seem important,” Priest said with a shrug. “All I cared about was that he’d decided to come back. Why? Did he talk to you about it?”
I could hardly believe it. All that time together and Ankh had never mentioned what he’d been doing those weeks.
“He came back to our hometown,” I said. “He wanted to talk to the only out gay guy he knew.”
Priest’s eyes widened.
“Yeah. Me.”
“No way.” Priest slapped the table and laughed in pure disbelief. “He didn’t!”
“He absolutely did,” I said with a grin. “Aaron showed up at my doorstep freaking out with this long story about this guy he’d met at a bar, and how he’d never felt anything like this for anyone before.”
Priest looked absolutely floored. The memory made me smile, too—I could see it clear as day in my mind, Ankh’s windswept dark hair and his brow furrowed above his deep blue eyes, talking a mile a minute as he often did when he got anxious. I’d had to interrupt him to get him to slow down and encourage him to come into the Liberty Crew clubhouse for a beer and the chance to actually explain what was going on.
At the time I’d been afraid it was something awful—when he’d explained that it was just guy problems, and not even real problems at that, I’d laughed so hard I’d almost cried, much to Aaron’s chagrin.
“I was already in the Liberty Crew at the time,” I said. “So he crashed at the clubhouse for a while and nearly drove himself insane thinking in circles.”
“That law school brain of his,” Priest said. “Always had to look at every problem from every angle.”
“Exactly,” I said with a smile. “I told him there wasn’t anything to be afraid of. He should just follow his heart. He didn’t seem to believe me, until one day he woke up and said I was right.”
“Always had to come to the conclusions on his own, too,” Priest said. “God, that drove me crazy. So, it was staying at the Crew Motel that gave him the idea to start the club, huh?”
“Well,” I said, and bit my lip a little sheepishly, “I may have had something to do with that, too.”
“What!” Priest squawked. He threw his hands up, rocking back in his chair so hard that it rattled the table. “How is it possible that I didn’t know this?”
“I didn’t tell him to start the club,” I said, laughing as I picked up my coffee mug to keep it from sloshing on the table. “I may have planted the seed of the idea, but the execution was all him.”
“What did you do?” Priest asked.
“He just seemed really lost,” I said with a shrug. “Falling in love with you kind of threw a wrench in all his plans. He was always a guy who liked to build things, you know. Communities, and businesses, and all that. But that rebellious streak was always getting him into trouble.”
“Never stopped getting him into trouble,” Priest agreed.
“He was a born leader, as you know,” I said, and Priest nodded. “So, I knew he wouldn’t really be interested in the idea of prospecting. But the idea of building something—I thought it might be a good next step for him. And a way for him to show in a concrete way that he was committed to you.” I rubbed my chin, still smiling at the memory. “I told him if I was in your position, I’d be really fucking pissed that the guy I was into just ran out on me like that.”
“I was pissed,” Priest said. “And you were right. When he proposed the idea of starting a club together, I knew he was serious.”
“What can I say?” I asked. “I’m a romantic.”
“Wow,” Priest said, “So really we have you to thank for Hell’s Ankhor, don’t we?”
“Hell, no,” I said. “All I did was give him a push. Building it was all you two.”
Priest took a sip of his coffee, still grinning like he couldn’t control it. I realized suddenly that I hadn’t seen him in smile like that in… well, in years. Not since he lost Ankh. And sitting here over coffee, reminiscing about our shared connections with Ankh, was the happiest I’d felt in a long time, too.
18
Priest
“Wow,” I said again, still reeling from the story Mal had just shared with me. “I can’t believe this. If it weren’t for you, Ankh and I may not have had the life we did together.”