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“The only time you leave is to go to work, but you miss me so much while you’re gone that most nights you hardly get through dinner without bending me over the table andfucking me until the plates and cutlery slide off onto the floor.”
Alek was relieved to know that his dick could still get hard.
“Then one day, I ask you to marry me.” The side of Ian’s face glowed golden as the sun rose higher in the sky. “Imagine saying no. Not because you don’t love me. Not because you can’t imagine marrying me one day. Obviously, you plan to be together for the foreseeable forever because you’re rebuilding me a goddamn Victorian mansion.
“And then, I break up with you. Imagine the shock and disbelief. The denial that gives way to devastation. ‘I don’t understand,’ you say. ‘We’re happy. We can fix this. I love you.’ But I don’t want to hear it. I won't compromise.” Ian turned his face away, his Adam's apple bobbing as he swallowed. “Then, the very next night, I invite someone over and fuck them. Loudly. Imagine how painful that would be. Sitting there, listening tothat. Totally discarded. The only conclusion you can make is that I moved on, just like,” he snapped his fingers, “that. Like I never meant anything to you at all.
“Imagine being trapped. All of your money is tied up in the house, and even if money wasn’t a problem, you can’t help but stick around for the mere morsels of attention I give you when I feel like tormenting you. But worst of all, you can’t leave because you’re afraid of what will happen if you leave me to self-destruct. Because you still love me. You still care. You can’t turn it off.”
Ian said nothing for long enough that Alek wondered if he’d ever speak to him again.
“Imagine being so miserable,” Ian began again. Slowly. Quietly. Almost whispering. “You long to sleep for even the briefest break from what is, essentially, a waking nightmare, but I make it so loud with sex and music that all you can hear are the thoughts inside your head.He never loved you enough to tellyou where he came from. You meant nothing to him. You don’t even know him.”
Ian pulled a folded piece of paper from his pocket, unfolded it, and looked down at the page.
“Then, when it’s finally quiet enough to fall asleep, you drop right into dreams about the way things used to be when we were still happy, when I still loved you, and that’s even worse than nightmares because the next morning you have to remember that we broke up all over again.”
With one hand, Ian crumpled the paper up into a ball and crushed it inside his fist.
“Repeat that. Every day. Every night. For three weeks. Then one day, you find out that none of it ever happened. That I didn’t sleep with any of those people. That all the pain you suffered was a lie to manipulate you into doing what I want. Imagine if I did that to you.”
But Alek couldn’t imagine that. The only pain he let himself feel was the physical kind. It had to be that way. Besides, things wouldn’t have gone down like that if the roles were reversed. Alek would have said yes. He would have never let Ian touch someone else.
That’s not to say Alek couldn’t admit that he was wrong. When he first started this monumental failure, he’d only thought of it as an equation. Ian plus jealousy equals marriage. He’d been so confident that it would work because it would have worked if it happened to him.
“Every time you hurt me, I think, this has to be the cruelest thing you’ve ever done. This has to be the lowest I’ll ever have to degrade myself in order to forgive you. But every. Single. Fucking. Time. There’s something worse than I can even imagine.”
Without looking at Alek, Ian held out the pen. “Start talking.”
Alek quickly scrawled,Forgiveness doesn’t make you weak. It’sharder to let go than to hold on and I’m not just saying that so you’ll forgive me. I didn’t want to hurt you. I needed you to promise that you’d stay because since I fell in love with you, my heart has been outside of my body and with you, and I don’t like how it feels.
“You think you’re the only one who gave their heart away?”
Alek ignored the question. Ian didn’t get it. Hearts were fickle. They could be broken. Marriage was more permanent.
Ian rubbed his forehead with his palm and sighed. “Marriage is about two people, Alek. It’s a choice you can’t manipulate me into choosing. You cannot treat people this way.”
Alek wrote,I don’t have to remember yesterday to know why I said I’d buy you out of the Victorian. Letting you go is the only apology that comes anywhere close to atonement. I was sorry then. I’m sorry now. The offer still stands. If you want to leave me, I’ll let you go.Each word Alek wrote cut him as sharply as if the pen were a knife, and the ink that bled into the paper was his blood.
Ian stood, walked to the window, and dropped the paper ball on the sill, before collecting his cell phone, wallet, and keys, holding them all in one hand.
Alek watched him, probably for the last time. He tried to catalog every detail, starting with Ian’s hands, strong and unrelenting when Alek needed him to be and generous enough to surrender when Alek wanted him to. He wished he could ask Ian to touch him one last time so he could get it right.
His eyes followed the curves of the muscles in Ian’s neck and the Adams’s apple he loved to watch when he swallowed. The shadow of near-black hair along Ian’s jaw that felt like sharp Velcro against his neck, lighting up like fizzing static electricity when Ian kissed him there. Those warm brown eyes that only ever brightened for Alek and would probably never brighten for him again.
With his back still to Alek, Ian said, “I'm so mad I can't even look at you.”
Alek held his breath. Ian was going to leave him now. At least he wouldn’t just disappear. At least he’d say goodbye.
Ian crossed the room and bent down so quickly that Alek flinched—which was stupid because Ian had never laid a finger on him in any way other than he wanted him to. Ian frowned and then pecked a chaste kiss to the side of his mouth.
As far as last kisses went, this one was all wrong. There was no passion. No angst. Up close, Ian didn’t smell the way he usually did. He reeked of hospital hand sanitizer that claimed to be unscented but really smelled exactly like cheap vodka poured over an open wound to keep it from festering.
“But, I accept your apology,” Ian said.
The noose around Alek’s neck loosened.
“I’m going to go home and take a shower and change into something that belongs to me and while I’m gone, I’ll deal with everything you’ve said because I don’t have any other choice. Then, I will come back.” Ian’s eyes raked over Alek like he was committing him to memory too. “Don’t you dare slip into a coma or die while I’m gone.”
