Chapter 6
LUCA
I don’t know what to do with all this sad and nervous energy of mine.
It’s not like I can talk to Demi about it. I can’t tell her that I’ve finally found him again, the boy I love so much. The one I’ve been looking for all this time while she’s been convinced I’ve been out sleeping with anyone and everyone else.
It’s sort of painful that she thinks this of me, that I have some burgeoning appetite for men that can be sated in time for the birth of our child.
If I was a good person I would’ve disabused her of that notion, rededicated myself all the more to being the devoted father I wanted so badly to be.
Instead I cut, run and searched until I found exactly what I was looking and hoping for.
Except Noel doesn’t want me.
And I don’t know what I expected. It should’ve been exactly this.
If there’s anything Noel is good at—which is a lot of things, actually, he is a man of many talents that far supersede my own—it is keeping himself walled in.
Locking down when he needs to in situations that would make anyone crazy.
Sort of funny, that. His BPD seems to dictate the facilitation of chaos, but when faced with it, he is the picture of collection.
He has some sort of superpower that makes him the rational one when everything’s going to shit.
It’s one that I wish that I had, because then I wouldn’t have made such an unholy mess of things.
But seeing him again has flipped a switch.
I’m right back in it. My body thinks I’m with him again and proceeds accordingly.
I find myself reaching for my phone to message him when I know I can’t.
Something happens during the work day—a funny conversation with a client, a questionable tattoo applied in an especially egregious location—and I file it away to share with him later before I remember that it isn’t possible.
I fall into bed and expect to be surrounded by his scent and it’s just not there.
There’s no sign of him anywhere in this house.
All of these little habits that I’ve fallen out of over the months I’ve fallen back into.
I saw him. I touched him and held him and kissed him and fell in love all over again.
I ache with it, how much I love him; I’m sick with it.
I don’t know how I will bear not ever seeing him again.
Not knowing if he’s safe or not. If someone’s hurting him, or he’s hurting himself. Or both.
I sit at home. I open the shut room in my mind and drown myself in thoughts of Noel. It’s not right that I’m here without him. It’s not right that we met up again so briefly, only to be cast apart again. But what the hell can I do?
Everything’s upside down and all wrong.
I don’t talk to Killian about it, either.
Or the rest of my friends, like Lael and Dorian.
I told them about it, of course, that I was postponing my divorce until after the baby came and playing the rest by ear.
They congratulated me, but there was a palpable air of disappointment when I told them that Noel and I had broken up.
They knew without me saying what it meant: a soft launch for returning to the closet, even if my wife and I were just friends.
I couldn’t imagine crying to them over my feelings for Noel when I was the one who messed it all up.
I didn’t abandon them entirely this time, at least. We’ve had brunches here and there and I’ve gone clubbing with Killian and his partner Max a few times, though their idea of going out is a lot wilder than mine.
And since I don’t party quite as hard as they do, the fun I can have with them is limited.
But I do message Killian to let him know everything turned out okay with Noel—relatively speaking—and he tells me he’s relieved, that he was worried.
Any other news on that front?
None.
That’s a shame…
He doesn’t pry any further, though. And I don’t take him up on the implicit offer to talk it out. Really, there’s nothing else to say. Nothing that will make it better.
I could always take myself to a club, either here or down in Providence, and distract myself that way, but there isn’t any point anymore.
The only reason I ever went was to find Noel.
I got some education along the way, sure, since they run those demonstrations at Excape—I think I could pick up a flogger and do a halfway decent job with it, and I recognize certain knots on sight now—but that was mostly because it was there, not because I sought it out.
If Noel isn’t going to be there, if he doesn’t even like going out anymore, then I don’t either.
So I don’t do anything or go anywhere. There is nowhere I want to go, anyway.
No one else I can or want to talk to. Only Noel.
If I thought I was consumed by him before, it’s nothing compared to now, since I’ve seen him again.
I go to work like a zombie and make it through the day without knowing how, and then find myself standing by my parked truck with my keys in my hands and the sun setting somewhere behind me.
I tell my wife good morning and good night.
We eat breakfast and dinner companionably.
She tells me ridiculous stories from her job, about clients and colleagues.
I try to think of anything to say at all.
The only time I feel truly present is when she tells me our daughter’s kicking, and I put a hand on her stomach to feel it. And it’s the only time, albeit briefly, when I feel like I haven’t made the worst decision in moving back in with Demi and trying to make this co-parenting thing work.
I couldn’t ever regret trying for my child, even if it amounts to failure.
The week drags. It’s only briefly broken up by a phone call from a manager at Anathema, informing me they’ve reviewed their camera footage and have taken “necessary steps” regarding the “incident.” He’s a bit vague about what those steps are, something about lids for cups, but I guess it doesn’t matter.
I won’t be going back there anytime soon, one way or the other.
“Your friend should make a police report,” he says. “If he hasn’t already. The footage will help with building his case.”
“I’ll let him know,” I reply, even though I have no way of doing that.
My day off comes on Friday and I take myself over to Watertown for one of my scheduled lunches with my father.
They’ve become more frequent since the happy news of my imminent fatherhood, unfortunately, and my dad is more determined than ever to dig his way back into a more active part of my life.
Becoming a grandparent is a big thing to cross off on his bucket list, I guess.
He’s not doing so well lately. His heart, he told me back at Easter at our big yearly to-do, with all our family and Demi’s there, too (they all think we’re still together together, despite our attempts to explain otherwise). I wasn’t all that surprised by the news.
He doesn’t look good today, either, when I pick him up to take him out, because he’s not up to cooking much these days. I tell him as much as I help him up the running board and into my truck, but he waves me off, even though he’s breathless with the minor exertion.
“Do you have your nitro?” I ask him. “Maybe you should take it.”
“I said I’m fine.” His face is sort of purplish.
“Dad—”
“Skata.” He kneads his breastbone. “I’ll take it when we get there.”
“You should take it now. If it doesn’t work, we’ll have to leave the damn restaurant anyway.”
But of course he doesn’t. He stubbornly waits until we’re seated at the Mediterranean fusion spot he loves so much off Main Street before he finally banks a tablet in his cheek.
I have to sit there and watch anxiously until the proper color returns to his face and he gets some life back to him.
He’s scoffing at me, rushing me as I scan the menu—he knows what he wants already, of course. He’s got the whole thing memorized.
“You worry too much,” he criticizes as I flip through without seeing. “You can’t be worrying about every little thing. It’ll send you to an early grave.”
I glance up at the man who has permanently aged an extra fifteen years since my mother died and say nothing.
“Like when the little one comes,” he goes on, pontificating with the glass full of wine that his doctor said he shouldn’t be drinking. “I can see you fretting over every little thing. Constantly worrying about this and that. Coddling a child is the very worst thing you can do to them.”
I’m not taking child-rearing tips from the same man who beat my ass over every perceived indiscretion, nearly murdered one of my boyfriends, scared me away from expressing my sexuality, and cost me years of grief besides. “Uh huh.”
“You’ll be trying for another one as soon as possible, I expect,” he says confidently. “Until you get a boy. Am I right?”
“We’ll see how we go with one.” Never mind the fact that I’m not having another baby with Demi. Never mind the fact that I am in love with a boy.
Dad dismisses me with a flick of his gnarled fingers. “Nonsense. Remember how lonely you were growing up? Your mother was so devastated she couldn’t have more. Much as we tried.”
“I was fine.”
“Would’ve been better if you had a brother or two. More males around the house to be a better influence on you.”
He’s warming up to his favorite topic, which is how I am a failure of a man.
This is due in large part to my appearance and how I choose to express myself, the bleached hair and tattoos and piercings.
Then there is the tacit bullet point he does not bring up, ever, but is loud as a scream nevertheless: that he caught me in bed with a man once, and he hurt that man very badly as a result.
Something he is never going to forgive me for.