Isaac stays with me that night and through the following days. He is, as corny as it sounds, my rock, and my safe-haven in the storm.

He makes sure I eat, and sleep, and smile; and gradually, I re-accustom myself to his presence and to his touch, to his unabashed honesty and generous affection.

He gives in a way few people know how—without asking for or expecting anything in return.

I hope that someday I'll be able to do the same for him, but for now I allow myself to simply take what he so willingly wants to give.

When my dad is well enough to come home, Isaac is there with me to get him settled and make sure he's okay. With his EMT training, I feel safe relying on him, able to relax as I know I wouldn't otherwise.

Finally, with my dad stable and everything calm once more, Isaac leaves. The house feels too quiet and empty without him, and I miss him almost as soon as he's gone.

Unlike the last time we parted, though, it isn't a painful feeling. He's not beyond my reach, and I know he'll come back if I call.

Over the next several weeks, we see each other almost every day.

He watches me practice on the small digital piano in my room with the rapt attention of someone in the best seats at the Met, and takes me out for coffee and sweet, cliché walks on the beach. He even convinces me to let him teach me to surf, and doesn't hold it against me when I decide I prefer to watch from the dry safety of the shore after all.

Without the stress of a wedding, or dark secrets, looming over us, we can take our time getting to know one another again; and yet—as silly as it sounds—I agree with him when he tells me he feels like he's always known me somehow.

We get closer in other ways too.

He kisses me every chance he gets—sometimes at the most inappropriate times, like right in front of my dad—and slowly, I grow confident enough to be the one to kiss him first.

I also discover that if music were a drug, Isaac would be addicted. Moreover, that I'd have the weird superpower to roofie him with my admittedly derivative compositions.

Case in point: one afternoon, after I show him the latest little piece I'm working on, he takes me by the hand as soon as the last note sounds, pulls me from the piano bench, and leads me to my bed. Seemingly overcome, he lies back and sets my hand to the center of his chest.

"Touch me like that, Felix," he says. "The way you touch the music. The way it makes you feel. Make me feel it, too."

"Isaac...I don't..."

I'm still very shy about initiating things, always unsure I'm 'doing it right,' always with a weird disconnect between my body and my mind—too cerebral to be truly sensual.

Isaac, on the other hand, has no such issue. He's comfortable in his body, lives fully in the physical, and gives himself over to sensation with ease.

Sitting up slightly, he pulls off his shirt, and then guides my hands over his body.

"I'm an instrument, Felix," he says. "Play me."

I do my best, exploring his body with my hands, my fingers ghosting over his smooth, sun-browned skin, feeling the firm muscles in his shoulders and chest, and the softer regions below his ribs. I discover the ticklish places along his sides, and learn how he shivers when I kiss the stiff little circles on his breast, and the sensitive surrender of his throat.

Eventually, I'm bold enough to work open the fly of his pants, freeing his blood-hardened prick, and taste the earthy salt of his most intimate skin. I'm still not able to take him in my mouth, but I kiss and lick and glide my hand up and down his length, and that seems like more than enough.

In fact, I've barely touched him when he spasms without warning, narrowly missing my face with the creamy jet of his sudden release.

"Sorry," he pants, blushing with uncharacteristic embarrassment. "You're just too much for me. I couldn't help it."

While I might be a little limited in the range of what I'm comfortable doing, he has no such hesitation. He makes me stand, leaning against the wall, and expose myself while he drops to his knees. Gripping my hips, he lavishes me with his tongue, encouraging me to make full use of his willing mouth, and swallowing around me when sudden, intense pleasure obliterates my mind.

In short, Isaac is an unapologetically sexual creature; and yet he seems to have an inborn sense of when I am, and am not, in such a mood. He's never impatient or frustrated, and seems just as happy to sit and listen to me play music, or simply lie in bed at my side, as he is to touch me when I welcome it; and, because he seems incapable of hiding what he feels, I'm more easily able to let him know how I feel in return.

Which is why it's strange when, about two months after our reunion, with my dad pretty much recovered and doing as well as he ever did, Isaac starts to act differently: more distant, more secretive, less available.

After three days without seeing him, when he once more declines an invitation to spend some time alone, I decide I need to confront him about whatever is going on.

If he needs our relationship to change or—though it makes me cold just to think it—even end, I want him to tell me; not keep secrets out of fear that I'll break.

The next day, when he's once more seemingly thrilled to do nothing but exist within sight of me, we go for a walk along our usual route on the beach, stopping to watch a pair of surfers paddle out to catch the incoming waves.

After a few minutes, I break away from Isaac and make my way to a nearby bench. He follows, dropping heavily at my side and leaning forward, chin in his hands.

Neither of us speaks.

The breeze that had swept in from the sea all day with a constant, buffeting force of moving air has grown quiet with the retreat of the sun, and the sky overhead is a mix of pink and tangerine that reminds me of something cool and sweet, like sorbet.

We watch the waves roll in—dark purple-gray swells topped with white—endlessly leaping to shore and dashing themselves upon the land in long sliding crescents of foam; energy spent and withdrawn with a rhythm we can almost match with our breath.

After the third time I hear Isaac sigh, I can't take it anymore, and break the silence.

"Isaac...is everything okay?" I ask. "You've been...different...the last few days."

He turns to me with a surprised expression. "Am I that obvious?"

I laugh despite the anxiety coiled like a snake in my chest. "Yes, you are. And I...I love you for that. But..." I bite my lip, afraid to say too much, afraid not to push hard enough. "If something's...wrong...I want to know."

He continues to stare at me with a wide, startled look for a moment before releasing his breath with a laugh of his own. Reaching over, he takes my hand, gently massaging it between his fingers.

"I was waiting to tell you this," he says, "but I guess now is as good a time as any."

He sighs again, looking out over the rolling waves, the water darkening to a blue-black as the light fades.

"I've been offered an opportunity," he says. "And it's kind of my dream job—a surf instructor for this small outdoor sports company. It's close to a school, too, where I can finish my EMT training. The only thing is...it's in Hawaii."

He looks up at me, gray-green eyes bright and showing all the colors of his soul.

"Isaac..." I force myself to smile, ignoring the void threatening to collapse in the center of my heart. The air feels suddenly much cooler than it did; the colors in the sky less bright. "That's...amazing," I say.

"I haven't said yes yet," he goes on quickly, "because...well no job's worth leaving you, but..."

"Isaac, you can't let this chance go just because of me," I insist, shaking my head. 

It's the right thing to say, I'm sure, even if it feels like a blade slicing through my chest.

"I love what we have," I continue, keeping my voice as level as I can, "and I don't want to lose it, but...you have to think about what's best for you."

He shakes his head.

"You should know by now, Felix, I don't think with my head. I think with my heart. When I think about what's 'best' for me, I don't think about money, or a career, or some sort of  'goals'. I think about what makes me happy in this life. That's why...I'll only say yes to the job if you'll come with me."

He bites his lip, clearly caught in the wires of his own nerves.

Different parts of me simultaneously light up with happiness and implode with despair. It sounds like a dream—a wonderful, beautiful, impossible dream.

"Isaac...I can't leave my dad. You know that. I'm all he has. But you..." I reach for him, brushing my fingertips lightly along the sides of his face, the way I know he likes. "You need to follow that dream. You can't let anything hold you back."

To my surprise, his eyes go wide with shock, and he takes my face between his hands.

"Felix—you don't hold me back. You hold me up. You inspire me, you make me want to go after my dreams. Of course you can't leave your dad—I'd never ask you to. I...I want you to come with me. You and your dad. I've—"

He bites his lip again, his eyes flicking between mine with nervous energy.

"I've found a place. Big enough for a family. For the three of us. I'll make sure he gets the best care—I promise you that—and you, too, whatever you want. I'll—"

I cut him off with a kiss.

It's not gentle or soft; it's hard and painful—a little too forceful, a little too desperate. But it's honest, and it's clear.

I want him, I've got him, and I'm not letting go.

"You'll have to ask my old man," I say, hiding a smile—for my dad, Hawaii would be a dream-come-true. "But if he agrees...then I guess I'm all yours, Isaac. I'll go anywhere, as long as it's with you."