Chapter 1

I could just go back.

Josh stared out at the passing landscape, trying to distract himself from the thought that had been buzzing around his head like a persistent bee for the past hour and a half. He concentrated instead on the scenery around him. The grass on either side of the highway was rich with the promise of the approaching summer, the expanse of green broken here and there with bright flashes of color where some of the hardier flowers had already opened their faces to the light. The sun itself, growing stronger with every passing day, rewarded their enthusiasm by covering everything with the hazy golden blanket of early afternoon.

I could just go back.

Josh sighed. Lovely as it was, the view wasn’t going to keep his mind off of where he was going, or why. Ever since leaving he had been playing a game with himself. He’d pretended that he was simply going to the store, perhaps to pick up dinner or a couple of movies. It was, after all, Friday. Those were the things he would normally be doing on a Friday afternoon, gathering up the ingredients for a quiet evening at home: a chicken to roast or steaks to grill, some wine to celebrate the end of the work week, a copy of a recently-released video or, if he was feeling romantic, an old standby like It Happened One Night or Barefoot in the Park.

But that would be a normal Friday, and this was not a normal Friday. It was anything but a normal Friday.

I could just go back.

Simultaneous with the recurrence of the nagging thought was the appearance of the sign announcing the upcoming exit for US 6 East. He had 3 miles or, at his current speed, about two and a half minutes, to decide what he was going to do. Once he was on route 6 he knew he wouldn’t be going back.

It seemed to Josh as if time stood still while he weighed what lay behind him against what lay ahead of him. If he got on US 6 East, where would it take him? Not in the geographic sense–he knew where the road went–but on a grander scale. What kind of change would he be making in his life if he turned the wheel slightly to the right and took the exit? When he thought about it that way, the off ramp became much more than just a twist in the asphalt, a sudden diversion from the grey-black ribbon of Massachusetts highway 3 South.

Fifty miles behind him was Boston. And in Boston was his comfortable apartment, with its familiar furnishings, it’s view of Fenway Park, and it’s proximity to the people and places that over the past seven years had become his world. There, too, as comfortable and familiar as the furniture, the view, and the neighborhood, was Doug, his lover of more than eight years. But it was Doug he was driving away from now.

The change in Josh’s world had come that morning, shortly after ten o’clock. Returning from his regular morning run, he had found Doug waiting for him on the living room couch, the couch on which Josh had taken so many Saturday afternoon naps, on which the two of them had sat together so often, fingers entwined, watching TV or reading the Sunday Herald. They’d bought it together, shortly after moving in to the apartment. It had been their first major purchase as a couple, and even though its covering was faded and starting to wear thin in the places where their bodies most often rested against it, they had never been able to part with the memories it held.

But that morning Doug had looked up at Josh from his seat on the couch they had bought together and said, “There’s something I need to tell you.”

The “something” had turned out to be a man from their gym. Josh couldn’t remember his name now–Stephen or Peter or Roger. It didn’t matter. What mattered was that Doug had slept with this man.

“It didn’t mean anything,” Doug had said afterward.

Josh had laughed, despite being in shock. Isn’t that what they always say? he’d thought to himself as he’d stared at the face of the man he’d come to think he knew so well, the man he’d believed would never hurt him. It was like the two of them were suddenly thrust into the worst kind of movie of the week, and for a moment Josh couldn’t help but wonder which washed-up former star would play him. Matthew Perry, perhaps, if his movie career was fading. Or maybe they could get George Clooney, he’d thought as Doug had waited for him to respond. George Clooney would be good.

When he’d finally accepted what Doug had said to him, Josh had replied with the line he’d always wanted the wounded party in such movies to use. “If it didn’t mean anything, then why did you have to do it?”

Doug had answered him with the usual repertoire of answers. It had only happened one time. He wasn’t really sure why he’d done it. No, they weren’t going to see each other again. Josh had listened impatiently, equally as irritated with the predictability of his lover’s responses as he was with the revelation of his infidelity. The fact that Doug had engaged in the most common of indiscretions–and that he didn’t even know why he’d done it–made everything even worse. At least if he’d had some reason, if it had meant something, then Josh would have something to focus on, to blame, to try and understand even while he was reeling from the initial blow. As it was, there was nothing but questions.

“I think I just needed some excitement,” Doug had said finally, sounding relieved to have come up with some way of breaking the silence that had settled between them while Josh frantically searched for something that would help him remember that it was Doug he was talking to, and not some stranger. “You know, after eight years things do get a little predictable.”

That, more than anything else, was what had caused Josh to leave. The predictability of their relationship, the comfortableness of it, was what he loved most about being with Doug. He liked coming home to the same man every day, and sleeping in the same bed with him night after night. He liked knowing that when they went to their favorite Chinese restaurant Doug would always order the General Chow’s chicken. He liked knowing that if he heard Tom Petty coming from the stereo it meant Doug was in a good mood or, if it was instead the Cowboy Junkies, that he should give his lover some space. He liked knowing that if Doug asked him to rub his back it meant they would soon be making love.

Wasn’t that what being with the same man for eight years was supposed to mean? Wasn’t that why you stayed with someone that long? After the initial rush of falling in love, wasn’t it the gradual accumulation of shared moments, the daily revelations that revealed the totality of the person you chose to share your life with, that made getting together in the first place worthwhile? Josh had asked Doug these questions, more or less without yelling. However, when all of Doug’s replies had begun with “yes, but,” Josh had felt himself beginning to lose control.

That’s when the clothes had gone into the suitcase. Josh had been surprised at how quickly it was all over. It had really only taken him about twenty minutes to gather up what he needed. Doug had followed him around the entire time, trying to calm him down. But that had only made Josh angrier, and finally he’d stopped speaking altogether, cramming his socks and T-shirts and underwear into his bag without even looking at his lover.

“Where are you going?” Doug had asked him as Josh had snatched up his laptop and carried it, along with his bag, down the two flights of stairs to the street.

“Away,” Josh had answered tersely as he’d gotten in and pulled away, leaving Doug standing on the street.

The truth was, at the time he really hadn’t known where he was going to go. All he knew was that he wanted to be wherever Doug wasn’t. So at first he’d just driven around with no particular direction in mind, trying not to think. He’d hoped that if he didn’t play the scene over and over in his head, that maybe it would turn out not to have happened. Maybe, if he tried hard enough to suppress it, time would somehow be miraculously reversed and Doug’s infidelity would never have happened.

After about an hour, though, he’d pulled the car onto a relatively deserted side street and cried. Then he’d used his cell phone to call Ryan at work. His friendship with Ryan went back farther even than his relationship with Doug, beginning when both were newly out of college and newly out in Boston. Over the years they’d seen each other through the usual romantic highs and lows, somehow miraculously managing to be on opposite ends of the dating-breakup continuum most of the time, so that whenever one of them was in need of comfort the other was in a position to remind him that true love was still out there somewhere. As Josh dialed Ryan’s number he couldn’t help but reflect that, true to form, Ryan had recently started dating what appeared to be a great guy after years of suffering through inappropriate and frequently unfaithful boyfriends. It should, he thought bitterly, have been a sign.

When Ryan picked up, the story had spilled out of Josh in a series of tearful bursts interrupted by Ryan having to put him on hold every couple of minutes to take a call from one of the clients whose stock portfolios he tended in hopes of growing their small fortunes into large ones. Each time Josh had been forced to sit and listen to the overly cheerful hold music, he had started crying all over again. It hadn’t seemed fair that while his life was falling apart, somewhere in the world Celine Dion was being allowed to record new love songs.

It was Ryan who, after dutifully siding with Josh in declaring  Doug the biggest jerk to ever live, had suggested Provincetown. He had, he told Josh, a couple of clients there who owned a guest house. They had frequently extended an invitation for him to come visit them, and he was sure they would let Josh stay for a few days. With Memorial Day more than a week away, the season hadn’t yet begun, and the town was still relatively deserted. “Just let me give them a call,” he’d told Josh, putting him on hold once again.

The clients, a couple named Ben and Ted, had indeed been more than willing to let Josh stay at their place. Less than ten minutes after hanging up with Josh, Ryan had called back with directions to the house.

“They don’t have any guests coming until the holiday weekend,” Ryan had told him. “You’ll have the place to yourself.”

After thanking Ryan and promising to call him later that evening, Josh had hung up and sat in the car, thinking of every reason why he shouldn’t go. He didn’t know Ted and Ben. He was embarrassed that he was running away. But the truth was that he didn’t really have any legitimate reasons for not accepting their offer. His job as a freelance copywriter for various ad agencies meant that he could basically take time off whenever he wanted to. Besides, he told himself, it was only for the weekend. He just needed a few days away from Doug to process what had happened and decide what his next move would be. And if it made Doug feel bad, all the better.

Before he could change his mind he’d started driving. Now, an hour later, he was having second thoughts. Maybe he should have stayed and talked things out with Doug. After all, wasn’t he the one who was always stressing the importance of communication in a relationship. He did it so often his lover had taken to calling him Oprah whenever he went into another one of his lectures on the subject, usually to some friend who was having relationship difficulties. Perhaps it was time to take his own advice and find out what exactly had made Doug feel he had to go to someone else for something he clearly wasn’t getting from Josh.

But if Doug was so interested in talking things out, why hadn’t he even tried once to call? Josh had set the cell phone on the seat next to him, fully expecting it to ring. Surely Doug was wondering where he was, and when he was coming back. Surely he wouldn’t let Josh just leave. Despite the way he’d fled the apartment, Josh had truly believed that Doug would try to get him to return after giving him an appropriate amount of time to be furious.

Or would he? Maybe, Josh thought, Doug was glad he was gone. Maybe he wanted the apartment to himself to, like Josh, think things over.

Or maybe he’s with Whatshisname, Josh thought grimly.

He wondered what this other guy looked like. Probably a lot like himself, he though miserably. Shortly after he and Doug had started dating, they’d run into Doug’s most recent ex at a party. Josh had been a bit taken aback to see that he and the ex resembled each other: tall, medium builds, short dark hair and green eyes.

He and Doug had laughed about it later, in bed. “What can I say?” Doug had told him. “I have a thing for you dark-haired boys. Especially when you have hairy chests,” he’d added, starting to run his tongue down Josh’s stomach. He’d kept going, and moments later any jealousy Josh had been feeling about seeing the ex had vanished as the warmth of Doug’s mouth had surrounded him.

The memory of that evening eight years earlier almost made him forget about the ugliness of the morning. Then he pictured Doug in bed not with him but with this new man, someone who resembled him visually but wasn’t him at all. It would be easier if the guy was his physical opposite: blonde, perhaps, and short. Maybe some bulked-up gym queen with bleached teeth and steroid pockmarks on his shoulders. At least if he was physically different from Josh there could be some kind of physical element to blame Doug’s behavior on, a momentary yearning for something different, some new taste, touch, or smell that he’d been unable to resist. But if the man looked like him, that meant there was something more substantial at play, something that couldn’t be explained away by Doug wanting to feel a more muscular body or smoother skin beneath his fingers.

How had it happened the first time, Josh wondered. Had they exchanged glances in the showers after their workouts, each sizing up the other while caressing themselves suggestively with soapy hands? Had one of them helpfully offered to spot the other during a routine, being sure to position himself so as to display his jockstrapped crotch to full advantage? Josh knew there had to have been at least minimal courtship, a casual compliment on the shape of a bicep or the strength of a calf that led to something more. After all, you didn’t just go from exchanging pleasantries in the locker room to rolling around naked in some man’s bed. How had the first suggestion of sex come up? Who had made the first move?

No, he decided suddenly, he wasn’t ready to talk it through. A few days away from Doug was exactly what he needed right now. A few days to think–or preferably not think–about what was happening in their relationship. All he wanted to do was sit on the beach and look at the ocean, far away from the distractions of the city, his friends, and the man he was no longer sure he knew at all.

The exit, and the moment of decision, had arrived. Without hesitating, Josh took it.