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Things moved fast after Adam and Ronan got together.
Nights were for sleeping together, always, and waking hours were for stitching up wounds from the past. For talking and fucking and bartering with their memories, eager to spend everything and acquire each other’s secrets. They tried to catch up on years in a matter of days, trading every little thing they’d never said:
“I wanted to help you with your shoulder last year.”
And, “I wanted to ask you to.”
Or, “That summer they reopened the park, I always stared when you were swimming.”
Late one night, when Ronan thought he was sleeping, Adam laughed abruptly next to him.
“That time at Em’s farm stand,” he said, shaking his head in the darkness of Ronan’s bedroom. “You were changing your shirt—I think you'd gotten berries on it? And I got so pissed off looking at you that I left without paying.”
Ronan pulled Adam swiftly underneath him, swallowing his laugh and feeling generous and proud. He wanted to make Adam feel the same way that he did, to give him a gift to match, and he used his tongue and his fingers until Adam ripped the blankets off the bed and came down his throat.
In the darkness, after, in a pile on the floor, their breath came quick and loud. They were catching up on years and picking up speed, now, sprinting ahead.
In town, Ronan only told one person, but that person was Carl Bennett, so word spread quickly. Carl told Angela, who told Shelley, who had to tell her four nieces, since they were all in her kitchen when she got the text from Angela and hollered in delighted surprise.
Things moved fast. The town made a fuss and then folks adjusted, smirking, pretending they were only grateful that their meetings now ended on time.
*
They’d been dating for a month when Ronan murmured, “I love you,” one morning after Adam brought him coffee in bed.
It lit Adam up like a sparkler.
“How long have you been holding that in?” he asked with a laugh, climbing onto the bed and over Ronan, who was lying on his stomach. The room smelled strongly of sex and the coffee that had spilled onto the floor.
“Fuck off,” Ronan said into his bicep, voice muffled. He smiled into his skin. “Say it back.”
Adam leaned down to kiss Ronan’s neck and whisper in his ear. “I love you,” he said. “I’m sorry I waited for you to say it first.”
Ronan rolled onto his side and looked at Adam lying next to him. He let his lips stay soft and lax as he leaned in, running his mouth over Adam’s cheek and jaw in something like a roving kiss, thinking about what to say next.
“I can say things first,” he said eventually, putting his mouth on Adam's and cupping his cheek with one hand. In a low voice, he added, “It’s OK with me if you want that.”
“Sometimes,” Adam said. He sighed, with pleasure or shame, Ronan couldn’t quite tell. Maybe both, he thought. “Sometimes, I do.”
“I love you,” Ronan told him. “I’ll love that about you, too.”
Abruptly, Adam crowded forward so that Ronan was rolled onto his back. He tucked his face into Ronan’s neck and asked, “What if I’m not good at it?”
“Being together?” Ronan guessed. When Adam nodded, he wrapped him up snugly, holding him close. Sometimes, the mood between them could swing suddenly, turning like the weather; Ronan only wanted to shelter Adam from the storms in his head.
They’d talked about this already, and Ronan knew all of it: Adam’s fears and wounds, his severity. How he’d hated himself when he first came to Henrietta, and how hard it was not to hate himself now, when he thought back on all of his mistakes. How he worried that he’d already doomed the two of them by being angry and stupid and broken.
Often, Ronan wanted to remind Adam that he, Ronan, was the stupid, broken one. Since they’d started dating, Ronan had wanted to kick himself a hundred times for his self-righteousness. For both of them, it was easier to forgive the other person than it was to forgive themselves.
But Adam’s pain about this particular thing, about their relationship and relationships generally, was different; it had a darker edge than Ronan’s. Sometimes, Adam needed to talk about it quietly, held tight in Ronan's arms. Some nights, he needed to try and take a swing at himself before Ronan caught him with his fist in the air.
Ronan asked, “Do you think you’re good at loving me?”
“I don’t think I’m the one who gets to decide that,” Adam replied.
“Don’t play dumb, c’mon. Are you good at it? Do you love me well?”
He was silent. Ronan could feel all that it took for him to finally say, “Yes.”
“Yeah, you do,” Ronan agreed gently. “So what else could I want? What are you worried about?”
“You’re good at this,” Adam said irritably, sidestepping like he did. “You don’t even try and you’re just—like this.”
Here was that sharp edge, now, Ronan thought, showing itself but not breaking skin.
Ronan knew that by ‘this,’ Adam meant that he was good at this lying togetherness, falling in loveness, sleepy-soft facing each other, Adam-and-Ronanness. Ronan was good at this: letting himself be tender for Adam. Not all the time, but when it was just the two of them. When it counted, and even when Adam couldn’t give it back. Especially then.
Was it enough to make things last between them? Ronan didn’t know. It didn’t seem like it could be, not when it was this easy. Adam was right that to Ronan, loving didn’t feel like trying; it didn’t take effort, not like the years of pretending had. Now that they were together, all the stored up wanting rushed out in a torrent. Was it skill, or just a backlog of desire?
“It’s embarrassing,” Adam said, interrupting Ronan’s thoughts. “I don’t want you to be with someone who isn’t as good at it as you are.”
“Fuck off with this ‘good at it’ bullshit. You’re so competitive,” Ronan complained. “Stop trying to be the relationship valedictorian.”
“You fuck off,” Adam muttered.
He was annoyed, but Ronan liked it. This was new and wonderful, this version of Adam’s anger that wasn’t directed at Ronan. The sharp edge glinted, but Adam felt warm and safe on Ronan's chest.
Ronan smiled at the ceiling above them. “I don't think I will fuck off, actually,” he said. “Maybe I’m hot for it. Maybe I like you all striving and inept. I've got a thing for C students, actually, have I never told you that?”
“I hate you.”
“You fucking love me." Ronan kissed Adam on the head and said sincerely, so Adam would know it was true, “I like how you do it, OK? Don’t change.”
They rearranged themselves after a moment, facing each other like curved parentheses. All morning they kept it up, fitting together everywhere they went: holding hands in the kitchen, pressed together in the shower, soft animals with hard shells at their backs. When they went outside to drink more coffee, they sat back-to-back on the porch, each of them resting their head on the other’s shoulder, looking upside down at the other’s sky.
"You're good at it," Ronan said later that night, when Adam pressed inside him. "You're so, so good at it."
*
Ronan didn't know what they were moving towards until four months later, after sex and before dinner on a Sunday afternoon.
He'd been running his mouth while they fucked, saying all the regular, dazed bullshit that came out when Adam held him down on the bed: please, don’t stop, there, God you feel good—
But he was clear-eyed, after, when the idea came to him. Or, when he said it out loud, since the idea had already come to him a hundred times, in his dreams and on the mornings when he woke up to find Adam slack-jawed and snoring next to him.
“You should marry me,” he said.
He felt Adam freeze halfway through wrapping an arm around his waist. They were standing together in the doorway between Ronan’s bedroom and the bathroom, touching each other because they’d just had sex and their bodies wanted to stay close, remembering and reenacting.
“Or just move in,” he amended quickly, pulling Adam into him. He wrapped him up tight, tucking Adam’s head beneath his chin before Adam could wriggle away or look up to see the flush racing across his cheeks. “You should move in.”
Adam squeezed Ronan hard with both arms, a gesture so fierce and abrupt that it made Ronan loosen his own grip. This was the intended result, he realized a moment later, when Adam took advantage and stepped backwards out of his embrace. Adam’s expression was cautious and amused, and for once, he didn’t make fun of Ronan’s blushing.
Ronan lifted his chin. “Make it official, stop coming and going from your place. We both like it all right, right?”
Adam ignored the question. “I never thought someone would propose to me.”
Ronan frowned. After a few months with Adam—properly with him, loving him, holding his hand on the sidewalk, even, for a brief moment outside the goddamn feed store—he thought he’d gotten over most of his insecurities about their relationship. And maybe he had, but time hadn’t cured him of all of his defensiveness.
“That wasn’t a proposal,” he said automatically, “that was—”
“I liked it,” Adam interrupted. His eyes moved briefly, lowering, Ronan thought, to glance at Ronan’s left hand. “If I had thought about it, I would’ve wanted it like this. Like how you just said it.”
“You should marry me,” Ronan said again.
Adam smiled. “Ok. I agree.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. I do.”
It made Ronan’s head swim. “You’re such a dick sometimes. You really want to marry me?
Adam nodded, stepping back into Ronan’s arms. “Yeah. It’s not hard to imagine, is it?
“You really want to do this forever, for the rest of our lives?” Now Ronan was asking questions that he didn’t really need answers to, because Adam was smiling as Ronan kissed his jaw and reached down to grip his ass with both hands. “Never fuck anyone else again,” he continued, and Adam laughed underneath him, pressing one leg in between Ronan’s. “Wake up next to me nine-thousand days in a row, like it’s Parrish-Lynch Groundhog Day? You’d really want that?”
When he pulled back to look down at Adam's face, they were both grinning.
“I think,” Adam said slowly, “that we’re good at that already. Being stuck together and working it out. And I wonder if marriage—I don’t know, I never wanted to be tied to someone. Couldn’t ever imagine someone wanting to be tied to me, ‘cause I know I don’t make it easy.
“But maybe if a person… maybe if you have to stay in a place, that’s the only way it gets better. It’s like Henrietta. I think if we were married, it would be like it’s been around here: projects, tearing things down, and planting all the new trees by the bridge. Getting ready so that the next flood isn’t as bad. Like that.”
Ronan stared at him. “I’m sold,” he said, bending down to kiss Adam on the mouth. “If you want to fuck things up and fix them with me forever, I’m sold.”
“I know,” Adam said. “Thank you for saying it first.”
*
They shared the news with their loved ones, starting with Ronan’s brothers. Adam told Ronan later that he’d meant to look at the camera and at Matthew and Declan’s faces on the screen, since he’d wanted to see them react to the news, but he’d gotten caught up looking at Ronan, instead, watching Ronan’s mouth smile as he formed the words.
Then they chose a day nine days later and planned to hold the ceremony wherever they could find shade near Miranda’s work site. That was how they’d gotten her to agree to participate—“It won’t take half your lunch break,” Ronan had promised. "Parrish'll cry like a baby, you'll love it," he'd lied.
On the morning of their chosen date, Adam woke up before Ronan.
“This is our anniversary,” he said, just as soon as Ronan blinked his eyes open. “September 4th. This is our wedding anniversary.”
Ronan put on his glasses and peered at him. “Are you having a breakdown?”
“No, I just—” Adam cut himself off and sat back, bashful.
Ronan watched him for a moment. “You’re excited?” he guessed. “Freaked the fuck out?” Adam clenched his jaw. "Scared to be bad at it?"
Adam nodded, and his expression crumpled. Ronan watched his face transform, all furrowed brow and pale splotches and fear filling his eyes.
Before they'd gotten together, it had been different: it used to be that Ronan watched Adam’s face turn to stone. For years, he’d seen Adam wear a mask continuously, for entire conversations and meetings, with no breaks. He’d always assumed that Adam wore his mask the way that Ronan wore his attitude: to warn people and shove them off. To make space, or to turn down the volume.
Now he knew that Adam’s incredible mind, with its excess of power and capacity, could split off into two, holding a conversation while simultaneously arguing with itself. Adam could talk to Jean about pancakes and at the same time curse himself for wasting time, for being rude, for being alone, for being who he was. For being half-deaf, wiry, sand-colored, and curt. For being at all.
It was a distraction. Multi-tasking. The same potency that let Adam’s imagination travel inside the body, understanding all the myriad fibers and cells that he could manipulate, allowed him to move through the world with an always-available well of shame behind a neutral expression.
But Ronan saw behind the mask all the time, now. He loved it more than anything, even in the raw and horrible moments like this one, when Adam could barely tolerate himself, and Ronan could see it all right in front of him.
He thought about this before he spoke.
“Parrish," he reminded him, "you said it the day we decided to get hitched: we've been stuck together for years, and it works for us. Even when we were fighting all the time, don't you remember? And now we give each other handjobs and make each other dinner and shit. You've got in me in fucking physical therapy. You treat me better than everybody else in this town combined."
Adam looked at him cautiously, and Ronan continued. “When I first saw you, I thought God sent you for me." He added, "Don’t tell anyone I said that, by the way."
He'd said it just to make Adam smile, even though it was true, and it worked. Adam squeezed his eyes shut and then relaxed onto the bed, saying fondly, “God, Ronan.” And then, "God, we're both insane."
"Are you still scared?" Ronan asked.
"Yes. Good scared, though. I can tell the difference."
The tide inside Adam receeded. They drank their coffee outside and then drove into town to get married.
*
Miranda was waiting for them the porch of the county library. She was in her clean Carhartt's, Ronan noticed, and she hadn't cracked open the lunchtime Diet Coke that she always sprayed all over herself. Both Adam and Ronan got a heavy pat on the shoulder before she stepped back and got started at 11:30 on the dot, just like they'd planned.
“Not everyone here believes in marriage,” she began gruffly. Ronan and Adam looked sideways at each other, but didn’t interrupt.
She cleared her throat and continued, “I’m not sure I do, is what I’m saying. Not sure the government belongs in anyone’s business like that. But you’re a good pair, and I trust you both. I know you trust each other, and neither of you would let the other get into anything stupid. Why you can’t apply some self-preservation to your own damn selves, I don’t know,” she added under her breath, “but at least you look out for each other.”
She took a deep breath and put her hands on her hips. “I’ve got some legal rights here, gentlemen, so let’s get it done. Do you, Ronan, take Dr. Parrish here to be your lawfully wedded husband?”
“I do,” Ronan said, and he felt Adam squeeze his hand. “Can you add some stuff, though? ‘To have and to hold, in sickness and in health,’ that kinda shit?”
“No, we’re a month behind and $12K over budget on the darn—” she gestured towards a section of unpaved sidewalk below them “—Main Street. Anyway, do you, Adam, take Ronan to be your lawfully wedded husband?"
Adam nodded once and turned to look at Ronan. “I do,” he said warmly. All traces of the morning's fear were gone.
“By the power vested in me by the Universal Life Church, I now pronounce you wed. You can kiss, although that is not a legal requirement for the ceremony. And take an extra fifteen for lunch,” Miranda added. Then she fidgeted with her overalls. “Actually, just take the day," she said, waving her hand dismissively. "Y'all don't need to be volunteering on Labor Day weekend anyway.”
They did kiss, the kind of brief kiss that suggested more to come later in private. Then Adam handed his phone to Shelley, who’d been sniffling on a nearby bench, so she could take a picture of the them with Miranda.
“Jean is going to be steamin’ mad she missed it,” Shelley said as she took the picture. “If y’all don’t hustle over to the Café for an iced tea, she’ll have your hide, Ronan, you know she will.”
After they left, though, they skipped the Café and drove the long way to the third-closest Dairy Queen. In the peaceful anonymity of the DQ parking lot, they made out for a long time, maybe longer than they ever had before. And that was really saying something, what with how much Ronan liked kissing Adam, and how much Adam liked to turn Ronan on.
*
That night, when Adam came downstairs after showering, Ronan dropped to his knees in front of him, hugging him tightly around the thighs. Adam laughed and rubbed his hands over Ronan’s head, touching his short hair and the boney curves where his neck met his scalp.
Ronan looked up and pulled two rings out of his pocket, holding them out and offering them to Adam.
“Be funny if I said ‘no’ this time,” Adam said, as he took the rings and examined them. “Since we just made it legal ‘n all.” He held one ring up in front of his face. “Where did you get these?”
“That one one was my dad’s,” Ronan said, pointing to a thick, silver band, “and that one belonged to my mom’s dad.” His grandfather’s ring was slender and pale gold.
Adam tried them both on his ring finger one at a time, admiring his hand and showing each ring to Ronan. “This one’s too big for me,” he decided, handing Ronan the ring that had been his father’s. He put on the other one. “Is it all right if I keep this one? Does that one fit you?”
Ronan nodded and showed his hand as proof.
“Silver looks nice on you,” Adam said, touching Ronan’s cheek. “Thank you.”
The gold ring fit Adam well, too, and they both touched the band on his finger. Ronan held Adam's hand tightly in his.
"You know you're not tied to me, right?" he asked. "Not in the bad way. Not like a leash. I know I said that we were stuck together, but I didn't mean it to sound like that, like you're trapped."
Adam touched him all over again, sweetly, rubbing his scalp and tugging gently at his earlobes. He was learning to reassure the way that Ronan did, Ronan had noticed, with his hands.
"We're all stuck with something," Adam said. "And it's usually in the bad way, I think. We get stuck with our past or our parents or our demons." He shrugged. "I like being with you more than anything else."
"I like you with my ring on," Ronan admitted. "I like you being mine. Being in my family, taking my name."
"Is that why you're worried I'll feel stuck?" Adam asked. "I like those things too, you know."
Ronan did know, had known, but still it washed over him like a wave, the relief and awe and gratitude that he felt kneeling at Adam's feet. He felt it pooling around them, a surge of love and trust, and it almost made him cry to press his face into Adam's thigh, smelling their laundry detergent on the fabric of his pants.
"I love you," Adam said, rocking them gently side to side. "You're my husband. I want to wear this ring and make each other dinner and go visit your brothers next week."
"You're getting really good at this," Ronan told him. "You always were, but still."
They stayed there for a long time, touching each other, soft animals with shells at their backs. Ronan felt the weight of his grandfather's ring on Adam's hand, cool and firm where it cupped the back of his neck.