Chapter 8

“You two fought again, didn’t you?”

Like everyone who knew Rhys and Dante, Kirk didn’t take their breakups seriously. At first, he had comforted Dante earnestly. But after watching them get back together several times, he had come to accept it merely as “a fight.”

Dante’s lips parted.

Just as he had at the café ten days ago, he nearly said they had really broken up this time, but the words caught in his throat. Back then, he had still believed that if he just met Rhys, everything would be resolved—which was probably why he had been able to say they broke up so easily. Now that he had witnessed Rhys’s ice-cold reaction firsthand, he lacked the courage.

“More or less,” Dante replied, trying to gloss over it. “But the trip… I don’t know what’ll happen. Anyway, thanks for asking.”

In the present situation, what were the odds he and Rhys would actually go on the trip together? When he remembered Rhys’s unanswered messages and that unsmiling face, the possibility hovered somewhere around ten percent. In truth, it was probably impossible. Expecting an anniversary trip to still happen while they were technically broken up wasn’t exactly a normal mindset in the first place.

They say people lose their minds after heartbreak, Dante thought miserably. Surely, that’s why I’m acting like this.

“Come on. You’ll make up before then. Don’t worry too much,” Kirk offered positively, knowing how much Dante had been looking forward to this vacation. “It’s an important day for you two, right?”

His colleague’s kind reassurance only made Dante’s heart heavier. I want that too, my friend. But even if I want to go, I can’t. The person I’m supposed to travel with won’t even show me a single strand of his pretty hair.

In his despair, a desperate temptation flashed through him. Should I ask Kirk to contact him for me and ask whether he still plans to go? He barely held on to his remaining thread of reason, knowing with absolute certainty that doing so would get him permanently blocked for real.

Get a hold of yourself, you bastard. It’s an anniversary trip. There’s no way you go on one after breaking up.

It was time to acknowledge the reality he had been actively denying just to keep a sliver of hope alive.

“Ha… I don’t think we’ll be able to go,” Dante said with a deep sigh, bending down to pick up the barbell he had dropped on the floor. He wanted to escape this painful subject by tormenting his body and leaving the secular world behind.

Kirk, however, seemed determined to bother him today, remaining right where he was. “Ouch. This one must be pretty serious,” Kirk said calmly. “Then again, I once fought with my wife the day before a trip and canceled it. Things like that happen. Sorry, Dante. So, are you canceling your leave too?”

Hearing the sudden shift to his time off, Dante narrowed his eyes suspiciously. He stared at Kirk before asking, “Why my leave?”

“I was thinking that if you cancel, I might take your slot instead,” Kirk admitted. “The kids are on break next week, so I thought we might take a family trip. My oldest has been singing nonstop about wanting to go to Yellowstone National Park.”

“Did you bring up the trip for that reason from the start?” Dante asked, his voice full of mock betrayal.

Kirk hurriedly waved his hands. “No! Originally, I was going to say that if you needed someone to watch Lily, I could help. The kids were asking how Lily was. We were looking at old pictures recently and they found him. They cried, asking why I gave you something so cute and pretty. Ha ha. Funny little things. They never even looked at him back then because all he did was sleep. They’re my kids, but they were so annoying that time.”

Kirk’s voice softened slightly as the topic turned to guinea pigs. A few years prior, New York had passed regulations preventing guinea pigs from being sold or purchased in pet shops, so Kirk had gone to great lengths to safely rehome the remaining ones through online marketplaces and acquaintances. He seemed to be fondly remembering those days.

“Anyway, as I listened, I thought if you were canceling, it might not be a bad idea for me to take the slot instead. That’s why I asked.”

Hearing that Kirk’s intentions were purer than he had expected, Dante’s mood softened. In that case… yes, it would probably be better for Kirk to go than for me, since I have nowhere to go. If he could be of help, he wanted to be. He was just about to tell Kirk to do as he pleased when the weight of the past year flashed through his mind.

It was leave he had worked agonizingly hard to secure.

The Coast Guard was, after all, a military branch. Because of the nature of being a servicemember, overseas leave required a mountain of advance paperwork. Even after approval, it could be abruptly canceled due to mobilization orders, and there were times when perfectly legitimate days off were denied simply based on a superior’s mood.

To minimize the chance of his leave application being rejected ahead of the anniversary, Dante had endured nearly a year without taking a single day off, covered countless colleagues’ shifts, and made every possible sacrifice to protect this trip. It felt incredibly wasteful for leave won through such grueling effort to disappear so easily.

But then, Dante remembered Rhys’s chilly profile—the way Rhys hadn’t even looked at him. Faced with that bleak reality, Dante had left the café first without saying any of the things he had truly wanted to say. That had been his only real chance, and instead of desperately holding on, he had ruined it by pretending to be composed for no reason.

“Yeah, then… I’ll submit the cancellation request today,” Dante said. “You said Yellowstone? Take lots of pictures.”

Kirk silently examined Dante for a long moment, his brows raised. Dante met his gaze evenly.

Do you need something else? What? You want my barbell?

When Dante made that face, Kirk smiled slowly. “But did you cancel your reservations and stuff? The trip is next week. Hotels usually charge a penalty if you cancel right before you travel. Let’s see, today’s Saturday, so you’ve got exactly four days left.”

…Ah, damn. Wait.

A cold sweat suddenly chilled Dante’s back. Jolted by Kirk pointing out what he had completely forgotten, Dante whipped out his phone and checked his reservation email. Horrifyingly, the hotel stated that the free cancellation deadline was seven days before the trip. It had already passed.

He desperately hoped that since there was still some time left, the penalty wouldn’t be too steep. But directly beneath the free cancellation notice was a line stating that after the deadline, thirty percent of the total cost would be charged. There was also a disgusting additional note saying the full amount would be charged for cancellations on the check-in date.

His blood-earned money.

Dante hurriedly opened the attached receipt file. The total was so staggering he could barely believe he had booked it himself: $3,480.

For only four nights and five days, he had paid a month’s rent? Dante, you were completely out of your mind with love.

Even if he could turn back time to the moment he made the reservation, however, Dante knew he would have made the same choice. Since Rhys had booked business class in such grand style, Dante had felt compelled to reserve a five-star hotel just to match him. The provider instinct running through his blood had shouted at him to maintain at least that much balance.

It had been an unplanned luxury, but the mere thought of Rhys delighting in the hotel had made Dante happy. Now, he was looking at canceling without ever going near the place. Worse, tragedy had piled on top of tragedy, and he would have to pay a steep penalty for the privilege.

The problem was that this wasn’t the only financial disaster.

Even adding up all four nights and five days of accommodations, the price was still lower than two business-class seats, so Dante had pre-booked various local activities to balance things out. Activities of that sort usually had to be canceled at least a month in advance to qualify for a refund. There was no taking those back now.

Dante rubbed his face with a dry hand, a low groan escaping him. It was unfair enough to be dumped, but now he was about to lose a fortune on top of it. Had he known this would happen, he should have chosen cheaper accommodations. Why had looking good to Rhys mattered so much?

…Was he kidding? Of course it mattered. If he wanted to look good in front of a beautiful, handsome younger lover like Rhys, that much was only proper. It was because Dante had maintained his cool, older-partner image all this time that he had managed to date Rhys for four years. Before meeting Rhys, he had never lasted a single year in a relationship.

Moreover, Rhys was not a man who suited a chain hotel like a Holiday Inn. Unlike Dante, who had spent his life hovering somewhere between the middle class and ordinary working folk, Rhys had been born into a wealthy class in the heart of Manhattan.

So, Dante didn’t regret reserving a good hotel. What he deeply regretted was that day two months ago when he had issued a breakup notice he hadn’t actually meant. No, he also had to include ten days ago, when he saw Rhys at the café and stupidly stood there acting detached and cool.

“You don’t look good, Dante,” Kirk noted.

“…The cancellation date passed. No matter what I do, I’m losing money.”

“Yikes. Europe must be expensive, right?”

Lacking the strength to give a proper answer, Dante replied with only a gloomy look. At that dark expression, Kirk clicked his tongue. After thinking for a moment, he offered a suggestion.

“Then wouldn’t it be better to just go? You haven’t taken a single vacation for the past year because of that day. You can’t get a refund anyway, right?”

Kirk had said something completely absurd. Go alone on a trip planned for our fourth anniversary? Dante couldn’t even fathom how pathetic that would be.

“I think you two will make up before then,” Kirk continued, “but even if you don’t, going sounds better to me. You’ll be just as depressed if you stay in New York.”

Yet, the more Dante listened, the more it sounded like Kirk might actually be right.

“You might feel better if you go somewhere unfamiliar and at least look around. I would,” Kirk said. “I told you I once fought with my wife and canceled a trip, right? Actually, I went to the place alone. I wanted to cool my head while thinking about why things had happened. And do you know what happened?”

Kirk was a natural storyteller, possessing the rare power to make listeners focus entirely. Dante found himself listening with rapt attention. “What happened?”

“Turns out, my wife had come on the trip alone too, just like me. We ran into each other at the museum we had originally planned to visit. God. The moment I saw her, I knew I was going to marry that woman. We’d been screaming at each other in a fight, and yet the second we met there, both of us were smiling.”

Seeing Kirk’s happy smile made Dante deeply envious. He knew exactly what that feeling was, which made it even worse. Just remembering the small, mundane things that happened with Rhys made him smile on his own. Everyone around them had acknowledged that Dante had become more stable and happier since they started dating. Dante felt it himself, too. With Rhys, he had truly… wanted to get married.

Not once, from the very beginning, had he sincerely thought of breaking up. The words had never meant he actually wanted to leave.

As Dante’s expression darkened with regret over the stupid, defensive habit that had plagued their relationship, Kirk suddenly slapped his broad palm against Dante’s back.

Whack.

The heavy impact cracked through the air. The blow was powerful enough to make Dante feel as if his organs might burst, instantly snapping him back to his senses.

“Stop worrying like someone you’re not and think simply. Call it an early summer vacation,” Kirk said.

“Did you just try to assassinate me?” Dante gasped.

“A guy who jumped into the sea alone on a stormy day without fear is whining?” Kirk countered. “If you went into a situation like that, saved people, and came back alive, you’re destined to be fine even if a tree trunk falls on you. That was a massage just now, so be grateful.”

Referring to something from the past, Kirk treated his complaint as mere whining.

The incident that all of Dante’s colleagues knew about had happened quite a while ago. In his fourth year working as a rescue swimmer for the Coast Guard, Dante had been stationed at the San Diego base in California. It was a neighborhood famous for its warm climate, but one year, an unexpected typhoon had hit.

Dante had been driving back to his lodging after work when the abnormal weather made him keep an eye on the sea. At first glance, San Diego’s ocean appeared deceptively calm and peaceful, but the water temperature was dangerously low, and the undercurrents were rough. There were several stretches of coast where even a small amount of wind drastically shifted the currents, and the shore Dante was passing happened to be one of them.

Sometimes idiots come out to surf on rainy days. Please let there be none today.

He had been about to look away, reasoning that with rain pouring down this hard, surely no one would be out on the beach, when he suddenly spotted someone running straight into the churning sea. If he had turned his eyes even one second earlier, he would have missed it entirely.

The moment Dante witnessed that, he slammed on his brakes and pulled over. Equipping the mask and snorkel he always carried in his vehicle, he stripped off his civilian clothes and ran. He had requested backup from headquarters, but there was absolutely no time to wait. Dante plunged into the treacherous sea to save them.

It felt like yesterday, but it had already been six years. Were the kids I saved back then doing well? When he pulled them out of the water, they were just college students who had recently become seniors. Afterward, the real storm had hit, and he had honestly come incredibly close to dying. Fortunately, all three people he rescued survived and were safely transported to the hospital. One of them had even been fully conscious, promising he would be sure to thank Dante properly if he ever came to New York.

Dante had completely forgotten about it until now.

Hm. They’re probably doing well. You have to work believing that.

In this line of work, the people you failed to save always remained in your memory far more vividly than the ones you did. But when old memories surfaced like this from time to time, he couldn’t help but feel the job was worthwhile. Thanks to Kirk bringing up the past, Dante’s sinking mood improved a little. A refreshing smile spread over his stiff face, and Kirk grinned when he saw it.

“Kirk, you’re built like you could catch a bear bare-handed,” Dante joked. “You’re way scarier than a tree trunk.”

“Thanks for the compliment.”

Dante had been half-teasing, but Kirk seemed to genuinely appreciate the remark. It wasn’t exactly wrong, either; Kirk was a giant standing nearly two meters tall and was naturally muscular. It was the result of blessed genetics inherited from his father, a former carpenter who had immigrated from Jamaica, and his mother, a competitive volleyball player. Watching him look so pleased, Dante let out a small laugh of his own.

“Anyway, think about it,” Kirk said.

Around the time Kirk finished speaking, people began gathering in the locker room. Among them was Sanders, the commander everyone absolutely hated, who immediately barked that if they had time to stand around chatting, they had time to clean. Before they hurried back to their respective workout spots, Kirk encouraged Dante with a quick wink.

…All right. Let’s go.

If he canceled the trip now, he would completely waste the money he had worked so hard to earn. Losing his lover was bad enough. Losing a small fortune on top of that was just a little too much to bear. At least if he went, something tangible would remain.

Hm. What exactly would remain?

Memories, for starters. Dante was ethnically Italian, but because he had been born and raised in the United States, he had never actually been to Italy. In Dante’s memory, his parents had always been far too busy to make time for family vacations. His grandparents had visited the U.S. a few times, but Dante had never traveled the other way.

So, if he ever visited his parents’ homeland, he had always wanted to stop by Rome—the exact city where the two of them had first met. Rhys had remembered that passing remark and had been the one to suggest they go to Rome in the first place.

The moment he thought of Rhys, his mood threatened to sink again, so Dante aggressively shook it off with a set of push-ups, forcing himself to think as positively as possible.

He had heard Rome was a breathtakingly beautiful city. Eating proper, authentic Italian food for the first time in ages would surely lift his spirits. On top of that, he would be staying in a luxury five-star hotel—something he had never experienced in his entire life.

Maybe this was for the best.

He had suddenly ended up going on an anniversary trip completely alone, but it probably wouldn’t be nearly as miserable as he imagined. Who knew? It might even become a trip that changed his life.

***