November 20, 2020—Tel-Aviv, Israel—The Same Day #7
Logan’s hands tightened, his eyes pleading, drowning in desperation. “Then let me show you. Let me prove it to you. Just don’t walk away.”
And there, amidst the silent hush of the corridor, with the ocean’s gentle roar echoing faintly within their chests, Adrian felt utterly powerless, irrevocably shattered beneath Logan’s imploring gaze, every fiber of his being yearning distraughtly for Logan.
Logan’s voice cracked as he half-mumbled, half-sang the first fragile notes of a melody that, through the distance, had tethered them together.
“I think of you when the sun climbs high, I reach for you when I breach the tide…” His voice was uneven, a whisper struggling against the weight of his tears, but the words were a lifeline cast into the storm that churned between them.
It was Adrian’s song—an elegy drawn from the depths of his heart, wrung out of the salt-stung strings of a soul shipwrecked by love’s cruel tide.
The words bled drop by drop onto the page, each oozing a testament to his sorrow, as he strummed a guitar that seared his fingertips, using the same strings that once resonated with the laughter of Logan, to weave a haunting ballad about their ossuary love.
“Lo, don’t.” Adrian’s voice wavered, a thin veil over the sea of emotion threatening to spill over.
But Logan pressed on. “I search for you whenever I rise from the depths, I dream of you beneath the moon’s soft embrace, I’ll take a breath just to give you mine.” He sang, his voice trembling but determined, each line a plea carved into the air between them.
Adrian’s body betrayed him, reacting to the lyrics in ways he couldn’t suppress. His shoulders shook, his chest heaved with the heaviness of memories carried on every note. Logan saw it—the way those words, born of Adrian’s long-buried pain, still clung to him like seafoam on skin.
“When I left,” Logan murmured, his voice low and raw, “I left the best of me with you. It was the hardest thing to rise and leave.” His own words faltered, rewritten in the moment, his truth unraveling in the same breath as his regret.
Adrian closed his eyes, but the tears escaped anyway, carving silent rivers down his cheeks. His hands trembled as he gripped Logan’s, forceful but fragile, and pulled him to his feet. For a heartbeat, they stood in silence, Logan waiting—breath held—until Adrian opened his eyes.
When he did, their gazes locked, and Logan saw every inch of the pain he had caused reflected back at him. Adrian’s quiet sniffs punctuated the stillness, and Logan wanted nothing more than to pull him into his arms, to promise a tomorrow where this pain would no longer exist.
Instead, Logan brought Adrian’s hand to his lips, his kiss as light as sea spray on a gentle breeze. “You are the real love, Adrian. Just you. Only you.” His voice was soft, but his words carried the weight of an oath.
Logan led him back to the suite, their steps slow, hesitant, as if the ground beneath them might crack. The door closed softly behind them, and the tension in Logan’s chest eased just slightly at the sound. Adrian stayed, and for Logan, that was everything.
They sat on the couch, bodies drawn together yet hesitant, like a current unable to choose whether to pull them closer or let them drift apart.
Logan held Adrian’s hand, his fingers warm and steady despite the storm raging inside him. He didn’t let go, afraid that if he did, Adrian might disappear like a phantom into the night.
“From the day I walked away from you…” Logan began, his voice breaking on the words, “I was drowning, Ad. Every day, every hour, I was sinking deeper. I thought I was doing the right thing, but it was a lie—I was a lie.”
Logan’s words poured out, a flood that had been dammed up for too long, surging between them with a force that neither of them could escape.
His voice was unsteady, each word tumbling over the next, raw and unfiltered, as if the truth had finally broken free and couldn’t be held back.
He began with Sandy, letting out the tapestry of a life he had stitched together from lies and duty, not love.
Each sentence was soaked in regret, each memory laced with the bitterness of a choice that had shattered both their hearts.
“I did everything I could to avoid her,” Logan admitted.
“I encouraged her to go on business trips, vacations, galas, conferences…anything to escape. I counted the hours she was gone as blessings. I spent most of the time at work…” He swallowed hard and avoided meeting Adrian’s eyes.
“I couldn’t even touch her, Adrian. Not in the way she deserved, not in the way I wanted to touch you.
My body shut down around her, like it knew I didn’t belong in that life.
I couldn’t even be in the same room without feeling.
.. trapped in someone else’s skin. Fuck, I had to have porn in the background to get it up…
” His hands clenched, and his shoulders curled inwards, trying to disappear.
Adrian sat motionless, his face a mask of exhaustion and sorrow, his head throbbing from too many tears. For a fleeting moment, Logan lifted his head and watched Adrian carefully, as though afraid of the strength of the confession.
“I turned to the bottle,” Logan continued, his gaze dropping to their linked hands. “Every night, I’d drink until I couldn’t feel anything. The pain, the regret…even my own body. I thought if I drank enough, I could drown the memory of you, but it didn’t work. Nothing worked.”
Adrian’s lips parted as if to speak, but no words came.
Logan pressed on, his voice faltering as he revealed the cracks in his fragile facade.
“Sandy and I fought constantly. She wanted a child, but I couldn’t do it, Adrian.
I couldn’t bring an innocent soul into that mess, into that kind of misery.
I wasn’t willing to be tied to her forever.
Not when all I could think about was you. ”
The room felt oppressively small, with thick air and pain seeping into the space.
Logan finally released Adrian’s hand, standing to cross to the minibar.
His movements were shaky, his frame a shadow of the man Adrian once knew.
He rummaged through the bottles and cans, placing sodas and water on the table like offerings before cracking open a can.
The sound of the carbonation hissing into the silence was almost jarring.
Logan drank deeply, the cool liquid soothing his raw throat. But there was no relief from the storm raging inside him. He sat back down and turned to Adrian, his voice quieter now, the weight of everything pulling him down.
“I thought about you constantly,” Logan said, his voice trembling.
“Every fight with Sandy, every night I couldn’t sleep, every morning that I woke up, every time I took a breath…
I thought about you. I missed you in ways I can’t even put into words, Adrian.
It was like losing a part of myself. No, it was losing a part of myself. ”
Adrian listened, silent but present, his tears falling steadily as Logan’s words cut into him. He felt the truth of it in every syllable, every unguarded look in Logan’s gray eyes. He wanted to speak, to say something—anything—but his voice was caught somewhere between his heart and his throat.
Logan had told him about the endless fights with Jane, how she had always felt something was off.
Logan continued, his gaze distant, his voice a hollow echo of the life he had lived without Adrian.
“The first time I heard it—your voice…” His words caught, a tremor beneath the surface.
“It broke me. I was a chaos. I cried so hard the bartender, Zack, told me to go home. But I couldn’t.
I just sat there, drinking and crying, saying your name like it was the only thing keeping me alive. ”
Adrian’s fingers curled into the fabric of his pants, his knuckles white against his skin.
His chest rose and fell with sharp, uneven breaths, but he made no sound.
His lips pressed together, a thin, fragile line, as if holding back the flood that churned beneath the surface.
He didn’t trust his voice—not now, not with the image of Logan, broken and bleeding out his grief into the dark corners of a bar, lodged so deeply in his mind.
Logan’s words hung in the air, and Adrian’s vision blurred, not from tears but from the weight of everything he couldn’t say. He could see it—the way Logan’s hands might have trembled around the glass, the way his shoulders might have hunched, caving in around his own hurt.
“When I found out you deleted your Facebook account,” Logan’s voice was barely a whisper, a sound so fragile Adrian thought it might shatter if he breathed too loudly.
“I broke down again. God, Adrian, I was stalking you. Every day. Just to feel close to you, to pretend you were still there, seeing you online… made me feel close to you, made me feel like… we exist in the same universe. It was stupid, but I… I needed it. And then, when I couldn’t find you anymore, it was like losing you all over again. ”
Adrian’s eyes stayed closed, his lashes brushing against his cheeks as if shutting out the world might soften the blow.
But he could still see it all—Logan hunched over a phone, scrolling through digital remnants of their life, looking for proof that Adrian was still breathing somewhere, still under the same sky.
His pulse thudded in his ears, the rhythm uneven, a drumbeat that had lost its tempo.
His body felt too small to hold the hurt, like every breath was a stretch against the confines of his own skin.