Meet Me in the Blue (Hemlock Harbor, #1)

by A.M. Johnson

“The moment when everything turns blue.”

I could feel him there waiting, and as I broke through to the small clearing, I saw him. A man I didn’t recognize stood with his back to me, his eyes on the sky. The tattoos peeking out from under his damp cotton t-shirt were new, his bleach-blond hair was new too. My heart drummed inside my chest, but I was surprised to find it wasn’t in anger, but relief. So much relief. “Meet me in the blue,” I said. “I’ll always be here.”

“I’m here, Luka.” Without looking at me, he opened his car door. “We’ll figure it out.”

But he was here, and he still smelled like rain.

But here. Now. I realized I’d always needed Rook.

“Fuck the labels. There are all types of love, Rook.”

I thought of Luka. Of all the years. The path between our houses. The blue hour. The fort. Rock giants and skinned knees. I thought of him, and maybe he couldn’t love me the way I needed him to, but he did, love me. And all the pain inside me intensified, crested like an ocean wave in a storm, but from up here I could see everything, and I decided happiness was forgiveness.

But you… you’re like the sun, I can feel you from millions of miles away.”

“Even if it takes our whole lives, we’ll count them, Rook. I know we will.”

My best friend. The man I loved so much it hurt. Was breaking. “I know… Luka. God, I know.”

“You give me what I need every time I look at you. By simply… existing.”

“I don’t know what to do… I’ll never be over you, Rook, and that kiss…”

It didn’t matter if, for the first time in my life, a kiss actually meant something, that I actually wanted more than anything to kiss him again. This was who we were, and I didn’t want to do anything to lose that. It was enough. It had to be, because more than anything, I didn’t want to be someone he needed to survive.

Loving Rook was effortless for me. Effortless because I’d always known. It wasn’t a maybe kind of thing, or a let’s try, it was years of hopeful smiles and subtle touches, disseminating each one and wondering if this time… just maybe… It was hours of talking in the dark shade of trees and knowing that this person, this one man, owned all of my secrets. All but one. And it was a million days of wanting to give him that secret, wanting to give him everything.

“‘Not yet,’ he’d say. ‘You tell him, not yet.’ I wish it was still not yet.”

“The point to this entire story is that love isn’t easy. Love is sacrifice, son. It hurts, it’s messy, and shit, it will tear you up. At the risk of sounding like one of those greeting cards your sister loves to torture us with, I have to say it’s worth it. Love is worth every single hurt it gives. It’s worth it because it’s fucking living, and you deserve to live it.”

I don’t want to miss you anymore.

“I don’t think there’s a timetable that fits us, there isn’t a list of things we need to check off. I don’t know a lot of things about relationships, but I know you, and I know I’m in love with my best friend. And I’m ready, Luka… if you are.”

“I want to marry you, Rook. Tell me yes… tell me you want that too. To get married here, in our spot… Meet me there, in the blue, one last time?” “Yes,” he said without hesitation and ghosted a kiss across my lips as he whispered, “I will always meet you there.”