How to Say I Do

by Tal Bauer

We must have looked like quite the couple. I loved it. The feel of holding another man in public and having someone special to care for, to have in your arms, and to focus all your little attentions and fondness on. Another big first: my first time looking very gay in public.

It was enough, I thought, to fall in love, even though he wouldn’t fall, too. It was enough to go a little crazy inside myself, and to feel like the world had lit on fire, and for these few days, to pretend that anything was possible.

Lord, I was gone for this man. Pure gone, and you couldn’t have beaten my soul back into my body with a baseball bat, or nailed my heart down when it started to run.

I rested my head against Noël’s and left it there, and we watched another round of Liam versus Jason and his lunch. Noël passed over the last of our shared sandwich. I took two bites, then held out the final piece for Noël. He ate it out of my fingers.

I held him beneath all those glittering constellations, and as the tide rolled in, I wished on every shooting star I saw that this little moment could grow into forever.

Wyatt tasted like sea salt and waves, chapped lips, and the coconut margarita he’d had earlier. Like promises and patience and the way he’d touched his fingers to his hat brim when he’d said “Howdy” in Dallas. Like sweetness and adoration and the first blush of falling in love.

sea-turtles ring. It seemed like, for that night, at least, everything that had happened was all meant to be because it had all led to this. To Wyatt, and to him and me dancing on this beach. His arms around me felt like a dream. If it was, and if he was, then I never wanted to wake up.

I loved him, I did, even in such a short time. I knew it wasn’t supposed to be possible. What did I honestly know about Noël? Well, I knew enough, I thought. I knew I wanted forever.

“I need you again,” Noël whispered pleaded into my kiss. “Wyatt, please.” He never needed to beg. I’d make love to him forever, any time he asked for it. I’d love him until the end of time.

this was my life, and I wished Noël had wanted to see it. I wished he’d believed there was something worthwhile here, something to visit and explore and maybe find delightful or charming.

“You’re built out of platinum. No one can fuck with you. Noël, you astonish me. You stopped me in my tracks the moment we met. There is nothing about you that is fucked up.”

Looking at him, I realized: even with all the heartache and the unknowns, and even if Noël, with all his luminosity and his prickliness and his brilliance, his defensiveness and his shyness and his hidden sweetness, ultimately wasn’t meant to be with me, I was still unbearably lucky to have him brush against my life.

My sweet, sweet cowboy, who was shy and didn’t like selfies and said goodnight to his horse, and who made the lives of everyone he touched remarkably and extraordinarily better. My dearest, darling Wyatt. The man of my dreams.

Everyone deserved to be loved like this. Everyone deserved to swing their wedding dress—or their cowboy hat—in the mirror and imagine their future because they found The One, their One, and that meant everything. Every Hollywood ending, every happy ever after, every sweet first kiss. A love like that deserved to be special, and sacred.