Chapter 11 Mickey
When Benji leaves, the door clicks shut behind him and the room goes silent.
I’m lying here thinking about the exact second the fastest mouth I’ve ever encountered went silent.
I’ve been watching that mouth run at full speed since the first time he walked into this room, and tonight I watched it stop.
His face went still, his eyes went wide and his whole body, that restless, always-moving body, just froze.
I shut down the one thing about Benji that never stops.
I didn’t plan to say it out loud. The schnapps story came out naturally because he asked about Tex. Tex is the easiest subject in the world for me, the one place I don’t have to think about what I’m saying. And then he asked how he didn’t know I was gay and I just said it outright.
Because I was gay, and now I’m not anything.
What’s the point in wrapping it in anything softer? My body doesn’t work. What made me gay in any functional sense is gone. That’s not self-pity. That’s a fact I’m living inside of every hour of every day.
I watched what the fact did to Benji though and I’m not sure it was worth saying out loud to him.
He put his head on my bed. Folded his arms on the mattress and lowered his forehead onto them and went so still. He was right there, inches from my body, and my body from the waist down didn’t know. I couldn’t feel the warmth of him through the blanket, the heat of his arms or his head.
But my body from the waist up sure as hell knew he was there.
My hand moved toward him.
I’ve been lying here replaying it for twenty minutes and I still can’t explain it.
My hand lifted off the blanket and moved toward his head.
My fingers reached for his hair, the white-blonde hair that’s always falling in his face.
My hand moved toward his hair the same way my body moved in front of the bullet.
Without thinking.
I wanted to wrap my fingers in his hair and tug him against the part of me that could still feel another person’s body.
I stopped an inch away, maybe less. Close enough that if he’d lifted his head, he would’ve brushed right into my hand and then we would’ve had to deal with that.
And I don’t even know what that looks like from a hospital bed with legs that don’t move.
So I pulled back. Curled my fist against the mattress and waited for the feeling to settle down.
It hasn’t.
Twenty minutes later my chest is still tight and my hand still aches from almost touching him. Everything above my waist is reacting, and everything below it is dead silent. My body picked a hell of a time to start wanting somebody.
What is it about him anyway? Benji isn’t my regular type.
That’s an undeniable fact. I’ve spent over a decade choosing big, athletic, masculine men on apps and not one of them made my hand unconsciously reach for anything.
They came for a week and they left. I told myself that was the deal.
I chose men who were never going to stay because staying was never the point. The point was matching bodies.
I made that choice every fucking time with my eyes wide open.
And now my body is off the table and the one person who keeps showing up is five-eight with eyeliner. He’s the furthest thing from my type I’ve ever encountered and my hand reached for him.
I can’t do a damn thing about it.
My body has nothing to offer. I can’t stand up and take his hand or pull him close.
It doesn’t matter anyway. The wedding is in days.
After that, Benji gets in his car and drives back to Miami and his life.
And I’ll be here, in this bed or in a wheelchair or eventually in a house with a ramp over the front steps.
He’ll be just another guy who came to the Panhandle for a finite amount of time and left when the time was up.
I rub the spot on the blanket where his head was. The fabric is cool now. Whatever warmth he left behind has long faded. The same way it’s going to feel when he walks out that door for the last time.
The hard truth is, I’m used to watching the taillights of men who leave.
Somehow, I know the view of his taillights from a wheelchair will be a million times worse.