36. The Hush of Darkness
(Josh)
K evin’s beside me in bed, but it doesn’t feel like he’s with me.
His back is turned to me, shoulder bare above the sheet, rising and falling with each slow breath.
He came home late from class, tired and quiet, and mentioned that a group presentation had run longer than expected. I didn’t press. I never do.
The letter is still in the drawer of the entry table. I haven’t given it to Kevin yet.
Not yet.
I keep replaying what Daniel said to me. Not the words exactly—though some stuck—but the tone. The steadiness of it. The truthfulness of it.
He wasn’t trying to convince me of anything—not even trying to win Kevin back. He didn’t say anything about closure either. He just seemed to need to tell his truth out loud.
Which makes it harder to dismiss—harder to ignore.
Kevin shifts slightly, curling in on himself the way he does when he’s holding something in. I think of all the times I’ve felt that distance before and told myself it was just stress. School. Work. The move.
But maybe it was always this .
Daniel said he needed Kevin to know the truth about why he left. I assume he meant what happened in Bayview—the night they had sex. I know Daniel is the boy Kevin told me about when we first met—when we talked in that diner for hours on end, getting to know one another.
I haven’t read the letter, but I also don’t know how or when I’ll give it to Kevin. I assume it contains all the things Kevin never told me—and maybe all the things he never planned to.
The lamp gets switched off, casting the room into a hush of darkness.
I want to believe Kevin’s silence is merely caution. I want to think this doesn’t mean anything. But wanting and knowing are not the same thing. Still, I lie awake and wonder what else I haven’t asked—and what he’s still not saying.