40. The Promise of Presence
W e dry off in silence, dressing in the dark with slow, unhurried movements. On the drive back to my apartment, we roll down the windows. The air feels cooler now, less oppressive—like something’s shifted between us, or maybe just inside me.
Patrick is half-asleep in the passenger seat, hair still damp, eyes blinking slowly as if drifting between one world and the next. When we reach my building, he follows me upstairs without a word.
He showers first while I dig out a pair of boxers for him. I throw his damp clothes in the dryer and fold them neatly afterward—something I do more out of desire than expectation, the carefulness of someone who rarely has overnight guests.
When he comes out, he curls up on my couch. I hand him a blanket, though he doesn’t pull it over himself just yet. He shifts onto his side, one arm tucked beneath the cushion, the other resting across his chest like he’s keeping something in.
“You ever feel like this is it?” he asks. “Like this version of you is all there’s ever gonna be?”
“Sometimes. But it wasn’t always like this—not this good, I mean.”
“No? ”
“No,” I reply. “There were nights I barely remember. Not because they were wild or anything—just empty. One quiet hour bleeding into the next. I slept in my car for two nights, once. Too ashamed to go back to my wife. Too ashamed to explain anything to anyone else.”
Patrick turns toward me as I slide deeper into the chair next to him.
“You were married? Jesus. What were you, straight?” He pauses. “What happened?”
“Her name was Stacy. It was brief and foolish—barely out of high school. Eventually, I packed a bag, gave her the keys, and left. She cried, but I didn’t. I think I was too numb—too cracked open to feel anything but the need to get out.”
“Cracked open by what?” Patrick asks, his tone softer now.
I sigh deeply and hesitate. Do I want to discuss this now? With Patrick? I shift forward in the chair, resting my elbows on my knees and cupping my hands.
“Cracked open by a guy. By having sex with a guy. But mostly by the intimacy.”
“What happened?”
“A friendship. A chance meeting a couple of years later. One night in the pool. Curiosity, sex, confusion, shame. Afterward, I broke up with Stacy. I couldn’t go back to what I had been, but didn’t know what I was, either.”
“What did you tell her?”
“The truth. In fragments. Probably more than I owed her, but not enough to set either of us free. She filed for divorce six weeks later.”
“Damn,” he said, quietly holding what I said before responding. “Is that when you came out? ”
I chuckle nervously. “No. Not really. But I wasn’t in, either. I was somewhere in between. In a place I didn’t have a name for yet.”
“Sounds familiar,” Patrick murmurs. “So what did you do? What changed?”
I lean back into the chair. “Not sure. I slept on a buddy’s couch for a while.
I got a job cleaning pools, so I didn’t have to look at my dad’s disappointment at the restaurant.
I told myself it was temporary, that I just needed some space.
But really, I was hiding from what I’d done, from what I wanted, from the parts of me I wasn’t ready to claim.
I kept to myself. Worked a lot. Smoked too much. ”
“That was in Florida, right?” he asks.
“Yeah,” I say. Maybe it was the swim, or simply being here, in the stillness and comfort of my surroundings. I’m comfortable telling Patrick things I hadn’t even shared with Naomi or Mateo.
“It wasn’t until a year ago that I got this offer to relocate with Sunbelt as they expanded into Georgia. Atlanta felt like a way out—bigger, faster, easier to disappear into. I took it. Rented this place, started over with new friends, a new routine. Eventually… new nights, new escapades.”
“So that’s when you came out?” Patrick asks, like he’s trying to pinpoint the moment everything shifts.
“Officially, yes,” I say. I could tell him about blowjobs by overfriendly sales clerks in department store dressing rooms, or glancing eyes and validations over urinals at rest stops, or the other games straight guys play when they’re figuring out they’re not so straight after all.
I don’t say any of those things, however.
“Yeah,” I repeat, “when I moved here. Not in one moment. It happened slowly. Quietly. The first time I went all the way, I drank enough to forget most of it. But there were good moments, too. Small ones—a good date, a stranger who didn’t expect me to explain myself.
It took time, but the feeling of wrongness and the guilt started to fade. ”
“I’m still in that part, I think,” Patrick said softly.
I give him a smile born of both compassion and gratitude.
I tell him that’s how I met Mateo, and how realistic and kind he was.
How he helped me stop apologizing so much, even if I didn’t know what I was sorry for.
I explain how, little by little, the version of me that lived in Bayview started to feel like someone else’s memory.
Like someone I knew once. Someone I left behind the night I ran. ”
“It must’ve taken a lot,” Patrick says.
“You don’t know it yet,” I say, “but you’re standing at the edge of the same kind of loneliness I wasn’t sure I’d survive at your age.” The kind that doesn’t look like sadness, but rather motion without connection. Charm without grounding. Touch without tenderness.”
“You think that’s where I am?”
“Maybe,” I reply. “I recognize the look of searching for something that feels like permission. To want more. To be seen and not punished for it.”
Patrick’s eyes look heavy. “I don’t wanna be punished for it.”
“You won’t be. Not here.”
I watch as he exhales—his breathing calm, surrendering to rest in my apartment, trusting me with the part of him that doesn’t know how to ask for safety while craving freedom.
When I stand, I draw the blanket halfway up his body, his legs curled inward, his breathing slowed into a deep sleep. The lamplight brushes the sharp edges of his face, softening him into something quiet and vulnerable. He looks younger like this. Unarmored .
I don’t go to bed right away. I stand barefoot in the kitchen, setting up coffee with two mugs for the morning. The scent is grounding, warm, and welcoming. It fills the space with a sense of routine—something solid to hold on to.
Glancing back at him from the kitchen, I see the curve of his jaw, the looseness in his limbs, the stillness that asks nothing of me. For the first time in a long while, I’m not tracing Kevin’s shadow onto someone else, but seeing Patrick. Only Patrick.
I smile quietly. No need to fix anything. No story to force. No craving to belong. There’s no script I’m clinging to, no chase I’m on, no past I’m trying to rewrite. Just this breath. This room. This moment.