Roman nodded, turning down a wide path and leading them toward a set of stairs that were underneath a massive set of shark teeth. “What about you? What incredible things have you been up to?”
Wyatt cocked his head. “You mean my award-winning work creating a five-minute VR experience for Tomes of Whatever that took me about a hundred hours of unpaid overtime to finish?”
“Unpaid?”
“Yes, unpaid. Although I may be exaggerating the hours.”
“Well, I guarantee you this job is paid. And you won’t have to worry about the museum ever again.”
Wyatt scoffed. “And we all know Roman Ashford has a great track record with keeping his promises.”
“Fair enough.” Roman wanted to put his hands up and tell Wyatt to just throw the punch. Knock him across the jaw and get all the pent-up anger and frustration out.
And then after, he’d ask Wyatt to kiss it better. He’d grab his hands and wrap them around his waist, pulling Wyatt onto him as they reunited in more ways than one.
“Have you been working on any passion projects?” Roman asked, pulling his thoughts back on track, even though the rogue throb in his shorts made that difficult.
“A couple, yeah. I just haven’t had any time to focus on them. I also feel like I’m behind, somehow. I had to teach myself everything from the ground up, and I couldn’t even focus on anything until the last few—why am I even telling you any of this.”
“Because I want to hear it,” Roman said as they walked under the gaping shark jaw, entering the underwater tunnel. Immediately, they were surrounded by a school of gray and black fish, moving as if sharing one mind, their scales flashing under the lights.
“Really? Is that why you haven’t called in the last, oh, I don’t know, five years? “
“It’s not—no…”
A thin thread of Roman’s reactionary self wanted to snap back with the same question thrown back at Wyatt. Why hadn’t he been the one to find Roman and reach out to him?
But Roman knew the answer to that question, and asking it now would only make things exponentially worse. So he swallowed his words and craned his neck, looking up as a hammerhead shark lazily swam past.
The two riled-up men slowly walked their way down the underwater tunnel in silence. A manta ray with a wingspan of at least four feet slowly drifted above them, appearing as if it were flying. Roman tried to think about the view, about the job, about the fucking weather. He tried to think of anything that wasn’t pinning Wyatt up against the thick glass and kissing him the way he used to—without any restraints, devouring him whole and enjoying every second of it, every taste, every moan.
“I’ve missed you,” Roman said, their walk slowing, the vulnerability in his own voice surprising him. “A lot.”
“Why didn’t you ever reach out, then? My number never changed.”
“I don’t have a good reason to offer you, Wyatt. I fucked up, and that fuckup ruined your life. That made me ashamed—it made me hurt for you and for what could have been. There was a time when I thought I was doing you a favor by staying away. You didn’t need to get involved in the shit that was going on in my life.” Roman rubbed the bridge of his nose. He hated apologizing, hated owning up to mistakes, and instead preferred to power through the turbulence and work to make the mistake right.
Tonight, he had to suck it up and let the words come without any conditions or subtext.
“I’m sorry. I should have stood up for you. I should have taken the fall—if not for you, then with you. I fucked up, and I’m sorry.”
They stopped their walk, the entrance to the tunnel still a ways away. A wall of yellow and blue coral rose behind Wyatt, some clown fish drifting in and out of an anemone. It reminded Roman of a date they had been on, one of their first, when he had managed to somehow snag them a private behind-the-scenes tour and swimming session with the dolphins at this very aquarium. They were only seventeen, just having made things official between them, two starry-eyed queer kids living life as if every day were a fairy tale.
Fast-forward ten years and those starry-eyed boys no longer existed, replaced by hardened and skeptical men, scarred by the way their dreams shattered around them. The scar tissue throbbed with every one of Roman’s heartbeats, reflected back at him through Wyatt’s wide brown eyes.
“I know,” Wyatt finally said after a moment of loaded silence. The blue hues of the surrounding water shifted across his face as he looked away from Roman. “You didn’t force me to hack the school. No one was holding a gun to my head; no one made me do it. I may have been a little coerced to do it, but you didn’t force me. But yes, you should have made things right somehow.” He crossed his arms, turning his face back to Roman and pouting those puffy lips of his. A bolt of heat wedged itself in Roman’s chest, spreading outward.