How to Say I Do

by Tal Bauer

My father's legacy lived in every part of me. I inherited his powerfully fierce need to help others, along with that everlasting McKinley dependability, and a tenaciousness that rose out of the marrow of my bones.

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.

Wyatt’s eyes were gray and soft as he studied me. “I’ve had a worst day of my life. I know what it’s like to feel alone, and I know what a difference it makes when you’re not.” He was the only one. The only person, from The Plaza in Midtown to Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport, who’d done more than stare and whisper and walk away. “Thank you.”

What was the worse idea? Cancel it all, plop my ass in the sand, and drink myself away to the sound of the waves? Or take off on my honeymoon adventures with Wyatt, a Texan who’d broken all my assumptions, and whose every next sentence kept stunning and surprising me?

He brought to mind saddle leather and gravel roads, oak trees painted by a setting sun, and the smell of the air after a hard rain,

He made me think of roses opening after winter, buds tentatively unfurling and testing the light before embracing a bloom. He made me feel sixteen again, heady and breathless and losing myself in daydreams and fantasies. I was gone. Ass over head, my boots well in the air, hungry for more of Noël. I wanted everything: the man who’d eaten both our burgers and poured his broken heart out to a strange cowboy, and the man who’d snuck a bottle of vodka onto a plane and chugged a homemade screwdriver while smirking at me like we were partners in crime.

Something inside me was opening to Noël. Something like old hopes and sixteen-year-old dreams, and like watching the sun set behind those first ten acres with my father.

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.

My world for an infinite staircase that I could help him down from.

So sweet

By the time he got to describing hints of chocolate and honey, I was nothing more than vapor. Effervescent, from my toes to my hat and everywhere in between.

His infinite compassion and his immeasurable kindness had seduced the part of me that was crying out for attention. When he’d found me, I was cracked open and exposed, and Wyatt had tended to the breaks in my soul with all of his unfailing gentleness. Was it any wonder that I was intoxicated by him?

looked into Wyatt’s eyes and saw desire, and I felt an equal desire flicker inside me. I wanted Wyatt, and I wanted everything that meant.

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.

I was in love. Heartbreakingly and profoundly in love. 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.

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.

Wyatt’s smile knocked the breath clear out of my lungs. His eyes sparkled, so full of adoration that my mind stopped. I could have stayed there forever, lost in everything that he was.

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.

I couldn’t keep the words in one second longer. “I’m in love with you, Wyatt,” I blurted out. He went still, so still I thought I’d made a severe mistake. I fucked up. He was going to let me down at the end of the week— The smile on his face. The look in his eyes. “That was my wish. Noël, that’s been my wish every time—” I kissed him.

“I know it’s going to take some time,” he said. “I know you’ve got a lot to figure out. While you’re figuring it all out? Just know that I’m here. I understand you, Noël. I do.” Not a single person had ever said those words. Shit, I had never said those words. How could he know me? How could he claim to understand me when I was such a mystery to myself?

I really hope noel mans up

“I think—” My voice wavered. “I think becoming your brother-in-law would be the best thing that could happen in my life.” After a handful of miles passed in silence, Liam reached across the truck and laid his hand on my shoulder.

He was so close that I wanted to pull him out of death and draw him back into this life so we could do everything together the way we were meant to, the way we had always dreamed of. Dad, please, please come back. My knees buckled. Noël grabbed my wine glass before I dropped it. He and I went to the ground, and he kept his arms around me as I cracked all the way open, the anguish that I never, ever let out finally breaking free. I wept against Noël’s neck.

I had a thousand memories of my dad and me here. Now I had new memories to share space with the old: Noël and I dancing in the same dust, loving each other as deeply now as I’d been loved back then.

This! ❤️

I didn’t want to call Wyatt. That seemed like admitting defeat. I’d set out three days ago to go to him, and go I was doing. I didn’t want him to rescue me or collect me or pick me up. I wanted our Hollywood ending, our love story’s finale, and the romantic forever after. I wanted him to know that I would go the distance, that I would brave the odds, that I would rent a car—okay, a luxury Tesla—and drive to him, and if my piss-poor planning meant I broke down in the final few miles, well then—

“Come on, let’s get you home,” he said, steering me toward the porch where his yellow roses were waving hello. Home. This was it. I’d leaped, and I’d soared, and I’d fallen, and, now, finally, I had landed. I was exactly where I was meant to be. I was home.

Coming to Wyatt—making that grand gesture and showing him, proving to him, that I chose him over and above my job and my life in New York—had fixed something immutable between us. Every

I looked at Wyatt. Wyatt looked at me. He gazed at me like I was the only thing in the world that could touch his soul. He’d look at me like that forever, I realized. We would never break this bond between us. We would never find the end of this love. And he would look at our kids the same way, full of love, and adoration, and awe. He’d look at our kids the way his father had gazed down at him. “We are,” I said. “We absolutely are.”

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