Page 4 of Party of Three

Return to sender. Unable to forward.

Rejection stung his face like a hot, quick slap on both cheeks at the same time. The Marine who’d saved his life, the Marine he’d worked for and worshiped in more ways than one, had thrown up another wall between them.

So Jeff had moved without telling him? Last he’d heard he was still stationed at Camp Pendleton, but he’d stoppedreturning Mateo’s messages about six months ago, and he’d never been a big social media guy, so who knew?

His head spun with possible explanations, all of them dark.

Jeff thought he was a wuss for getting out of the Marines after his accident.

Jeff couldn’t be bothered now that he’d been promoted to master sergeant.

Jeff regretted those few nights they’d spent in each other’s arms and the awkward conversations after when they promised not to let it wreck their friendship.

The list of possible explanations could turn into a panic spiral in his head if he didn’t slam on the brakes.

But he was allowed to have hurt feelings now and then. Buckley had taught him that. He’d been reaching out to Jeff for over a year, and each time he’d scraped his knuckles on a brick wall. And yeah, that hurt. No point in pretending otherwise.

The envelope contained a personal, handwritten invitation to his birthday party at Sapphire Cove. He’d placed it inside a greeting card with a beach scene that reminded him of the stretch of cliffs and sand down in San Onofre where they used to surf, a last-ditch effort to re-establish contact with a man who’d been more important to him than his own father.

And here it was, returned without a forwarding address.

* * * *

Shit, Buckley thought as he rose to his feet.

He’d been ninety percent sure he’d hidden the damn thing, but apparently not.

“Guess Jeff’s not coming.” Mateo dropped the envelope back on the counter. Head bowed, he returned to the cutting board. It always twisted something painful in Buckley’s chest to see Mateo hide his pain under a task, the way he was doing now—chopping zucchini too hard and too fast, head bowed, nostrils flaring.

On most occasions, a wondrous light came into his eyes whenever he talked about the crew chief who’d rescued him from a sinking Osprey during a training exercise gone to hell. Jeff Braxton hadn’t just been Mateo’s split-second savior, but his mentor as well. An older man in his life who’d actually accepted him before he’d been ready to fully come out. He’d even hung a framed picture of the two men on their living room wall, a picture that made Buckley’s heart race and his skin prickle whenever he looked at it too long.

Dressed in their desert cammies, they looked like they were posing for a Marine Corps recruiting poster. With close-shorn salt-and-pepper hair and a proud jaw, the older man looked tall and imposing, his stare turned laser-like thanks to big crystal-blue eyes, arm looped protectively—maybe even possessively—around Mateo’s broad shoulders. He looked so solid, so immovable, Buckley had trouble imagining what he must have looked like when he’d used all of his brute strength to drag an unconscious Mateo to the ocean’s surface as the massive death trap that had almost drowned them both plunged to the dark ocean depths below.

And he’d always told himself the fantasies he nurtured about the guy were harmless, porny fun, a natural outgrowth of the fact that Jeff Braxton had saved Mateo’s life.

Besides, Buckley, like so many gay men he knew, had a low, throbbing appetite for handsome, unattainable straight men, an appetite he knew better than to feed thanks to some gnarly early experiences with high school classmates that had left everyone involved more creeped out than satisfied.

Some queer men got off on hooking up with straight guys, but Buckley had always felt he could tell a guy was straight the minute he touched them. The deadness of their response could be bone chilling, a reminder they’d probably closed their eyes so they could imagine he was a girl. Buckley had no interest inclosing his eyes and imagining a straight guy was queer, so the pairing never worked out.

Weird thing was, most of Buckley’s fantasies didn’t involve Jeff touching him, or vice versa. They involved Mateo and the man who’d been his Marine Corps mentor in a sweaty, passionate tangle, Jeff capping off his watery rescue of the younger man by giving Mateo a Hollywood-sized kiss, Mateo looking both innocent and worshipful in his arms.

But what did it matter? They were daydreams, that’s all. Occasional horny flights from reality that whisked him up off the sofa when his eyes snagged on the photo during a boring moment in a TV show.

When Mateo caught Buckley staring across their apartment at the photo now, Buckley awkwardly sputtered, “So what kind of girls is he into?”

Buckley had plenty of female friends of all ages. Maybe setting one of them up with Jeff would be a good way to bring the guy back into Mateo’s life.

At first, Buckley thought his boyfriend’s tense expression was the result of having sensed the strange, heart-racy feeling Buckley got whenever he looked at Jeff’s photo. But when he went back to chopping zucchini, Mateo had the furrowed brow and tense lips that Buckley had come to recognize as signs his boyfriend was holding back a difficult truth.

“It’s probably better he doesn’t come,” Mateo finally said. “Our history’s kinda…complicated, I guess.”

Buckley’s hands prickled. A question about Jeff Braxton’s taste in women had resulted in the wordcomplicated, and now his boyfriend looked ashamed. “Wait… You guys…”

Mateo stopped chopping, giving Buckley a wide-eyed, puppy dog look that twisted something in Buckley’s chest.

“You want me to take the picture down?” he asked softly.

“I don’t understand.”

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