You & Me

We didn’t get home until after 2:00 a.m.

At the school, we’d dumped the empty water jugs, coolers, bags of footballs, practice equipment, medical gear, and other crap in the center of the athletic building and turned out the lights.

There’d be time tomorrow, and the day after, and the day after, to clean up.

Football season was over.

Emmet was wired on the drive home. Nervous, too, like he was a kindergartener with a secret that he was dying to not-tell. He jiggled one leg, bit down on the edge of his thumbnail. Stared into the side mirror and wouldn’t look my way.

Tomorrow, I’d obsess about it. Tonight? I was too exhausted to worry over his odd behavior.

Home. Duffel dumped on the living room floor, sandals kicked off on the carpet. Emmet ran up the stairs and disappeared into his bedroom like the Flash.

All I wanted to do was climb into bed, text Landon, and pass out. Fifteen weeks of football—fifteen weeks of life-changing moment after life-changing moment—and I was dead on my feet. Worn the fuck out. I felt every one of my years. Even Landon looked tired, so I must have looked like well-trampled dog shit. I made a point not to look in the mirror as I brushed my teeth.

I’d grabbed my phone and flopped face-first onto my bed when Emmet knocked on my bedroom door. “Dad?”

“Yeah?”

“Can I come in?”

My pillow was calling my name. Landon had already texted that he and Bowen were home. “Of course.” I hauled myself to the edge of my bed as Emmet walked in.

He looked nervous. Swollen with something more than nerves, even. His fingers curled around the edge of his sketchbook, fingertips red and white against the page.

“Em?”

He dropped his gaze, and suddenly he was all thumbs, opening the book backward, upside down, flipping through the pages until he found the right one. A loose sheet of paper slipped free. “I have something for you.”

“Oh yeah?” The last drawing Emmet gave me was of his third grade science class’s pet goldfish, done entirely in purple crayon. I still had it taped to the bottom of my computer monitor at work.

Emmet nodded. His jaw clenched, and his eyes rose to meet mine. A moment, and then he thrust the paper to me, upside down.

I flipped it over.

Time elongated. I looked from the sketch in my hands to Emmet and back.

He’d drawn Landon and me. Together. My arms around Landon’s neck, Landon’s hands possessive on my hips and back. We were kissing, our lips locked in an embrace, our eyes closed. Landon was in his suit and I was in a polo shirt, my truck behind my back. Leaves were scattered on my windshield and the ground around our feet. I could count on one hand the times when Landon and I had kissed in the parking lot with him in his suit.

“I saw you guys a couple of weeks ago. I had to run back to get the pump from the locker room because the balls were underinflated. I passed you in the parking lot.”

“Em—”

I’d been trying on speeches in my head, trying to find the right words and put them in the right order. Emmet, I have to tell you something. I’ve fallen in love with Landon.

Now I had nothing, no words, no thoughts, as I stared at Landon and myself imprinted forever in graphite by my son’s hand. The way Landon’s hands held me, the way my lips turned up in a tiny smile as Landon kissed me. Who loved who more? The two men in the picture or the artist who had drawn them so tenderly?

He’d gone back to fiddling with his sketchbook, his shoulders high and tight. “I’ve been working on this on the bus rides to playoffs, and I told myself I’d give it to you after the season was over. This was supposed to be a big moment, but— I just want you to know. Know that I know, I mean. I didn’t want to wait any longer.”

I blinked at him. His words were hitting me too fast. I couldn’t process them all at once. “You’ve been drawing this on the bus?” I was pretty damn sure he and Bowen sat together on those bus rides. “Bowen knows, too?”

He rolled his eyes. “Dad, Bowen’s known forever. When I told him I saw you guys kissing, he was so relieved. He said keeping it quiet was killing him, especially with you guys being so obvious about it.”

“Obvious?”

Emmet grinned. “Well, kinda. I mean, after I caught you guys, I noticed about a thousand other things. Neither of you are Academy Award–winning actors.”

I glared. “And you couldn’t have said something before this?”

“We were focused on playoffs, Dad!”

Now it was my turn to roll my eyes. But I was smiling, too, and I took his hand and squeezed it. “You’re really okay with this?”

“Yeah, Dad. I’m really okay.” He shrugged. “More than okay. You’re happy again. I like that.”

“I’m very happy. Very, very happy.”

He squeezed my hand this time. “I know.”

The tender moment was broken when a yawn split his face. I echoed him, and we stared at each other like we were snakes unhinging our jaws.

Time’s up: touching father-son bonding over. “’Kay, Dad, I’m going to bed.”

“Em?”

He stopped at my door.

“Thank you.”

He smiled.

I propped his drawing against the lamp on my nightstand. I’d need to get a frame for it, mount it, save it forever. Should I keep it on my nightstand or take it to work? Or bring it back and forth so I’d never be without it?

Emmet knew. He knew, and more than that, he was happy for me. Landon and I had talked on the drive home about telling the boys before Christmas and after the end-of-season banquet in a few days. If it went well, we could spend the holiday together. Head over to Landon’s house and maybe not leave for days. We’d imagined it, how telling them would go down. Both boys on Landon’s couch, us in front of them. We have something to tell you.

You’re really not Academy Award–winning actors. I grinned and rolled on my side, dragging my phone up. Landon was going to flip. Not only had Emmet seen us kiss, he’d drawn us together. And Bowen had known for “forever.” How long was forever? I thought back to the look Bowen had given us in the rearview mirror on the drive home from the State Fair. Or how he’d insisted on homecoming photos for the four of us, and then for Landon and me together.

Yeah. He’d known for a long, long time.

Landon had already texted. Falling asleep. Love you. Can’t wait until you’re here with me.

I could text him right now, tell him everything. He’d wake up to the news, and we could celebrate together, the four of us, by napping all day on the couch.

Or…

I drummed my fingers over the back of my cell phone. My mind started clunking into gear. I rolled to my back and stared at the ceiling, ideas forming in the front of my mind.

Yeah. Or.

Three days later, the Last Waters Rodeo Riders, Texas state champions, threw their annual end-of-season team banquet. Four years ago, it had apparently been no more extravagant than a Thursday night team dinner, with parents and players wandering through a buffet line before settling in at cafeteria tables and listening to the coaches give speeches under the humming fluorescent lights.

Annie and Landon had fixed that.

Now the banquet was a formal affair, players in suits and parents in evening wear, and the athletic center was converted from a multipurpose room to an event hall, complete with linen-covered tables, yellow rose and football-themed centerpieces, dim lighting, and a three-course dinner. Landon had been working the details with Annie for weeks.

Emmet went to work for them both, one-man manual laboring everything they needed to clean up the athletic center. He scrubbed the floors, washed the walls, banished the jock stench, and set up the venue. He said it was the first of his—at a minimum—153 days of self-imposed cleaning, sorting, stacking, repairing, and gophering for the team, doing anything that needed to be done. One hundred and fifty-three days, one for every day he’d doped sophomore year.

It was hard to wrench him away for a few hours, but I played the father-son bonding card, and he caved. I picked him up in the parking lot with Bowen in the back seat of my truck, and that’s when his Spidey senses really started tingling.

A few hours before, Bowen and I met up at his house. We talked one-on-one in their kitchen, Bowen spinning a football and bouncing his knee as he listened to me tell him about how I wanted to be the love of Landon’s life for the rest of time. I wanted it all—Landon’s love, our lives together, and the opportunity to be a part of Bowen’s life, too.

He could be my stepson, I thought, watching his big fingers flex around the football. I could be his stepfather.

And Bowen could be Emmet’s brother, not just on the field, but for the rest of their lives.

“I’ve watched my dad fall in love with you,” Bowen told me. “At first, it was like watching him try to hold his breath underwater. He didn’t want to fall for you. You were straight. Well.” Bowen threw me a half grin, half shrug. “But he couldn’t stop. I was scared he was going to get hurt.”

“I never want to hurt Landon.”

Bowen nodded. “I have never seen him as happy as he is now. I mean—” He chuckled. “You guys really sucked at hiding this. Really sucked.”

I grinned. My thumb worked over the edge of Landon’s granite. Landon had kissed me right here. I told him I wanted to make us work right here. And now I was with Bowen, right here, question on the tip of my tongue.

“So what do you want to ask me?” Bowen’s voice was soft, almost a whisper.

Bowen kept his head down while I spoke, hands kneading that football in his lap until the leather squeaked. His long hair fell forward, covering his face. I heard a sniff and then saw him rub at one eye, wipe his wrist under his nose.

“Is that okay?” Fear wrapped around my heart like a lasso. After all this time, was—

Bowen’s eyes were wet when he looked up, but he was beaming. “Yeah, that’s okay. It’s what I’ve always wanted for my dad.” He laughed, like he couldn’t keep his happiness inside. His eyes were shining. “And I want it to be you. I really want it to be you.”

The three of us drove to the mall, ate our weight in soft-baked pretzels, and then perused all six stores the mall had to offer. Both boys had opinions, and they argued back and forth like they belonged as devil and angel on my shoulders. When I said I’d found the one, they were all smiles and gave me a double thumbs up each.

If Landon hadn’t been completely preoccupied with the banquet, I wouldn’t be able to keep this secret. It was screaming out of me. I vibrated with anticipation and apprehension. What if I was wrong? What if this wasn’t what he wanted? Bowen told me to stop being ridiculous. What if he thought this was moving too fast? Emmet rolled his eyes at me. What if—

“Dad!” Emmet had to shake me back to reality while we dressed for the banquet. I’d zoned out, gone ghost white. He’d grabbed me by the shoulders. “Stop overthinking.”

I snorted at him. “We share DNA, Em. That ever work for you?”

He grinned, laughed at me, and then said, “Just don’t throw up.” He slapped me on the shoulder, a manly kind of get-it-done slap that nearly knocked me off my feet.

We were all wearing the same boutonniere, a secret nod to the four of us being a family already. Bowen took care of his and Landon’s, and Emmet and I pinned each other’s on before we hopped in the truck and drove to the stadium.

My hands shook the whole drive. I was heavy on the gas, heavy on the brakes. “It’s going to be great, Dad,” Emmet said as we parked. “You’ll see.”

I found Landon inside, laughing with the caterer as they reviewed the final plan for the evening. He looked radiant, as always, as perfectly put together as he’d been the night of our first date.

I slipped my arm around his waist and kissed his cheek. He checked over my shoulder and eyed the crowd. Our sons had disappeared into the throng of players milling on the dance floor. The parents, bedecked in glitz and glam, hung around the tables. Annie and Coach Pierce were making the rounds and thanking the parents for their support. She was in a floor-length champagne-colored gown, glittering from neck to train. She had her football earrings in again and wore a giant pin with a picture of Jason as a toddler, holding a football on top of his bobblehead helmet, over her heart.

The four of us were seated at one table, along with Annie, Jason, and Jason’s girlfriend. Emmet and Bowen had flipped the seating cards, arranging it so Landon and I were together. Landon slipped his hand onto my thigh beneath the drape of the tablecloth. I smiled at him as I sipped my water. Behind Landon, Bowen tried to smother his smile as he watched us both.

It wouldn’t be a banquet without speeches, and Coach Pierce kicked off the night. He thanked the players for their excellent teamwork, camaraderie, sportsmanship, and work ethic. He thanked the varsity players for mentoring junior varsity, not only on the field but off. He thanked the parents for their patience, tenacity, and their resilience.

Everyone got a chuckle out of that.

He bid the seniors farewell, and the tissues started to come out. “You will remember the lessons you’ve learned on this team and on this field for the rest of your life. The men you are growing into have been shaped by your teammates, your friends, your coaches, and your parents, and we could not be prouder of the young men you are. Continue on this path of personal excellence you have carved for yourself, and you will achieve greatness and glory in any and every endeavor you set your heart on.”

Bowen had started to fidget with his butter knife and then a sugar packet as Coach Pierce spoke, until he was shaking the sugar against his thigh like it was a tambourine. Landon rested his hand on Bowen’s forearm. A moment later, the table started bouncing when Bowen’s knee began to jiggle.

He was pink on his cheeks and the tips of his ears, the same way Landon got when he was embarrassed, as he made his way to the lectern set at the head table for his team captain speech. I finally saw his shyness, his nervousness, in the way he cocked his head and rolled his neck. The way his eyes darted left and right and the little smile he gave the crowd. He is Landon’s son.

Bowen unfolded a packet of papers and cleared his throat. His eyes darted to Landon, to Emmet, to me.

Like Coach Pierce, he thanked the team and his teammates for their hard work and their commitment, and for giving him the opportunity to lead them. He spoke of his favorite moments during the year, detailing a series of gut-busting foibles and faux pas from practice that had the audience roaring. He was hitting all the right notes, had the crowd eating out the palm of his hand as he flipped the page.

“There’s one more person I have to thank.” His voice bobbled, and his eyes dropped as he pressed his lips together. “Dad—” His voice cracked.

“Dad, you are my idol, my hero, my knight in shining armor. Every lesson I learned in this life began at your feet, and all the best parts of me come from you and your example. My life has been blessed by your love. I am the man I am today because of your support, and your guidance, and your unwavering, undying belief in the best of me. You cradled my dreams in your heart and you taught me that nothing was out of reach. There is no dream too big in my life, no hope that I can’t wrap my arms around—”

Landon went atomic still beside me. He trembled, his shakes shifting to muffled cries, then to hand-over-his-mouth sobs as he reached sideways and grasped my hand in his. I threaded our fingers together and squeezed.

Bowen’s voice shook as he pressed on. “The joy you brought me in these first eighteen years of my life is immeasurable. I can only hope I have brought half as much joy to you in your life. Dad, I have known you as a boy and loved you like a father, and now, I will spend the rest of my life knowing you as a man, and loving you, and learning from you still, because you are my best and closest friend. And you always will be.”

He sniffed, long and loud, and the microphone picked it up, echoing the wet noise around the room. Bowen laughed, waved his hand in apology.

There wasn’t a dry eye left in the crowd, not a single person who hadn’t teared up as he spoke. Landon wept, fat, heavy tears streaming down his face and into his palm as he tried to break my hand.

“Thank you, Dad,” Bowen said, speaking directly to Landon and ignoring his notes. “Thank you for everything. Thank you for loving me. Thank you for being you. Thank you for being my father. I love you.” He nodded to the crowd once and backed away from the lectern.

Everyone leapt to their feet and clapped as he strode back to our table. The applause rang on as Bowen and Landon bear-hugged, both crying into each other’s shoulders.

A memory tugged at me, a moment that seemed like an eternity ago. Bowen struggles with English. He always has. I twisted to Emmet. “Did you help him write that?”

Emmet’s gaze darted away, hitting a saucer and a coffee spoon before gliding to me. “I didn’t write it for him. He told me the kinds of things he wanted to say and I helped him put it together. And I typed it in this special font that is supposed to be easier for people to read. That’s all.” His eyes hit that coffee spoon again. “Um, while we were drafting it… I was thinking of things I could say to you, too, Dad.”

I grabbed his hand. His grip was iron, and he didn’t let go.

The speeches wrapped up shortly after. No one remembered anything anyone else said after Bowen spoke. The assistant coaches might as well have been teachers from Peanuts.

With dinner over, the banquet shifted into party mode, more player focused than parent focused, with a DJ in the corner pumping out pop forties hits and scattering of party favorites. Servers mingled with trays of finger-food desserts and offered to refresh coffees. Landon needed fifteen minutes to settle himself, four glasses of ice water, and a defibrillator. Every time he looked at Bowen, jumping around on the dance floor with his teammates like he was a pogo stick with a broken spring, he started to tear up again.

The DJ kept the music to mostly upbeat, fast-tempo songs. This was a football banquet, not a prom. Landon and I were dragged onto the dance floor by Emmet and Bowen to do the Macarena and the electric slide, and then they tried to teach us new dance moves, the all-the-rage stuff from the internet. Apparently, we were hilariously hopeless.

By 10:00 p.m., the party started to wind down. The junior varsity players were still partying hard, mosh pitting in the center of the dance floor, but the parents were fading, and the coaches looked like they were ready to hang up their clipboards and hibernate until spring training.

I caught Emmet and Bowen’s eyes. They both nodded.

Somehow, the three of us managed to convince Landon that we were ready to head home, but first, we wanted to walk down to the football field for one last look. The boys had already established I was no Academy Award–winning actor, but their acting skills hovered somewhere below entry-level soap stars. Bowen had gone with the classic arm stretch and fake yawn maneuver, loudly announcing he was “so tired” as he stared into Landon’s face.

“Yeah, Dad,” Emmet chimed in. “I’m beat, too.”

Teenagers. World-champion-level sneaks in their own mind.

Landon was more than happy to meander after Bowen and Emmet to the field. The stadium lights were on for the last time this season. Not every town followed the tradition, but according to Texas legend, Last Waters was supposed to be the only town with those big Friday night lights still burning. State champions. Our sons.

So much had changed beneath these lights. For Emmet, who’d lost himself and fought his way back, guided from treacherous waters by the steadying influence of his friendship with Bowen. He’s got Bowen to thank for pushing him. Your boy wouldn’t let Hale give up. He probably saved that kid.

Thank you, Bowen. Thank you for being there for Emmet when I was still lost.

Bowen and Emmet were shoulder to shoulder, slow-walking across the forty-yard line. They were giggling and eyeing me, eyeing Landon.

Landon had his hands in his pockets and was staring up at the dome of obsidian sky above the stadium lights.

You will remember the lessons you’ve learned on this field for the rest of your life.

There was the spot near the end zone where Landon and I met, and where he’d gently reached out to a broken, aching man. One moment, one act of kindness. One conversation. One decision. One season, one fraction of a life. Endless possible outcomes, and yet everything that had tumbled forward brought us here, to this moment. To the four of us together at the dead center of the field. I could hear Bowen and Emmet laughing, could hear Landon gently teasing the boys.

I loved these three. I loved Emmet’s hidden smile, so honest and hard-won when it appeared, and the way he faced life like he was battening down the hatches and ready for anything. He was so like Riley, stern and steady, but beneath that tough exterior, Emmet nurtured an artist’s soul. My soul. Me and my son, alike in so many ways.

I loved Bowen and the wide-open way he faced the world, ready with a smile and enduring patience and unending kindness. He was his father’s son, the best of Landon distilled.

And I loved Landon more than I thought it was possible to love another. Landon was more than my lover, or my partner, or the man of my dreams. He’d become the foundation of my soul.

Love was too small a word to contain everything I felt for them. I wanted to spend the rest of my life with these men. And, if Bethany was right, if the families we created on Earth lasted through eternity, I wanted that, too. I wanted everything, all of it, together. Fathers and sons.

You and me.

Bowen and Emmet had hit their marks. They were shuffling and giggling, trying to look serious and failing. Bowen was bouncing on his toes. Emmet stared at me, eyes glittering.

I stood in front of the boys and slid my hand into my suit pocket. “Landon?”

Landon had stepped away, holding on to a private moment as he gazed up at the sky. Was he remembering all our nights and days, and how the two of us—the four of us— had merged into one? Lovers, partners, family.

Landon turned to me. His smile was beautiful, always so beautiful.

“Landon.” My knee hit the turf as I closed my hand in my pocket.

Our gazes locked. His lips parted, his jaw dropping as I pulled out the ring I’d picked with Bowen and Emmet’s help. They were still and silent behind me. I could feel them, their crackling hope pushing against my own.

I held up the ring, a band of rose gold plated with tungsten and encircled with tiny diamonds. The ring reminded me of Landon’s kindness, his spirit, and his perfect soul, wreathed in a strength that still brought me to my knees.

Landon’s eyes were huge, and they darted from me to the boys.

“Turns out, they’ve known for a while.” I smiled as I heard Bowen snort and Emmet’s scoff. “Emmet came to me after the state championships. He’s known for a few weeks. Bowen’s known a lot longer.”

“A lot longer, Dad.” Bowen and Landon shared a look, one that started as a joke, Bowen teasing Landon, and then shifted, deepened. Questions filled Landon’s gaze. Bowen smiled. Nodded.

“Landon, I want us to be a family. I want to love you and Bowen and Emmet until the end of time. I want to be yours forever. Landon Larsen, will you marry me?”

Tears cascaded down his cheeks as he reached for me, pulled me to my feet, and dragged me into his arms. “Yes,” he sobbed, clinging to me, his hands buried in my suit, his lips pressed against my cheek. “Luke, yes, yes, yes.”

Bowen and Emmet cheered when I slid the ring onto Landon’s finger. Bowen had swiped Landon’s old BYU college ring to bring to the mall to size, and my ring fit Landon like it was always meant to be there.

We hugged again, kissing as we smiled, as we laughed, as Landon’s tears became my tears. Landon tried to wipe mine away even as more tumbled from his own eyes. He laughed and held on to me, buried his face in my neck, and breathed, “I love you.”

Bowen and Emmet were still cheering, celebrating together before they clapped us both on the back. I heard Bowen say, “I always wanted a baby brother,” right before he yanked Emmet into a headlock and ruffled his hair. Emmet squawked and wrestled with Bowen, but they came out of it in a fierce hug.

Both of their arms wrapped around us. Landon and me, arm in arm, our sons holding on to us both. We pushed our faces together, the four of us beaming and sharing our tears, sharing our joy, sharing our love. Our arms linked together around each other, until we all were one big chain, one big ring.

“We are a family,” Landon said. Bowen and Emmet nodded. “We always have been.”

I kissed Landon’s cheek. “We just needed to find each other.”