“Yes,” Damien said softly. The tone said he was sharing my wish, not that he was agreeing with the label. “I want that, too.”
Tanner cocked his head again and smiled. Those damn dimples made my heart stammer. “I feel like I’ve been dating you both since high school, to be fair,” he said. “Minus the best sex of my life.”
Heat touched my cheeks, but I remained calm.
“And when we graduated,” Damien continued where Tanner had stopped. “It was like going through a breakup when you think you can remain friends. But you can’t. It can never be the same when you still love the people that aren’t around anymore.”
“Have we wasted all those years?” I asked, panic rising again.
“I don’t know,” Damien said.
But Tanner gave the answer that truly mattered. “Maybe,” he said and let us ponder. “Maybe we did, but there’s no fixing it. All we can do is choose what comes next.”
“What does come next?” I asked.
The two of them exchanged a quick glance. “You tell us,” Damien said.
“Damien and I are both in LA. But you…” Tanner shrugged, then quickly moved his arms around to stay afloat. “Do you miss the sunshine?”
“Hell yeah,” I said. And it all became so simple. “I want to come back to California.”
“You do?” Damien asked.
“You do,” Tanner simply stated.
“I’m sick of living the way I’m living,” I said. “Without you guys. And with a soulless job to show for it. It’s the worst deal I’ve ever gotten.”
“So…you’re coming back?” Damien asked, his voice growing higher as visible hope and excitement appeared.
I nodded. “I choose you. If you…”
“If we choose you?” Tanner asked with a little dose of sarcasm. “Is there really an ‘if’ there anymore?”
I chuckled. “I guess there isn’t.”
“Guys,” Tanner said. “I finally feel complete.”
As those words left him, all three of us had the same thought. We propelled ourselves closer until we were pressed together. “I love you both,” Damien said.
“I love you both,” Tanner echoed.
And all the passion and pain of all the years behind us finally flapped their wings and took flight. It welled in me. It overpowered me. It gave me hope.
“I love you both,” I said, aware that we just created a phrase that echoed into the future, long into our whole lives. I said it now, for the first time, but I heard it throughout my life. I heard it on the day all our friends would gather to celebrate our next graduation anniversary. I heard it when the three of us moved in together. I heard it when each of us brought home some news worth celebrating.
‘I love you both,’ would be spoken when bad times came. And when good times returned. It would be the phrase that marked our highs and lows. It would be a phrase worth fighting for and, someday, dying with.
I marked it, in this moment, as the last words I would ever say one day. And I was sure of it. I was sure of it because I would never stop saying it. It would be a hello and a goodbye until the end of our days.
I loved them both.
