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And yet, I can’t help but feel hopeful, even as the night creeps in on us from behind. As the hours tick by, drawing our time together to a close.
Today was a good day.
And the following morning, when we rush off to the airport, bleary-eyed from hardly any sleep, that hope lingers, fueling our steps to the moment we must part.
It’s in the steadiness of my fingers as we walk hand in hand through a bustling airport to catch his flight to Chicago. It’s in the jut of my chin as I wait for Will to check his luggage.
I inhale deeply, taking in all the sights and sounds converging on us.
The dread isn’t as heavy as it was when he first arrived in LA, replaced instead by a bittersweet longing for more days like the last five.
Days filled with pink sunshine and salt-laced kisses; jostling elbows and gentle hair-tugs.
Nights filled with long steamy showers where I bite into Will’s fist as he bites into my back.
Stolen hours spent touching and whispering under cool, crisp sheets that smell of the ocean, making promises only we have the key to unlock.
We’re stronger this time around,I remind myself. We know what to expect. Know what the other needs, even if we can’t always voice it.
He made me promise to still call him if I have another panic attack.
And I made him promise to call me when the loneliness back home becomes too much for him to bear. When his fears become louder than reason.
We’ll be each other’s burdens. We’ll be each other’s strengths. Pillars to rest upon until we can be in each other’s arms once more and remember what it’s like to sit under a hot pink California sunset, watching the waves crash along the beach.
Only fourteen days to go.
Eventually, we won’t have to count the days anymore.
Once his bag’s handed off, he turns to me with a small, knowing grin.
I suck in my cheek and shrug.This is it.
He takes a step forward, then another, before pausing just in front of me.
I know we’re out of time, so I soak the goddamn marrow out of this moment. Hoping this right here and the five days that brought us closer together will be enough to hold me over, holdhimover, until he flies back out two weeks from now.
Two weeks.
It’s nothin’ right?
His mouth crooks up into a stupid grin, blue eyes glistening like little pools. There’s a question in their depths, one I’m well familiar with by now. One he shouldn’t even have to ask anymore.
Especially here. In an airport, thousands of miles away from the fishbowl that is Shiloh, Pennsylvania.
I’m free here in a way I’m not back home, despite most of the town already knowing. Free to be me, the real me I’m only beginning to unearth. Free to be the guy so hopelessly in love with another guy without fear of jeers or repercussion.
It’s easier, I guess, when no one knows who I am. I can almost pretend I’m someone else as I reach for Will and press my body to his, burying my face in his neck.
But I don’t want to be anyone else, I decide as his arms come around me, holding me tight.
His voice is in my ear, and it’s all, “Way, Way, Way.”
No.I don’t want to be anyone else but me. Buthis.
Even when we’re apart, I’ll always be his.
He steps away, brushing his lips over mine with a quiet, “See ya in two weeks, Rockstar.”
