Chapter 28
That night, sitting alone in his hotel room, Dmitrii didn’t want to do anything. He didn’t want to watch anything on TV. He didn’t want to eat. He didn’t want to do a single thing without Tyler. His chest hurt as if the shattered pieces of his heart stabbed him with every breath.
It was Friday night. Even back home, he wouldn’t be doing anything.
He’d be exhausted after a full day of practice.
His St. Petersburg apartment, which the Russian skating federation paid for, was nice, but it wasn’t ‘home’.
It had never been home. Home had died with his grandmother so many years ago.
Even after his time on the ice today, he wasn’t tired enough to sleep yet, at least not without replaying every moment of breaking up with Tyler in his head over and over.
Without thinking, he grabbed his phone …
but there were no texts. Well, no texts that came from anyone he cared about.
There was no reason for Tyler to text him …
not after what he had done. Not after how badly Dmitrii had hurt him.
Life in Russia had moved on without him.
His social media feed was full of the skaters he knew and the coaches he followed doing the normal summer things of getting ready for the next season and going to ice shows.
Some were dating, and one ice dance pair had evidently gotten married.
There were no messages for him. He hadn’t truly been part of that world since the accident.
No, even before, he had never fit in with them.
He had lived in fear that someone would find out he liked boys. Now he wanted only Tyler.
Dmitrii knew better, but that didn’t stop him.
He had never before searched for Tyler on social media.
It only took a few minutes, and his feed became full of Tyler and the people in the man’s life.
Dmitrii saw pictures from all the coaches here.
Little kids on the ice, older kids on the ice.
Tyler and his friends. Of course, Tyler had friends.
He had even met one of them, but it made sense there were so many more.
Tyler was fun and friendly and everything that Dmitrii wasn’t.
The more he scrolled, the more he saw of Tyler’s smile.
So many pictures with so many people. He knew there was a risk to this, and all too quickly he came across a picture of Tyler with another man.
That was the picture that made this hurt so much sharper.
It was only a few months old, and Tyler looked so happy in it.
They were standing in front of a movie poster, and Tyler was leaning into the man’s shoulder with that man’s arm wrapped tight around him.
There were no pictures of Dmitrii with Tyler. Their short time together hadn’t been marked with even a single selfie. They’d go on with their lives, back to their own worlds without even the smallest memento to remember what had been some of the best days in Dmitrii’s life.
A new picture being posted to Tyler’s account snapped him back to the most current posts and broke his heart.
Tyler posted a selfie of himself sitting on the back deck of his house.
The man was gorgeous. It was hot today, and he was sitting with only swim trunks on.
Without thinking, Dmitrii saved the picture.
He remembered that man’s body. He remembered those shoulders and that chest and those lips that he so desperately wanted to kiss. The caption was what really hurt.
Still waiting for my Romeo. Yeah, I know it’s a tragedy, but so is my love life. #alone #Fridaynight #heartbroken
Dmitrii was fine with his own life being a tragedy, or at least that is what he told himself.
However, Tyler deserved better. If he had stopped to think about it for even a moment, he wouldn’t have clicked the app for the car service.
Barely bothering to throw on clean clothes instead of the sweaty workout clothes he had been sulking in, he ignored the paperwork from the Russian skating federation and instead ended up in a rideshare car giving the driver Tyler’s address.
The house wasn’t how he expected it to look when he got there.
The driveway was empty, and it didn’t look like any lights were on.
He could hear music coming from the back of the house though, so he walked up to the front door.
He stood there. The only noise was the music from the backyard, but that didn’t mean Tyler’s mother wasn’t home. If she answered the door, she’d turn him away. If Tyler were smart, he’d turn Dmitrii away as well, but there was a chance he would listen first.
Instead of ringing the doorbell, Dmitrii walked around the house to where there was a gate in the back privacy fence.
It was locked. Maybe this was foolish, but Dmitrii had come this far, and a six-foot fence would not stop him now.
He took a few steps back from the fence to get a little room for his jump.
He grabbed the top of the fence, using his momentum to straighten his arms to swing his legs over the top of the fence when he realized how stupid that had been.
The wood under his bare hands felt sharp, but worse, the other side was not clear.
He had only seconds to decide between landing on the garbage cans or the pile of extra patio furniture.
His plan at no point had looked like this.
All delusions of appearing as some sort of white knight fell apart as he crashed into the blue bin that was full of plastic to be recycled and then knocked over a mountain bike that he hadn’t seen behind the bin.
He didn’t think he had broken anything, but he was still on the ground when Tyler came racing around the corner of the house to find him there.
“What the hell?”
“This isn’t what it looks like!” Even to Dmitrii’s own ears, that sounded ridiculous.
“What? Like what the hell, Dmitrii! You break up with me and then break into my backyard? What are you thinking? Do you want to break up with me again? Didn’t I cry enough the first time?” Tyler was yelling now, and Dmitrii couldn’t blame him.
“I …” What was he supposed to say to that?
“You know when they say don’t meet your heroes? Yeah, I really should have listened to that because I actually was enough of an idiot to believe you loved me.” Tyler’s face started to change, the rage fading to be replaced by concern. “You’re bleeding?”
“You deserve better than me.” Dmitrii looked down at his hands to see the blood on his palms. His left leg hurt, but he couldn’t see any injury, though his jeans were ripped there.
“I didn’t want better. I wanted you, idiot!” Instead of rage, Tyler’s voice now held frustration more than anger. He knelt down next to Dmitrii, taking the man’s hands into his to look at the wounds. “You could have just used the front door.”
“I didn’t want your mom to tell me I couldn’t see you.”
“Why would she?” Tyler sighed as he stood back up, helping Dmitrii to his feet as well.
“Because if I go back to Russia, it would hurt you?” Oh, that sounded so stupid to Dmitrii’s ears.
Frustration returned to Tyler’s voice. “It would hurt me? Know what hurt me? Breaking up with me out of nowhere.”
“I thought it would hurt less to do it now than to wait until I had to leave?” As soon as Dmitrii put any weight on his left leg, he felt the pain shoot through him as he winced.
“Come on. We’re going inside. You’re hurt, and I have to get you cleaned up.” Tyler put Dmitrii’s arm over his shoulder and supported him as Dmitrii limped beside him as they went up the few steps to the deck and then in through the sliding glass door.
“I don’t want your mom to–”
“She’s not here. Max has a swimming competition up in Pennsylvania, so they’re all gone for the weekend.” Tyler muttered under his breath, “You’re lucky I didn’t leave you with the other trash.”
As he was led into the first floor bathroom, all Dmitrii could think of was how wonderful this would have been if he and Tyler were still together.
No, no, he couldn’t want that. If they had been together, it would have hurt that much more when they had to break up.
This wasn’t about how good Tyler looked, and oh he did look good.
Especially wearing as little as he was right now.
“Take off your pants.”
Dmitrii took half a second to process that. “What?” His voice even did a little squeak as he tried to understand Tyler wanting him naked.
“I need to see how badly you hurt your leg. Not trying to seduce you.”
“Oh…” Of course that was it. He kept his eyes down as he awkwardly took off his pants.
He wasn’t sure what he had done to his leg, but there was blood.
Somehow, that didn’t hurt as much as standing there in the bathroom in a T-shirt and his boxers with Tyler just looking at him like he was a problem.
“You’re a mess.” Tyler was trying to clean up the blood and make sure there wasn’t anything more serious than some scraps when he looked up at Dmitrii. “Why did you come here?”
All the reasons that had made sense to Dmitrii just a short time ago had disappeared in the reality of what this really was. “I saw the picture you posted.”
“That I was sad that you broke up with me?” It clearly made no sense to Tyler.
“I didn’t want you to feel like everything was a tragedy. That’s what my life is, but you deserve better.” Maybe Dmitrii wasn’t making the most sense.
“You broke up with me!”
“I didn’t want to.” The response seemed weak even to Dmitrii’s own ears.
“Then why did you?” Clearly, none of this was making sense to Tyler.
“Because, like your mom said, it would hurt even more if we’d been together even longer?
I’m going to have to go back to Russia at some point, and I don’t want to.
They’ll make me go back.” Dmitrii had wanted to show up like Tyler’s Romeo to save him, but that was never to be.
Tyler had never been the one of them that needed to be rescued.