1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | Epilogue
6 - Kane Reasoning
Brian/Kane’s POV’s
Rated PG-13
******************
Brian
Lindsey once told me that I’d never truly know myself until I’d been in love.
Or rather, until I let myself be in love. To see yourself through the eyes of
another person, another person who loves you completely…you'll never be better
than you are in the eyes of someone who loves you, someone you love in return.
You'll never be as pure or as beautiful or as strong or as happy. You'll never
truly be yourself until you can love and be in love. I'm sure at the time I
spit at her and walked away, maybe rolled my eyes and cursed a little.
I pull out of Kane's not-so-strong hold on me and turn back toward the loft.
His look is one of triumph. How wrong he is. I’m not walking away under the
guise of taking his advice (although ‘don’t go after him Brian’ keeps ringing
in my ears), quite the opposite, really. Hearing Kane echo words that so
closely resemble ones that I’ve uttered myself, I realized something. I
realized that I fucking go about every goddamned thing in my life the wrong
way.
I’m not going to run after Justin. I’m not going to force his hand. I’m not
going to break him down until all he can do is melt into my arms and let me
drag him up to the loft. I’m not going to fuck him until staying with me is all
he can think about. I’m not going to mess with his head until he has no clue
what to do. I’m going to let him walk away. I’m going to make him come back to
me of his own accord, in his own time. When we’re both ready.
It’s only been a few months that we’ve been apart anyhow. How is it that it
seems like forever? How it is that we act so final and fatal and dramatic about
all of it? So he found some kid to tell him he loved him. So he left me for
that kid. So we don’t fuck everyday and don’t talk everyday and don’t wake up
together everyday. So fucking what?
I care about Justin, always will. Maybe I even love him. I wouldn’t really
know. What is love anyway? Is it wanting to be with someone when they aren’t
there? Is it being happy to see someone at the end of a shitty day? Is it
relief when you wake up and they lay peacefully beside you? Is it wanting to
touch them when you can’t? Is it tolerating their shortcomings and
idiosyncrasies and annoying habits? If it is…if that is what love is…then yes,
I love Justin. But if it’s more…if it’s some cosmic shift of the planets, some
explosion of otherworldly emotion. Some soul-shaking, mind-twisting,
gut-wrenching, heart-throbbing, skin-tingling emotional overload…well, then okay…maybe
I’m fucking in love. But that doesn’t ever mean I’m going to say that fucking
word. That fucking useless, empty, overused, over-marketed, Hallmark-whore of a
word. After all, it’s just a fucking word.
The rain is beginning to let up. I look skyward to see little breaks of blue in
the deep gray clouds. Then I look earthward to see Kane standing beside me. How
is it that I keep forgetting he’s here? I’m so damn preoccupied I can’t wait to
deliver him back to his hotel and forget about him for good.
Without an ounce of emotion in my eyes or voice I say in his direction, “Sorry
about the detour, your time in the Pitts will be coming to a close now.”
He laughs nervously, “Brian…” There is something in his voice that immediately
makes me uneasy.
I counter, “Don’t. Just don’t. Whatever you think you know, you don’t.” I walk
more swiftly now, making him work to keep up with me.
“That was Justin.” His statement could be perceived as a question, but I know
it’s not. He clearly isn’t going to let this go.
We walk up to the jeep and I unlock his door. While my hands are in front of
me, fumbling with my keys, he has a chance to catch me off guard. He grabs my
arm and spins me around, leaving my back flat against the door of the jeep.
There is urgency in his eyes.
“It isn’t that I didn’t think you should go after him. It’s that I thought you
weren’t ready.” I almost laugh at the irony. If he only knew the meaning of the
words he’d uttered just moments ago on that street corner held for me. He
intended them differently than I’d heard them, and I reacted differently than
he expected. There’s a lot to be said for failing to communicate.
“You say and do things in the heat of the moment that you wouldn’t otherwise.
It’s always better to think things out and to calm down.” I stare at him. He
doesn’t understand that I live my life in the heat of the moment.
Something in his voice. The way he says the words. I almost agree with him. I
almost let a fucking stranger believe he knows something about me. But instead
I pull a classic Brian and slip into fuck-you-asshole-mode.
“Just shut…the fuck…up.” I say it quietly, with determination in my voice,
shaking free of his grip on my elbow. I walk around to my side of the jeep and
hop in.
He fastens his seatbelt and adjusts his tie, “You’ve never listened to anyone
your entire life, Brian. I know it’s an impossible thing to ask a grown man to
start taking advice at this stage, but the way I see it, you need someone to
talk to. You need someone who’s not family, not a friend. Someone who’s been
where you are. Someone who won’t judge you. I’m offering my experience and my
insight to you. If you’re ever going to get that kid back, you need some plan
of action. And you need to realize some things about yourself that you probably
don’t right now. I have a feeling your charm isn’t going to win him over.”
I
throw him a tired glance to let him know his comment about my lack of charm was
unamusing. His accent, which I once found sexy, now seems only annoying. But I
am certainly rational enough to find the truth in his words. I never get to
talk about Justin. Not to anyone. Everyone in my life thinks they know
everything about us. It’s impossible to tell any of them that I miss him or
need him or want him. Mikey would tell me I was crazy and get all pissy and
jealous. Debbie would slap me and tell me I was too late for emotional
revelation. Ted and Emmett…well what the fuck do Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dum
know, anyway? There’s always Lindsey, but she’d just run off and tell Melanie
and I’d never hear the end of it.
Maybe I could see what Kane thinks about this mess. See if he thinks I’m
supposed to end up with this kid I met on a fucking street corner. What the
fuck am I talking about? This is business, Kane is business. He’s not my friend,
he’s certainly not my fucking therapist. He’s going back to his hotel and then
back to his country and, judging by the way I’ve treated him, I’ll never have
to see him again. End of story.
Kane
Fuck, he’s a stubborn son of a bitch. I have no fucking clue why I’m so
hell-bent on helping this fucker out. He’s a self-righteous prick. He’s
arrogant and hard headed and a complete asshole. He’s…fuck, he’s me. That’s
exactly why I want to help him. What I wouldn’t have given for someone to take
me by the shoulder and shake some good sense into me 10 years ago. My life
would have been quite different.
“Okay, so you aren’t going to make any of this easy. Fine. We’ll play your way.
You want my account, don’t you?”
He raises an eyebrow at me. Most likely, he’s slightly surprised at my mention
of business in the midst of such a personal encounter. But, as with all of
Brian’s reactions, his facial expression is so slight that I can’t tell how
he’s feeling.
I continue, “If you want me to throw my 3 million dollar ad budget for next
year your way then you’ll give me tonight.”
He furrows his eyebrows in confusion and replies, “Give you what?”
“One night. My flight doesn’t leave until tomorrow. Stay at the hotel with me
tonight.”
“You’re seriously going to give me a 3 million dollar account if I fuck you
again?” His tone is dry and disinterested. It annoys me because I know he can’t
be misunderstanding me as much as he’s pretending to.
“Brian, it’s not about sex. It’s about conversation. An art at which you’re
sadly lacking. I think I understand you much better than you realize. And I
think I could help you sort your life out a bit. Even if it’s just one night’s
worth of conversation. And…if I fuck you before dawn, so be it.”
He doesn’t miss my little quip at the end, and he almost, almost cracks a
smile. But, he doesn’t. He stares straight ahead, shifts gears and pretends I
don’t exist. Okay, one more shot.
“So your parents didn’t love you…probably still don’t. I bet they don’t know
you’re gay, if they do you didn’t tell them. You had a childhood full of shitty
holidays, missed soccer games, half-assed apologies and you probably got
smacked around. You grew up shooting from the hip and flying off at the mouth
to try and make up for never being heard at home. No one ever picked up on the
fact you were smart as hell so you got to slide by in classes with all the
other idiots. You got incredibly used to no one expecting anything from you.
You finally turned 18 and got the fuck out of your house. College showed you that
life might be worth living after all. You finally got to show someone you had a
brain, and you finally got to suck all the dick you wanted. But, somehow, you
ended up back here…working and living in the city you grew up in, even though
it’s never felt like home. You’ve kept your group of close-knit friends and
they are as close to family as you’ll get. But even they don’t really
understand you, or even expect anything from you. You’re clearly successful,
but I bet you wonder why you haven’t gotten the fuck out of here and tried your
hand at swimming in a bigger pond. I bet you wonder why you haven’t said ‘fuck
it all’ and offed yourself. And I bet you wonder how it is you fell in love
with some pretentious kid when you weren’t even paying attention.”
Brian barely makes a move during my entire diatribe. The flicker of his eyes is
the only indication that the wheels in his head are turning. The story is more
about me than I care to reveal, but something tells me I’m dead on when all he
does is keep driving. No ‘shut the fuck up’, no denial, no eye roll.
We race down Liberty Avenue. He doesn’t speak again until we’re in the parking
lot of the hotel, “He’s not pretentious.”
His words are a whisper, I barely hear him. I don’t know if he was actually
responding to me or just talking to himself. I see pain in his eyes in that
moment. Then he shakes his head, literally, as if to rid himself of any
thoughts about that boy. He abruptly adds, “I’m only sticking around if you
order some fucking food and I’m walking out when you start spouting
psycho-babble about my bad childhood.”
I nod as I mask my smile, “Fair enough.”
Brian
I cannot fucking believe I let this British prick talk me into a night of
conversation, of all things. We enter the elevator from the main lobby of the
hotel. He puts a hand on my back as we go into the small space, eliciting looks
from the other hotel guests already inside. The well-placed hand is a sign of
ownership, and Kane is the last fucking person who owns me. The only reason I
don’t shake him off is because the woman next to us looks as though she may
throw an embolism. Makes me want to hit the emergency button and fuck him right
here. Fuck her.
We walk down the monochromatic hallway to the suite Vanguard is paying for. It
was well stocked with wine, a fruit basket and some other complimentary shit to
let him know we wanted his business. Nothing is touched, which strikes me as
interesting.
I
walk the length of the main room and then waltz into the bedroom. I plop down
on the king size bed as he walks through the double doors and looks at me.
Removing first his jacket and then his tie, he lays the designer attire on the
chair in the corner of the large room. With soft eyes, he watches me sprawl out
in the middle of the bed. I lay back and put my arms behind my head.
“So Dr. Kane, where should we start?” I hear him snort just a little. It makes
me relax a bit, actually.
“Tell me about him. Your relationship, what happened?”
“We weren’t in ‘a relationship’.”
He sighs loudly and responds, “You’re even worse than I was.”
I sit up, “What?” What the fuck is he talking about?
“Brian…,” he stumbles. What the fuck is going to come out of his mouth? I need
a drink.
“You and me…we’re the same kind of people. I’m just an older model, with more
experience. I can’t help but think if I’d met someone like me ten years ago,
when I was your age, my life might be different. I guess this is about karma.
If I do some good with you, maybe that good will come back around to me
someday. Lord knows I’ve already done enough bad.”
He looks down at the Oriental rug beneath the bed and drags his feet across the
crimson and black pattern. He looks so defeated, so open, so honest. It’s like
he’s raw and exposed and needs me to cover him up. It’s so hard to be an asshole
to someone when they’re serving themselves to you on a silver platter. I guess
that’s sort of how I ended up with Justin.
I sigh deeply and let my eyes drift nearly shut. I see a blonde head and deep
blue eyes…pale, soft skin and a smile bright enough to rival the sun. “I took
him home one night…I don’t know…about two years ago. He was a twink, fucking 17
years old…” I see Kane nearly shudder at the thought of how young Justin was
then, and how young he still is now. “I didn’t know he was so young. I mean, he
fucking looked it, but I didn’t know. Who the hell crawls the streets of
Liberty Avenue in the middle of the night at 17? Well, I guess I would have. I
guess I did.” He nods at me as a sign to continue.
“So I took him home and fucked him. Well, actually before I fucked him, my
friend Lindsey had a kid…my kid…but that’s another story. He named him
actually…Gus. Justin named Gus.” I momentarily trail off from the memory, so
vivid it shocks me, making me shut my eyes tightly to hold on to it for a while
longer. I see his blue checked shirt, his short spiky hair, his shit-eating
grin. He was so happy I’d let him come to the hospital with me. He was so
elated to finally be devirginized. To be touched by a man, to be taught by a
man.
I sigh as I let the memory slip away. I bury it deep down with all the others,
filed under ‘never to be revisited again’. Then I continue, “I don’t know,
after that he just wouldn’t go away. At first it annoyed me. I’d never had a
trick stalk me before. They all got what they wanted, a great fuck, and left.
But Justin, Justin grew attached…right away. I guess I should have known he
would. I mean, I was his first. And we were…we were good. He knew it, too.”
I shift my position on the bed to face away from Kane. Letting him listen to me
as I vocalize my inner dialogue is one thing, letting him look me in the eye
while I do it is another. “Somewhere along the line he started to grow on me. I
started to not mind him being around. I mean, in the back of my head I always
thought he’d get a boyfriend or get bored with following me around. But, he
didn’t. As time went on things got a little more…I don’t know, intense. Then
his parents got involved. God, that was a nightmare. His father’s as bad as
mine was. Just verbal abuse instead of…well anyway, I turn around one day and
the fucking kid is living with me. I’d taken him in, gotten him out of his
parent’s house. Then I got robbed and he ran away to New York and I went up
there and brought him back. What a fucking soap opera that all was…”
I trail off. The memory of New York hits me strong and hard. Why is it I
haven’t thought of these events since they occurred? Why is it now I only have
my bad memories with Justin to keep me company? Why is it when I lay in bed at
night I can only see tear-stained eyes and hear unspoken words? Why don’t I
remember the great sex and the laughing and the touching and the talking and
the joking? I let myself get lost in that hotel room in New York. I remember
his white robe and his careful smile and his cockiness that snuck up and bit me
like a snake.
The memory must make me smile too widely and Kane asks what’s making me happy.
I immediately revert to my show-no-emotion state of being, but he protests.
“Tell me what was making you smile, Brian. You must’ve been having a happy
memory of him.”
I practically whisper, “A lot of happiness. It’s easy to forget, I guess.” I
stand up and cross the room to the window that conveniently overlooks Liberty
Avenue. We’re less than a block away. I see the bright lights and can almost
hear the bustle in the streets. I watch the queers parade up and down the
sidewalks as they sample different venues and contemplate their final
destinations. I think about how many nights I’ve done that. How many nights I
will do that. But, mostly…I think about the kid who kept me home a lot of the
nights in between.
“It’s very easy to forget. You have to work to remind yourself. So what
happened after you brought him home from New York? Did he move back in with
you?”
“God, no. That wasn’t working. He wanted to move back in with me, but I
wouldn’t allow it. He ended up renting the spare room in my best friend’s
mother’s house. Mikey’s mom, Debbie, practically raised me. I lived over there
most nights through high school. I knew she’d be the best influence on Justin.
I knew he’d get some freedom and a little perspective, and one hell of a
backbone from her. Most amazing woman I’ve ever met really.” Admitting what
Debbie means to me feels good. I turn to look at Kane as I say the last few
sentences to make them more real, as if to validate my relationship with her.
“That all went well. It was the smartest thing I could have done. We kept
seeing each other on and off after that. Well I guess it was always ‘on’. I
just didn’t really think about it. Things were easy then. He always wanted to
be with me, but made no demands on my time or my emotions. And then…”
I
know what’s next. In the story of Brian and Justin…if I’m telling it
chronologically, which I am, the prom comes next. Can I relive that? I never
have…not to anyone. Even Justin and I have rarely ever spoken about the events.
After he got better, physically and then emotionally, I laid that dead dog to
rest. It was a demon I didn’t want to fight anymore. So I pushed it down, way
down and hoped to never let it resurface. I could just skip over that part;
leave Kane out of that mess. But, I suppose if I’m being true to our story,
mine and Justin’s, I can’t leave out the most pivotal part of the tale. If you
take out that piece of puzzle, Justin and I make very little sense.
I clear my throat, “Well after that, I ended up at his prom, long story really.
We danced. I kissed him. It was all very after-school-special in a queer way.
It was just a way to tell his hypocritical, fag-hating, Christian school to
fuck off before he graduated. After our little show was over he walked to my
car in the garage of the hotel. When he was walking away I was watching him.
Watching him practically float and pull at the scarf I’d left around his neck.”
I swallow hard. I can see Kane watching out of the corner of my eye. I can talk
about anything without wavering. Anything without conjuring up emotion. My
fucking dead father, my crazy mother that hates me, how much I love my tiny
son…but not this. This is too hard.
I close my eyes and his quiet voice tickles my ear, “What happened that night
Brian?”
I shut my eyes even more tightly. “This kid, this fucking kid…fuck I still
can’t say his fucking name…he walked up behind him…he had a bat…I could see it
all…he’d given the asshole a hand job…they’d had words on the street…the kid
taunted him in school…Justin never backed down…he was so thick-headed…he
wouldn’t hide who he was…the kid swung as I yelled for Justin…he turned
around…he fucking turned his head to look back toward my voice…he’s so fucking
strong…so much stronger than I’ll ever be…he’s taught me so much…he turned his
face into that fucking bat to look back at me…I can still hear the crack…the
way it sounds when wood traveling at 100 miles an hour sounds when it hits
bone…the way it breaks it…the sound it makes when your skin tears and your
blood spills and you hit the pavement like a rag doll with no life. I didn’t
know what to do. I still…don’t know…what to do.”
I bite my bottom lip so hard, it bleeds into my mouth. I taste the blood on my
tongue and it reminds me of the blood on my lips from Justin’s face. The memory
is becoming so real I can’t take it. I get a head rush and stumble a little
when I start to walk. I hadn’t realized I was letting the window support me.
Kane reaches out to grab me, surely just to steady me, but I shrug him off. I
walk into the other room, breathing deeply. Grabbing the champagne bottle from
the basket on the table, I uncork it with little trouble and then sit on the
plush couch in the middle of the room.
Kane
Fucking hell. I figured they’d been through some shit, but that was more
than I bargained for. Well, I saw the kid standing, walking and talking
tonight...he must have ended up okay, but it must have been touch and go for a
while. Brian has some serious guilt festering inside of him about that…he needs
to start this process by letting go of that. Some random homophobic high school
prick with access to a baseball bat hurt Justin, not Brian.
I get up from the bed and walk over to where he’s seated himself on the couch.
I see the champagne bottle, heavy green glass filled with pale yellow
effervescent liquid that meets his welcoming mouth, spilling past those plush
red lips like a rushing, wild river. He drinks and drinks in a long gulp until
some of the sweet escape spills over the bottle top and onto his chin, his
mouth too full to take in any more. He lets it run down - over the curve
in his chin, across his long, suggestive neck and into his pale blue shirt. I watch
that trail of liquid as it runs to hide.
I sit on the ottoman in front of him and he immediately averts his eyes. I
touch his knee and he flinches, but doesn’t move it away entirely.
“Brian, don’t you think it would be good to talk about what happened? Isn’t it
better to get it out, have someone listen to what happened that night? Please
tell me the rest of the story.”
He sighs and I think he’s going to tell me to fuck myself, or some other such
thing, but he stops himself. Raises the now half-full bottle to his lips and
drinks more. He’s such an escapist. Uses alcohol and drugs and sex to mask his
problems. Figures if he can give his brain a break, if he can just forget about
what’s bothering him, then it will stop. I’m sure he tore through cases of his chosen
poison after Justin left him. I’m sure he went through even more after the boy
was injured. It’s Brian’s only method of coping. No one’s ever let him cry or
talk or shout or work things out. So he buries it all down deep, keeps it all
inside. Then packs it in tight with narcotics of any kind and hopes the poisons
will dissolve the memories while they eat away at his brain cells. But, they
never do, do they Brian?
Brian
Shit, fuck…this fucking sucks. Kane wants me to finish my story. Maybe I
don’t want to. Maybe I need to, but maybe it fucking hurts. I’m so not in the
mood to do this…never am though, I guess. I take another swig of the fairly
decent champagne we left in Kane’s room. I took it after deciding he wasn’t
drinking it anyway, and being partner now, I paid for the shit.
“So the prick cracked his head open with a bat. I ran up behind him, grabbed
the bat and hit the kid in the knees with it. I held Justin until the ambulance
came. It’s all…I don’t know…it’s murky. It’s like someone else’s memory. It’s
like I’ve relived it in my head so many times over that I can barely see it
anymore. And I’ve worked so hard to push it out of my head that…”
I stop. I stare straight ahead and remember that night with perfect clarity. It
is the first time I’ve done so in a long, long time. I can taste my own fear, I
can smell the cold parking garage, I can feel the dead weight of Justin in my
arms. I watch his blood pouring from the gash in his head, that I can’t look
directly at or I’ll lose it. It soaks his hair and my hands and his shirt and
my pants and that scarf…that fucking scarf. Like a little limp puppy, the one
who didn’t make it in the litter. He rolled around in my arms, completely
helpless as I wailed silently. I don’t remember who called the ambulance, maybe
it was me. I’m really not sure. But it came, within minutes it was there.
“We were racing through the Pitts, so unbelievably fast with those damn sirens
shrieking, I thought for sure we’d all die before we ever got to the hospital.
I remember thinking that would be okay. I remember thinking I’d rather die than
live to see the outcome of that night. But, we got to the hospital. Justin got
through a three-day coma and then six weeks of intensive rehab. And then we got
through the period after he returned home and then the months that he lived
with me after that. I took him to the loft for some emotional healing. Turns
out I just hurt him worse in the end. Ironic, isn’t it?”
That’s
it, I guess. Kane doesn’t need to know the details to understand how we got
from point A to point B. I highlighted the main events. He doesn’t need to know
that I visited Justin in the hospital every night and told no one. He doesn’t
need to know that when I saw Justin for the first time at Woody’s, after he was
released from the hospital, I’d never been so scared in my whole fucking life.
Even more than I was the night he was hit…’cause I was too shocked then to know
I was scared. But, at Woody’s I was scared…scared shitless, and speechless. He
doesn’t need to know that Justin’s mother forbid me to see him. He doesn’t need
to know that Justin had a nervous breakdown when he figured that out. He
doesn’t need to know that Jennifer then asked me to take her son, make him
whole again. He doesn’t need to know that I did. We did, we made each other
whole again.
Kane nods, a long slow nod that tells me he is processing my story. My
retelling of how that kid came to live beneath the surface of my skin, close to
my heart, in the neighborhood of my soul.
Finally he turns to look at me, his face hazy thanks to the bottle of bubbly.
“Well, you certainly love him. Although I bet you’ve never told him. And he
certainly loves you, no matter what caused this split. Whatever is going to
happen between the two of you, in the long haul I mean, isn’t over yet. You
certainly have unfinished business that you need to work to resolve. From what
you’ve told me and what I witnessed, you both need each other more than
anything else. But, you can’t quite get your shit together and work that out. So
you’ll have to rebuild what you had, but do it better and stronger this time.
Not under such intense circumstances. You need to be together only because you
want to be.”
I don’t know what to tell him. I’m listening, but I don’t know that I’m really
hearing him. After this flood of memories I’m too tired to think straight. I
get up from the couch and wander to the mini bar. I open it, grab one of those
mini-size deals of vodka, and toss it back. Reaching from behind me, Kane takes
the mini Jack Daniels out of my hand before I have the chance to down it.
“Ah, come on…Jack’s going to be lonely in there without his girlfriend, Stoli,
let me make it better for him.” I try to grab the bottle back from him, but
miss and nearly take a nosedive into the plush cream carpet. Kane grabs me,
holds me up and then starts to push me toward the bedroom. I’m not drunk enough
to be this unstable, but somehow I really can’t fight back.
He tosses the comforter and sheets back, throws the pillows from the bed. He
takes my shoes off and my jeans, finally my shirt. He rolls me into the center
of the huge bed and tosses the sheets back over my bare body. I see his eyes
linger for a long while on my bare shoulders. In a way I want him to fuck me so
badly. I’d never let him, but I know it is the only thing that would put my
head in a different place.
He leans over and kisses my temple, and when I try to grab his face and pull it
towards my mouth, he resists and stands up. The light clicks off and I hear his
whisper float through the dark room, “Get some sleep Brian, you need it.”
He’s right, when was the last time I really slept…the last time I didn’t wake
up every fifteen minutes reaching for someone who wasn’t there? I can’t
remember. It’s been ages. I’m just so damned tired.
Halfway to dreamland I start to mutter. He listens from the foot of the bed,
“Wanna know how it ended? I didn’t really finish my story.” He sits down at the
end of the bed, but says nothing. So I keep on muttering, “A fiddler. It all
came down to what some fiddler had that I didn’t! After all of that. All that
shit that I just told you. He chose a goddamned fiddler. I followed the
rules…that’s right, there were rules. Fucking rules that I, fucking Brian
Kinney, followed. But, did he? Did he stick to them…nope. No sir, he broke
every last one of those fuckers by the end. Can you believe that? His own
rules. You know I’ve still never broken any of them. Well…not really. I kissed
you, a little. But, you’re the first. No kissing, always home by 3am, never the
same guy twice. No names…no numbers…just rules. Justin’s rules. Months have
gone by, fucking months, and I still follow his rules. Fuck this!”
Kane
I listen intently to his diatribe from the end of the king-size bed. I
don’t dare move or breathe or speak. He talks and talks about how their
relationship ended. Something about a fiddler, whom I can only assume is the
other man. And he talks a lot about some set of rules that he lives by. I guess
they were relationship rules.
His anger builds as the rant continues and by the end he's nearly breathless,
though oddly quiet. He sits up abruptly as the last angry words pour out of his
mouth. He grabs me, pulls me to him tightly, and kisses me. It’s hard and
desperate. I have no clue what to do, so I kiss him back. It seems the right
thing to do.
He’s getting back at the kid, once again. This has nothing to do with me, once
again. But, I set out to help Brian and if he needs me to break a few rules
with him, then I will. He’s out to even the score, and maybe it is isn’t
healthy. But, maybe he needs to do it before he moves on.
He pushes me away as quickly as he pulled me close and he lies back down.
Lands with a thud, like maybe he passed out. I stand up and adjust the covers
up over his shoulders. I turn and walk away, even though I’d love to stay with
him, and shut the doors leading to the bedroom. I plop myself down on the couch
with the three tiny bottles of alcohol left in the mini-bar. Old habits die
hard.
I toss them back, gingerly propping my feet on the glass coffee table, noting
that it would be all too easy to break. I look over my left shoulder at the
closed doors, and think for a long moment about the man sleeping behind them.
Brian was so goddamn tired I could barely get him to walk to the bed. I know he
wasn’t drunk, takes more than a bottle of champagne to get a guy like him down
for the count. He was so drained. I bet he’s never experienced that before. I
bet he had no idea what releasing that kind of emotion felt like.
I wonder if he told me the whole story? I wonder if he’ll go right back to
being tight-lipped tomorrow? I wonder if he’ll make things right with Justin? I
wonder if he’ll ever forgive him for breaking his heart? I wonder if he’ll
forgive himself for breaking Justin’s? I wonder if he’ll ever own up to all the
memories he lets run his life? I wonder if he’ll ever stop hating himself? I
wonder if anyone has ever let him talk like that before? If anyone has ever
really listened to him?
I just wonder…
Feedback to throughthelens78@yahoo.com