I’m finally revisiting the characters from The River City Chronicles nine years after their original timeline. I’ll be running the series weekly here on my blog, and then will release it in book form at the end of the run. Hope you enjoy catching up with all your faves and all their new secrets!
Today, Dave has a secret of his own, and it’s haunting him…
< Read Chapter Nineteen
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Chapter Twenty
With Eyes to See
Dave sat alone in his car, staring at the bungalow across the street—his old place in River Park, the little yellow wood-slat rental he’d lived in for more years than he cared to remember after his life had fallen apart. He took a sip of his Everyday Grind mocha—now cold—and set it back in the cup holder.
He could think of John without regret, without falling into the throes of a panic attack. His heart still raced a bit when he remembered John’s bright smile, his laugh when Dave said something stupid that amused him. His warm touch. But in a good way.
Then those long months after John was diagnosed, as HIV ravaged his body. The meds had slowed it down, but the end had been swift when it came, overwhelming them both like a floodtide.
That last night, all night long, holding John’s hand as he succumbed. Dave could still feel John’s cold fingers in his palm.
Yes, he could think about it all now without his heart threatening to burst out of his chest, without gasping for breath and feeling like he was going to die. All because of Marcos.
He’d never thought he’d get a second chance at life. At love. A fucking cliché. But it’s true.
Marcos had given him a reason to live again. Marcos and his beautiful, complicated adopted daughter Marissa. Carmelina’s granddaughter.
Staring at the red front door of the bungalow through streaked car windows—it had been forest green when he’d lived there—he remembered the day she’d welcomed him in, hugging him tightly and smelling of patchouli. Stay as long as you need.
And he had.
Then the world had thrown them a swarm of curve balls—the oft-cited curse of living in interesting times.
From the moment He had ridden down his golden escalator with his dark visions of “American carnage,” everything changed.
Dave refused to even think the man’s name, let alone speak it.
The Obama years had been washed away by a red wave, a deluge of fake news—for a brief, shining moment, that phrase had meant something, before He co-opted it to mean anything he didn’t agree with.
Suddenly everything Dave’s community had worked for—legality, sanity, security, peace, equality, and marriage—felt threatened.
Corruption, rage, and an avalanche of lies followed… so many lies. It felt like nothing would ever be right again.
They had held on, the three of them. Dave had moved out of the bungalow and into the condo with Marcos, and Marissa had graduated high school and had gone off to college.
An unnecessary war halfway around the world. And He had been impeached, but not convicted.
Then the plague had shut down the world.
It was hard for him to remember how dark that time had been, how scary to live in fear of a virus, to be trapped indoors for months and months like a prisoner. He’d been afraid to set foot outside, for fear of catching it on the breeze from some passerby. The gift of working from home turned into a jail, with friends seen only in little boxes on flat computer screens. Toilet paper and sanitizer as valuable as gold.
And all the unhinged madness from the White House. Hydroxychloroquin. Horse pills. Drinking bleach. And Chai-nah!
In the end, the biggest lie of all, and then they’d attacked the U.S. Capitol. End times indeed.
Dave sat back and closed his eyes. He and most of the rest of the country had blocked out those black days, and now they were paying the price.
Finally, there’d been a breath of fresh air. A second impeachment. The inauguration, and the sight of loving, caring adult human beings with their children and grandchildren in the White House, with people in their cars honking and flashing their lights in approval—the strangest inauguration day ever.
A vaccine, and a slow, halting return to something that resembled the “normal” he used to know.
And now? He opened his eyes, looking up at the clear blue sky that belied all of the fears and worries of mere mortals. He was back, stronger than ever, and if He got back into the White House… We’re done.
Dave shuddered. He lived in a baseline state of dull fear these days, watching his party sleepwalking with a diminished candidate toward an almost certain defeat. I can’t imagine living through another four years of Him. Let alone unrestrained.
But that wasn’t why he was here, in front of this house on this sunny Monday afternoon. He’d told Marcos he had a meeting. That much had been true, but the doctor had let him go hours before.
Now he was on a tour of his former life, like a man who was already dead but hadn’t quite figured it out.
He picked up his phone and stared at his notes again. Wet Advanced Macular Degeneration. Irreversible. Likely near-total vision loss within six months, even with treatment.
I’m going blind. He’d first noticed it a few weeks earlier, before he’d had to learn the difference between Dry AMD and Wet AMD. The wet kind proceeded much faster.
When he’d first moved in with Marcos, he’d taken up an old hobby. He had always loved watercolors, how the bright pigments blended and flowed together on the paper, the cheery, vivid colors.
Soon, he wouldn’t be able to see them at all. Those vibrant hues would be gone, replaced with—at best—a blurry, monochrome world.
Hence the tour of the important places in his life.
How was he supposed to tell Marcos? It wasn’t fair for him to have to take care of a blind spouse. Marcos was eight years younger than he was, and still had so much of his life to live, places to go. Things to see.
Maybe it would be better if I checked out before the worst arrives.
The thought shocked him. He’d never been one for self-pity, let alone to think of taking his own life. And yet, there was a certain appeal to going out on top.
After all, the world was coming to an end. The liar in chief would be president again. The economy would crash, and queers like him and Marcos would be ripped apart and forced into the closet again, or worse. And the destructiveness of climate change would only get worse, year by year.
Dave wouldn’t see any of it.
He squeezed the steering wheel and clamped his eyes shut, trying to hold back the tears that threatened to overwhelm him. Not panic, this time. Just a deep, gutting sense of impending loss.
He held himself absolutely still, waiting for it to pass.
A single tear slipped down his cheek.
Slowly, the pressure in his chest eased, and his heartbeat slowed.
Little by little, he loosened his grip on the steering wheel.
He began to breathe again, deep, slow intakes of air that calmed his soul.
This isn’t the end. He would go home and talk it out with Marcos, when he was ready. Soon.
Together they would figure it out.
Sometimes miracles happen. He wasn’t sure if he was talking about his own situation, or the plight of the world.
Marissa and her generation would have to live with the mess that Dave’s generation and his own ancestors had let them. What would they do with it? Would they be b y the mistakes of those who came before? Or would they find a way to make things better?
Maybe, just maybe, it was worthwhile to stick around to find out.
His phone buzzed.
Pizzasaurus Rex for dinner? It was Marcos’ favorite new pizza discovery in Midtown.
Dave chuckled.
Sure. See you at home in twenty.
With a sigh, he started the car. He gave the old yellow bungalow across the street one last look, then turned the car around on the narrow suburban road and headed for home.
< Read Chapter Nineteen
Like what you read? if you haven’t tried it yet, check out book one, The River City Chronicles, here.