How to Say I Do

by Tal Bauer

In Texas, you don’t describe distance in miles. You talk in hours.

If a Texan had been weeping into his shot glasses at a bar, he’d have had four new friends inside of five minutes to pour out his troubles on. No one here knew what to do with a prickly, wounded man from New York City.

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.

My dreams were soaring for the moon. Anything could happen here. I could fall in love. Maybe I already had.

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 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.

If you got me rattled and put me in a box, I was going to chatter until you stapled my mouth shut.