I’m not sure how long Kevin’s affair with Spencer lasted, but over the space of a few months I saw Kevin’s Mustang parked at Spencer’s house several times, so I know their fling lasted that long. In truth, I didn’t care how long it continued because I didn’t care about Kevin anymore. I had my life to live and a boyfriend who loved me without shame. Why waste time hoping Kevin might become something he never would?
I took the SAT in April, and my combined score placed me in the eighty-sixth percentile of all those tested. Lane scored almost as well—we both received letters of acceptance to the University of Florida in the spring of our senior year of high school—but being independent sorts, Lane and I chose a different path. Much to the disappointment of Lane’s folks and Carmen Valenti, we enrolled at Brevard Community College in Cocoa Beach, where we attended classes with kids whose fathers worked for NASA or served at Patrick Air Force Base.
Lane and I rented one half of a furnished duplex in Cape Canaveral with a weed-and-dirt yard, no air-conditioning, and a beer-swilling carpenter named Wayne as our neighbor. A good surfing break was only two blocks from our front door, so after classes we could hit the water whenever waves were firing. Our apartment sat on the east side of the duplex, and each morning we woke to the cries of seabirds at the shore. We smelled the Atlantic’s briny scent.
I brought my mower and edger to the Cape when we moved there, and it didn’t take me long to build a customer base in our neighborhood. My earnings, combined with proceeds from a student loan, helped make ends meet.
I liked east coast living. An onshore breeze nearly always blew; it kept things comfortable even on the hottest of days. I liked our working-class neighbors and their lack of pretension, and I don’t think they ever suspected what went on privately between Lane and me. To them, I suppose, we were just two college boys who liked to surf. Our two years in Brevard County flew by, and after we earned our associate degrees, we transferred to the University of Florida to earn our bachelors.
I can’t say that I enjoyed landlocked Gainesville; I missed the sound of waves slapping a shore. But I earned an engineering degree there, Lane a degree in journalism, and then, after graduation, we returned to Pinellas County. We rented a cottage in Sunset Beach, only a few miles south of my mom’s house on Treasure Island. Eventually, we bought the cottage from our landlord, and we have lived there ever since. Lane and I never made a lot of money in our respective careers, but we’ve done okay; the bills get paid.
There’s actually a half-decent surfing break only a short distance from our house, and a few times each month, Lane and I will dust off our boards. Then we join all the teenagers and college kids on the lineup. We ride a few waves and remember the days when we could surf for hours and not get tired.
Lane and I have been a couple for almost fifty years, which I find pretty amazing. Of course Lane’s put on weight and his hair has thinned, but he still looks beautiful to me when I wake next to him in the morning. Sometimes I rest my cheek against his warm shoulder. I listen to waves crash against the nearby beach and think about how lucky I am to have Lane in my life.
What more could a guy ask for?
I only saw Kevin Corrigan once after our breakup. When Lane and I came home for spring break from the university, during our junior year, my mother told me Kevin’s mom had just died. Her funeral would take place at St. Jude two days hence. Mom asked if I would attend with her, and though I didn’t want to go I said I would.
Kevin was only twenty-two at the time, but he looked older when he stood alone to greet a short line of mourners in the chapel foyer. He wore a rumpled business suit and a necktie, and he kept tugging at his shirt collar whenever he got the chance. His shoulders seemed to sag and the freckles on his nose had faded, but he still looked handsome with his blond hair, square chin, and twinkly blue eyes.
When Mom and I reached Kevin, his face lit up while his gaze traveled from Mom to me. He hugged my mother, then shook my hand while he thanked us for coming, and if he harbored any anger or resentment toward me, he didn’t let it show. I think Kevin was genuinely glad to see us. We had probably known him longer than anyone else present, and in a sense we were all the family he had left.
When Mom asked Kevin what he was doing with his life, he explained that he lived with his girlfriend on Madeira Beach, where he helped crew a commercial fishing boat; it sailed weekly from the John’s Pass Marina in search of grouper.
“I’m out in the Gulf for days at a time,” he told us. “My girl doesn’t like it, but the money’s good and the guys on the boat are fun.”
I’ll bet they are, I thought while I studied Kevin’s inscrutable visage.
I’ll bet they are…
No photograph accompanied Kevin’s obituary when I read it this morning. I suppose the Times charges extra for that sort of thing. But since today is Saturday, I took the time to leaf through pages of a photograph album I’d found at my mother’s house several years ago, not long after she passed. The album was the kind with heavy black pages that mumbled when I turned them. The crinkly edged black-and-white snapshots in the album were held in place by little gummed corners Mom had carefully positioned on each page.
Most of the photos depicted me and my sister during various stages of our childhood and adolescence, but then I found one of Kevin and me, taken back in our Jungle days. We wore our hobo Halloween costumes. We had smudged our faces with burnt cork so we looked like we hadn’t shaved in a week, and we stood before the Corrigans’ front door with our arms draped across each other’s shoulders.
We looked about as happy as two boys could be.