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The Best Four Years of Adam Becker - 30. Sophomore Year - Chapter 8
“Okay, so,” Kevin said. “I was going to bring this up after lunch, but I didn’t want to put it off. We need to talk about something serious.”
He was pacing in front of me, in his bedroom.
And I had rarely seen Kevin like this: pacing. Acting serious. It made me nervous; I didn’t know what to expect, but I could feel my heart beginning to race, assuming the nuclear option had just been deployed.
We need to talk about something serious. When had we ever talked about something serious, soberly?
Something serious--his family, maybe? hopefully?
I would not let my paranoia betray me.
“Okay,” I told him, slowly. “Do you want to sit?”
Kevin shook his head, continued pacing, his eyes cast down at the floor.
“Well, it’s like.” His voice paused, the rest of him continued to pace, back towards me, though he still wasn’t looking up. “Okay. It’s always been so light and fun between the two of us. And we never talked about what long distance would actually mean. Two continents, across an ocean. Starting next week, I won’t see you in eight months. And I know we said we’d try but I think we didn’t know what to really expect until everything started happening, and I know I can’t be the boyfriend you deserve while I’m away. And I care about you too much to put you through all that, so I think we should end it now, rather than go long-distance.”
And it was the nuclear option.
Wasn’t it?
But I felt oddly still, oddly nothingness. There were emotions, but I wasn’t feeling them. I was watching them happen to something else, only the foggiest curiosity of what they were.
So light and fun between the two of us.
Is that what he thought of me? Light and fun?
How was I light and fun, when everything around me was dark?
It was at this point, when he finished the difficult part, the utter destruction of Peter Adam Becker, that he finally looked up at me. “Are you okay?”
Was I okay. Was I okay?
I really didn’t know.
A winded emptiness. No tears, or shock, or horror, or despair.
“Spring break,” I managed, lamely. “What about spring break?”
Kevin sat down next to me on the bed. “Well, it’s going to be a long time apart, whatever way you slice it. We’re going to be in two very different places, and how can a relationship work when you’re that far away? When you only have emails and the occasional phone call, from the other side of the world? And I’m not good about keeping in touch anyway. I’ve never been--it’s the problem with moving every year when you’re a kid.”
I care about you too much to put you through that.
But instead he would put me through this?
Was this a definite decision? A final one?
Was there room to appeal this sentence, to beg him back, to tell him not to do this?
Was he expecting me to plead? To beg for leniency?
“Things are going to change when I’m over here,” he told me, finally. “They’re going to change a lot. I won't be able to give you what a boyfriend should give. And what you deserve, Becker. Because you deserve a lot.”
No, I wanted to say: Nothing ever has to change. And deserve: what do I deserve? I deserve what I want, and what do I want, if not Kevin Malley?
I had no rebuttal, outwardly at least. Because I couldn’t find any words, other than “please,” other than “don’t do this.”
And one other word: “Kevin.” My voice hushed and choked, as if it begging for water with his name, with my boyfriend’s name. “Don’t do this.”
He said nothing ,and I sat there, gaping up at him, gaping up at my boyfriend, my ex-boyfriend, my Kevin.
“I was so lucky to be with you,” he continued, returning to the script, his voice measured like he had rehearsed this in the bathroom mirror. “To have had your love. I've never met anyone like you. You're smart and you're funny and classy and you're so, so adorable. You were often my first thought in the morning and my last thought before going to bed, and I couldn’t even believe how lucky I was that you could fall for someone like me. And I mean that, Becker. But this is best for both of us, and I know that, in your heart, you know it too.”
I shook my head. “Kevin.”
“You do,” he said, strictly. “Becker, it’ll be different when I’m not here. You know it too. It’s already different. And when I get to Paris, Carver—”
“Carver,” I repeated.
“Carver’s going to tell everyone I’m gay,” he continued, moving forward in spite of me. “Because it’s Carver, and he can’t help himself. And everyone’s going to know. Tulane people, classmates. And you know, I’m not scared of that. Maybe I want them to know. Maybe it’s time they know.”
He placed his other hand on my shoulder, still squeezing my hand; we were embraced, embraced on the bed where, dozens of times, I had slept next to him. I had sex with him. I cuddled him and kissed him and told him that I loved him.
And by now, Kevin was beginning to cry, which I had not expected. Not a full cry, but his eyes were reddening, tears were starting to dig rivulets down his flushed cheeks.
“I had this all worked out in my head, and now I’m just babbling, and I don’t even know what I’m saying,” he said.
I squeezed his hand.
Kevin’s voice had grown quiet: “I want us to be friends, Becker. I do. You know how much I consider you a friend.”
I had a lump in the back of my throat, and I knew that, at any moment, tears would burst out of my swollen eyes, but I wasn’t going to do that.
“I consider you so much more than a friend,” I managed, finally.
“But we were friends first,” he said. “Think about where both of us will be in eight months. You want to go eight months without sex? Eight months without seeing me? It’d be pen pals. It won’t be a relationship. And you don’t deserve that. Neither of us deserve that.”
In eight months, we would be in the same place we were now.
Because happiness did not simply expire, love did not expire. They could not be broken, could never be broken.
We’d be a year older, certainly, but our love would be right where we left it, like reopening a beach house on Memorial Day.
Kevin would come back.
He’d come back, and the two of us would come back, and we would still hide away in his room like this and make love and be together.
And that would be all we needed in the world.
There had to be words to change this, words to bend this truth to a more acceptable one.
And yet, I had none of them.
What could I say, to make him smile and say you’re right and I love you and we’ll make this work somehow, because we could and we should and we will.
Fuck distance.
Love triumphs over everything.
“Please,” I whispered again.
And Kevin didn’t say anything, for a long time, and he wouldn’t meet my glances, but I didn’t think I could handle looking him in the eye either.
Kevin. Please. Don’t do this.
“Are you going to be okay?” he asked again, his voice thin and reedy, like he’d reached the end of a very long race.
Even my limited words, my please, my Kevin, my don’t do this, had been extinguished from my vocabulary by this point.
I very suddenly could hear nothing and everything. And feel everything and nothing.
But I couldn’t speak or think or see through anything but pain.
Not actual pain, but pain in its most abstract form. Deep and ephemeral, the idea of pain.
My hand, which was still holding his, came free, though I didn’t know which one of us pulled away. And I raised it to his bicep, and pulled him into an embrace. I rested my chin on his shoulder, and suddenly it was any day, with our arms tangled around each other. I could feel his face against mine, his uniquely Kevin scent filled my nostrils, one I could never describe and never recreate.
And then I turned my head, and I kissed the delicate stubble on his cheek.
And I kissed it again, and again, and another time, and then I heard myself, faint and far away:
“I want you,” I whispered, “to fuck me.”
He was taken aback. But even as he said, “I don’t know,” his voice reedy and heavy, he did know. And we were already in motion, his big hand grabbing my back, leaning in to me with a sexual hunger as if it was the last night of the end of the world.
He kissed me, long and intentional. I closed my eyes, it was any other day: we had come from lunch, or come from Bruno’s, and the world outside has seized to exist, a moment and a space built just for the two of us.
His t-shirt came off. I kissed his neck, as he fumbled with the buttons on my shirt, and I tried to focus on how he felt, tried to memorize every inch of him.
We were both hard, through our jeans, and we both wanted this, and we both wanted to be together, to be with each other.
And we were moving quickly, him undoing his pants and then me undoing mine, and finally, our hard dicks were rubbing up against each other.
“I want you so bad,” I told him, and we kissed again. And he had his hand on the back of my head, and I had my hands on his shoulders, and we were both pulling into each other, a long kiss, a seduction.
“Suck me off,” he said, and of course I did: Kevin pushed me back on the bed, straddled my face, and slowly lowered his considerable dick into my throat. And I had only sucked a few dicks in my life before Kevin, and I remembered how uncomfortable it had been, how quick to gag, and here was Kevin, my Kevin, hung and a perfect fit.
And suddenly, I was in Destin, spring break, on the beach. And it was dark and we had left the group and we were on the abandoned beach and he told me to get on my knees and suck him off.
And I did. The danger. Because Kevin was an adventure.
I could feel his pubes against my chin and nose. He was moaning, and saying, “Oh fuck, oh fuck.”
And then, he pulled his dick out of my mouth, and he leaned down, to kiss behind my ear. “Want me to get lube?”
He didn’t wait for an answer, because he knew the answer; he reached over the bed to the nightstand and grabbed the bottle. He clicked it open, and I felt his lubed up finger toying with my ass, slowly massaging the lube into my hole, and it felt so perfect. I wanted him. I needed him, inside me, so badly.
Kevin grabbed my ankles, and put them on his shoulders, and he leaned forward to kiss me again. I wanted to say, I love you. I couldn’t get the words out. As a whole, I couldn’t get the words out: to speak was to think, to think was about Kevin, and I wanted to feel. I wanted to feel him.
He slowly pushed his dick inside of me, and I let out another moan, and Kevin was inside me, his big dick, a perfect fit, my top, my Kevin. He began fucking me, slowly at first, like he was trying to savor every moment, and maybe that was just me projecting. Because I wanted to, and I wanted him to.
He leaned down again, and kissed me, and I clawed at his back, taking in every scent of Kevin. Every second I had with Kevin was not a second I didn’t have with Kevin.
Kevin fucked me harder, and faster, in and out until we were both grunting and moaning, in the incredible rhythm you only get when you’re a couple, and he made that face, that it was almost time.
And I started furiously jacking off my dick, as Kevin continued to pound my ass, and just as I shot my load all over my stomach, Kevin grunted and shot his load deep inside of me.
He pulled his softening dick out, then collapsed on top of me, not caring that I was covered in my cum and his sweat. And he kissed me again, and said, “Wow.”
“Yeah,” I said, and he kissed me on the cheek.
And now I felt empty. Not just where his dick had been, but where the rest of him had been, but he still just lay there on me, our bodies together in primal unity. And I could feel his breath, his heartbeat.
“Hey, Kevin,” I whispered, finally, as he held me. “You can tell Veronica about us if you want.”
He sniffed, let out one breathy, teary laugh. “Oh, Becker.”
I wasn’t ready for that kind of finality, in his voice.
In the dim of the aftermath, I still felt nothing, but I felt nothing acutely.
I didn’t know if I thought sex would bring him back, remind him that what we had was good and was ours and ours alone.
Or if I just didn’t want it to end and that was the only way I could think of to make him stay.
Because I knew I’d fall to pieces when Kevin Malley walked out of my life, and I’d hold on to him as long as he’d let me.
“Yo, space cadet,” Patrick replied, as I was hit in the face by his pillow. “I asked you a question.”
I hadn’t heard Patrick’s question, or I hadn’t thought I heard Patrick’s question, but somehow I knew what he had asked.
“We went nowhere,” I told him. “We didn’t go to lunch.”
I was standing in the entryway to our room, near the bathroom. I had closed the door behind me, but I hadn’t been able to move the rest of the way; I stood there, staring at the blindness of the white light streaming through our windows.
“Oh,” Patrick said. He was studying me with suspicion, that something was wrong and he couldn’t tell what. “What, did you and Kevin fight or something?”
“No,” I told him. “Not exactly.”
Patrick was still staring at me, waiting for the rest of the story, but he eventually gave up. “Well, if you’re hungry, I’m meeting Morton at the LBC for lunch.”
It was so bright through the window.
I thought about shielding my eyes. My hand didn’t move.
I felt like a marionette.
Like someone else was controlling the strings.
Like I was just a spectator at the way my body was moving through the world.
And I thought: there’s no way this was not a dream.
There was no way I wouldn’t go to bed, and wake up, and have everything reset to the way it was, the opening scene of the next episode of whatever sitcom we were living in.
“Okay,” I told him, and we went.
I was on autopilot.
I watched myself order chicken tenders from W.O.W.
I watched myself pay the cashier.
And I was able to notice that, when we got into the dining room, it wasn’t just Brett Morton who was waiting for us, but Morton, Matt Rowen, and their dear friend, Kevin Malley.
Of all people.
And I watched myself smile at him politely. Which he returned. Our secret a secret for only us, like everything that had ever happened between us.
I sat down across from Kevin.
Any other day, sandwiched in a big group like this, where we’d communicate silently in our secret body language, the gentle smirk and the offhand wink, the secret sharing of our shared secret.
But right now, after the initial polite smile, he stopped looking at me. I still looked at him, but he stopped looking at me.
Unfolding in front of me, the banalities of conversation:
Morton talking about Meredith, disdainfully.
Patrick talking about Annie, neutrally.
Rowen talking about Annie’s roommate, glowingly.
And Kevin, silent.
And me. Doing my best to stay silent, but I knew I was a wildcard, even to myself, a stranger.
I was a hurricane. There was data and charts and weather patterns and history, but you never know exactly where or when the violence would shake the earth.
And I knew the storm of conflicting emotions, the thoughts that were flooding my head but not able to be truly perceived, would suddenly wash ashore.
I did not feel an impending storm. But I felt a heaviness in my stomach, a falling sensation, like the Tower of Terror. And I felt the walls beginning to strangle me.
“I’m sorry,” I said, getting up, abruptly enough that everyone was staring. “I don’t feel well. I’m going back.”
And I didn’t wait for anyone else.
I turned around, leaving my chicken in a heap on the table.
And I shot out of the LBC dining room as quickly as I could, out on to the porch.
The fresh air was an initial relief.
But it didn’t make me feel any different.
I kept moving, and I was already across the quad in front of Mayer by the time I dared turned around, and I thought of Kevin standing on the LBC’s porch, watching me, a solitary figure of concern and hope, but he had not followed me outside. Through the window, I could see everyone settling back into conversation, back into the pother of everyday life. Including Kevin.
Because of course Kevin wasn’t heartbroken. Kevin had initiated all of this.
I felt like I was going to hurl.
I dropped myself to my knees, in front of the bushes on the side of Mayer. And I went through the motions, lined myself up with the ground and gagged theatrically, but I didn’t throw up. It was cold out, but I didn’t feel the cold, just the dysphoria of trauma.
Text, from Patrick: “You okay, man?”
And I didn’t respond. I didn’t want anyone, or anything, except Kevin.
Time was a funhouse mirror.
I stood up after maybe an hour or a day or maybe thirty seconds, and I went back into Mayer.
My legs felt heavy, so I didn’t take the stairs; I waited for the elevator, willed myself to stay upright.
And then I was home, and I swaddled myself in my duvet, a cocoon away from the world, and I fell asleep. I didn’t dream.
But if I had dreamed, I would’ve dreamed of Kevin.
I woke up around sunset.
The strands of decaying light filtered through the windows, the room darkening which each passing second.
It was still the same day.
And I didn’t know how it was still the same day. How multiple days had not passed in this length of time.
I had gone to sleep with the thin hope that, when I woke up, something may have shifted, either in Kevin’s mind or my own.
Or at least that I’d have some sort of rested clarity, the beginnings of a developed plan to combat the rest of the world.
But I didn’t.
I felt no better, even as the world moved forward into darkness:
Patrick’s typing.
The vague strands of Tripp and Erik playing Battlescar on the other side of the wall.
Rustling in the hallway.
I did not know how to remove myself from this haze, from this autopilot through the clouds, and the rest of the week was like that.
I was better at faking it, of going through the motions, of acting like there was something left inside of me except for the creeping nothingness. And maybe I was a little quiet--I told Jordan and Erik, when they commented on my quietness, that I was feeling a little under the weather.
“How are you holding up?” Kevin texted me, Sunday afternoon, the second day post-apocalypse, our new calendar, AK, After Kevin.
I responded forty-five minutes later, to suggest I was somewhere other wrapped in my duvet, in my bed, watching Tripp and Patrick play Battlescar on our TV.
“Holding up,” I told him. “How about you?”
His response was immediate: “I’m holding up too,” he told me. “I know this is going to be for the best, but I keep thinking about you.”
Ideally, I would’ve written: “Maybe it’s not for the best. Maybe you keep thinking of me because we’re supposed to be together.”
But I didn’t want to invite the obvious response: that he knew what he was doing, that he was sad about what he was doing, that he was not going to undo the decision.
Instead, I responded with nothing, and by the time I thought maybe I shouldn’t respond with nothing, the window of time had already slammed shut.
I only had to make it to Saturday, before I could collapse in the privacy of my own bedroom. My flight from New Orleans to DC was at 6am on Saturday morning and I set that as my finish line.
To get there, I organized. I meticulously made to-do lists. Portion-controlled my actions, my life, so I could combat each morsel at a time. There were edits to my last story for Diana Webber’s creative writing class, there was indexing my portfolio, there was dropping my portfolio off in her mailbox.
There was my American Lit final. Google “Herman Melville Benito Cereno Sparknotes.” Email Stephanie Davis from class for notes. Make notecards. Check, check, no response, check.
Run through Audubon Park with Chris Baker. Domilisie’s for lunch. Check, check.
Happy hour, The Boot, Wednesday, check. Bruno’s with Jordan, Michaela, Erik, Patrick, and Tripp. Beat Erik at darts, check.
So on, so forth.
And a secret to-do list, that I didn’t dare to write down. Three commandments to get me through the next week:
Don’t cry.
Don’t let anyone figure out what happened.
Avoid Kevin.
The latter was the hardest, considering our overlapping social circles and the general idleness of finals week.
But I only had to make it to Saturday. And then I’d be gone, and he’d be gone, and I’d be somewhere else, in a different place, leaving all of this behind for a month and sort everything else out later.
I made sure to avoid public outings where there was a high chance he’d be in attendance--public drinking outings with Baker or Morton or Veronica.
Chris Baker had texted me on Tuesday night: “We’re at Bruno's for Kevin’s going-away. Get your ass over here!” I was unresponsive.
I had no idea if anyone had put two and two together, that something had happened, but Baker’s texts led me to believe that they had, in fact, not.
Which was the only silver lining of this whole ordeal, that I had somehow survived it.
And I hadn’t cried, either.
I hadn’t had any contact with Kevin since his Sunday text, and my lack of response, until Friday morning, the day before I was leaving for DC for Christmas.
“I totally understand if you don’t want to see me,” he said, “but I know you’re leaving tomorrow, and I wanted to at least say goodbye before you go. Lunch? My treat?
I could sense the palpable guilt.
Like I had on Sunday, I did not immediately respond. But I didn’t want to respond with nothing again. Because I didn’t want him to think that it didn’t matter. I didn’t want him to think that my only response to the end of our relationship was that I still wanted to sleep with him.
“You don’t have to see him,” Patrick told me. “He dumped you. You don’t have to see him.”
“I know,” I said, but I knew I did have to see him.
All I wanted to do was see him. Even though I knew it was probably not a good idea.
“Look,” Patrick continued. “Everyone’s in the other room. Let’s go murder Erik on the PlayStation, and get your mind off of it.”
And we did; we went into Tripp and Erik’s room, and Patrick proceeded to massacre Erik, and Tripp and Eddie Darien sat at Tripp’s desk going over stuff for their psych final that afternoon, and I sat on Erik’s bed, against the wall, staring at my phone, staring at the words that Kevin had sent me, maybe the last word’s he’d ever send me.
I rehearsed the reply in my head maybe fifty-thousand times.
And I didn’t say anything. And then it was too late to say anything, so I never said anything.
Until:
“Holy shit,” Eddie Darien exclaimed, punctuating the hum of noise. He turned his laptop screen in our direction. “Is someone fucking with Kevin Malley’s Facebook or is he really into guys?”
I craned my head over so I could see across the room.
Kevin Malley has updated his Interested In.
Kevin Malley has updated his Relationship Status.
Interested In: Men
Relationship Status: Single
I had settled into the monotony of routine over the course of the week, with my to-do lists and my methodology and my intentional lack of Kevin.
But this. This was so public, and this was so bold, and so unbearably Kevin, that all my thoughts about him came racing back, filling the measured emptiness with a sudden churn of pain.
I didn’t know what I was supposed to say to Eddie, if I was supposed to address this latest turn of events, but of course I wasn’t. They didn’t know I was any different to Kevin than any of them were.
Besides, I had a lump in my throat, a sudden fog obscuring the barren moors of my mind, and I couldn’t have said anything anyway.
“I think it’s legit,” Patrick offered from his bed, trying to catch my eyes to gauge how much he was allowed to say before he was stepping too far over the line. “No, I mean, there were whispers about it, weren’t there?”
Whispers. And I made a mental note to ask Patrick later what the whispers were.
And I thought for a second: if this had somehow exposed me, if Kevin’s news had somehow implicated my as an accomplice.
“Yeah, I always thought he might be gay,” Erik replied, lazily. “Never gets with girls or anything, and he’s a good-looking dude.” He turned to me. “Becker, Malley had to tell you, right? You guys are like butt buddies.” He started laughing at what he didn’t know was unintentional accuracy. “Shit. Ba-a-ad phrasing there.”
There wasn’t an easy way to back out of this, and my mind was thinking a hundred things. I didn’t want it to be an inquisition, because I knew the facts wouldn’t add up even somewhat if they really started digging. Second commandment of the post-Kevin world: don’t let anyone figure out what had happened.
“He told me a little while ago, actually,” I lied, and I could feel Patrick’s eyes staring at me, though I didn’t dare to look at him. “It’s, like, no big deal to be gay, is it? It’s 2007.”
“I mean, yeah, it’s not like we’re all going to go out and gay-bash Malley, dude,” Erik said. “I love that kid. It’s just news, is all.”
I pulled up my phone, and opened the last text from Kevin, his invitation to lunch from an hour ago, and texted him: “Did you really just come out to everyone on Facebook?”
I couldn’t take my eyes off my phone, but there was no response. I wasn’t expecting silence, at a moment like this.
Although: what had he said months ago? That when he came out, he would post it on Facebook, close his computer, leave his phone, and do a weekend in Biloxi?
We. He had said we. That we would do that. And we were not doing that; he was doing that; Kevin Malley; Interested in: Men; Relationship Status: Single.”
No. I couldn’t imagine Kevin Malley in Biloxi, even though he had wrapped up his finals earlier this morning. Maybe he was at Cafe Nino or Favori Deli or even La Petite Grocery, with someone who wasn’t me, if he was feeling especially celebratory.
It was three hours later, around four o’clock, before I got a text back: “Heh. Yeah.”
I was still sitting on Tripp’s bed, still in a relative daze, and I just stood up, told everyone I was going to grab some Gatorade from McAlister Market, or some other bullshit lie that I forgot the second after the words left my mouth, and I found myself outside Kevin’s house, knocking on the Becker door, my heart pounding over nervousness by proxy like I was visiting the Chamber of Secrets instead of my boyfriend’s door, my ex-boyfriend’s door, the door I had walked through a million times.
Kevin’s smile was lopsided and welcoming. He was a little drunk from lunch, and he was casual, like he had expected me to sprint across Uptown New Orleans to see him.
“Okay, okay,” he greeted, with a grin, ushering me in through the Becker door. “I know what you’re going to say. I know you probably think it’s the most insane thing ever, but literally everyone’s leaving today or tomorrow, and I won’t even see anyone until August. And I figured: if not now, when?”
“‘If not now, when’?” I asked, a little more irritated than I had initially intended. “That’s your big presentation? You make your major life decisions based on ‘now is as good a time as any’?”
Kevin seemed vaguely amused by this, and it seemed so foreign to me, that major decisions could be made on “why not” rather than “why.”
And I didn’t, couldn’t, understand how he could look so blasé and nonchalant over this whole thing, over this seismic quake he had unleashed on his own life. Even drunk.
“I told everyone who matters in person already,” he said. Counting off on his fingers, he said, “Chris, Brett, Tommy. The band guys. You know I told my family. And I was just, like, if it’s not a secret anymore--if it’s not something I’m hiding, and not something I’m ashamed of, why not just let everyone know? Because then people know. And then it’s over.”
And then people know, and then it’s over, but it wasn’t actually over, was it? It was just beginning. Three letters, M-E-N. Interested in. A look behind the curtain, a personal secret laid bare for the world to see and pick apart.
I hated Facebook.
“You’ve had a busy week,” I replied.
Kevin didn’t seem to recognize my tone was still frosty; his lips curled into a distant smile. “I told Chris last Friday,” he said. “Veronica already knew, obviously. Ben knew. Brett Monday, Tommy on Tuesday, the rest of the DMV and the band guys on Wednesday. And then it was done.” He paused. “I told Chris I told you on Saturday. So he doesn’t know about, you know.”
He had told Chris Baker on Friday. And he broke up with me on Saturday, lunchtime. And that meant when I was with Baker on Friday night at Bruno’s, he already knew.
And when I got home from Bruno’s, and I texted Kevin, “I love you,” and he texted me back, “I love you too,” he also knew. Knew that everything was over, because he had already started moving pieces around the board, had already put our relationship in checkmate.
“You didn’t tell me,” I told him.
He grinned at me, his grin wide and stark against the haze of chaos I had felt all week.
That perfect smile of his, even drunk, the smile I didn’t really appreciate until just now, when I knew I wouldn’t be seeing it again for a very long time.
“I think you I think you had a pretty good idea I was gay, Becker.”
I couldn’t tell if he was using humor to defuse the situation, or if he genuinely didn’t understand what I was saying. He had started coming out to our friends--started coming out to my fraternity brothers--when I still thought we were going to stay together.
“You know what I mean,” I told him. “You didn’t tell me you were doing this--you just started doing it. And you didn’t even think about the position it puts me in, having to deflect and defend...”
“Wait a second,” he said, the smile evaporating from his face. “Wait a second. I didn’t have to consult you on anything. If people think you’re gay because you hung around with me so much, that’s not really my problem. Tell them the truth. Or lie about it. You’re fucking good at that.”
It was Kevin in front of me, but it was no longer Kevin in front of me, no longer my boyfriend who would tell me how much I meant to him.
I’ve been so lucky to have had your love.
It was a different person in front of me.
Just for a second. Because then he blinked, and realized how deeply his words had cut, and he backtracked: “Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean it like that.”
My temper had been rising, right up until he apologized, and then it all broke and I just became hurt. Not hurt because of what he said, or what had happened. Just hurt because that’s all I had inside me over the past week.
“I’ll say,” I said, my voice softer than I had anticipated it being, than I had hoped it would be, and I felt the tickle of hot, wet tears dripping down my cheeks.
Kevin looked exceptionally uncomfortable, but he didn’t move to embrace me, or do any of the things he would have done if we were still a couple, if he was still my boyfriend, which he was not.
“I’m sorry,” he said, instead, 1and I didn’t know what to say. “I’m sorry,” he said, again, in the silence.
“You should know,” I told him, quietly, “how complicated everything is. And you’re a year older, anyway. When you were 19, no one knew.”
“I know,” he said. “I know, I know it’s hard for you.”
He let that linger for a second. So did I.
I could not conjure up a specific memory of Kevin, as I stared at his body across from me, but I could think of a whole slew of vague ones, of Kevin laying in his bed, staring at me, a soft smile on his face, telling me he loved me, that he wanted to be with me. And maybe that moment, etched in my brain, had never happened in reality, but it had happened, again and again and again.
“I shouldn’t have had sex with you,” I told him, finally, “that last time.”
“I know.”
He didn’t say anything more, so I continued. “I didn’t want you to leave me, and it was the only thing I could think of to make you stay.”
I was getting choked up again, but I resolved not to cry, the first commandment, that I’d stick to. It was now that Kevin came home to me, enveloped me in a hug, kissed my cheek. “I’m here,” he whispered. “I’m here.”
And he held me, like that, like we were still together. Except we weren’t.
“Congratulations, by the way,” I said, finally. “I know this had to be tough for you.”
Kevin released me, and he had a smile on his face again, his beautiful smile, even though his eyes had teared up too.
“It was tough, but it’s so freeing, Becker, I can’t tell you,” he said. “I feel better than I have in forever.”
“Good,” I said. “Because you should be proud that you’re everything you are.”
We stood there, facing each other. For either a long amount of time, or a short amount of time, because time had become so relative and malleable over the past week.
“You know,” he said, finally. “It really only takes the click of a button. And then you’re free.”
“Duly noted.”
“No, but,” he said, “you can hit it and then go to lunch, and you can’t undo it. And everyone knows, so you don’t have to talk about feelings or give hugs or all that awkward bullshit. It’s just one instant where you have to make the decision, and then it’s done, and it’s over, and you never have to worry about it ever again.”
“That’s not me,” I told him.
There was another long pause, as we stared at each other, our eyes locked on each other.
“I know.”
His voice was almost mournful, an elegy for what was, for what might have been. He leaned forward, embraced me again, but this time it was more for him than it was for me. My hands were around his waist, his up near my shoulders, and he was stroking the back of my neck. And I could hear him not exactly crying, but his breathing had sped up, little bursts of sad staccato.
“I hope you don’t see me as just some ex-boyfriend,” he whispered in my ear. “Because I care about you. I really do. And I don’t want this to be the end of things.”
“It won’t be.” I felt like I was going to cry as I choked out: “You mean so much to me, you have no idea.”
Neither of us said anything for what seemed like a long time after that. We just held each other for a little bit, until he finally let me go, and said he had a lot of packing still to do.
And so I said goodbye, and I walked out of that Becker door. And I didn’t look behind me, as I walked down Broadway, but I swear he watched me go. And, even if he didn’t, I figured I’d rather believe he did.
I felt deadened by the time I got back to Mayer.
Deadened and emotionless, draining from the entire week of whatever I had been into.
On my corkboard was a to-do list, a long list of what I needed to pack before my flight tomorrow. A long list of things that were mundane and self-evident. Jeans. Shoes. Toiletries.
I closed my bedroom door. Collapsed on my bed. And I thought maybe I’d allow myself just one cathartic cry, but I didn’t. The tears I had been fighting back all week wouldn’t come, because I was gutless and completely empty inside after all this.
The door from the bathroom opened, and I could hear the vague sounds of MLB 2K7 still playing from Erik and Tripp’s room. It was Patrick.
“You okay, man?” he asked, closing the bathroom door and locking the bolt. “I heard you come in.”
I looked over to him. “Yeah. I just went to Kevin’s.”
“Yeah, I figured,” he said, sitting down on his bed. “What happened?”
“Nothing,” I said. “We talked. We hugged.” I didn’t know what else to say. “I’m going to miss him.”
“Yeah, man,” he said. “Look, he’s going away to France for a whole semester. Let him have his fun, and you can have yours. And if it’s meant to be, when both of you are back here in the fall he’ll probably want to restart things.”
And maybe that was all that was left, was hope.
That Kevin and I would keep in touch while he was away, that we could keep the embers of our relationship burning, and we’d have our fun apart, and then we’d be back, and things would be exactly like they had always been.
Me and Kevin, together, and nothing would be different and nothing would be awful and I wouldn’t have the crippling emptiness that seemed to engulf every part of my heart where Kevin had been.
“It’s definitely meant to be,” I told him. “I’m sure of it.”
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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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