Page 70 of The Rest is History

After a while he asks, “How did you and Ash meet?”

I laugh, and he looks at me curiously, tilting his head adorably. “Do you really want to know?”

“It’s the thing I want to know the most.”

“Okay. One day this guy walks into the bar where I’m working.”

He laughs. “Really? That much of a cliché?”

“I’m not even kidding. So, this guy walks in. He has a cigarette in his mouth, and he’s already drunk from a bar across town. He sits down and demands a drink. I ask him if he’s sure, and he tells me gay bar drinks go down better than regular bar drinks.”

“He wasn’t the drinking or smoking type back then,” Reece murmurs. “I hate that he changed so much after what my father did to him and his family.”

“He was trying to cope,” I say as gently as I can.

Reece nods quickly. “Then what happened?”

“Well, I poured him a gay drink and asked him if he wanted to talk about it. ‘I can’t get over my boyfriend’ was the first thing he said.”

Reece maintains my gaze, but I can see it’s hard for him. “When was that?” he asks.

“Seven years ago.”

“He was – we were – twenty-one. That was four years after he left.”

“For the first year, he came into that bar every night. He didn’t drink every night, but he was there. And every night for a whole year, all he talked about was you.”

“I hate how much I hurt him. His mom told me I could talk to him when I had more courage. There was never a time I felt like I had any courage. Even when I did call him. It wasn’t because I had any courage. It was because I was so broken over losing my daughter, I was willing to do anything to make it stop. Asher was the only one who could ever make things right.”

“I’m glad you called him,” I say. “I would never have met you otherwise. And you were right to call him. He always makes things better.”

“We came out to his Mom and Dad first,” he says. “We were sixteen. It was June. The next day we went to my father’s company’s picnic. Mrs. Cameron baked a whole lot of cupcakes and among them were rainbow-colored ones. No one suspected a thing. It was our secret.”

I smile, wishing I could reach out for my hand and entwine our fingers together. “Ash told me about that.”

“He told you that?”

“Yeah, he did.”

“Did he tell you about the first time we realized—”

I nod. “In a barn. At his grandparent’s place.” And when I see how sorrowful he looks suddenly, I add, “He loved you very, very much, Reece. It broke him to be away from you. He was still so broken, even after all that time.”

“You’re letting me make it right,” he says quietly.

“I just believe in this thing between the three of us.”

He gives me a bright smile. Then, inhaling deeply, he asks, “When did things change between the two of you?”

“It’s hard to tell exactly. Over that first year we became friends. I started to look forward to him coming in. I watched his alcohol almost right from the beginning because I didn’t want that for him. After the first year, he just came out and said that he thought he was in love with me. I’d fallen for him months before that, so it was easy.”

“Who proposed?”

I lock my eyes with Reece. “He did.” I watch his reaction carefully. “What’s the real question?” I ask quietly.

Reece looks caught. But there is no decorum between us. “Was he over me by then?”

“He has never gotten over you. Not even when he proposed.”

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