Page 2 of Torch Songs

Well, it was a certain thing. “I was,” he said, hoping the little lie would go unnoticed.

“Oh, Guthrie,” she said, holding her hand to her mouth, her eyes watering. “No.”

Apparently not. “Look,” he said, touching her hand in return. “He knows. He’s known since the beginning. For that matter, so has Kelly. They… they hung with me because I was a friend—and darlin’, when I say friend, I meanfriend. You can’t get any better loyalty than Seth Arnold and Kelly Cruz. Don’t ever doubt it. I donotwant to repay that friendship by mooncalfing all over Seth during his wedding. He invited me—Kelly invited me—and I need to respect that means they both love me, and I am going to go hang out with their family and have the time of my life. Please come with me and make sure nobody gets hurt while I do that, okay?”

“Oh, Guthrie,” she said again. “Nobody but you.”

His own eyes burned. “And only you can know that,” he said earnestly. “Please.”

She squeezed his fingers and gave a watery smile. “Think he’ll play for us?”

Guthrie laughed. “The boy plays like he breathes. Yeah. I think he will.”

“Totally worth it,” she said.

He was forced to agree.

AND DURINGthe ceremony, when Seth stood on a promontory at Pebble Beach, overlooking a thunderous winter ocean, playing a composition he’d written for his beloved and nobody else, Guthrie still agreed.

When Seth was done—and his best friend, Amara, had taken his violin and put it tenderly in a slightly heated case while Seth turned to Kelly to say his vows, Guthrie knew his face wasn’t the only one freezing with brine.

Roberta clung to his arm and damn near sobbed, so he got to comfort her, and that was nice. Gay or not gay, it did make him feel a little more powerful to be able to comfort a pretty girl.

The vows were short, and equal parts foolishness and mooncalfing, as Seth would have said. And they were perfect. Guthrie and Roberta had played their share of weddings, but this one…. Guthrie was just as glad Seth provided the music here, because anything either one of them could have done would have made them both seem underaccomplished in comparison.

And that wasn’t Seth’s intention. That’s what made him the boy Guthrie couldn’t get over. Seth had written and performed that composition to make Kelly smile at him. Kelly, who was a year younger than Seth, was a short, compact boy with coarse black hair he pulled back from his face in a half-tail for the occasion, and wide, almost guileless brown eyes that practically sparkled with mischief and joy. He stared at his new husband with a fond look that said he knew he was stupid with love but didn’t care.

For his part, Seth, who was tall and who neverhadmanaged the knack of wearing clothes that fit, had trimmed his blondcorkscrew curls tight to his head and returned Kelly’s expression of profound stupid love with green eyes that were only ever focused when he was looking at Kelly. Those eyes in Seth’s pale brown face—his mother had been Black and his father was once a blond, blue-eyed high school basketball player—were striking enough, but the faraway expression in them made him almost otherworldly in his beauty.

The fact that Guthrie knew that the two of them had overcome more tragedy than people twice their age in order to stand on this ice-fucking-cold romantic cliff and stare hopefully into each other’s eyes made their love even harder to resent.

Guthrie had no choice but to be happy and proud for the two of them. To love them like the small gathering of family and friends around him.

When Amara’s husband, Vince, was done with the short ceremony, they turned toward their parents, Seth to his father and Kelly to his mother, who both held out their arms. Seth’s father deposited an almost pitifully thin little girl into Seth’s arms. She clung to his neck and laughed excitedly, talking a mile a minute about cold and wind and pretty coats and “Set’” and “her music.” Kelly took a limp, placid little boy, bundled in a warm winter-blanket sleeper. Even from fifteen feet away, Guthrie could see the baby’s arms weren’t as active as most children’s would be at eight months, and Guthrie’s throat tightened. Kelly gazed down at this baby with affection and love. He and Seth were twenty-five and twenty-four, and they were embarking on their new life together with two children with special needs—and Guthrie could only gaze at them as they posed for a joyous, unself-conscious picture, and think about what a happy family they made.

“I present to you,” Vince said, his handsome, boyish face wreathed in smiles, “the Arnold-Cruz family. They’ve alreadykissed, so now we all get to hug them and then bundle up and go back to the houses for a hot drink and some good food.”

To general laughter, Guthrie jostled up with the rest of the family to kiss the babies and hug the men and greet Vince and Amara, who had arrived that morning along with Guthrie and Roberta and he hadn’t had a chance to hug them yet.

The five of them used to hang out in Seth’s dorms and watch movies and eat pizza and talk about their lives together. It was damned good to see them.

He expected Seth and Kelly to be distracted and generally high with happiness by the time they got to him, but instead Seth focused on him, and Kelly gave him a super tight one-armed hug while the baby drooled on his good suit.

“You came!” Seth said happily. “I’m so glad you came. We didn’t give you much time.”

“And miss an opportunity to freeze my balls off?” Guthrie asked, eliciting warm laughter from both men. “How could I?”

“Speaking of which,” Amara murmured, coming up between them and holding her arms out imperiously for the placid baby, “let’s load into the cars and go back to the houses. You guys, I can’t wait to catch up.” She kissed Guthrie on the cheek and gave Roberta a smile. “And you are….”

“His totally platonic plus-one,” Roberta said cheerily. “He didn’t want to make the drive alone.”

“Roberta plays fiddle in The Crabs,” he told Seth, who cackled with laughter.

“You kept the band name!” he said, like this made him unutterably happy. “I’m so glad! Are your dad and Uncle Jock—”

Guthrie cut him off with a quick shake of his head. “Naw. Just me and some of Roberta’s conservatory friends. We do five nights a week—keeps me out of trouble and lets me hold down the day job without any corporate fatalities.”

Seth blew out a breath. “You’re too good to have a day job,” he said seriously, which, Guthrie admitted, could be yet another reason he loved the guy. Then right on the heels of the one thing came another. “You brought your guitar, right? You’re gonna play for us tonight? ’Cause I’m saying, I’ve got some prime musicians here—Amara, Vince, you—” He grinned at Roberta. “And you, probably, cause you wouldn’t play with Guthrie if you sucked!”

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