“I would know, right?” Buck asks Hen where they’re tucked together on the couch, on a slow day so silence has fallen over them, soft and comfortable. Hen is halfway to a nap, if Buck had to guess, and Buck is not. He can’t stop thinking, is the thing. He can’t stop replaying a conversation in his head that feels too private to say out loud. It felt too private to hear, even if it was meant for him. “If I was in love with Eddie,” he says, tapping his foot, fiddling with his phone, unlocking and locking, over and over.
The silence stretches. He doesn’t dare glance over, scared of what he’ll see. He knows Hen won’t lie to him. He knows he can trust her, but he’s terrified. He’s more terrified than he’s ever been in his life.
“Buck,” is all she says, and he can hear it all in her voice.
“I would know,” Buck insists, leaning his head back on the couch, trying to swallow down the lump in his throat. “I would know if I’m in love with him.” He can’t breathe, not really. “I would’ve known.”
He knows she notes the tense change. “Have you talked to him?” she says, and Buck is so grateful for her, so glad that someone’s listening to him, that someone knows him enough to know where this is coming from.
“Yes,” he says, and he thinks of saying the words out loud.
“What did he say?” Hen asks, and the bubble of two expands to three.
“He said he was in love with me,” Buck says, easily, looking at the ceiling. He still can’t bear to look over. “He said he’s been in love with me for a long time.”
And he said it like a goodbye. Like it was okay to say because he was saying goodbye. That’s the part Buck can’t say out loud. It wasn’t any different than before, the phone call. They skipped hellos like they always do, talked easy, back and forth, and Eddie hadn’t said it any different than he said anything else. Said, “I think I’m going to be here for a while,” and Buck’s heart constricted, and then in the same breath, “and I think I’m in love with you. Think I have been for a while,” and it felt more like Buck was going to die. Like everything changed in one moment, and then as if nothing had happened, Eddie added on, voice wavering just once, “I tried that new recipe you sent me.”
Buck hadn’t even been able to touch it. “Did you like it?” he asked, barely breathing. And, “A while?” about coming back.
“Chris said it tasted like home,” Eddie said, quiet and warm, and quieter, “Years, I think.” Buck hadn’t known which one he was talking about, past or future, and he had been too scared to ask.
“Don’t wait for me,” Eddie said, firm and a little wistful, and Buck hadn’t responded so they kept talking about little nothings until Buck watched his phone go dark and sat on his couch staring into nothing until he thought he could stand up without his knees giving out from under him.
“Oh, Buck,” Hen says, and Buck loves her but he can’t bear to hear it.
His chest hurts so badly he has to put his hand to it, has to press. “I would’ve known,” he repeats, because he would’ve. How could he have missed something like that when he had Eddie? How could he be too late? He can’t be. He isn’t.
Years, Eddie said. Eddie had maybe been in love with him for years, and Buck didn’t know, and he didn’t realize he—he didn’t know he—
“I would’ve known if Eddie loved me,” he says, voice cracking, and that’s the heart of it. He would’ve known because he knows Eddie, because he worked hard on knowing him, everything about him, and if he had known, he would’ve loved him too because that’s what Eddie would have deserved and because it would’ve been easy loving Eddie back and because he would’ve been in love with Eddie too, if Eddie were in love with him. “How could I not know?”
He’s crying, he realizes through shaky breaths, and Hen wraps her arms around him. Buck slumps into her, puts his damp eyes on her shoulder, admits, here in a safe place, “He told me not to wait.”
“Sounds like he’s looking out for you,” Hen says, and Buck knows she’s right, but it’s the way she says it, sadly, like she knows it’s a goodbye too.
“I love him, Hen,” Buck says then because he couldn’t tell Eddie that on the phone, because he couldn’t torture them both. “I loved him.”
He would’ve given him everything, if only he had known, and it feels like that’s what Hen responds to when she murmurs, “I know.”
