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- 07/06/2013
- 2,159 Words
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- 3 Comments
Stories posted in this category are works of fiction. Names, places, characters, events, and incidents are created by the authors' imaginations or are used fictitiously. Any resemblances to actual persons (living or dead), organizations, companies, events, or locales are entirely coincidental.
Note: While authors are asked to place warnings on their stories for some moderated content, everyone has different thresholds, and it is your responsibility as a reader to avoid stories or stop reading if something bothers you.
Note: While authors are asked to place warnings on their stories for some moderated content, everyone has different thresholds, and it is your responsibility as a reader to avoid stories or stop reading if something bothers you.
Jim and Chad, Part 2 - 11. Chapter 11
Chapter 11
After a while, the images that had shredded my emotions begin to fade, changing from a vivid color to a lackluster black and white before fading completely away to a gray nothing. As my overactive imagination shuts down from this latest episode, I slowly begin to get back in touch with my surroundings. I still hold on to Chad but relax a little, letting go of the death grip that I have on the back of his jacket. As I do, I hear him sigh and take a deep breath as he continues to hug me tightly.
I open my eyes and see that it's almost dark. The only light on the deck is the lingering twilight as the sun sets over the mountain nearby. I soon realize that I'm standing and the outlines of the deck aren't the same as they were just a short time ago.
As I sniff to try to contain the stuff in my nose, I suddenly realize that I've gotten the shoulder of Chad's leather jacket wet and messy. In a move that surprises Chad, I pull back, rush over to the lounge chair on the other side of the deck, pull the pillow case off the pillow, then come back to Chad and use it to clean up the mess.
Chad tightly grabs one of my upper arms and says, "Jim, stop. STOP." He shakes my arm until I look up at his face. His eyes show a true concern. "Relax. My jacket will be fine. There's nothing there that a little water won't clean up." I look away and continue to clean his coat until it's dry.
Chad grabs the pillow case from my hands, throws it onto a nearby chair, and then cups my face with both of his hands. "Look at me. LOOK AT ME." As I finally meet him eye to eye again, he says, "You get up from the chair, walk over here to the other side of the deck, and when I come over to you, you have tears streaming down your face." With a chuckle he continues, "Then you nearly squeeze me to death as you cry for about five minutes. What's going on in that huge brain of yours, bud?"
I try to move back from his hands, but he holds my face firmly with his hands and continues to look at me. "Tortured brain is more like it," I say quietly.
"Huh?"
"I just remembered some things from the past," I say with a definite raspiness in my voice. After a short pause, I continue with "Look, there's no need to get into this. This is how I reacted when my wife and kids . . . well, a couple of years ago. No one else saw it then, and if you hadn't been here, you wouldn't have seen this little episode either."
"I still care deeply for you, and I always will. But now I'm concerned for your mental health."
I reach up, take both of his hands and pull them from my face. Trying to control the emotions that I'm feeling, I say hoarsely, "I can't do this, I can't be this close anymore, Chad. I've spent most of the afternoon trying to let you go, trying to become friends again instead of lovers. That implosion you saw was me realizing that we're not a couple and we're not lovers anymore. We're now just good friends. So what you're seeing is part of my grieving process, part of me dealing with the loss of . . . us."
After a short pause, I sigh and continue with, "We need to let this go. I'm going to go take a long, hot shower to clean up from the hike, and then we'll have a nice dinner at the lodge. After that I'll see you off to catch your plane. I assume you're headed back tonight?"
"Yeah, I have a ticket for the 11:30 red-eye back to the East Coast." With a chuckle, he says, "And that gets me back there about 8 a.m. so I can go to work."
With a small chuckle, I say, "You're such a masochist. You really need to learn how to relax."
"I know. Sarah said the same thing last night on the phone." As we look at each other for a few more seconds, for once I actually feel that maybe I can let him go. But then he puts a hand up to my face again and says what I hoped he wouldn't say: "No matter where you or I may go or whatever we may do, I want you to know that I'll always love you."
As my throat begins to hurt again and I feel tears rush to my eyes, all I can think of is 'Damn you.' So I pull away from his hand, then turn and go inside, not responding to his confession. I angrily yank off my coat, throw it down on a chair, and walk over to the suitcase sitting on the second bed.
As I pull out clean underwear, jeans, and a t-shirt and shirt combination, I feel Chad come up behind me and drape his left arm over my left shoulder, his left hand settling in flat against my chest. At the same time he wiggles his right arm under my right arm and around my side, his right hand settling in flat across my stomach. As he slowly pulls me back to him, I realize that he's taken off his coat. The heat of his chest and stomach through our clothing and against my back makes me feel good, really good if we were still lovers, but way too close for friends.
I drop the clean clothes back into the opened suitcase, reach up with my left hand, and hook my fingers over his left hand between his thumb and index finger. Then I reach over and cover his right hand with my right hand, intertwining our fingers and holding him close to me. He responds by wrapping and tightening his fingers around mine and pulling me closer and tighter to him.
I look up and shakily say into the air in front of me, "I'll always love you, too. But I'm not yours and you're not mine anymore. You belong to Sarah. We're just friends now, and as much as I don't want to let go, I have to . . . we have to . . . because you're going to be a great husband and a terrific Dad. I would never, ever want to stand in the way of that opportunity because I know what it'll mean to you when you get there." Then with a chuckle I add, "And besides that, humanity really needs you in the gene pool. With your and Sarah's genetics, you two can't help but have smart and amazingly good looking kids."
When I get no chuckle from Chad for the last comment, I let go of his hands and slowly turn around so that I'm facing him. His face betrays the emotions that are boiling just below the surface. I put my right arm around him under his left arm and put my left arm over his right, our noses about an inch from the other's nose. I feel the heat of his face radiate onto mine and I see the tears as they pile up in his eyes. I pull us closer, moving my head to the side of his head. As we pull together, he buries his face into that tender spot where my neck joins my shoulder.
When I feel him begin to tremble, I pull him closer and tighter to me. As he had said to me, I quietly say back to him, "Lean on me, bud. Let it go." It's my turn to be the stronger person as the guy I'm holding finally recognizes that our relationship is over and that we're now just good friends. As the trembles and sobs slowly get stronger, he slowly tightens his hug around me. I feel the heat of his face against my neck followed by a coolness as his tears evaporate from there, too. I try to hold back, but tears come to my eyes, too. I wish that I could remove this pain from him, but I also know that he needs to go through this to be able to let it all go.
After about five minutes, Chad's sobbing slows, and he loosens his hug some. I scratch his back to help him through it all and to let him know that I still care for him. Another minute later he pulls away so we have about six inches of air between us and says, "Thanks. I needed that. It all got to be too much."
With a chuckle, I quietly say, "And I thought I was the emotional one in this relationship."
Chad looks into my eyes, smiles a little, and responds quietly, "You're not the only one. I just hide it really well from you and everyone else. The last month has been hell trying to figure out what and how to do what we're doing now."
He gently raises his hands and puts one against each side of my face. His thumbs caress my cheeks and the fingers play with my ears, then bury themselves in the hair behind them. After a short pause, he moves both hands forward, the palms resting gently and warmly against my cheeks, the thumbs tracing my four-day old mustache and goatee. Then he uses both hands to gently feel my face, the fingers roaming over my face trying to memorize the contours of my forehead, eyes, nose, jaw, and chin. As he traces my face with his hands, I slowly scan over his face trying to memorize everything I see. This is the last time we'll be this close, so I want to try to remember everything I can.
Soon the bottoms of my feet begin to hurt, so I reach up and take both of his hands and intertwine all of our fingers together. As I look down at my feet I say, "I have to go take a shower and get off my feet. They hurt too much to be doing this for much longer."
When I look back up to Chad's face, I see a mischievous grin that I've seen before, the grin which implies 'I know how to get you off your feet.' My heart skips a beat and blood rushes to my groin until I realize that friends don't do that. Those feelings are reserved for lovers. So I back away, break our hand-holds, gather up the clean clothes, and make my way to the bathroom.
I must have been overly sensitive to everything because when I close the bathroom door, the simple "click" of the door latch sounds almost like a nearby gunshot with the bullet hitting me and stopping right in the center of my heart. After a few seconds of thinking about it, I realize why: ever since our first weekend together, whenever we're together, there's never been a closed bathroom door between the two of us, at least not until now. The bathroom has been a place for some of our most bawdy and most intimate moments together, partly because its a bathroom, but mostly because of the warmth of a shower and our nakedness. So that overly loud "click" also signifies another part of our relationship being broken.
As my emotions shift into overdrive and tears rapidly fill my eyes again, I think, 'Shit, why do all the little things have to hit me so hard?' I try to distract myself by starting the water in the shower, hanging the towel over the top of one of the shower's glass sides, stripping off all my clothes and piling them on the floor, then stepping into the warm and steamy shower. The hot water pouring over my body, face, and head comforts me some, but the emotions are still firmly in control of my brain. So I put my hands on the wall in front of me, lean into them, and let quiet sobs overtake me while the water washes the tears from my face.
Eventually I get it all under control again and finish my shower. Although the cabin feels warmer than it did earlier, I still dry off in the shower stall so that I won't get cold as the water evaporates in the dry cabin air. As I step out of the stall, I hear a soft knock on the bathroom door.
"Yes?"
Through the door I hear Chad's voice. "Ummm, may I come in?"
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Stories posted in this category are works of fiction. Names, places, characters, events, and incidents are created by the authors' imaginations or are used fictitiously. Any resemblances to actual persons (living or dead), organizations, companies, events, or locales are entirely coincidental.
Note: While authors are asked to place warnings on their stories for some moderated content, everyone has different thresholds, and it is your responsibility as a reader to avoid stories or stop reading if something bothers you.
Note: While authors are asked to place warnings on their stories for some moderated content, everyone has different thresholds, and it is your responsibility as a reader to avoid stories or stop reading if something bothers you.
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