Tony
This is my fault—all of it, every damn bit. I’m the one who lunged; the one who kissed first; the one who pushed Jake toward the stairs, then up the stairs. I can’t even claim I didn’t know what I was doing. I knew exactly what I was doing. And exactly why it’s a terrible idea. I did it anyway.
I think finally being able to touch him was the thing that really sent me over the edge. He’d looked so desperate, so hungry and…and frightened. I don’t think I’d never seen him like that before. So I reached for him without thinking, needing to offer comfort. I’m pretty sure that’s all it was at first. But then…
Oh, God. The feel of him, the taste of him, the reality of him—here again. Here with me again. After so, so long—it short-circuited my brain.
And now we’re here—in this, of all places. This former hayloft. The same place we stole away to all those years ago. The place where we made love for the very first time.
If I’m being honest, I don’t know if I can blame this moment on any one thing. I feel like I’ve been on the path to self-destruction all day today, or at least ever since Jake first showed up in my office. Why else would I have dragged him off to trim that particular plot of trees? Why else would I have made absolutely certain that he knew precisely where we were when—let’s face it, it’s been a while—he probably would never have remembered on his own?
I knew exactly what I was doing then as well. I wanted proof that it wasn’t just me who was awash in memories and drowning in regrets. That this surreal reunion, this second chance that isn’t— I mean, seriously. How is this even happening? What does any of it mean? —has us both feeling crappy as hell.
“What is this place?” Jake asks now, shocking me for a second. He doesn’t remember this either? But even before I can get the words out, he’s shaking his head, shooting me a fond, reproving, exasperated glance, saying, “No. Would you stop? I mean what is it used for now? Obviously, I remember what it used to be.”
Not that obviously, I think as I answer, “It’s an efficiency unit. Originally, I was thinking we could rent it out, to bring in some extra cash. But…that never really worked out. Mostly we use it for bridal parties, as a place to dress, or change clothes; or to relax and regroup in between the ceremony and the reception. There’s a bath and a kitchenette…” and a fold out couch that I’m trying really hard not to let my gaze stray to. “I guess it looks a little different than you remember it, huh?”
“A little bit—yeah.”
I want to kick myself. This is virtually the same exchange we had earlier, out in the field, and look how well that turned out. Now we’re both looking around, both remembering how it used to be…
Why do I keep doing this to myself?
Back when we first got together, this was all rough wood, floor to ceiling, not even insulated. It was good for nothing but storing the kind of junk that, in all fairness, should probably have just been trashed. It was too hot in the summer, too cold in the winter, but we’d been desperate for a bit of privacy and this hard and dusty, useless place had felt like a palace.
By the time that first winter break was over, and we were back in our dorm room, we thought we knew everything there was to know about each other—about our minds, our bodies, our goals and plans. About the kind of life we wanted to live.
Wanna know the truth? We didn’t know shit. But if you’d have told either of us that then, we’d have laughed in your face. We’d been fooling ourselves, just like I’m doing now. I keep telling myself it’s fitting that we’re exploring all these memories, that we’re coming full circle, that we’re finding closure and forgiveness—all those things you’re supposed to want.
Anyone with a stitch of sense, or a shred of integrity, would realize it’s no such thing. We’re not clearing things up. We’ve just been digging ourselves a hole; a bigger, deeper, more inescapable hole than ever before. And, now, I think we’ve both fallen in.
I look across at Jake and grimace. “I’m sorry. This was a bad idea.”
“I know.”
“It’s a mistake.”
Jake shrugs. “Yep. Probably.”
“I mean…what are we doing, Jake? You can’t stay if you wanted to! You’re fucking dead! You don’t belong here anymore! If you ever did, which…”
Jake flinches. Dropping his gaze to his shoes he mutters, “Don’t remind me. Please.”
It’s the please that gets to me. It’s so soft, quiet, and hopeless. “What?”
“Do you want the truth? I’m scared. All right? What if this is it for me? What if I never…” He pauses, throat working furiously. “What if I’m…done?”
“No,” I tell him, rejecting the whole idea. Isn’t denial one of the stages of grief? Well, I’m all in on that. I’m standing foursquare on that particular stage and never moving.
“But…”
“No,” I repeat as I cross the room and grab him. “Fuck that. If this is all we get, we’re gonna damn well make it count.”
We fall together onto the couch, pulling at each other’s clothes, kissing every inch of skin we can press our mouths to, not stopping until our shoes are off and our shirts are gone, and our jeans are bunched and tangled partway down our legs. At which point I lift my head to ask, “So how do you want to do this? Which way…?”
“Both? I mean, can’t we…?”
“Yes. Definitely. We’re going to do it all.”
And we do. We’re ravenous for each other, voracious, unappeasable. We’re need, and want, and hunger.
Never again, never again, never again…
Words keep repeating and repeating, over and over somewhere in my mind, until I want to tear off my own head just to make them stop. It’s so wrong, so unfair, so cruel…so completely my own fault.
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” I start to cry.
Jake folds me in his arms. “Shh,” he murmurs as he strokes my hair. “It’s all right. It’s all right.”
But it’s not. It’s not.
At some point, we stop long enough to convert the couch into a bed, to remove the rest of our clothes, to check in with each other.
“Hungry? Want some food?”
“Fuck, no.”
“How about you? Getting tired? Need to stop?”
“Pfft. Fuck that.”
Then we fall on each other again. Until finally, even with the hottest of hot guys once again in my bed, my super-sleep-powers kick in. My eyes close. My muscles relax.
“Goodnight, Tony,” Jake murmurs. It sounds like he’s smiling. “Sweet dreams.”
“Don’t leave,” I beg as exhaustion pulls me down into a well of endless darkness. “Not yet. Not while I’m asleep.”
“I won’t. Christmas Eve, remember?”
“Wait…wait, until I’m awake. At least.”
“You got it.”
“Just…promise, all right? Promise you’ll stay.”
“I will. I do. As long as I can. Nowhere else I want to be.”
“Oh, me, too. Me, too. Always…”
“Shh,” the EMT says, speaking softly, soothingly to the young man who’s sprawled out on the cold ground. “Take it easy. Lie still now. Try not to move. We’re here to help you.”
The young man’s gaze meets his, eyes glazed with terror. It’s hard to tell whether he’s even able to process what’s being said to him. He feels pain, quite a lot of it, almost too much. But even so, somewhere in the back of his mind lurks the frightening thought that the pain is too muted, too localized. That there should be more of it, somehow.
Ignoring the EMT’s directives, he tries to sit up, but nothing happens. He feels too floaty, sort of mushy and uncoordinated, like his arms and legs don’t want to respond to his brain’s commands. And once again, he starts to panic.
“We’re not done yet,” the EMT says, still speaking in calm and gentle tones. “Let us work. We got you breathing again, now we need to get your neck stabilized.” A moment later, perhaps in response to the unasked questions in the young man’s eyes, he smiles at him and adds, “Don’t be afraid. It will be okay.”
His colleague scoffs in disbelief, and murmurs, “Really?” earning him a sternly reproving look.
The young man’s throat works for a moment, lips twisting with the effort. “You…? You’re…? Who…?”
Seeming to intuit what the injured man is trying to ask, the first EMT smiles and says, “I’m Gabriel. Gabe for short.” Then he glances encouragingly at his colleague. “And this is…”
“Hi. I’m Ra— I mean, Ra…Raphael? Or um, Rafe, I guess? Yeah, tha-that works. You can call me Rafe.”
Two disbelieving gazes greeted this outpouring. Gabriel looks at him pityingly. The injured man merely snorts and whispers, “Turtle.”
Gabriel chuckles softly, “Well. That’s you told.”
Within moments, the cervical collar is affixed in place. The EMTs work swiftly now, transferring their patient onto a gurney, and then into the waiting ambulance.
Once the doors are closed, the second EMT, the one whose name may or may not be Raphael, but who will henceforth and forevermore, be known to Gabriel as Turtle, grabs his colleague’s arm. “Why did you say that, back there—that it would be okay. You don’t know that’s true.”
“I don’t know it’s not true,” Gabriel responds, smiling kindly. “And, besides, you’re only looking at it from one perspective.”
“What other way is there to look at it?”
“Well, you could try looking at it from the perspective that everything is always working out for each of us. Because the divine plan is perfect.”
“Right. I got you,” Turtle mutters angrily. “These are not the droids you’re looking for.”
“Gabriel eyes him curiously, “I’m sorry. What was that?”
“Nothing,” the other man sighs. “Just reflecting on something I heard recently—something someone said to me. I didn’t understand it, at the time. Now, I think I might.”
“All right, well, let’s get going, shall we? We’re on the clock, you know.”
“This was a plot twist,” Turtle says, as he buckles his seatbelt into place.
“Mm-hm.” Gabriel nods in agreement. “It was.”
“I didn’t see that coming. Did you?”
“Sufficient unto the day, my boy. That’s why I try and keep my focus on the here and now.”
“But…wasn’t there something I could have done—you know—differently?”
“Like what, for example?”
“I don’t know. Issued a warning, perhaps? I knew it was a bad idea. I had a feeling!”
“I think you did the best you could with the information you had at the time. And I think that’s all anyone can ask of you. Let it go.”
Turtle subsides in his seat, still muttering angrily; something about droids again. Whatever those are. Gabriel is content to let him sulk. After all, he’s had this same conversation, or one just like it, too many times to count. And, in the end, none of it has ever mattered.
As they speed away from the scene, with the wail of their siren tearing up the night, Turtle takes one final glance in his sideview mirror at the road reeling out behind them. The once pretty motorcycle lies abandoned now, crumpled sadly on the ground. But that is no longer his concern. That’s a problem for the police now; he’s pretty sure they’ll know how to handle it.
Jake
It’s another sleepless night for me. Tony, on the other hand is curled at my side, sleeping the sleep of the just. Which makes perfect sense, given that he’s a good man. The best I’ve ever known. As for me…well, right now I’m looking like the guy his parents should have warned him away from. The one who’s gonna break his heart. Again.
Because you can dress it up however you like, tell yourself that we’re both adults, that we were scratching an itch, or looking for closure, or saying goodbye. It doesn’t matter. The bottom line is that, deep down inside, I wanted him to fall back in love with me. I wanted this. I let it happen; I maybe even made it happen. And I shouldn’t have. Because now…he’s going to hurt so much when I go. I know this for a fact because I still remember how much it hurt when he left me.
I can’t decide how much to tell him about these last few years. Is it fair to tell him—now, when it’s already too late for us, when we’ve no chance for a future—that I never got over him? That, when it comes to my heart, it’s always been his?
Yes, I’ve had sex since the divorce. But that’s all it ever was. All of my relationships, even the sexual ones—and there weren’t as many of those as he probably thinks—were emotionally sterile. I was fond of people—I’m not a sociopath, after all. There were people in my life that I considered to be friends. But I wasn’t capable of anything more than lukewarm emotions.
And the same could be said for most of my lovers—like Randy, the nurse I’d mentioned to Tony earlier. Wounded and hollow, we were like peas in a pod, Randy and I.
But I don’t want to think about that right now. For some reason, thinking of Randy unsettles me. When I try to flip back through the pages of my mind, searching for memories of our time together, a lot of them appear to have been wiped blank, with just a tinge of melancholy remaining. I feel like it’s been a while since I’ve seen him. But if I try too hard to think about him, my thoughts dissolve into something vague and bittersweet, like the cold dregs of your morning coffee, or the stale taste of a stubbed-out cigar.
Then even that dissolves, and I’m back to thinking about Tony, about whether or not I owe it to him to tell him how I feel.
Does he deserve to know the place he continues to hold in my heart? Absolutely. Without question. But would it be kinder, or fairer, or better for him if I were to let him continue to believe that I’d moved on with my life?
I was hurt when I thought he’d forgotten about me. But now…I think I actually feel worse. I feel hurt, and sad, and bitter. And angry, like I’d been cheated by fate. And guilty for all the time I wasted, all the hurt I caused.
Why would I want him to feel those things, too? Why wouldn’t I try to shield him if I could? But would I really be doing it just for his own sake, or am I trying to spare myself from feeling even worse than I do right now; from feeling even more guilt, more anger, more loss?
The temperatures have been dropping over the last few hours—there’ll be ice on the roads tonight. The former hayloft has been insulated, but there’s still a chill in the air. I’ve cuddled Tony closer, pulled the blanket up higher, wrapped it more securely around us. Tony murmurs in his sleep as I shift him, but he doesn’t wake. He’s a sound sleeper, always has been.
Thinking about that makes me smile. And my mind shifts easily in that direction, pulling me along with it. I don’t sleep; but in these dark, quiet hours, my mind does drift some. My consciousness bobs along on a current of memories, like a cork that’s been tossed into a stream.
I’ve drifted so far with the current that the ordinary sounds around me have ceased to have meaning. Somewhere a cell phone rings and rings and goes unanswered. Somewhere a voice calls Tony’s name with increasing urgency. The pounding of feet up the stairs to the loft, comes closer and closer…
It’s not until Maggie bursts into the room and flips on the overhead light, flooding the room with brightness, that I’m startled back to the here and now.
I raise a hand to shield my eyes. “Maggie. Hi. Did you want something?”
“Oh, good,” she says, breathing heavily. “You’re both here. Thank God.”
Tony, ripped from his peaceful slumber, jerks upright with a startled yelp. Clutching the blanket to his chest, he blinks at his sister in outraged confusion. “What the fuck, Mags? Can’t you knock?”
“No time,” she says. “Get up. There’s been an accident. Tim’s hurt. We gotta go.”
And there it is, I think with a sinking sense of inevitability; the other shoe.