Eli was going away, leaving for a year. That was the plan. With so much love for Johnny and Casey, he didn’t want either of them to be alone. It was obvious they’d fallen in love with one another while Eli was gone before, even if they’d both claimed to be in love with him. So, what was Eli to do? He gave them his blessing.
“Orange you going to kiss?”
But then Eli’s plans changed, and he came home, just in time for Valentine’s Day, a day that started it all with him and Johnny, a day with significance to him and Casey, and Johnny and Casey, too. Three men with a mishmash of sexual and romantic feelings, though none of them had an easy answer, the adorable primates they cared for and cherished offered an obvious one.
“If anyone present has just cause why this marriage should not take place, let him speak now or --"
“Wait!” I yelled. “Stop!” The jungle habitat had to be warm, of course. Despite running all the way from Fleckman’s parking lot, through the lobby, then up two flights of stairs, it wasn’t only exertion or fake climate that had me sweating, though.
“Eli!”
My Johnny -- someone else’s Johnny now -- our eyes met, and he spoke my name aloud. Hearing his voice was still a treat, be it two months or two minutes since last I’d heard it, as Johnny mostly relied on ASL. The camp we’d met at was for the hearing impaired, me a fifteen-year-old junior counselor; him a forbidden older man on the cusp of aging out. Back then, he refused to speak at all until a deal was struck.
“If you take off your shirt for me,” Johnny proposed as we stood in the middle of Camp Quick Fingers’ murky lake beneath the hot summer sun, “you can pick the word I have to say.”
A hairy man -- a hairy teen -- I was once shy about certain things, too.
“Deal.” But I gave in. “Say kiss, Johnny.”
Even now, Johnny saved his lips and voice for meaningful occasions.
“Slick!”
It was Casey, though, who ran to lift me right up off the floor in a hug. He spun us around like a pair of tops, ironic, since I could count on one hand the number of times I got to with him.
“Put me down, Case.”
He belonged to someone else, too, I recalled as I wriggled free.
“Right.” Casey took a step back. “I suppose J-Yo might like a turn.”
Slick.
J-Yo.
Casey had a nickname for everyone in his life. At least for those whom he adored.
“Hi, Johnny,” I said in voice and sign.
Theodore Johnson, I’d dubbed him Johnny Orange on that fateful day at youth camp, because every time I’d seen him on the grounds he’d been holding or eating one. I could dole out a nickname, too.
“Laying eyes on you,” Johnny signed, “feels almost fantastical.”
F-a-n-t-a-s-t-i-c-a-l, one of those ASL words one had to spell out. Ever the poet, Johnny could have chosen a simpler word but chose that instead.
“He’s real,” Casey said with both his mouth and fingers. “Touch him, J-Yo.”
I was the diminutive brunette of the trio. Blond Casey and ginger Johnny both stood over six-feet tall, orange tuxedoes for the matrimonial occasion something else they now had in common. The fruit and color were a major component of our history with Eddie and each other.
“How?” Johnny asked. “Why are you home?”
“Orange you glad to see me?” A tingle went through me when I reached out to stroke his beard, but when his fingers were still, my heart sank.
“Of course we are, Slick. It’s just ... when you told J-Yo and me to hook up, the plan was you’d be gone a year.”
“I’m sorry if ...”
Johnny reached over to stop my fingers from finishing the thought.
“It’s not a sorrowful thing,” he signed.
“Right.” Casey agreed. “You’re okay? Not, like, sick or something ... something that made you not a viable donor, I hope.”
“No. Well ... No.” I didn’t want to get into the whole reason for my change of plans right then, but what choice was there? “Everyone is healthy ... as healthy as they were… things just went kind of sideways.”
“Tell us, Slick.”
“Later. Where’s Eduardo, Max, and Essie?”
“Eddie and his betrotheds are with the vet,” Johnny told me.
“Just a checkup,” Casey added.
“And the wedding vows?” I asked him.
