Winging It with You

by Chip Pons

Asher Bennett always has a plan. Except for today, dumped and teetering toward tipsy in an airport bar with only a few hours to figure out my next move.

“So, your plan is to just wing it?” he asks, and I can tell he hates everything about that. “Winging it has gotten me to where I am today…”

“Ashley Tisdale.” He cocks his head at the immediacy of my response. “Okay, wait,” he says, leaning forward. “Are we talking High School Musical Ashley Tisdale? Or…” “All of it,” I say, unlocking my phone and opening my music library before passing it over to Asher. “The Tis must be protected at all costs.”

It’s not lost on me that this is our first kiss, and I’m praying it won’t be our last, because kissing Theo Fernandez is like coming up for air while simultaneously being set on fire and screaming Thank you.

I want to remember this moment for the rest of my life.

“When your heart suffers a loss or takes a hit, all you can do is cling to whatever happiness you can find. Because you will be happy one day.

Like allowing yourself to need someone doesn’t automatically equate to weakness.

Once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return.”

The trauma train has left the station and whether Asher wants it or not, he’s getting a front-row seat to the mess that is my life.

I need to believe the things we go through in life—the good, the bad, and everything in between—they are all somehow not-so-subtly nudging us toward what’s meant to be.”

Like maybe all this—meeting Asher in the airport and competing together—is perhaps where life was meant to take me. Both of us.

I may still be figuring out who Theo Fernandez is to me, but it’s abundantly clear he’s become something more. A quiet exhale and the safest of spaces. A shimmering light I hadn’t realized was so obviously missing from my life until he came along and lit up every corner of darkness like the goddamn sun.

I want that. To be happy simply because I believe I’m allowed to be. To be…free.

Like the state championship basketball game when Lucas Scott tells Peyton Sawyer It’s you, except instead of confetti floating gracefully around us, Theo and I are surrounded by, covered in, and choking on tomato guts.

But damn it, he’s my mess. The thought of Asher being mine cracks my chest wide open. This could be it. The moment everyone always talks about. It scares the hell out of me, but he’s mine for however long he wants to be. With anyone else, self-preservation might kick in. But Asher? He just might be worth the risk.

He’s going to kiss me. He’s going to kiss me, and I can’t think of a time when I wanted anything more.

“I don’t want to pretend with you.” “Then don’t,” I whisper, my demand hot and desperate against his lips. “Please don’t pretend, because I don’t want to either.”

“You are,” he whispers, his fingertips covering my body, “the most gorgeous man I’ve ever seen.” His words make me forget how to breathe.

“I need you to breed me.” Theo’s eyes roll back into his skull, a hiss escaping his lips. “Yeah, baby? You want my load?” “Give it to me,” I demand, arching my back so he can really thrust up into me. “I need it.”

“Asher. Bennett. You. Are. So. Amazing. And. I. Will. Never. Stop. Telling. You. That,” he says, between soft, lingering kisses.

Sitting in the kitchen, talking to my mom about a boy I’m clearly crazy about over coffee? It feels right. It feels like growth and acceptance and a version of self-love I never thought I would be capable of experiencing.

If traveling the world together has taught me anything, it’s that the feeling of home doesn’t always have to be a place. Melting into Theo, I know without any reservation or nagging uncertainty that if you’re lucky, home can be a person.

There’s an urgency to the way he’s kissing me. Like he has been a man starved and my lips are the only things keeping him going.

“It’s yours…It’s yours…I’m yours.” He’s mine. My head is swirling at his admission. Theo Fernandez is mine.

the only thing my heart and body and mind are capable of focusing on—is the way Theo’s kissing me. Like he’s trying to make up for lost time. Like his hands need to relearn every inch of my body. Like finally, I’m his.

if I could bottle up this very moment, him in my arms on the lake, I’d want to live in it forever.

I lean my hand into his touch, realizing that I’ve found myself in the middle of a moment I thought only existed in movies and daydreams—wrapped in the embrace of someone I can no longer envision a future without. I love this man.

“My life is infinitely better because you came into it.”

What do I say to the man who has felt more like home than any place ever could?

Sometimes, a life detour comes along when you least expect it. And if you are brave enough to lean in to it, that little detour—or the right person—can change everything. Like Theo has. Like only he could.

But isn’t that what you do when you’re madly in love? Throw yourself headfirst into each other with everything you’ve got? Diving headfirst into Asher feels like coming home, and our home, with his things and my things and our things, has quickly become my favorite place in the world.

“Do you want to wing it again?” A smile grows across his face, slow at first and then all at once, and I’m pretty sure there isn’t anything I wouldn’t do for him just to keep him smiling like this. “With you? Always.”

Queer joy is a powerful force, and I believe with every fiber of my being that every person is so damn worthy of their own love story.