Chapter 9 #2
I wish I could tell him the same. That I never gave up hope, that I never stopped waiting.
That I kept looking for him too, hinging everything on a prayer that I might glimpse him in a crowd, call out his name and run to him, but the truth is that I grieved him like he’d died.
He had been dead to me. It was the only way I could bear it, to try forgetting him in a permanent way.
And though my mind kept punishing me with the reminders, I just kept trying. I’d hurt myself to numbness and drugged myself to apathy until it was a pain that was bearable, and even then I kept hoping that he’d fade.
I never imagined he would come back.
I let my breath go and look at him again.
“You broke me,” I say, after a long moment.
“When you left, you fucking broke me. It took me so long to start feeling even a little bit better. A lot of therapy, a lot of medication. And just when I started feeling sort of like myself again, here you are, burning everything down. Luca, I can’t keep doing this with you. I can’t.”
I drop my face into my hands, digging the heels of my palms into my eyes so hard it hurts.
I’m right back in the old apartment, begging him to keep me as I watch him withdraw before my eyes.
Telling him all the many ways I will compromise while he shuts down in front of me.
Pressing my face to the windowpane as he leaves me and willing him to turn back.
I just want to mean something to someone.
Enough that they’d put me first, and they’d introduce me to their family and friends, and they’d take me to dinner and let me on their arm and there wouldn’t be any shame.
It didn’t seem like so much to ask but it was because no one wanted these things with me the way I did with them.
The mattress creaks and I can smell Luca getting closer, that comforting musk I missed so much, before he takes my wrists gently and removes them from my face.
His thumbs rub circles into my palms. “I swear I won’t hurt you like that again.
I know you have no reason to trust me now, but I mean it when I say it’ll be different this time. ”
“How? You’re afraid of your own gay shadow, Luca. You just admitted it yourself.” I know it’s cruel, but it’s true. “It’s some awful terrible secret no one gets to know but a select few. And fine, no one can make you come out, but I’m not going to hide away with you. That’s not fair.”
“I am out,” he says wryly. “Out as it gets for me, anyway. I told my dad.”
And my jaw actually drops. I stare at him, mouth popped open until I very consciously snap it shut, and even still I’m staring at him with round eyes. “You…did?” I say weakly.
“Yeah. Yesterday. Think I almost gave him a heart attack.” He leans forward, his nose touching mine. “I told him about you,” he says softly. “That I was going to be with you, if you’d take me back.”
“Oh.” I’m choking up again.
“I’m going to figure this all out, okay?
I’m sick of being scared and constantly compromising myself for everyone else.
I just want to be happy as myself. With you.
I’m going to talk to Demi about everything when she gets home.
” He tucks an errant strand of my hair behind my ear.
“You aren’t a dirty secret, Noel. You’re my everything.
Living without you is like trying to live without a vital organ. ”
“Your heart,” I say softly.
“My heart,” he agrees, taking my face in his hands and kissing me. “I promise you, this is real,” he tells me softly, nudging his forehead against mine.
My eyelids flicker. “What a stupid fucking waste this has all been.”
Luca’s hands slide down my shoulders, leaving goosebumps in their wake before they finally fall away.
He sits back and tosses his silky hair away from his face and it looks so good now since he’s fixed the roots and toned it again.
Not everyone can pull off that silver-blonde the way he can.
I want to sink my fingers into it again.
I clamp my hand around one wrist and wait for whatever it is that he wants to say.
“I want,” he starts, almost hesitantly, “so bad to be the kind of dad that mine wasn’t.
I want to be different from him in every way.
I don’t want to fail my own kid in the same ways he failed me.
” He turns his head, and he’s not looking at me anymore, his gaze taking on a faraway look as he casts it towards the open window.
“The moment I realized that I was really going to be a father, I panicked. I think of the way I was raised, how good everything was when Mom was around—that’s what I’ve always wanted, in some way. To recreate that.”
I remember, of course, what he told me on the beach before about his big fat Greek family, everyone in each other’s hair and in each other’s lives all day, every day. And I remember being almost envious, too. I couldn’t even imagine it. Still can’t. “I know, Luca,” I say quietly.
Luca looks at me again. “I finally realized that what my dad would’ve done—what he did do—was fake it.
Fake everything. He would never be his true self if it compromised what he thought he was supposed to be.
We play-acted a happy family so much of the time, versus actually being one.
Mom was the glue that really held it all together, kept Dad from being… the way he is.”
The kind of man who would beat his son’s boyfriend nearly to death.
The kind of man who I knew, from reading between the lines, has not treated his son much better.
Pride, fists and words are a fucking lethal combination and Luca’s got old, old bruises, invisible, but they hurt enough still that change the way he walks and talks and carries himself.
And I wonder what I would’ve done, if I were Luca.
It’s such a foreign scenario that I can’t actually imagine it.
I’ve never been with a woman and never felt like I had to be.
I have no family to really speak of so I don’t know what it’s like to want one or even being able to provide one.
This is something that will never happen to me.
But I can relate to the idea of wanting something so different for my theoretical child, if one were to somehow manifest, nothing like the way I grew up.
A home that was full of unconditional love and attention, a family like a sitcom and probably ten times more dysfunctional, but at least there would always be love, because that’s all that matters in the end.
So I get it, I think. Even if I hate it. Even if it hurts.
“Noel.” Luca’s moved in close again, his chin coming to rest on my knees where I’ve drawn them up and looking into my face like he needs it to breathe, like he will wither and die without it. “Do you want to do this again?”
Oh, he doesn’t even need to ask because of course I fucking do.
Of course I want to throw myself out there again like a battered life ring and let the current that is him and his love rip me under.
Some part of me knew I would cave the moment I saw him again, swimming before me in my bleary vision like the most beautiful fucking dream come to life.
I could resist and rationalize and weigh the pros and cons, couch myself in my fear and stay in it, and I’d be justified and maybe even correct for doing it—but I would always come back to him.
Always. Luca has made a home in me and he is never going to go away.
All I want is him. I only ever feel good here with him.
“I’m yours,” I say to him. “Luca.”
He wraps me up in a big hug, the tight ones I adore, with my face crushed into the side of his neck right where it’s meant to fit. “Mine,” he agrees, softly, against my ear.
It’s kind of tacitly agreed upon that I will be spending the night here. That’s fine with me. There’s nothing at home that needs me, anyway.
We get in the shower to wash all the sticky things that have long dried on us, and that’s probably the best part of the whole night (well, second to the fantastic sex and the first and best orgasm I’ve had in months and just being with him in general).
I love when I can just touch Luca everywhere and it doesn’t feel wrong or bad, having an excuse to do it.
Maybe I’m not all the way back yet—not confident enough yet in us, because there’s still so much to sort out and fix and I don’t know how it’s gonna work. But this is okay. This is good. Tracing soap suds along his ribs and abs and tattoos under the guise of washing him.
I get to really look at him, too. Not just his sculpted, lean body, which is a work of art all on its own, but his face.
Which is like something sculpted by a Renaissance artist, all high cheekbones and a chiseled, aquiline nose and a jawline so sharp it could kill someone.
I get to look at it, marvel, feel, kiss along while he smiles and nuzzles me.
And that’s good, too.
He turns me around so I’ve got my back pressed to his front and his hands are working their way lower and lower, over my hips and down my thighs.
There’s a flutter of heat in my stomach.
It is normally borderline impossible to get aroused on the meds, but with Luca it’s so easy.
He knows exactly how to touch me. My head lolls back against him and I sigh.
“You should let me try to fix this.” He means my tattoo. I feel his fingertips graze the scar. “Not now, but maybe in a month or two. When it’s less fresh.”
“Is it fixable?” I ask, shutting my eyes.
“I think I can make it less noticeable.”
I don’t want to worry about it right this minute. Really, it’s the last thing on my mind. I’m thinking more about how if his hands move in and up a little, they’ll be touching exactly where I want to be touched.
He kisses my cheek. “There’s something else I wanted to talk to you about. Well, a lot of things, but…”
We have done so much talking tonight, but it’s true that there are a million other things, still. I’m just exhausted. “What?”
“Someone from Anathema called me earlier this week.” His fingers glide along my slippery skin. “About what happened.”
My eyes pop open and I tilt my head back, looking up into his face. “What? Why?”
“Because I called them that night. Remember?”
Vaguely, because it all still feels like a fucking fever dream.
Remember it in a hot fog so thick I have to chop my way through it.
Being led out of the club crossfades to that dark, disgusting alley.
The wall as it met my face and the damp brick beneath a body that wasn’t mine to command.
The things Jordan said. The disgust and derision.
Above all, the disbelief that even he could do something like this to me.
My belly is a knot of anxiety now and I almost sag in Luca’s arms. I watch the water and bubbles circle the drain, taking whatever remnants of our lovemaking with it. I’m not happy and relaxed anymore—I’m just so fucking tired.
“I’m sorry,” Luca says, very quietly.
He’s said that so many times tonight, but this is one thing that’s not his fault. I turn and press my face into his chest. “What about it?”
“They said you should make a police report, if you haven’t already. And they’d provide the footage to help with your case.”
“No.” The one word explodes from me, and I snap my head up to look at him. “I’m not doing that. I fucking told you.”
He opens his mouth to argue with me, then thinks better of it. “Alright. If that’s what you want.”
“It is what I want,” I say shortly. “I want to forget it ever happened. I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Noel…”
“No.”
He wipes my wet hair back from my face before cupping my cheek. “I can help you.”
“I said I don’t want to talk about it, Luca.”
“Okay.”
I sigh and bury my face in his neck. Don’t want to think about it. Don’t want to worry about it. I don’t need to see Jordan ever again. It doesn’t matter, it’s not relevant, and it’s not going to destroy me.
I won’t let it.