Chapter 20
ASH
An hour passes and Sam doesn’t return like he said he would.
I could leave. I should leave. I am strongly considering leaving.
There isn’t any point in me staying, no reason at all, now that the jig’s up.
There’s not a chance he’ll want to talk to me ever again, even if he does come back and take me to Miami.
We aren’t going to stay together. I’m not going to live in his condo. He’s not going to show me around.
I don’t even have a guarantee he won’t call the cops but I don’t believe he will, anyway. He’s not like that. And he’s right—it’s more dangerous for him. I was an idiot, reckless with him. My moment of weakness could’ve cost him more than me.
Whatever’s between us is over, I know. I just didn’t expect it to hurt so bad.
Only a few hours and a few hundred miles and half the breadth of this state lay between me and my goal, and I sit in this hotel room anyway. I sit here and think about things and I still make no move to save myself.
My hindbrain is so heightened and hyperaware that when housekeeping knocks on the door I almost piss myself.
I bite back a scream and answer instead, in a voice that shakes, that yes they can come in, just give me a moment, and then I sweep all the money into my bag and make myself scarce.
Scuttling with it to the balcony to sit on one of the plastic chairs.
All while the cleaner sorts out the room that still, to me, smells of sex and the souvenirs of which clutter the bottom of the wastebasket.
I feel no shame about that, not at all. Maybe I’m simply above things like shame and pride.
Or below them? Or just completely devoid of either one, because what am I, anyway?
Spent the whole of my adult life sucking cock for this and that and hating myself for it, hating myself to numbness. Now it’s survival. Now it’s nothing.
Except I hadn’t needed to fuck Sam, had I? I’d done that just because I wanted to. Enjoyed it. Loved it, even.
Just like I’m staying here because I want to. Because I want him to come back for me. Because I want this to be made right, somehow, even though I know it won’t. He shouldn’t ever forgive me.
I light a cigarette from the pack Sam left behind. I press my thumb between my eyes.
Get out of here. Go. Run. You’re so fucking close. Why are you just sitting here? Go!
Fight or flight. Freeze or fawn. Deer in headlights.
That’s what I do best, besides fawning. Or, also like a deer, flinging myself in the path of an eighteen-wheeler and letting it obliterate me.
I can do that, too. Self-destruction is easy.
All you have to do is nothing at all. Make no attempt to preserve the self and life will take care of the rest. The walls are constantly closing in; the only thing keeping you alive is holding them back with all your might.
I wonder where it is he’s gone, Sam. To his friends, maybe? To tell them what’s happened? I fucking hope not but can I blame him? Or maybe to pick up some girl. Drown his sorrows in her, whoever she is, because that seems to be what he does. Met him doing that very thing, or trying.
And of course he can have whoever he wants. That’s been made abundantly clear to me. Repeatedly.
The nauseous, panicked, soul-sucking sensation that is jealousy consumes me even now. In spite of everything. Even though I have absolutely no right to it because of what I did to him, lying like that. Maybe I’d even deserve it but I fucking hate it anyway.
So. Close.
What I’d wanted to do, before he’d gone, was beg for him not to leave me. To stay. To figure this out together. To tell me that I hadn’t broken us irrevocably.
More impossibly, rewind back to the night we met? Dump the money somewhere, maybe, fuck it. Tell him the truth. Maybe he would’ve taken pity on me. Maybe we could’ve had the same exact thing without all the stupid shit I made up.
Maybe. Maybe…
But it’s pointless to think about. Just like it’s pointless to wonder why I am the way I am.
Why men are the way they are. If I’m the broken one—because all I’ve ever wanted was men, a man, to love me, and it seems the rest of them just want me for an hour.
Use me and then go home to their girlfriends and wives.
I’m about as good as the hand that masturbates them, except I cost money.
Is Sam any better? He called me a whore.
Does love actually exist between men, or only gratification?
I can’t believe he thought I was fucking faking it.
That’s what cuts the deepest, I think. Of all the things he said, everything hurled at me in that fight—most of it deserved—it was the accusation that I’d faked any of it.
If only he knew what faking it really looked like.
How awful and performative. The white rubber room I go to in my head, just to see the whole thing through without crying or throwing up or worse.
No, everything with Sam has been painfully real and raw.
All of it. I never had to go anywhere in my head with him.
I was present and whole and loved every minute of it.
His touch, his affection, his kisses and being inside me.
Always wanted more. Reached for more. Tried to get closer while knowing this whole time it was gonna backfire and look—it did. It fucking did.
I can’t even make myself wish to undo it all.
I smoke three more cigarettes and then, when the cleaner’s done, I go back inside. I seize in the bathroom and collapse, clipping my brow on the edge of the sink as I go down, and come to with the taste of blood in my mouth and cold dread in my heart.
I lie on the cool tile for a long time. My thoughts have turned into rabbits I can’t be fucked to chase. I let them disappear into their holes. Nothing useful there anymore. Nothing worthwhile.
Another hour’s passed when I order room service.
The attendant, when he comes, looks like he wants to say something, but a generous tip stifles the thoughts on his tongue before they can become words.
I sit on one of the freshly made-up beds and turn on the TV and eat until I think I’ll throw up, and then I curl up on the bedspread.
A hotel room can be a prison. One easily escaped from, and yet I don’t.
Like a well-behaved dog, I do what I’m told.
I guess I’m good at obeying—sit still, spread your legs, open wide, take it—not so good at other stuff.
Independence or anything like that. I’ve proven that to myself with this entire disaster of a journey.
Please come back. Prayers to no one—at least no one who’s listening. Please come back.
Is it possible to be in love with someone you just met? That you hardly know?
But I do know Sam. I know plenty about him.
I know about his family, how his grandmother and father and aunt immigrated here on fishing boats from Cuba, and the dire circumstances under which they had.
I know about his older sisters, Olivia and Camila, what they did and how much he adores them both.
I know how he likes his coffee—one creamer, no sugar—and how he likes his eggs—over medium.
I know he likes 311, same as me, and how he knows all the words to all my favorite songs of theirs.
And I know how he struggles, too. With what he wants in his life and his future.
With his identity and sexuality both, what they mean to him and how he fits into the world.
The way he can’t seem to put it all together, muddied by culture and family pressure.
I know these are his biggest pain points.
I know about Gabriel. And I know, without being told, how he’s grappling with the anticipatory grief of losing him.
No, I don’t know everything about Sam, but I know a lot of things. Tender things. Things that endear him to me and make me like him so much—a like so strong and so painful and so different to anything I’ve ever felt for anyone before that the only word adequate for it is love.
I am in love with Sam.
And I’ve fucking ruined it all.
I pick up the phone and dial the apartment in Providence.
I don’t know why. Habit, maybe? What I would’ve done in the good old days, when Ben was still with us.
Something compulsive, fingers picking out a number long memorized.
Need something I recognize because I’ve got exactly nothing like that now.
No one. And I don’t know what else to do.
Can’t exactly sit with these feelings any longer.
I hold the receiver to my ear. It rings and rings and I almost hang up, but then there’s Julian with a breathless, sleepy hello. He’s beyond thrilled to hear my voice. “Oh man,” he goes, “We thought you were dead. Hold on—”
Jules covers the mouthpiece and yells for Mike, and when he comes to the phone a rush of relief so intense shoots through me I nearly collapse. “Mike,” I whisper, voice tremulous. “It’s so good to hear your voice.”
“Ash. Jesus.” He sounds just as relieved. “Where have you been? We’ve been trying to track you down, but no one knows where the hell you are.”
“Who’s asking?”
“No one but us.”
“Promise?”
“Yeah.”
I hesitate. “Mr. Bigshot…”
“They had his funeral yesterday, apparently. It was in the paper. I’ve been following his little story, I guess.”
I blow out my breath. “So…the money?”
“If they’re looking, it’s not in your direction. There’s speculation he gambled it. Apparently he had a big problem with that. Knew him well at the Newport Grand.”
I knew that already. He kept very few secrets from me by the end. “One of his millions of skeletons. Sooner or later they’re gonna find out his predilection for young men.”
“His family’s gonna suppress the shit out of something like that, Ash. You know the type. Hell, he preferred the route of blowing his brains out over anyone finding out about you. Even gambling’s more glamorous than that. I mean, for a guy like him.”
My throat spasms. It takes me a few seconds before I can say, “Yeah.”
“Ash…where are you, anyway? Lying low, obviously, but where?”
“Florida.”
“Fl—! Oh. Ben, right?” I don’t say anything. “How the hell did you get all the way down there?”
“Hitched a ride.” Such an inadequate way to describe what Sam is to me. A ride. Just a ride.
“Well, are you gonna come home?”
“I…” God, I want to cry. I wish that I could. Maybe I wouldn’t feel so awful. “I don’t know, Mike. I don’t—oh, I fucked up so bad. I don’t know how I can. I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing.”
“You can always come home, Ash.” He’s so exceedingly gentle when he says this. “You know we’re both gonna be here for you when you do. Jules and me.”
Not for long, though. Mike and Julian are both moving on next year. Everyone’s moving on and I’m still me. Nothing on the horizon. All I’ve done is steal a lot of money and drive a man to kill himself. What a fucking life.
I press the switch hook and then set down the receiver without another word.
Maybe it’s for the best if I go back to Providence.
I don’t belong here. What the hell was I thinking, anyway?
Leaving, chasing a ghost. There is absolutely nothing for me in Miami but a dream that died in December and a love I killed in utero, however inadvertently.
Ben won’t care I’m there, he’s worm food.
And whatever I had with Sam, I’ve destroyed.
I’m not sure there’s a soul alive who cares where I am, but at least Providence is familiar. It’s my hometown. I know it well. Know the best places to get solicited. Know the cops who will rough up a john who fucks with me. Better than nothing. Right?
I find some stationary in one of the drawers and look at the blank page for a long time. I don’t know what to say, if I should bother explaining anything. I don’t know if he’ll even care that I’m gone. Maybe he’ll be relieved he doesn’t have to deal with me anymore. The trash taking itself out.
I leave the note on top of the bureau with a thousand bucks in cash, enough to cover the cost of the hotel and then some. If he doesn’t want the money, he can throw it in the ocean. It doesn’t matter to me.
I dress in my old jeans and black T-shirt, tying my flannel around my waist. I leave the hotel keycard behind in its little paper slip and shut the door behind me before I make my way down to the lobby.
The concierge gives me a friendly smile and bids me to have a good day as I step out of the large glass doors.
I walk out to the road, bracelet jingling on my wrist, and stick out my thumb.