eight
Duke Dolce
I should be happy. I keep telling myself that. I’ve been holding onto Colt in my head all this time, but it was just a fantasy. Like he said, I couldn’t let go of the past. Now I have what I wanted—if not Colt, then at least closure.
Now I can let it go and move on into the future and whatever that holds.
I can, but I don’t want to. It doesn’t make sense to leave something perfect in the past just because we met when we were too young, too dumb, too self-destructive to make it work. That doesn’t mean it isn’t right. Maybe it wasn’t then, but that doesn’t mean it’s not now.
Not everyone has to be the one forever. Not everyone has to fall in love at first sight.
Some people fall in hate first. Some people try their best to destroy each other, and when they can’t, and the war is over, and the dust has settled, and they’re the only two soldiers left on the battlefield, they realize that it’s for a reason.
That the only person tough enough to endure each of them is the other.
Sometimes, it’s not the right time when you meet, but later it is.
Sometimes, you cross paths at just the right moment, the moment where everything can change if you don’t let the mistakes of the past or fears of the future trip you up.
Sometimes, you have to be brave enough to take the opportunity, to see the reason the lesson keeps showing up again and again.
And it will keep showing up. Colt’s sister is married to my brother. His brother is married to my sister. We’ll see each other again.
But I can’t count on that being the right time.
One or both of us might be with someone else by then.
Life—and death—sometimes happens when we least expect it.
I can’t know for certain what the future will hold.
I only know what today does. Life is not guaranteed.
That’s the lesson I learned when I was shot, the one that turned my whole life around.
Maybe it’s time I turned it around again, or the next time the lesson of Colt shows up, it might be a lot more brutal.
It might be a lesson about taking the chance before it’s too late, about what happens if you don’t act when the perfect person steps into your life like a fucking Christmas miracle.
Because out of all the people, in all the places, I had to run into Colt fucking Darling at the Christmas market in New York City.
I don’t have to be a gambling man to know the chances are probably less than one in a million.
The lesson couldn’t be more obvious if it clubbed me over the head.
I can watch him walk away from my perfect life, or I can give it up and walk away with him. Besides, what good is perfect if the person you made it perfect for saw it and walked away?
The truth is, if he could walk away from it that easily, it’s not perfect.
Not for him.
And if it’s not perfect for him, it’s not perfect for us.
Maybe it was perfect for me, my bachelor pad.
I didn’t wait for him to start my life. I started the day I walked out of that rehab center.
Every day, I lived for the next. I focused on getting better, being better, living better.
I focused on the good. I didn’t wait around, stuck in the past, like he said.
I moved on. But I also prepared. For the day when I’d see him again.
For the day when I’d be good enough. That started with being good enough for me.
And I am. This is.
But I didn’t think about what would happen if, when that day finally came, he said no. If he didn’t want the life I offered. I didn’t think about his family in Arkansas because I was done with it. I haven’t gone back in five years. I have no reason to.
The only person in my family who still lives there is my sister, so she comes here to visit. My mom never left New York. My dad is buried here. My two older brothers live in the state, even if one of them isn’t in the city anymore. And my twin is off at med school.
But Colt isn’t me. He had a point. I was being selfish to ask him to drop his entire life to come here.
His family has lived in Arkansas for generations.
As far as I know, they pretty much all still live there, except for his sister, who went away to college with Baron.
His parents live there, his aunts and uncles and cousins, who were like brothers to him.
He left with Lo for a while, but when they broke up and he spiraled, he must have gone back to the place he knows, the place that’s home to him, comfortable and safe.
I can’t expect him to give all that up when all I have to offer in return is me.
I have to be willing to sacrifice something too, to prove to him that he’s worth more than all of it. So what am I doing still sitting here in my perfect, lonely apartment, letting the one that got away get away again?
I jump up and run to my room, hurriedly dressing before grabbing my coat on the way out.
They’re predicting a white Christmas, so maybe the impending snow will delay his flight.
Maybe I can still get him. On the way to my car, I punch his hotel into my phone, silently thankful that he told me where he was staying last night.
He would have had to wait for a car, so I’m probably not too far behind him.
I start my car and leave the garage, not waiting for it to heat up even though it’s freezing out. I pull out onto the road, and I’m immediately surrounded by fucking traffic. Of course.
I tell myself that means Colt is also stuck in traffic.
By the time I get to his hotel, and argue with the front desk, and pay off the manager for his room number, I’m ready to tear through the wall to find him.
Spotting a line for the elevator, I race to the stairwell, taking the stairs two at a time.
When I reach the upstairs hallway, my heart is beating double-time, and I don’t even know what I’m going to say. I just rush down the hall to his room.
The door is standing open, the maid’s cart blocking the way.
Everything inside me sinks.
I missed him.
“What you want, kid?” asks the woman cleaning the room, her Jersey accent nasal and demanding.
“Did you see the guy leave this room?” I ask. “Do you know how long he’s been gone?”
She gives me a look that’s somewhere between scorn and pity. “What do I look like, his mother?”
“Right, yep,” I say, backing out of the room. I look up and down the hallway, clinging to a shred of hope that I’ll see him walking toward the elevator, having gone to get ice or something from the vending machine before he left. But there’s only another maid’s cart.
I don’t bother checking the elevator, just rush down the stairs again.
Back in my car, I pull out into traffic once again.
Even driving like the world’s biggest asshole, it takes me way too fucking long to get to the airport.
He didn’t tell me his airline, but I’m able to look up the flights to Arkansas while sitting in traffic.
Unfortunately, none are delayed, despite the low, heavy cloud cover that promises the snow will be here sooner rather than later.
At the airport, I throw my car in park at the curb and hit the hazards, taking a guess which terminal he’ll be leaving from, and run inside.
My heart sinks even lower. The lines are almost to the doors at every counter, everyone getting flights home on Christmas Eve morning, wanting to be with their families tonight.
I search the line for Colt, praying he’s here, even if he’s all the way at the front, but I can’t find him.
Everything in me is screaming with frustration. I try to pay people to let me in front of them, but most of them look at me like I’m insane. Only a few take me up on it.
By the time I get to the counter, the frazzled lady tells me the flight is already boarding.
I try to buy a ticket anyway, but she reminds me I’d still have to go through customs, and even in the express lane, I won’t make it in time.
She looks a me with a complete lack of emotion, like she couldn’t give two shits that I’m clearly having a breakdown.
“Next,” she calls, before I’ve even decided what to do.
In a daze, I step away from the counter. I could go to another terminal, get a flight on another airline, but he won’t be here. He won’t even be in New York anymore.
I shuffle back outside, only to see my car being hauled off by a fucking tow truck for illegally parking at the curb. I’m not even surprised. That’s how the whole morning is going, like the universe is conspiring to keep us apart. Maybe that was the lesson he was here to teach me.
Don’t hesitate. Don’t wait too long. Don’t sit on your ass and watch the love of your life walk away.
This was my chance, and I blew it. I let him run.
I should have stopped him, even if I had to hold him down and force him to listen to my explanation.
I should have had the words already prepared, the ones that could make him stay.
I had everything else prepared. But when the time came, and he was right here in my arms, I choked.
I let him slip through my hands, and instead of catching him, I let him go.
And now he’s gone.
I’m about to do something completely reckless and crazy when two things happen at once.
A text buzzes on my phone, and three guys run out the doors of the airport to a car waiting at the curb.
They’re shoving to get past each other to meet the woman standing outside the car, arms outstretched.
One of them reaches her first, wrapping her in a bear hug and lifting her off her feet.
“Merry Christmas, son,” says a man coming around from the driver’s side with a Santa hat on.
He hugs another one of the guys, clapping him on the back, while the last guy throws his arms around the mom and brother at once.
They’re all laughing, talking over each other, loud as people get with their families.
I swallow and pull out my phone, the desperation of the past hours melting away. What am I doing? I have a dozen texts from my brothers, asking where I am, why I’m not at Ma’s yet.
Five years ago—hell, maybe even two years ago—nothing would have stopped me from going after Colt.
I would have gotten on a plane and gone after him.
I wouldn’t have stopped until he forced me to, ran so far I couldn’t catch him, or beat me into the ground until I couldn’t get back up.
Not physically, the way I did him, but in other ways, ways that let me atone in some small way for all the damage I’d done.
I don’t blame him for hurting me. I would have done the same, taken revenge in whatever way I could.
But I’m not that guy anymore.
I’ve atoned.
Now I’m a guy who knows what’s under his control, and what isn’t.
Maybe I haven’t done enough for him, but I can’t control that.
I can only control myself, and I’ve done enough for me.
I can’t change Colt’s mind. I can only change mine.
I’ve been doing it since he left the last time, and it doesn’t stop just because he left again.
In fact, it only becomes more important.
It’s time to stay the course, focus on the future and let the past go. To focus on myself and what I need now.
I didn’t come all this way, do all this work, for Colt fucking Darling to ruin all my progress in one night.
But fuck, it was a good night.
I push the thought away, text Baron back, and look up the towing company.
By the time I make the calls and get my car back, snow has started to fall in hard streaks, cold and bitter, and my brothers are texting me again, asking where I am, when I’m coming over.
They miss me, their kids miss me, our mother misses me.
I have all this love here, people who want me there. I’d be a fool to leave it behind.
In a few hours, we’ll go to Christmas Eve mass together, like we always do.
We’ll go home and sit around the fireplace looking at the tree, talking, listening to the Frank Sinatra Christmas album our mom always insists upon playing on the old record player.
We’ll help the kids hang their stockings, and we’ll hang ours too, because it makes our mother happy, and that’s what we’ve always done.
I’ll be happy for them—genuinely happy. My oldest brother deserves the family he always wanted.
My other older brother definitely deserves happiness after all the shit he’s gone through with his fiancé and even before her.
My sister and her husband deserve a fucking medal for being such good parents to their hoard of children.
My twin and his fiancé, Colt’s sister… I can’t want anything but the best for them, having to deal with each other, and having let me go, so I no longer have to.
But despite all that happiness, a selfish little part of me wishes I had someone too. That I wasn’t the one person alone again this year. Even Ma has some new guy.
Here I am, though, single as usual, ready to go play with the kids so the couples can sneak off for some alone time, ready to smile and be part of the family, to tell them I’m living it up in the city, having fun, going out to clubs every night.
Later, I might sneak off to one of them for a few hours, come home before dawn smelling like another man’s cologne.
And they’ll all be a little jealous because when they imagine living my life, it’s with their partner at their side.
They’ve forgotten what it’s like to be lonely, forgotten loneliness exists, because in their world, it doesn’t.
They’ve all found their person. They can no longer imagine life without them.
They didn’t scare their person away by being too thirsty, too eager, too much.
I asked for Colt’s whole life when all he signed up for was one night. He just wanted to fuck, and I might as well have pulled out a ring. I’m the fucking idiot.
Of course he ran. I knew he was a flight risk, and I still tried to bully him into a commitment on the spot, just like I always bullied him into giving me what I wanted, regardless of what he wanted. He never wanted me.
There’s no use chasing someone who doesn’t want to be caught. That’s the difference between us. Colt doesn’t want to be caught. I do. And somewhere out there is a man who won’t just want to fuck me. He’ll want to keep me.
But he has to catch me first.