“SO,” JOHN says. He’s lying on his back on the carpet, still not wearing a shirt, and finishing up a spliff. “That’s why All Mod Cons is the best album of all times.”
I laugh, leaning back against the wall. “I thought you’d be more antiestablishment.”
“The Jam is antiestablishment,” he says. “They’re just not, um, I don’t know. Fake. They’re channeling all this energy into what it actually means to be, you know, a person living in this society.”
I raise my eyebrows. “They aren’t poseurs?”
“What’s a ‘poseur’?”
“Nothing,” I say and laugh. “Forget about it.”
He looks at me for a second, smiling. “You asked.”
He’s right, I did ask. For the last hour or so, I’ve been quizzing him. I need to know as much about him as I can, because even when his smell starts to fade from the fabric of the shirt he’s gifted me, I can keep the knowledge of his preferences locked deep inside of me. And when I hear the Jam or when I see a reference to Chinatown or when I see a man in leather-studded boots, I’ll think about him. I know that. I know I’ll always have that. And while it won’t be the same as actually touching him, holding him, kissing him, it will be enough. And maybe if it’s not enough, at least it’s going to be something.
Something is all I need. Because I can’t walk away from him with nothing.
I need him in my life, even if it’s just a shadow of him. My heart needs him.
He sits up and looks at me. “Are you okay?”
I nod. “Yeah, I’m fine,” I say. “I’m good. I’m just, I don’t know, I guess I’m just a little scared. And I’m a little sad too, because this is the kind of day I want to spend all the time, not just, you know, right now.”
“Stay,” he says.
“What?”
“You should stay,” he says. “Don’t leave. Maybe what hurts you is the time traveling, you know? Maybe if you stay here, you’re going to be fine.”
I smile at him. “And what would I do?”
“Well, you know,” he says. “You could just live here. I could give you a job at the studio again, or you could, I don’t know, do whatever. Or you could just live with me.”
“You’re asking me to move in with you?”
“I’m just telling you that you can,” he says. “If you want to.”
I sigh. “It’s not that I don’t want to. I want to, okay? It’s just that, like, there’s so many people at home that are keeping an eye on me. And I can’t stay here, you know? Like if you were the only factor, of course I would stay. But there are people that depend on me, people that I can’t let down. Like my brother and like—”
“Levi?”
“No,” I say, swallowing. “I told you that was over.”
“So you haven’t spoken to him since he broke up with you?”
“I have,” I say. “I went over to apologize to him and—”
He looks at me.
“It was kind of an accident. I didn’t mean for it to happen. Really, I just meant to apologize, I swear.”
He sighs before he looks down. “It’s okay,” he says. “I know that I’m just—I know that I don’t get to be part of your life. I mean, not like that. I know that I don’t factor in, because of the way things have happened.”
“For what it’s worth,” I say. “I chose you. Every time I came back here, I chose you. Over him. Over anyone else I know.”
He smiles at me. “Yeah,” he says. “But that’s not cool. That’s not what I want. I don’t want you to forget about your family and your friends just because you think I’m attractive.”
“It’s not just because I think you’re hot,” I reply. “I mean, I think you are, I think you’re super hot. But that’s not the only reason I’m here and you know that.”
He cocks his head and he smiles, that unabashed smile that manages to show off all his teeth and that makes his green eyes shine.
“I do?”
“Yeah,” I say. “You do.”
“Maybe,” he replies. He looks away before he speaks again. “But, I don’t know, I think I’d like to hear it. If it’s not too much trouble.”
I smile at him. “It’s not too much trouble.”
“Okay,” he says, still looking away.
I stand up and walk over to where he’s sitting. I kneel down and kiss him. “I love you,” I say quietly. I can feel the weight of my own words as soon as I say them, even though they’re nothing, they’re just words. I feel like I’m floating when I kiss him again, when I look at his eyes, which are wide and watery and beautiful.
He kisses me back at first, closes his eyes, and puts his arms around me, before he looks at me and frowns. “Damien.”
“What?”
“Your nose,” he says. “You’re bleeding.”
“No, I’m not,” I reply. I haven’t felt a seizure coming on. And I know, for a fact, the moment I stop kissing him, I’m going to lose a part of myself. So even if he’s right, even if I have a nosebleed, I don’t actually care. All I care about are his lips on mine.
Except he turns away and takes a deep breath.
“Seriously,” he says, “you’re bleeding.”
I lean back, exasperated, and then I start to feel it come on. The world darkens in front of me and the familiar feeling of nausea starts to build up in my throat.
“I have to get to the metro,” I say, more to myself than to him. “I have to go.”
He says something, but I’m not sure what it is. I’m having a hard time processing speech now, and I’m not sure if what I said was at all coherent. But John puts his arm around my waist and seems to prop me up, even when the world decides to stop being steady and starts to wobble, even when I start being hyperaware of the air around me, the way the soft wind is whistling past my ears.
I think I’m apologizing, but I’m not sure. My mouth isn’t really following my commands right now. He says something, I think, but I can’t hear him, or maybe I just don’t know what it is because words are hard right now. Then I hear nothing.