Missing Chord (The Road to Rocktoberfest 2024)

Epilogue – Eight months later

Griffin

Sun filtered through the trees outside the park gazebo. Bright patches dappled the concrete paths and splashed light and shadows across the blankets, shawls, shirts, and dresses of the wheelchair-bound folk parked there. The overhead shelter’s posts and roof beams sparkled with rainbow tinsel. I wondered how much of the decor had been recycled from Owen and Harvey’s wedding. Lee had stored a bunch of that stuff in the nursing home basement. Waste not, want not.

Owen himself stood at the back of the gazebo in front of a makeshift arch of rainbow balloons, chatting with Harvey in a wheelchair at his side. Streamers fluttered overhead in the light breeze. Not quite the ambiance I’d have gone for, but a work of love, so I wasn’t about to complain.

Pete Lebraun leaned close to my ear and murmured, “Is the whole population of the nursing home here?”

“No,” I whispered back. “We wish, but some aren’t able to leave the building, and some aren’t interested in seeing two queers joined in holy matrimony.”

“Their loss.”

“Hell, yeah.”

“Here comes Shondra.” Pete nodded toward his keyboardist, picking her way between the guests toward the stand with her instrument.

“Thank her for me,” I requested.

“You already did.” As she sat down and played the first rippling notes of Elton John’s “Your Song”, he straightened his shoulders and turned to me. “Ready?”

I tugged my collar a little straighter. “Sure.”

We approached the front of the gazebo from the left. All my attention was on Lee, coming from the right with Kashira on his arm. Man, did my guy clean up nice. We’d gone with suits rather than tuxes, and Lee’s perfectly fitted charcoal-gray emphasized his height and broad shoulders. Kashira wore a bright floral number that suited her too, and she grinned at me as she let go of Lee.

When we reached the makeshift aisle between a motley assortment of chairs from Wellhaven, Kashira and Pete strode forward side-by-side to pace ahead of us toward Owen, her hand tucked in Pete’s elbow. Lee and I walked behind them, holding hands. At the front row, Lee bent to kiss his mother’s cheek. She patted his shoulder, her eyes misty. I ducked behind Lee to do the same. Ellen was more mom to me than my mother had ever been. She murmured, “I’m glad he found you,” and my own eyes blurred.

In front of Owen and Harvey, Kashira and Pete stepped to the sides. Lee and I let our hands slip apart and stopped, turning to face each other.

“Dearly beloved,” Owen said, then laughed. “Folks and friends, family and guests, welcome. It’s not often I get to return a favor these days, and this was a big one. All hail the online ministries that help us celebrate our love the way we want to. I’m grateful to be here to join Griffin and Lee in legal matrimony.” He winked our way. Almost no one in the crowd would know why, but the four of us were deeply grateful our ruse with their illegal matrimony hadn’t come to light. Owen and Harvey were accepted as husbands, living together for whatever time they had left.

Might catch up with us eventually when death came calling, with all its attendant paperwork, but seeing the joy those two had in each other every day, I counted it well worth any cost.

Lee and I would be legal though. Husbands. Any minute now. That was a heady thought.

Owen said to the crowd, “I asked these two guys who proposed to whom, and they didn’t seem to know.”

Lee laughed and I had to join in, because yeah. Somehow, “when we’re married,” had crept into our discussions as an inevitability, like the sunrise. Until one day, Lee said, “We are getting married, right?” And I said, “Yeah. Want to figure out when?”

We teased each other that romance was dead, but it wasn’t. We just did it differently.

“Almost everyone here knows Lee,” Owen went on. Some of the Wellhaven residents applauded and shouted Lee’s name. Owen waited, smiling, until they were done. “Everyone here knows Griffin too.”

Tom, off to one side, shouted out, “Who?”

I called back, “The guy you beat at checkers every week.” Although I was still on parole for another year, I’d finished my community service hours in March. By then, my routine of Wellhaven in the morning and practice in the evening had become part of my life. My songwriting and residuals were bringing in enough income, I didn’t have to find a day job.

I’d quit the other two nursing homes, except for showing up now and then to play piano for the residents, but coming to Wellhaven every weekday kept my life on an even keel. I liked being a part of Lee’s days, knowing who or what he meant when he needed to vent back home.

Like when Zhukov flatly denied permission to hold our wedding at Wellhaven. We hadn’t planned on doing it that way to begin with, but once Harvey and Kashira heard us discussing options, they ran with Operation Wedding, part two. Then, when Zhukov spiked their idea, well, I always did like an end-run around a bully. The park down the block rented the gazebo out for parties. Wheelchairs and even some beds could handle a short trip down the sidewalk. Several of the aides had volunteered their time off to help wrangle the residents, and here we were. The folks who were up for it had helped decorate the gazebo within an inch of its life and even the weather was smiling on us.

Owen waved a dramatic hand. “Look around you. There are a lot of folks here whose lives were made better by the two men standing in front of you. Including mine and Harvey’s. So when they decided getting married was right for them, we all dove into making it happen.” The end of a streamer floated down near his face and he flicked it aside. “With all the glitz and rainbows we could manage.”

Carol called out, “Joe-Joe-Joey loves rainbows! So many rainbows. Look, look!” She started shuffling toward us but the aide near her intercepted her, handing her a balloon, and she fixated on that. My heart squeezed, because Lee cared about her and she was getting frailer and more confused. I doubted she’d be around for our anniversary. We were going to lose some of the people gathered here before many more years passed. I hoped for some of them, watching Lee get married could be a brilliant memory against the oncoming dark.

Owen said, “We need celebrations. We need joy. In a world that always has ups and downs, seeing love triumphant lifts us all higher. Today is about celebrating love. A melding of hearts that took a long and winding road to reach this moment. Twenty-one years ago, two men met and began moving toward love, but life came along and bitchslapped them and said, ‘Sorry, not the right moment, guys.’ Love is strong, though. It perseveres. Twenty years later they met again, and although the time apart had shaped them differently, it hadn’t extinguished that light. And if all those years of change and adventures and losses couldn’t kill the love between them, nothing will.”

He turned to us. “Today, we’re here to see you two say those vows to stay together till death do you part in legal matrimony. When Harvey and I married, there was a big element of up-yours. We’d spent so long being simultaneously told, ‘It’s not as if you’re married,’ and ‘you’re not allowed to get married,’ that finally tying the knot was vindication as much as affirmation. Today is not about that. Today is quite simply about the love of two men for each other. “

His gaze passed out across the audience of musicians and nurses, nursing home residents and cat café people. “Griffin and Lee belong together, so obviously and naturally they didn’t even bother with a proposal.” He leaned my way and murmured in a conspiratorial but totally audible voice, “Yes, I’m going to give you a hard time about that forever, Griff.” Raising his voice again, he added, “In the music Griffin gives us, we see that love. In the well of caring Lee draws from to care for his patients, refilled by time home with his beloved, we see it reflected. In the rings they will give each other, the world will be reminded of that love.”

A resident I didn’t know well began babbling randomly for someone to help her, near the back of the audience. Owen waited until the aides could reassure her, then added, “In the way they chose to share their special day with all of us, we see love.” He turned to Lee. “Will you say your vows?”

Lee nodded and held out his hands to me. I reached for him, and his fingers closed on mine. He said in a clear voice, “I like simple words best. Griffin, I’ve always loved you, even when I was hurt, even when I was angry, even when I didn’t know if I’d ever touch you again. You’re the person I want to see when I wake in the morning, and the one I want holding me when I fall asleep at night. Will you take me to be your husband, for all the days of our lives?”

“I will.” I cleared my throat. Months of voice coaching had brought me back to where I’d been before the benign polyp— and thank God, it had proved benign— upended my life. I’d thought a few times of writing a wedding song and performing something for Lee. But I didn’t want our vows to be a performance. So I said simply in return, “I never met anyone whose heart spoke to me like yours does. We both lived and grew and changed in those twenty years apart, but we came together again knowing it was right at last. Will you marry me and grow old with me, however that plays out?”

“I will.” Lee’s response came strong and clear. I’d asked him a few times if he was prepared for the fact that I’d be growing old a lot sooner than he would. He’d pointed out that Harvey was a lot younger than Owen, and it was Owen who was still on his feet. We never knew what life had in store. He wasn’t going to let a stupid thing like an age difference rob us of one minute more. As I stood holding his hands and staring into his gorgeous gray eyes, I was glad my almost-husband was such a strong man.

“The rings?” Owen asked our best people.

Pete dug my box out of his pocket and Kashira unearthed Lee’s from somewhere in her skirt. As she passed it over, Lee caught the side seam of her dress, pulled the fabric in a wide drape, and said, “It has pockets!”

A ripple of laughter ran through our audience, mostly from the women.

Lee opened his box, took out the ring, and handed the empty container back. I did the same with mine and we faced each other again. For a moment, time stood still, standing there surrounded by the people who meant the most to us, rings in our hands, hearts full. Lee grasped my fingers in his. I realized my hand was trembling. He slid the gold band over my fingertip, worked it down where it belonged, and grinned.

I took his hand in turn and eased the matching band onto his fourth finger. The strength of his hand in mine, the trust he gave me in this moment and always, echoed in my heart. I rotated the ring, edging it over his knuckle and then lower to seat at the base of his finger. No longer shaking, I raised his hand to my lips and kissed him right there, above that golden band.

Owen announced, “By the power vested in me by the state of Iowa, I pronounce you husband and husband. You may kiss.”

I’d have kept the kiss light and chaste for the sake of our mixed audience, but Lee hauled me to him, put his hand behind my head, and kissed the hell out of me. I closed my eyes and let him lead. I was safe in his hands.

When we came up for air, our friends and family began cheering. My face was probably flushed, but I kept a grip on Lee and turned to face them. Ellen had her fingers pressed to her lips, her eyes damp, but beside her, Yolanda cheered and whistled. Quinn beat a thundering crescendo on the top of an empty box off to the side of the gazebo. Harvey pumped his good fist.

Then Shondra played a chord, and the members of Chaser Lost, plus Mandy and Colby and a couple of my other LA friends stepped forward and began to sing Pete’s hit “You’ve Done It Now!”

Lee hugged me to his side, his smile ear to ear, as our friends celebrated our marriage in enthusiastic rockstar style. Half the audience sang along, the rest nodded and toe-tapped and faked the lyrics. When the line, Fuck, you’ve gone and done it , came around, the volume got loud. People grinned. Pete tipped his head to me, still belting the vocals. Lee squeezed my hand.

I thought back to a dark day a year ago when the only person at my side was my lawyer, and I looked guilt and prison in the face. I’m sorry, Linda, I thought now. So sorry. But I’m going to live and love and be a good husband to Lee. I’ll probably screw up again, please God never that badly, though. But I’m going to live my life with my songs and music and friends and my beloved, and do the best I can to be worthy of the time I have left on this earth.

If this’d been a cheesy movie, there’d have been a cut to a white dove flying overhead or a convenient ray of sunshine, forgiveness from above. But in real life, if I were Linda or her family, I wouldn’t give me that satisfaction. What I’d learned in the last year, from Lee and Ellen and some therapy too, was that I had to go on without being forgiven. I could go on. I was allowed to have joy.

And standing there as a rude rock song echoed from the people around me and smiles wreathed their faces? As I leaned against the big, solid bulk of my husband with my fingers wrapped in his? This was joy, in one pure, perfect moment.

Lee

In the quiet of our bedroom, I reached up and tugged Griffin’s tie free of its knot and slipped the royal blue silk from around his neck.

He blew out a breath and opened his collar. “As incredible as you look in that suit, I’m glad to get out of mine.”

“Likewise.” I draped our ties on the dresser, shrugged out of my jacket, and hung it away because that suit cost more than any clothes I’d ever owned.

“The wedding went well, don’t you think?” Griffin reached past me for a hanger.

I laughed and bent to brush a kiss on the back of his neck as I passed. “It was perfect. Everyone had a blast. And Owen tipping his food over the head of that paparazzi and pretending to be senile was awesome.”

Griffin sighed. “I’m not sure why that dude still shows up now and then. I’m really old news. I’m not even doing Rocktoberfest this year.”

“He has some kind of fixation. But seeing him with pasta dripping down his face was satisfying.”

“Yeah. True.”

“And then Harvey knocked his phone out of his hand and ran over it with his wheelchair.” I grinned. “I do like our friends. Speaking of, Yolanda said to tell you she can die happy now.”

“I hope you told her she’s not allowed to die anytime soon.”

“Yep. And Chaser Lost gave her a VIP pass for Rocktoberfest, so she said maybe she’ll hang on until then.”

“I don’t have half her energy.” Griffin unbuttoned his shirt.

I paused to watch his chest being revealed. Mmm. “She’ll probably outlive both of us,” I agreed absently, more of my attention on Griffin’s bare skin than the conversation.

He looked up, caught my eye, and turned sliding the shirt off his shoulders into a strip tease.

From the living room, where Cinder wasn’t supposed to be right now, something thumped.

We froze, eyeing each other.

“I swear I shut her door,” Griffin said. We’d built an awesome cat room in this new apartment for Cinder to spend her nights, trying to limit the nighttime cockblocking and disasters. She’d seemed fine with sleeping there, but this wasn’t her first escape.

I suggested, “She’s a minion of darkness. She knows teleportation.”

“Or she’s learned to turn door handles. I’ll go see. Don’t get started without me.”

I’d been half hard since we got in my car, dragging a set of plastic bedpans behind us with “Just Married” written in white lotion across the trunk. I was more than half hard now. I called after Griffin as he disappeared into the hall, “I’ll start with my socks, but don’t take all night.” I tugged the socks off and tossed them into the hamper, listening to his voice in the living room while he lectured Cinder on the error of her ways. He was no doubt doing the stern spiel for my benefit, but it made me smile.

I decided my shirt could go too. That would only put me a little ahead of him.

His steps passed, no doubt carrying Cinder to her wonder-playground with every toy a cat could want. Then he appeared in the doorway. The heat in his eyes took my breath away as he stared at me. “What happened to just taking off socks?”

“You were slow.” I unbuckled my belt, popped my button above where my dick strained the charcoal-gray fabric.

“You are so fucking hot.” Griffin eased behind me and turned us to face the mirror, his hand splayed on my bare belly.

There was a time I’d have peered into that mirror and hated what I saw. Now, the desire in his touch and the darkness of his eyes made it impossible to feel unattractive. I saw a salt-and-pepper-haired sexy man standing behind a big, hairy bear of a guy, both of them staring at the mirror like they could eat each other alive, their hard dicks tenting their dress slacks. If that was the start of a porno, I’d click on it.

I twisted to get to Griffin’s mouth for a kiss. “I love you.”

“I love you too, husband.” He kissed me again. “Sounds good, right?”

“Sounds perfect.” I dragged the hand he’d pressed to my stomach down to where it might do some good and moaned as he cupped me through my slacks.

“You don’t mind that we didn’t get a real honeymoon somewhere exotic?” Griffin mouthed at the side of my neck below my beard. “Next year, once my parole’s over.”

“I’m not much of a traveler anyhow.” I tilted my head to give him better access.

A crash from out in the kitchen broke us apart.

“Crap.” Griffin stared at me. “I swear I shut her door this time.”

We hurried out and found Cinder sitting there innocently washing her face while one of the kitchen chairs lay on its side.

“She’s nine freaking pounds,” I said. “How does she do that?”

“Time to find out. Get your phone.” Griffin scooped up the cat and led the way to her room, while I followed, digging my phone out of my pocket.

In the playroom, Griffin checked Cinder’s litterbox, her electronic food dispenser, and her hanging toys. Then we set up my phone on the windowsill with the camera running on Facetime, put a few bits of kibble in her chase toy, and backed out, firmly closing the door.

Griffin accepted my call on his screen and we put our heads close together, watching. Cinder whacked the toy across the room, pounced on a kibble bite, then stalked toward the door. Her tall climber stood in the corner and she scurried to the top, crouched, and leaped down, snagging the door handle in both front paws as she passed.

The handle turned. The door opened a crack as she landed. Cinder hooked her toes around the edge and pulled the door wider. She sauntered out, then froze, staring up at us.

“Hah!” Griffin said. “We have you. Your secret has been revealed.”

With an indifferent twitch of her tail, Cinder headed for the living room.

Griffin and I looked at each other.

“It’s not that late,” I suggested. “She just wants her evening routine before bedtime.”

“But I want to get fucked,” Griffin muttered. “Maybe a chair under the doorhandle?”

“We’ll buy a hook tomorrow,” I told him, despite my dick still holding out hopes. “We can give the cat her evening cuddles. We have time. All the time in the world, now.”

“You might. I’m closer to my expiry date and I don’t want it to be from blue balls.”

I hip-bumped him and headed for the living room.

Griffin followed me, murmuring, “Your ass looks edible in those slacks.”

“Thank you.” I sat on the couch, picked up the remote, and clicked on the TV. Something random appeared, travel maybe. I didn’t much care. Griffin sat behind me in the corner of the couch and I reclined onto his chest.

The damned cat, as was her routine, jumped onto my knees, turned a circle, and settled down, purring. I patted her in spite of myself. “If you didn’t knock so much over and bite Daddy’s toes in the middle of the night, you wouldn’t have to stay in your playroom,” I told her. She closed her eyes and rumbled softly.

Despite the low ache of need in my groin, I let my eyelids droop and tucked my head back on Griffin’s shoulder as I petted Cinder.

“This is nice,” Griffin murmured. “Although I still want to be fucked once she’s ready for bed.”

“It is nice.” I took his arm and pulled it across my chest, a loving barrier against the world. For once, I wasn’t worried about anything or puzzling out anything other than how long it would take Cinder to settle into her evening doze and be ready for bed.

“You know, I almost sang my vows today.” Griffin’s chest vibrated behind me as he laughed. “Not sure why I thought that would be a good plan.”

“Does seem a little over the top.”

“I’d been writing that album material for Amy Lenardo and I think I was stuck in composing mode. My lyrics were a lot flowerier and more eloquent than what I did say.”

“I liked what you said.” I squirmed back farther, feeling the bulge of Griffin’s dick behind my ass, half-hard but not insistent. I’d work on that later. “Did you actually come up with something?”

“Oh yeah, a whole song.” He chuckled.

“I want to hear it.”

“It’s embarrassing now.”

“Gimme, gimme.”

“Only for you.” He hummed a note, then began singing softly in my ear. The words flowed honey-sweet. Yeah, a bit much for the wedding but here, with our cat on my lap and Griffin’s arms around me, the melodic lilt of destiny and forever and together turned the moment to gold. This was my Griffin, my bard and my lover, and I got to keep him for all the years to come. Life didn’t get better than this.

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If you enjoyed watching Griffin take the stage at Rocktoberfest, check out the rest of The Road to Rocktoberfest 2024 series by an array of talented authors. 17 stories of rock stars, almost-stars, guys making their first grab for the gold ring, and the men who fall for them. Hot, sweet, angsty, nostalgic, real – stories to fit every mood.

And if you started my Rocktoberfest books here, check out Cam and Erik, navigating Cam’s severe social anxiety as they try to bring his incredible but hidden talent to the Rocktoberfest crowds in Hidden Blade .