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“ONLY CRAZY PEOPLErun outdoors in the fall. Or winter. Or the spring. Or summer.”I thought back on Jasper’s words as I pushed my legs harder and swung my arms faster to counterbalance the momentum. Crazy was exactly how I felt as I hit the sixty-minute mark on my run, and showing no signs of letting up.
I rounded a corner, startling a flock of pigeons and sending them flying from the sidewalk when my gaze smacked against Jasper’s building. I slowed to a jog before stopping completely, winter smoke billowing from my mouth as I panted through my exertion and pain.
Backing under the awning of a bakery that hadn’t yet opened for the day, I peered to the left and right of me, ensuring neither Jasper nor Daniel weren’t somehow walking the streets this early in the morning and would spot me.
When the hell had I decided to take the route to him?I hadn’t. At least not consciously, but he was all I could think about since we ended things last night. I couldn’t help feeling like I’d given up on him, although that couldn’t be further from the truth.
Ending things didn’t end my mental turmoil, though. As I gazed up in the vicinity of their apartment, jealousy still plagued me. Was Daniel holding him? Consoling him without even knowing it? Would Jasper now do everything in his power to make his marriage work? Did I subconsciously break things off hoping it would force him to pick me?
“Fuck.I can’t do this.” I tugged the hood of my running jacket over my head, and jogged off in the direction I’d come from, suddenly anxious to get home so I could lick my wounds in private, because I was terrifyingly close to falling apart on the street.
“She knew.”Jasper’s voice spirited through my mind, and I cursed again, picking up my pace.
“She didn’t approve”filtered in next, leveling up the panic to the point I darted into the street without looking, the blare of a horn waking me from the replay of my nightmare.
“Shit!” I jumped back just in time to narrowly miss being run over. The driver cursed at me through his cracked window as he sped past. I gestured for the oncoming car to proceed while I waited in the middle of the intersection before cautiously getting to the curb and hailing a cab. I wasn’t fit to be outdoors.
After Jasper had left, I’d sat at the piano and played until the sun poked its head over the horizon. I playedMoonlight Sonata,Selene’s favorite, and thought back on the many recitals she’d sat front and center at, and the tears she’d cry into my father’s handkerchief. I tried to reconcile that image with the woman who wanted Jasper to sever our relationship. Tried to reconcile the woman who once told me she’d love me through anything and everything, with the woman who disapproved of our love.
I’d played as my tears flooded the keys making my fingers slip and the song go out of tune. I’d played as I whispered the self-love mantras I’d accumulated over the years, needing them badly right then because I’d felt myself toe-dipping into a pit of self-hate again. The one I’d crawled out of with the support of Leland and countless hours of therapy.
At one point I’d stopped playing, needing the quiet to apply the rationality I’d gained on my therapist’s couch to my current situation.
Selene had every right to disapprove of us. Or to have needed time and space to come to terms with who Jasper and I were to each other. What I knew for sure was she loved us, and she would’ve found a way to move past her own ideas for our lives, past her discomfort. She would have found a way to accept us. And then she would’ve been our advocate, even if it meant going up against her husband. Selene was love and light, and she would have discovered a way to meet us where we were. I had to believe that.
“Sir?” the cabbie said a bit aggressively, as if it weren’t his first attempt at getting my attention.
“Sorry,” I said, paying him and exiting in front of the hotel I called home.
“This living arrangement is temporary, right?”Jasper had asked during his first visit here. Maybe it would’ve been if leaving meant getting over him.
I thanked the doorman and then slid onto the elevator.
As soon as the doors opened onto my foyer I was hit with his scent, sparking a sort of grief-rage. There was a time I’d searched this place practically on hands and knees praying to find a trace of him. A sock under the bed, deodorant left behind, a dirty coffee mug with the imprint of his lush lips on the rim. And now that I wanted no reminders, reminders were all I had.
I snatched a trash bag from the kitchen pantry, charging through the house on the hunt for anything Jasper. I tugged the dresser drawer so hard it crashed to the floor, the t-shirts unfolding onto the closet carpet. Rummaging through it, I struck gold, coming across the black wide-armed tank he loved to lounge around in. It showed off his defined arms and rib cage. It was mine, but it had to go.
Next, I dug around the cabinet under the bathroom sink, spilling its contents onto the marble floor in search of the lotion he favored, then tossed it into the bag, too. I’d have to start wearing something new.
The hazelnut coffee he loved went next. Then his favorite mug. If I could have, I would’ve ripped away the kitchen island I’d laid him out on countless times just to taste him while seated on a stool with his legs thrown over my shoulders.
I roughly rolled up the fluffy living room rug I’d made love to him on, flashes of him gripping it as his cum soaked into the fibers sent me to my knees. While there, I scanned the room for what would be next.My piano.
An ache of a different kind took up residency, then, because that instrument was more than its shiny lid littered with Jasper’s seed, more than his tongue cleaning up the mess he’d made—with my help, and more than the place we’d first kissed upon my reentry into his life.
It was also the place Selene loved to watch me get lost in from her curled up position on the bay window bench. It was also the only place I could get Jasper to venture to when he was sick. I’d promise to play “Clair De Lune”if he’d only get out of bed and stretch his legs. He’d sit with his head on my shoulder as I played, fingers tapping away on his thighs because he’d memorized each note of the song by then.
I sat then, with my back against the sofa—the one we’d notoriously fall asleep on intertwined like vines. By my reasoning, nothing short of burning the place down with everything in it would do. And that’s when I noticed the gift tucked under the Christmas tree.
Crawling over, I snagged it before returning to my spot, turning the badly wrapped item over in my hand. It wasn’t from Leland. He hadn’t been by for a while.
Jasper.He must have snuck it under there while waiting for me to get home last night.
Christmas was still a day away, but I couldn’t tear the red and gold paper away fast enough, convincing myself it was so I could throw the gift away even faster, be done with him and this thing causing my heart to fold in on itself. Be done with love.
Functions of the body normally done subconsciously escaped me as I stared at the item in my shaking hand. I didn’t blink. I didn’t breathe.
The clay bowl was big enough to store a set of keys that were always lost, a wallet that could rarely be found, and the pocket change that would sometimes make its way into the wash cycle. I knew what it could hold, because it was perfectly crafted for me for all those reasons.
