Chapter 44
David
For over five years, I managed to keep my feelings for Louis in check to stay capable of coping with everyday life. And in fact, after my breakdown on Sunday morning, I somehow managed to function. Until today. Until he had that letter in his hand.
The certainty that I will never see Louis again washes over me in a relentless wave. Will he miss me as much as I miss him? Will he wait for me at the club, will he be sad when he realizes that I really won’t be showing up anymore? Will he even notice?
“And I love you. Still.” Tears fill my eyes again, run down my cheeks, collect in my pillow. Not quiet tears, the pain is too huge, too overwhelming, the thought of being without Louis again tears me apart. The hopelessness of my situation hits me like a fist in the stomach.
For the first time in my life, I’m allowing myself to feel everything, not suppressing anything, not trying to pull myself together.
Sobs and cries shake and tear my body apart.
I can no longer feel myself; I no longer know where I begin or end, and yet everything hurts, down to the smallest fiber of my body.
Why can’t I be with Louis? Why do I have to choose?
Why can’t I have both? My father and with him the company and the love of my life.
Why does it matter that my favorite person is a man? Why?
***
I lie curled up in my bed. I don’t have the strength to get up, everything hurts.
The walk to the bathroom feels like climbing a three-thousand-meter peak.
Hard, but doable. The kitchen is my Mont Blanc, reachable on a really good day.
The university is my Mount Everest. The very idea of making it is so absurd that I just turn to the other side and continue staring at the wall.
I don’t know how long I’ve been lying here.
Three days, three weeks... I’ve lost all sense of time.
It gets light and dark outside, I sleep, I’m awake.
Finn brings me something to eat or drags me into the shower.
Sometimes I see the worried look in his eyes when he looks at me.
Sometimes I see the pity in his eyes when I look at photos of Louis.
Old ones of the two of us together, new ones from our trips, Instagram posts from the club.
Louis at work, with that light, open smile on his face, as if everything were fine, as if his world hadn’t fallen apart.
A photo of Louis and Paul together. They look like they always do, like a couple, so close.
Fuck, that stings. Paul has his arms around Louis from behind, holding him tight, and Louis’s head is resting on his shoulder. He looks content. Happy.
“Who’s that?” Finn points to my screen. I haven’t even heard him come into my room. “Does he have a new guy already?”
I shake my head weakly. “That’s Paul. They’re close friends, but there’s nothing going on, even if it looks like it.
” I’m lying with my back to Finn and I’m not willing to expend the energy to turn around.
Without a word, he turns and leaves my room.
The door closes and the first tear collects in the corner of my eye.
***
At some point, Finn dragged me back to university.
“For the credits,” he said, but I don’t get much out of it.
I’m only physically present; ninety percent of the time, I don’t even know where I am, neither spatially nor in terms of content.
Finn takes me there and picks me up again.
Actually, he’s doing everything for me right now.
But that doesn’t mean he has to get on my nerves at home.
“David... sorry to bother you, but someone is here to see you.” My heart skips a beat and hopes it’s Louis, until I remember that he doesn’t have our address.
“I don’t want to see anyone...”
Finn’s tone is almost pitying. “I don’t think I have a...”
“Hello, coward!”
“...say in that matter.”
Oh, fuck the hen, seriously. What. The. Hell. Not him. Groaning, I turn around at a snail’s pace and shit, he’s not alone. Of course not.
“Whoa, shit! Why do you look like that? Do you shelter animals in there? Should be enough room for a possum.” He wags his hand in front of my face, his eyebrows raised.
“Luca, Jannis, so nice to see you. Why aren’t you in school?” Rolling my eyes, I turn back to the wall.
“Sunday.” Ah, that makes sense, I’m not at university either. “Louis is not well. And neither are you.”
“And you’re so sure of that because?”
One of them takes a loud breath. I suspect it’s Jannis who has to stifle his laughter. Fantastic.
“Your look doesn’t exactly scream ‘I have a grip on my life’. More like ‘homeless’ or something.”
I turn back to the two of them, and if looks could kill, they’d already be dead.
“Oh, oh, oh, don’t be like that. We won’t hurt you.” Just the choice of words. Nobody talks like that at sixteen. “We’ll meet you in the living room in five minutes.”
Honestly, I don’t know why I do what Luca says, but three and a half minutes later, I’m sitting on the sofa with a coffee in my hand. Just the smell...
“We thought Louis was bad, but you’re really completely screwed up. This has to stop.”
Jannis quickly types something into his phone, then a synthetic voice comes on, deeper than when he was a child. “You love him and he loves you. How can you just let him go? Why aren’t you fighting for him?”
“Because I can’t have him. We’re not allowed to be together.”
“Who says that?”
“My...” At the last moment, I press my lips together, but it’s too late. Damn it.
“Who?”
Defeated, I exhale. “My father. I’m not allowed to be with a man, otherwise I’ll lose everything. My family, the company...”
“So instead you lose the only person who has ever made you happy.”
I pull my knees up and lower my forehead, squinting my eyes to hold back the tears.
Jannis types again. “Sometimes you have to decide what’s more important to you, who or what you really need in life. Look at yourself. Your heart made the decision long ago, it just hasn’t reached your mind yet.”
I want to say something, argue against it, but I remain silent. The realization slowly seeps into my body. Like honey, it flows viscously through my veins. He’s right. So what now?
“Ah, look. It clicked. You know what you have to do.” Jannis again with the voice output. Before he’s even finished, the two of them get up.
He’s right again. I know exactly what I have to do. And right this moment, my head is completely silent, an eerie calm envelops my body, and before I can back out, I go to the bathroom, shower and shave, then make my way to my parent’s house.
My father’s office door is open, and I knock on the doorframe. “Father, I need to talk to you.”
“Sit down, son.” He’s always been so formal, even with me. I used to think that stiffness and arrogance came with money, but Louis’s family has three times as much as we do, if not more, and they are all warm and loving. No, it’s not about money, it’s about my father.
“I’ll just get straight to the point, okay.” I actually wanted to wait for him to nod, but I have to get it out, or I’ll lose my nerve. My chest is tightening again, and my tongue is going numb and tingling. “I’m in love... with a man. I’m gay, father.”
It’s out, and then everything is silent. My father lowers his head and takes a deep breath in and out. I wait for harsh words that will pierce me deeply and hurt me so much that I don’t think I’ll ever recover again.
“I know, son.”
The world stands still for a brief moment, then my mind grasps his words. What? Is he serious? No yelling, no freaking out? I know? “Excuse me?”
“When I showed you the photos a few years ago, I already suspected it, but then you said you were just friends and I believed you. I suggested to stay away from that boy to not lead him on. To not give him false hope. I have a feeling that had been the wrong thing to say.” No.
He can’t be serious. That’s a joke, a bad one.
“But Theresa...?”
“What did she tell you?” Now his tone is stern.
I swallow hard, because somehow I have the feeling my half-sister hasn’t shared the whole story with me. “That you found photos of her kissing another woman in a club and then she had to leave.”
My father shakes his head, snorting. “That’s a very simplified version of events.
There were photos. Your sister half-naked and more than just kissing with a nineteen-year-old in some nightclub.
That in itself is difficult for someone from management at a company like ours.
The main problem, however, was that the nineteen-year-old in question was our new university intern, who had only started with us a month earlier, with your half-sister as her supervisor.
This naturally made her part of a vulnerable group of people and placed her in a relationship of dependency.
Your sister’s behavior was highly unprofessional and unacceptable, and it was completely irrelevant whether she was intimate with a man or a woman. ” I am speechless.
“The Delfosse boy and you, you were a couple, weren’t you?”
Tears well up in my eyes. Tears of relief and tears of abysmal grief and bottomless pain.
How much time have we wasted? How much have we suffered for nothing?
Because I was sure my father was a homophobic asshole.
Because I was sure my father would take away the company I’ve wanted so badly since I was a little boy, because I was afraid he wouldn’t love me anymore.
Because we just didn’t talk to each other.
“Yes...” My voice is nothing more than a whisper. “And if I’m lucky, I’ll get another chance, but Louis wants to live openly.”
“That’s completely understandable. What’s wrong with that?”
“I thought you... the company...”
“Of course you’ll get the company.” My father looks at me almost blankly.
“Even if I live openly in a gay relationship?”
“For heaven’s sake, it’s not the 18th century anymore. You’ve heard who took over as the new CEO of the Lacroix Group, right? Unanimously elected, by the way.”
Yes, I did. Mathéo Gaillard. His kid, Valérie, is in the same class as Louis’s brother Jannis, and the families are close friends. I know him and his husband from my countless afternoons and weekends at the Delfosse house.
“Do you know why he got the job? Because he’s good.
Damn good. That’s all I expect from you, that you do a damn good job and successfully continue our legacy.
At first with me, then on your own, and maybe someday with your children.
” Fuck. I’m stunned. Speechless. “The fact that this surprises you so much should hurt me, and well, it does hurt me, but I guess I deserve it. I raised you with a firm hand, so maybe love fell by the wayside. But I love you, my son, and nothing will ever change that, especially not your sexuality. I’m proud of you. ”
And with those words, my father stands up, walks around his desk, pulls me up, presses me close to his chest and holds me while I cry over the last six years of my life. But at the same time I’m so incredibly excited about what might come.