semperama:

Is it worth the risk? the asked each other at the beginning. Name a movie star couple that made it work, Zach said. Chris rattled off a list. What if we break up and end up hating each other? Chris asked. Zach told him that would never happen. They told each other what they wanted to hear, because that’s what you do when you’re trying to convince yourself it’s okay to fall in love. You believe whatever you can to make it less scary. You say whatever you can to make the other person give you a chance.

It’s still terrifying at first, even though Chris has never been happier. Every time he wakes up and Zach is there, he gets that swooping feeling in his stomach like he got the first time he stepped on stage in front of an audience. Except instead of being scared he’ll forget his lines, he’s scared he never learned the right lines in the first place. Zach is going to figure out he’s a phony. He’s going to give Chris the boot and cast someone in his life who isn’t such a bumbling moron.

But he doesn’t. Days go by, months go by, and he doesn’t. Chris can feel the fear in Zach too—sometimes their eyes meet and Zach is looking at him like he can’t understand why he’s there—but they are both trying, both fighting, and maybe that’s what really matters.

It hurts when Zach has to get on a plane and fly across the world to shoot a film.

It hurts when he calls, and it’s the middle of the day for him but the middle of the night for Chris, and Chris has to wake up early for work himself, and all he wants to do is sleep, but all he wants to do is hear Zach’s voice—and how can two people exist like this?

It’s all worth it when he picks Zach up at the airport and that smile is the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen. It’s Zach’s smile—not the Grand Canyon, not the sunset, not the vastness of the ocean—that makes Chris wonder if maybe there’s a higher power after all. But then again, maybe not. Because how is it fair that he gets to be this happy? He’s done nothing to deserve the way Zach looks at him, but he’s grateful that the universe collected very specific carbon atoms together in very specific ways and placed this man in his life at this time. And if tomorrow a solar flare turns them all into dust where they stand, then so be it. His dust and Zach’s dust will join with stardust, and that’s beautiful too.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” Zach asks him on the drive home. Zach insisted on driving, because he got chauffeured around the whole time he was in Paris and he misses the independence of being behind a wheel. Chris was happy to let him, because it means he gets to look at Zach and not at the road.

“I don’t know,” Chris lies. “I’m just looking.”

They make it all the way back to Chris’s house and pull into the driveway and get out, but Chris stops Zach before he can get his bags out of the trunk. He doesn’t have a ring, and he doesn’t have a plan, but he doesn’t need those things. He just needs Zach.

“Let’s get married,” he says. A tear slides down his cheek and Zach’s hand is shaking when it reaches out to brush it away.

“What?” Zach is wide-eyed, terrified. Chris doesn’t blame him. He is too.

“I want to marry you.”

“Chris….I don’t know. I don’t know if…I don’t know.”

It strikes Chris as funny. He chuckles and sniffles and swipes at his wet cheeks, then reaches out and grips Zach’s hands tight in both of his. “I don’t know either.”

That’s the problem. There is very little that he knows. He doesn’t know if he’s right for Zach or if Zach is right for him. He doesn’t know if they’ll still love each other in a month, a year, a decade. He doesn’t even know if they’ll be alive tomorrow to put this plan in motion.

But in light of all those unknowns, what can he do but throw himself into this while he has it? This is crazy, but any other course of action would be crazier.

“Okay,” Zach whispers. He’s smiling through tears now too. “Okay.”

They kiss under the palm tree that God or the universe put there just for them to kiss under. Chris maybe not have all the answers in life, but this one answer is good enough.