer park conservatism left in him and the way he’ll always be the little boy watching his father call other boys fags. It’s not even that he doesn’t like girls; he does. It’s just that some part of him is addicted to Declan.
He hooks up with a guy, once, a shady little thing in the back of his car. Adam spends most of it looking at a receipt that Declan left in here, an expensive dinner they attended together before fucking in the car. The other guy is older than him, with a buzzcut and eyes that don’t seem to have a color. Adam doesn’t ask him for a name and he doesn’t give his. When it’s over Adam kicks the guy out of the car and drives home.
The sting of not having Ronan fades more and more, and Adam misses the grief, the way it spiraled over his life so horribly, the way it made everything feel like nothing at all. He wants to tell Declan that he misses the grief almost more than he misses Ronan but he doesn’t know what the other will say.
Over spring break Adam flies down to Cancun with some trust-fund friends, kids that pay him to do their assignments so that they graduate. He drinks more than he usually would, calls Declan twenty times and hangs up the moment the phone is answered. In the back of his mind he thinks Ronan would have loved this, partying, and then a different voice reminds him that’s what Ronan might have loved in high school but he would have been older, he would have changed. Adam can’t reconcile the idea that Ronan would be different if he was alive now.
Adam goes to church on Easter, nothing crazy, just finds a church and slips in the back. He’s never been to any kind of service, has never wanted to. He looks around and wonders what Ronan saw in all of it, wonders if Ronan would have kept going to church, if it could have changed anything that happened. He doesn’t believe in God, never had, but he doesn’t think he ever could, not after the Fourth. His prayers haven’t worked once—no reason to believe they’ll start now.
After the service a woman comes up to him and says, “I haven’t seen you around, young man.”
“It’s my first time here,” Adam says, which isn’t a lie but isn’t the truth. Jesus stares down at him from the crucifix and Adam meets his eyes and asks him if the pain is anything as close to the way he felt when that car lit on fire.
She hands him a pamphlet, closes it in his hand gently, and says, “I hope to see you around more.” Adam doesn’t have the heart to tell her that he won’t come back.
He calls Declan once he’s made it to his car, asks, “Did Ronan like Easter?”
“He thought the Passion was fascinatingly gory. He didn’t really like the long Mass. We never did any of those egg things. Why?”
Adam just hangs up, like putting distance between them will somehow make everything better. Declan calls back. Adam doesn’t answer. The phone doesn’t ring again after that.
& & &
Adam barely makes it through the Fourth this year. He’d thought, maybe stupidly, maybe rationally, that it had been six years since Ronan had died, that he should be fine by now. Like the grief magically disappeared.
(The grief hasn’t disappeared; Adam finds it all over the place, when he looks at things and thinks of Ronan, of his eyes and his wicked smile and his rough, thick hands. He’s reminded of Ronan every second of every day, like a ghost, like a spirit. He can’t stand it—he loves it—he doesn’t know how to survive without Ronan, how he’s made it this far.)
It’s a mistake to go with Nora to see the fireworks, and he knows it, but she’s never been in D.C. before, insists that they see the fireworks, the big ones, even if it means sitting in a park a few miles away and watching them explode overhead. Adam agrees because, maybe irrationally, he loves her.
They’ve started dating, officially; she reminds him of Blue, a little, and of Ronan, and of Declan, and of all the people he loved and still loves. He thinks maybe that’s not a good thing, that she doesn’t deserve being a dozen different replacements in one, and yet he’s desperately grateful that she exists and loves him back.
His heart starts racing when a car backfires in the parking lot, and Nora notices but doesn’t say anything. Adam watches cars drive by in the distance, thinks of the Fourth so many years ago, and when the actual fireworks begin he only lasts a few minutes before standing and leaving for the car. Nora calls to him; he doesn’t answer her.
Adam waits in the car, heart racing, hands shaking. He thinks about calling Declan and doesn’t. He thinks about driving to Henrietta just to sob in front of a grave but he can’t leave Nora. He can’t close his eyes without seeing a car in flames in front of him.
Nora comes into the car with all of their things, and Adam jumps again when the door shuts.
“Are you okay?” she asks.
“I’m fine,” Adam says, even though he’s still trembling minutely. It’s funny; he hadn’t even reacted this way immediately after Ronan died.
“I’m sorry,” she says. “We shouldn’t have come.”
“I could have told you,” he says. “I thought it would be fine.”
“Do you want to talk about it?” she asks, kindly, and Adam doesn’t, but he wants to try.
He says, “I watched a friend die on the Fourth of July. The fireworks remind me of it. It’s not a pleasant memory.”
Nora’s quiet for a very long time. Finally she says, “I’m sorry, Adam.”
“We should go,” he says.
“If you’d like. I really am sorry.”
“I know,” Adam says, and he leans over the console to kiss her, a brief thing, but it’s sweet enough to make her smile.
“I didn’t know.”
“I didn’t tell you. It’s not your fault. I thought I could handle it. It’s been a few years.”
“College?”
“High school.”
“Ah,” Nora says, because there really isn’t any other response. “I had a friend die in high school, too. It was—” She goes quiet. Adam doesn’t pry. “I miss her more than anything. It’s strange when you have someone one day and then lose them the next.”
“I’m sorry,” Adam says. They’re out of the park, on the road, hitting traffic. He wants to take Nora back to his apartment, but he hasn’t cleaned and she’s never been and he doesn’t want to make a bad impression.
“It’s been years. I’ve gone to therapy. I’m not past it but it’s better than nothing.”
“I’ve tried to move on,” Adam says. “I guess—it was a violent death. I watched it happen. He died in front of me. I don’t know how to recover from that.”
The car is deathly quiet after that, and Adam is afraid that he said too much. This is the most he’s ever talked about Ronan to anyone except Declan. It’s terrifying, like opening up his chest and pulling out all of his organs for her. His knuckles are white on the steering wheel.
Finally Nora says, “I’m so sorry, Adam. I’m so sorry that happened to you.”
All Adam says is “Thanks,” and the car is silent after that. Adam drops Nora off at her apartment eventually, when he makes it through the D.C. holiday traffic, and then goes home. He thinks about calling Declan, and does this time, but the phone rings and rings and Adam doesn’t try a second time.
& & &
Declan is at least kind enough to tell him the news in-person, the two of them sitting over dinner, looking so different from the two teenagers that they had been when they had first met. It’s fucked because it’s the day after Ronan’s birthday; Adam already knows it’s fucked when they sit down at the table but he doesn’t know what it is until Declan says:
“I’m getting married in May.”
Adam laughs first, thinks it’s some kind of joke, and then he looks at Declan’s face and realizes it’s the truth, one of the only ones they tell each other, and then he can’t say anything at all.
The restaurant is filled with chatter but both of them are silent. Adam can’t read Declan’s expression, and after all this time he can read Declan better than anyone else but his face is shuttered now and Adam doesn’t know what to say.
“Congratulations,” Adam says, because he means it, because Aubrey is beautiful and kind and smart and he knows that she’ll make Declan happy. “When did you get engaged?”
“I proposed to her last week,” he says. Adam’s chest goes cold and then bitter, mostly because he’s possessive about Declan, because he feels like he should have been there, should have been the first phone call afterwards to hear the news. “Nothing public. I asked her if she’d marry me, and she said yes.”
“No ring?”
“She picked it out, I paid. It was her decision.”
“You have a picture?” Adam asks, and Declan pulls out his phone to show a photo, a little diamond with a few smaller ones down the band, silver and simple. He’s only met Aubrey a few times but it seems like something she would like, elegant and plain. “It’s beautiful.” When he says it he meets Declan’s eyes over their glasses and it makes Adam want to throw up all over the white tablecloth, spilling the contents of his stomach over the crystal and porcelain.
“I wanted to ask you to be my best man,” Declan says, swirling his glass. Adam watches the brown liquid spin around the crystal, takes a sip of his own so that he doesn’t have to think too hard about the conversation they’re having.
“Of course,” Adam says, because after everything he knows Declan better than anyone, even if they’re not really friends, even if they’re not really anything except two stray dogs circling each other constantly, occasionally meeting with teeth and claws.
“It’s going to be a small ceremony,” Declan adds. The glass is empty, both of them, and Adam looks out the window of the restaurant, studies the tinted streets of D.C. so that he doesn’t study Declan’s face. “Just a few friends. She doesn’t have much family coming either.”
“Do you love her?” Adam asks, because he can feel the grief in his veins, a smaller, weaker version of the kind he feels for Ronan every day, and it makes him angry, tone biting.
“Something like that,” Declan says, and it kills Adam. He remembers an old conversation about Aubrey being a liar, too, but he’d never learned more. It’s clear on Declan’s face that he loves her; Adam thinks he loves her for the wrong reasons, but he loves Declan for the wrong reasons, so he can’t even blame her.
“I’m happy for you,” Adam says, and he does mean it, of course he means it, but it ends up more biting than he intends, and Declan winces slightly.
“You always said it was nothing,” Declan says, voice gone quieter, and Adam thinks of all the nights in the townhouse, and the long, silent phone calls, and quick kisses in cars in the dark, and silent meetings in hotel rooms where they never spoke. “We always let it finish before it even started.”
“There’s no we,” Adam says, which is a lie and they both know it. “There was never an us, never a me and you. And now you’re getting married.”
Silverware scrapes against plates at the table next to them, the couple staring at each other with adoration, like some kind of romance movie, two people completely in love. Adam can’t pull his eyes away from Declan. It’s been six years, three months, and twenty days since Ronan died, and Adam feels every minute of that acutely in his body when he looks at Declan.
“I’m getting married,” Declan repeats, like he can’t even believe it, and Adam can’t tell if it’s from incredulity or doubt. He thinks about holding Declan against his body, time and time again, and suddenly the space between them at the table feels unfathomably long.
Declan gets the check and Adam lets him, knowing now that it’s not worth fighting about, that it doesn’t really matter anymore.
In the glass of the window waiting for the card to come back, Adam catches a glance of himself in a mirror. He tries not to look at himself too often; when he does, he can see how his face has filled out a little, his body a little less angular than when he was a starving (in both senses) teen. In front of him, Declan has gotten thinner, eyes deeper and darker, and Adam can’t look at him without seeing Niall now.
In the parking lot, November air whipping at their skin, they face each other, and Adam is reminded of a parking lot outside a church, being dropped off after a dinner. This time he has his own car, a sleek black Mercedes-Benz, only a year old, one of his proudest purchases, and they stand beside it, not speaking.
After a pause Adam takes a step forward, lets his breath condense over Declan’s open mouth, the two of them almost eye-to-eye. He puts his bare hand over Declan’s cheek, the two of them circling animals unsure of whether to bite or run.
Declan says, barely a whisper, “Not here. Not now.”
“Not ever?” Adam replies, half-question and half-statement, because he knows how this ends, the way they’ll separate, become sort-of-friends, run into each other in the same circles. He’s been grieving the loss since the day it began.
“I don’t know,” Declan says, a little louder. A group of older men come walking by, and the two of them step away quickly, a safe enough distance for nobody to suspect what they mean to each other.
“Good night, Declan,” Adam says, hand reaching for the door, and Declan pulls it away, his hand a welcome warmth against the late winter chill. He gently tugs Adam towards him, and Adam comes when he’s called, has this whole time, since the Fourth and maybe even a little before that.
The kiss is like a funeral, tastes like mourning and grief, and Adam thinks he might cry or punch Declan in the face. It’s the first time they’ve kissed in over three years. He puts his hands on Declan’s body, trying to feel the pieces that he knows beneath Declan’s overcoat, but the material is too thick, and he can’t feel anything at all.
& & &
The wedding invite comes out shortly after their dinner. Adam stares at it for a very long time, then puts it on his fridge. He RSVPs that he’ll attend with one guest, that they’d both like the chicken dinner. Aubrey’s added a kind note for Adam in it. He doesn’t bother to read it.
Declan comes to Adam’s apartment once, and when he sees the wedding invite on the fridge he goes very still and silent. Adam doesn’t know what to do with him. They stand like that for a few minutes, the whir of Adam’s heat coming on, and then Declan snaps out of whatever trance and pushes Adam towards the bedroom, one hand on his shoulder, gentle but firm.
They haven’t kissed since the parking lot. Adam wants to, desperately, but he knows he shouldn’t, that it’s some kind of line they’re not supposed to cross. He thinks about Declan’s mouth more than he should, about that singular moment, and it’s like relapsing into an addiction, pure desire coursing through him far more than it has before.
He lets Declan fuck him on the bed, both of them half-dressed, curtains drawn, room dark. It’s messy and sweaty and disgusting and Adam loves it because it’s Declan, because it could be Ronan, here in his bed. When they first started having sex Adam would sometimes pretend it was Ronan; now, he can only seem to remember bits and pieces of Ronan’s face, and he doesn’t like imagining having sex with a seventeen-year-old anyway.
Adam falls asleep after, which is a first, dozing off with his head on Declan’s chest, listening to the rabbit heartbeat slow. They don’t usually touch like this. Adam tries to avoid it, and he suspects that Declan does, too, and yet he isn’t pushed off.
He wakes up hours later in the same position, Declan asleep beneath him, chest slowly rising and falling. Adam looks at his phone and sees one notification from Nora, a photo of something that she saw. He doesn’t open it, just sets the phone back down. The noise wakes Declan up, and Adam freezes like a criminal in the bed.
Declan says, “You fell asleep.”
“You did too,” Adam says.
“I should have been home hours ago,” he adds.
“What did you tell Aubrey?”
“She doesn’t care that much,” Declan says.
“You’re getting married. Won’t she find it weird that she slept alone in the bed?”
“She’s at work, probably.”
“It’s eleven at night.”
“Maybe not,” Declan amends. “She might not be at the house, though.”
“Does she cheat, too?”
The room is silent. Adam regrets asking. This isn’t supposed to be an affair, this isn’t supposed to be cheating; this is something else, something sicker than that. Neither of them like being reminded that this is cheating. The word leaves a bad taste in Adam’s mouth.
“I don’t know,” Declan says. “She lied about her past but she’s truthful with me now, for the most part. There’s some things I don’t know about her job, or about where her money comes from, but she tells me where she’s going and with whom, and I trust her.”
“But you still lie to her.”
“She trusts me, too.”
“Lucky thing,” Adam says, only a little bitterly.
“Nora’s oblivious?”
“We’ve only been together a year.”
“Long enough for her to suspect things.”
“We’re both busy with school. And she trusts me.”
“Maybe she shouldn’t,” Declan says, and Adam can sense the bitterness there. The bedroom feels too small all of a sudden, and Adam thinks he’s choking and dying. It reminds him of how the attic in St. Agnes’ felt after Ronan died, too small, too familiar, too dark, too empty, and he has to run to the bathroom all of a sudden to heave over the toilet.
Declan’s there when he pulls himself up from it, asks, “This happen to you often?” and Adam shakes his head. He stands and makes his way into the kitchen, even though he’s still half-dressed and sticky with sweat and—other things. The kitchen, at least, is brighter, feels a little less like a confessional or a coffin.
Declan says, “Are you upset that I’m marrying her?”
“I think you shouldn’t marry someone you don’t love.”
“I love her,” Declan says. “I swear to God.”
“Okay,” Adam replies, because it’s the only thing he can find to say.
“Adam,” he says.They don’t call each other by first name like that. He’s almost pleading, just a little. It’s so pathetic that Adam wants to hit him. He tells Declan that.
Declan blinks, once, twice, and then disappears into the bathroom. The faucet runs, and then Declan goes into the bedroom, and when he comes out he’s dressed. Adam is still shaking in the kitchen beneath the fluorescence.
“That was uncalled for, Parrish.”
“Fuck you, Lynch,” Adam says, because he is upset that Declan’s marrying Aubrey, because he doesn’t want to be an affair but he doesn’t want to lose Declan. He would have never married Declan. He would have never wanted to. He just doesn’t know what to do without him.
“I think I should leave.”
“Maybe you should,” Adam says, bitter. He thinks about every time he was snappish with Ronan, the way they could be dogs with sharp teeth, and he looks at Declan and all he sees is Ronan, Ronan, Ronan.
The door shuts, startling Adam—he hadn’t even realized that Declan had left.
& & &
Adam picks up boxing again, just to have some way to move his body again. He hasn’t felt angry like this in a long time, and he knows why he is but he hates that Declan can have this kind of effect on him.
He finds a gym near his apartment, gets himself a subscription. He doesn’t really have the money for it, but he needs something to do with his hands or he’ll start ripping things apart. It’s good for his balance, too, for his awareness; Adam’s found, lately, that his balance has been getting worse as he gets older.
The wedding comes closer and closer. Adam’s involved in some of the planning. The ceremony will be small; none of Aubrey’s family is coming except one of her sisters, and Declan has no family. They both have some friends, coworkers or old college friends, but Adam knows the guest list isn’t more than forty people. Gansey has been invited and RSVPed with a plus one, but Blue wasn’t. It’s logical to Adam, and yet it’s even more of a reminder of the fact that what used to be is no longer, and will never be again.
Declan calls him, once, to say, “Are you giving a speech?”
“That’s customary, right?” Adam asks. He’s never been to a wedding before.
“Yes.”
“Okay. I don’t know your girlfriend well enough to write one, I don’t think.”
“That’s fine,” Declan says. “Our circles don’t overlap much. She understands.” He hangs up after this, and Adam stares at the phone, frustrated.
He asks Nora about best man speeches, and she laughs, says, “I don’t know anything about that.” They’re curled on her couch, in her apartment. Adam’s been thinking about asking to move in; her apartment’s nicer, a bit bigger, and he wants to live with her.
“You’ve never been to a wedding before?” he asks.
“When I was a kid. Not recently. And definitely not recently enough to remember the speeches.”
Adam kisses her, soft and slow, and part of him is relieved that he’s at least reserved this part of himself for just her, when he’s given everything else to Declan over and over again. They haven’t talked about anything serious in a while, not since Christmas when Adam told her a little about his father, about why he can’t hear out of his left ear.
“How do you know him, anyway? I’ve never met him. I didn’t expect you to be the best man.”
“I didn’t either,” Adam says, which is true. “He’s the brother of my friend that passed. We were close for a while after. We’ve drifted apart since; he’s in politics now.”
“Oh,” she says, and that’s it.
Adam goes to the gym the next day, boxes until his hands hurt, knuckles aching. He doesn’t know why. While he does it, he thinks of the things he can say about Declan, about weddings, about love, and realizes that he’s probably the least-suited for this kind of thing.
The wedding will be in a church, and this, too, is unusual to Adam. He asks Nora about the customs of a Catholic wedding; she was raised Roman Catholic, just like the Lynches, and she still goes to church, but really only on holidays and Sundays when she’s not busy. She laughs again and says she’s never been to a church wedding, either.
Adam says, “I don’t know what to write.”
“If you’re good enough friends, anything you say will be good,” Nora tells him. “You can tell, in speeches, if the person talking loves the other person. If you love him, if you’re best friends, then everyone will be able to see it.”
The idea of this is terrifying to Adam, but he doesn’t say so, just smiles and thanks her and kisses her, soft and gentle. He doesn’t know how he’ll stand in front of people and say things that are nice about Declan that don’t let on any part of what the two of them have been to each other for the past six years.
Adam stays up late for a few nights, trying to draft something, working in between assignments for his classes. He isn’t sure what to say; the doc stays empty, over and over again, and he keeps deleting paragraphs. The only thing he wants to talk about is Ronan, because it’s the only thing he’s ever wanted to talk about in his life, at least since Ronan’s death.
& & &
During the first few weeks of the new year Adam has a horribly vivid dream of Ronan. It starts with him waking up in his apartment, books scattered on the bed still, laptop open with the cursor blinking over blank space on a document titled “Best Man Speech.”
The door cracks open, and Adam has never once been so relieved and happy in his life, not the way he is when Ronan comes through. In the dream Ronan is still seventeen, angular the way high school boys often are, and Adam is also seventeen—newly eighteen, really, but seventeen, with that same kind of desperate hopeless optimism that he used to have.
Ronan says, “I missed your face, Parrish,” which is more honest than anything he’d ever said to Adam before.
“Missed yours too,” Adam says, and his voice comes out in a Henrietta accent, and he can’t seem to stop it. The mirror in the bed catches only his legs, but there’s a second pair this time, and when Adam looks up Ronan is over the bed, moving in that fast, dreamlike way.
Chainsaw is there, too, all of a sudden, and Adam hadn’t realized how much he’d missed her until she’s perched on his windowsill. The bedroom is St. Agnes’ and it’s D.C. and it’s the townhouse and it’s Cabeswater all at once, and every time Adam turns his head he’s somewhere that he hasn’t been in a very, very long time.
He says, to himself in the mirror, not to Ronan, “I’ve changed too much.”
“You’re growing up,” Ronan says, and Adam looks at him and sees Declan, sees Niall, and the faces are blurring, and somewhere in there he swears he catches a glimpse of blonde hair, Matthew or Aurora.
“You aren’t.”
“Yeah, astute observation, dipshit,” Ronan says, cracking a grin, and it’s the Ronan that Adam remembers.
“Sorry,” Adam says. Outside the bedroom window it’s raining, but Adam can feel the drops on his skin, even though there’s a ceiling above him. “I haven’t talked to Gansey or Blue in a long time.”
“You talk to my brother.”
“More than talk,” Adam replies, because right here, right now, he can’t seem to lie to Ronan.
Ronan is so hauntingly beautiful in this light, and Adam wants him more than anything in the world. It’s not even sexual; he just wants to have Ronan beside him, to be able to hold him. He doesn’t need to kiss him, doesn’t need anything with him except to have him alive.
“I know,” Ronan says, because it’s a dream and he can read Adam’s mind, because Adam has always been a liar but can’t seem to keep the poker face when he’s around Adam.
“I might go to church,” Adam says, which isn’t really true but it feels true, because if there’s a god then it probably looks exactly like this.
“You gonna start praying?”
“Maybe. To you.”
Ronan laughs. “I’m not a saint, Parrish.”
“Might as well be.”
The room spins, once, twice, and it’s St. Agnes’ attic, and Adam is seventeen and starving in a hundred different ways. Ronan is sin in front of him, and he’s a saint and the devil at the same time. Adam can’t want him anymore but he still does.
“This old place,” Ronan says, like he’s revisiting it.
Adam says, “Your funeral was here.”
“I was there.”
“I—” Adam stutters, but Ronan’s grinning again, so Adam says nothing at all. It’s raining inside the little apartment, both of them getting soaked in it.
The room is blurring, and Adam’s head is beginning to hurt, and he can’t take his eyes off Ronan. It’s funny how he’s lost some of the memories of Ronan’s face, the way that dream-Ronan’s jawline and nose are far too similar to Declan’s, like it’s not quite right.
Adam says, “Your brother’s getting married,” and the two of them are walking out the door together and into a graveyard.
“I know. She seems fine. I don’t like her.”
“You wouldn’t like any of them.”
“No, I wouldn’t,” Ronan says, and they’re at Ronan’s grave, still perfectly kept, lying beside Niall’s. Adam wonders, distantly, if Aurora and Matthew will ever be buried here, if they’ll ever even die.
“I’m scared I don’t miss you anymore.”
“You do,” Ronan says. “I know you do.”
Adam stares at the grave for a very long time, which isn’t a very long time in the dream state. Ronan is flickering in and out of his peripheral vision. The rain is pouring on them now, and Adam turns to Ronan to say something and there’s nobody there.
Adam wakes up in a sweat, head spinning; it’s raining outside, the windowpane rattling in its frame. The sun hasn’t even risen yet. He doesn’t feel good, and once he manages to get out of bed to take his temperature he finds out that he has a fever. Adam crawls back into bed and falls asleep, but he doesn’t dream of anything at all.
& & &
Declan takes Adam to buy a suit before the wedding. Adam’s not the only groomsman that Declan has, but he’s the only one going with Declan right now. He knows it’s intentional but he can’t exactly place why, other than their history.
“I still don’t like you buying me suits,” Adam says.
“What, were you going to wear a business one to my wedding?”
“No, but I could pay for this.”
“You couldn’t,” Declan says. “You don’t even know the price tag.”
Adam relents with this and waits for the fitting. It’s the same store as before, quiet and peaceful, but the tailor is a different man, younger than the last time. Adam doesn’t catch his name, but Declan talks to him quietly, the two of them poring over catalogs. Adam waits quietly on one of the seats, watches out the window as cars pass.
Declan says, quietly, “Adam,” and Adam stands and goes where Declan has told him to go.
In the mirrors he looks less skinny than usual, a little more definition to the muscle in his arms. He can still feel the bones, though, hidden under paper-thin skin. He can see Declan behind him, patiently waiting with his arms folded.
Adam asks, “What suit are you wearing?”
Declan half-shrugs. “Something nice. Simple. She’s not wearing anything extravagant. It’s a quiet thing, small. We’re not splurging.”
Based on Adam’s knowledge of Aubrey and Declan’s combined bank accounts, he suspects ‘not splurging’ is still much more than what most people would consider cheap. He says, “Do you know what the dress looks like?”
Declan gives him a look, says, “I wouldn’t break tradition like that.”
“Right,” Adam says, dryly. The tailor comes out with a suit and Adam slips into it carefully, not meeting Declan’s eyes in the mirror.
“I’ll give you a moment?” the man says, raising one eyebrow, and Declan nods, a sharp, curt thing, and the man leaves.
Declan comes and looks at Adam’s suit, studies the hems and the lines. He says, “It needs a few alterations but it’s good already.”
“Tie?” Adam says.
Declan hands him a tie in a dark emerald green, says, “Tie it yourself.”
“Is this the color Aubrey picked?”
“It was a joint decision.”
“You had a say in the wedding designs?”
“Not much. It’s my wedding too.”
Adam sighs, says, “I know, but you’re not one to choose colors.”
Declan is quiet for a while. The tailor comes back out once Adam’s done tying the tie, and he pins things carefully. Adam doesn’t look at Declan in the mirror but he knows he’s being watched, can feel Lynchian blue eyes fixated on his back.
A pin pricks him gently on the ankle; the tailor murmurs a sorry, Adam doesn’t say anything at all. He says to Declan, “Am I keeping this?”
“It’s more formal than most of what you have,” Declan says. “But it’s not a rental.”
“What would you do with it if I didn’t take it?”
“Are you going to not take it?” Declan replies, and Adam thins his lips and says nothing at all. He hates charity, hates the suits, hates the way Declan can make him do things he would never do otherwise. He thinks it was the same way with Ronan, with the way St. Agnes’ rent was paid. He doesn’t say any of that.
The tailor says, “I’m finished,” and asks Adam to slip out of the suit so it can be altered. Declan and the tailor have a quiet conversation, and Declan hands him a credit card, shiny, dark. Adam pretends to not see it as he gets dressed.
In the BMW Adam says, “I don’t know what to write in my speech.”
“Whatever you want,” Declan says. “If you don’t want to do it—”
“It’s not that,” Adam says. “I’ll do it. What do I say?”
“I don’t know,” Declan replies. “I’ve never done this before.”
“What, get married? I hope not.”
Declan doesn’t answer, just starts the car and heads down traffic-stopped D.C. roads. The radio is playing classical; Adam thinks about all the times he’s been in the passenger seat with Declan, the first time that was so many years ago now.
He says, “Are you happy?” and doesn’t expect an answer.
Declan says, after a second, “Yes,” and Adam can’t place the waver in his tone. They don’t speak any more after that, not until they get to Adam’s apartment and Declan drops him off.
“The suit will be ready in a few days. Do you want me to pick it up for you?”
“I can do it,” Adam says.
“Okay,” Declan says. “Have a nice afternoon, Parrish.” They don’t say anything else to each other but they linger, if only for a minute, like they’re waiting for something more.
& & &
Spring break is in March, and Nora’s decided that they’re going to fly to the Pacific Northwest for a few days, spend some time by the coast. She loves hiking; Adam can’t say the same, but when she shows him pictures it makes him think inexplicably of orange Camaros and after-school adventures, so he agrees and they get tickets.
Adam texts Blue, on a whim, to say he’ll be out there; he doesn’t quite remember if she’s still living out here or not, but he thinks he’ll text her, if nothing else to say hi.
She texts back quick, says she’s out in Washington, has a little house in the woods that she’s fixing up. Adam says they’ll come by, that she should meet his new girlfriend.
The house is barely a house, barely a cabin, and they drive on gravel and dirt roads for fifteen minutes before getting there. Nora says that she hopes the rental isn’t wrecked, that no tires have sprung a leak. She didn’t say no when Adam asked her to come out here, but he can tell she’s wary of it.
Blue looks different and the same all at once; her hair’s longer in some spots, color fading from bleached spots, but it’s shorter up near her eyes. Her teeth are still a little crooked. Adam swears her face has gotten skinnier, too, but her hands are the same as they ever were, and her smile is just as wide as usual. When he hugs her he realizes that they’ve both filled out since growing up.
She says, “It’s been a long damn time, Adam Parrish,” because it has, because he hasn’t seen her in six whole years, because he’s been out on his own doing everything he can to forget Henrietta. She still has a trace of the accent.
“It has,” he says, and he glances at the door but nobody else comes out. Adam wonders if she can tell that he’s tried to get rid of his accent. He’s sure she can.
She says, “It gets lonely out here, with nobody to see,” as if to stave off any questions, but Adam has to ask them anyway.
He asks, “Is it the curse?”
Blue smiles a little sadly and says, “I know who I would have killed and he’s long gone now. This is just self-preservation. If I can’t have my soulmate, who’s left?”
Nora’s in the rental still, watching the two of them talk. Adam gestures at her to come out and she does, shakes Blue’s hand and introduces herself.
“Come inside,” Blue says. “And watch your head.”
Adam does have to duck a little at the door; it’s plenty tall enough for Blue, but Adam doesn’t quite fit. The house is cozy, small, herbs and flowers drying over the sink, a low steam emanating from over the stove. The windows are open; there’s some kind of crochet waiting on the couch from where Blue left it.
He asks, “How long have you been out here?”
“About three and a half years,” she says. “I worked my ass off to get out here.”
“You still call your family?”
“They told me you stopped by,” she says, going over to stir something on the stove. “You should call more, Adam.”
“I don’t know what to say.”
She’s silent, then, for a while. Nora, perched carefully on a chair, looks between the two of them. Adam can feel the grief on Blue still, can feel it on both of them, the way they’re mourning the one thing that they had, the one person they had, that they lost.
He says, “Declan’s getting married.”
“You still speaking to the Lynches?”
“I keep in touch with Declan.”
Blue looks over at Nora and says nothing, but she frowns in this way that Adam takes as her knowing what happens between them. She’s not psychic like her family, but he knows she can read people anyway.
“I didn’t know you two were close.”
“I’m going to be the best man at his wedding,” Adam says.
Blue’s lips thin, and she steps away from the stove. “I didn’t know you were that close. I had figured you would cut off every tie to Henrietta and Aglionby.”
“He’s my D.C. connection,” Adam says.
“Sure,” Blue says. Nora looks at her, then looks at Adam with a question that Adam doesn’t know how to answer.
They talk for a little bit more, meet Blue’s cat (Chainsaw, in honor of the raven), and then leave. They’re not there long; Adam promises to stay in touch, to call more. He doesn’t know if he’ll remember.
On the drive back, Nora says, “That was nice, to reconnect with people from high school.”
“It was nice,” he says. “I think.”
“You think?”
They get off the dirt road, and Adam misses who he used to be, suddenly, which is odd, because he’s never wanted to go back to his past. But here with Blue, in the woods, it reminds him of Glendower and the search and the kind of magic that he seemed to only get with their little group, their strange constellation, and the grief and mourning that hits him is so strong he thinks he might throw up.
He says, “I don’t know,” and leaves it at that. Nora doesn’t say anything else.
& & &
The wedding comes sooner than Adam thinks it will. He finishes his second year of law school; Nora graduates. The ceremony is nice. Her family doesn’t come. She starts looking for jobs, says she wants out of the D.C. area but she knows Adam wants to say, so she says she’ll try and stay close.
Adam writes the speech in a frenzy in the middle of the night, doesn’t read it over in the next morning. He hopes that whatever he put is good enough. He knows how to speak confidently but he doesn’t know how to stand in front of everyone and talk about Declan without sounding like he’s talking about Ronan.
Gansey comes into town, flies in from the UK without anyone on his arm. He stays at Adam’s, on the couch, and they stay up late into the night talking about nothing. Adam doesn’t bring up Blue. He thinks it’s for the best.
The wedding is at St. Agnes’. Adam isn’t really surprised, he knows it has meaning to the Lynches, but he’s at least a little bit surprised, because he knows Declan’s started going to a different church in the D.C. area so that he doesn’t make the drive. He didn’t know Aubrey was Catholic, either.
The three of them—Adam, Gansey, and Nora—pile into Adam’s car and make the drive down early in the morning. The wedding itself is in the afternoon, and then the reception is a few hours later, back in D.C., at some nice restaurant they’ve booked out. Adam wants to go even earlier so he can see Ronan’s grave.
He does go to Ronan’s grave. Gansey says he can’t do it, can’t stand to see his best friend’s grave like that. Adam wonders if Gansey’s ever been up there, if he’s ever seen how beautiful the cemetery is where Ronan is buried, but he doesn’t ask.
At the grave Adam murmurs, “It’s your brother’s wedding today. I think you should have been here. With Matthew too. I’m sorry for everything I did.” He hesitates, lets the wind blow past him, and then says, “I don’t love you less than anyone else.” This is somehow easier to say than the fact that he’ll always love Ronan more than he can bear.
Adam goes up to the attic and finds the door works; when he turns around he finds Declan’s followed him up, dressed in his suit. The door shuts behind the two of them. The attic is stuffy, and dusty, and there’s no trace of anyone living here at all. It’s haunted with everything Adam used to know, and too small to fit the history of him and Declan into it, and the tightness of everything presses their bodies close together.
“Not here. Not now,” Declan says, quietly, but his hands are wandering, and Adam, for the first time in this kind of situation, says, “Please.”
It’s fast, clean, neat. Adam is thinking about his best man speech half the time and thinking about Ronan the other half. Downstairs people are meeting each other, talking happily in the pews, whatever few friends have been invited. They don’t kiss at all, just breathe each other’s humid air, panting softly.
When it’s done Declan wipes his hands on the old curtain on the wall, and Adam says, “Gross,” and Declan says, “What else am I supposed to do?” and Adam just shrugs. He wonders if Aubrey’s downstairs, wonders what her dress looks like.
“This is over,” Declan says, and Adam thinks maybe that’s the truth and maybe it’s not, and he thinks maybe he should stop believing it when they promise each other these kinds of things.
The ceremony is beautiful; Aubrey is gorgeous, in a simple white dress that slips down the back to an almost indecent point, the straps beaded with pearls. Her hair is down, simply arranged with the veil. Adam thinks she looks like a perfect bride, like the exact kind of girl Declan should have married.
He stares at Declan through the whole thing. Declan’s handsome as ever, perfectly coiffed, suit pressed and neat. Adam watches his hands, watches his mouth, his eyes. He thinks about carrying a coffin down this aisle, wonders how Declan can stand up there with a straight back and not think of carrying his father and brother down.
The vows are exchanged quietly, without the audience hearing. Adam wonders what they’re saying to each other. Even the priest has turned from them, like it’s so private nobody can hear. The afternoon light streams through the stained glass and paints everything in beauty, and Adam is reminded of the sunlight dappling the woods around Cabeswater.
The rings are exchanged. They’re both simple things, little gold bands, and Adam watches Declan slip it on with a horrible jealousy that he knows he shouldn’t have. He’s thinking about what Ronan would say if he was here, is thinking about if he was the person on the other side of Declan, is thinking about a gold ring on his own finger. Not that he wants to marry Declan, really, but more than he can’t stand to lose him.
When it’s all said and done the general crowd mingles for a while, and Adam and Declan stand together and say nothing at all. Gansey comes over, briefly, and they talk about nothing at all. Adam congratulates Aubrey when he gets a chance, and she thanks him and then goes back to talking to people she seems to care about more.
Adam says to Declan, “I’m genuinely happy for you.”
Declan’s eyes flit to Aubrey and then back to Adam’s, the bright blue so reminiscent of Ronan’s, and he says, “Thank you,” but it’s flat, like it’s fake. The stained glass is splotching his face with blues and oranges and reds, and Adam wants to touch it but he can’t.
& & &
The drive to the reception feels short, but only because Adam’s nervous about the speech. Gansey talks to Nora for half the ride there about Welsh kings, and she nods politely and asks questions when she needs to. Adam isn’t listening to anything at all. His skin feels like it’s going to itch off of his body. He can’t stop twitching his leg.
The restaurant is nice, quiet. They have some private little room, enough to fit the thirty or so people that are attending. Most of them are coming from the wedding but some of them aren’t. The reception is all white and gold and dark green decorations, elegant, simple, the kind of thing that Adam had expected from the couple. Dinner is delicious; Nora compliments it four times and drinks two glasses of wine during it.
Aubrey changed into a shorter white dress at some point. Adam wasn’t aware that weddings needed two dresses, but according to Nora it’s the trend now. Gansey leaves to take a phone call, briefly, and doesn’t come back for twenty minutes. Declan is laughing with her and Adam feels like burning everything down.
Adam reads over his best man speech once, on his phone, before he gets up and says it. He can’t stop thinking about the two of them together tonight, having sex in their marriage bed, the same bed that Adam used to sleep over in. He knows that he and Declan were never anything and yet it still hurts more than anything.
When it’s time he stands up and clears his throat, meets Nora’s eyes and then Gansey’s and then finally Declan’s, and he can’t tear them away.
He says, “I’ve known Declan Lynch since high school, but I didn’t really know him until he’d left. I was best friends with his brother first, and after everything happened I found that Declan and I had more in common than I thought we had. He’s driven, independent, and brilliant. I looked up to him for a long time, and I still see him as a role model.
“When he asked me to be his best man, I was hesitant. I was sure there were better men to do it, some other old friend that he loved more.” Adam looks at Declan when he says love and finds the other’s face impassive. “There wasn’t anyone else. I didn’t know what to say. It took me a long time to find the words for the speech.
“We’re not the closest friends; Declan’s been half-mentor, half-brother, checking in here and there when I need it, giving me connections in D.C. if I asked, taking me to dinners and galas to meet people. I’ve gained so much from him. He taught me how to box, unasked, when I needed it for self-defense. I’m grateful for it. He’s even let me stay at his home in D.C. when I had to. It’s more than I could have asked for.”
Declan’s face is still impassable. When Adam looks over at Nora she’s unreadable, too, but she gives him a half-smile, like he’s doing well.
“When I see Declan he reminds me so much of his younger brothers. It’s unusual for an older brother to do that, but all three of them were so similar, and Declan did so much for them. He’s generous, and he cares so much, even if he doesn’t show it.” Adam hadn’t wanted to bring Ronan or Matthew up but he feels like he should. “I wish they were here now, for everyone to meet them, to see how great all of them are.
“I don’t mean to overshadow the couple’s special day. I was happily surprised when Declan told me that he was getting married, because he’d already gotten engaged and I didn’t even know. I know how wonderful Aubrey is, though, and I know how good of a husband Declan will be to her. I wish you two the best in the future, and congratulations.”
The speech was simple. Adam thinks it wasn’t anything crazy—really, he thinks it wasn’t even that good—but Declan’s staring at him like he has a second head, like there’s something wrong with the both of them. Adam’s looking at the gold band on Declan’s finger and he can’t take his eyes off it.
One of Aubrey’s friends gives a speech, and that’s the last of the talks. There’s some dancing, more drinking, mostly of wine and champagne, and a cake cutting. The party doesn’t go that late, but Adam and Declan find themselves together on the side of it all, watching it pass by.
“That was a nice speech, Parrish,” Declan says.
“I tried.”
“I wish Ronan was here.”
“I know,” Adam says, and he’s looking at that gold band, and then at Declan’s lips, and he thinks there’s so much grief in his stomach that it can almost kill out the burning hunger inside him.
“I love her,” Declan says, watching Aubrey spin on the dance floor with one of her sorority friends that she invited. “So much.”
“I know,” Adam says, and there’s that grief again, the funny little feeling. He wants to leave. The champagne flute in his hand suddenly feels breakable.
Adam, Nora, and Gansey are the last people left at the reception, once it’s gotten late and the cars outside have slowed and the drinks are no longer being poured. Adam doesn’t want to think about what happens to the two of them when they walk outside, but at some point Adam and Declan walk to the cars, just the two of them.
Declan says, “I’m sorry. For everything.”
Adam doesn’t say anything at all, just watches Declan’s face light up under the streetlamps. The May breeze ruffles both of their jackets slightly, and Adam swears he can smell Declan’s cologne.
“Adam,” Declan says, when Adam still doesn’t reply, and he reaches out for Adam’s hand. Adam hadn’t realized they were standing close enough for that. Had he moved forward? He doesn’t remember. The gold wedding ring feels like it’s burning under his fingers.
“Declan,” Adam says. Like this, Declan looks like Ronan, like Niall, like himself. He looks like someone that Adam loves and can’t stop wanting and will never stop hungering for. Adam doesn’t let go of Declan’s hand; he thinks maybe he never will.