Chapter Thirty-Five Breaking （December 27th）
I took a taxi to the airport. It was fucking cold, even for Timmins.
I called him, but it just went to voicemail.
I left a message telling him I was coming home.
He never responded. Which was maybe not surprising, since the last time I’d called him, he’d told me he didn’t want to talk to me.
That had been two days ago. I got a text from my mom while I was waiting at the airport:
We’re so disappointed in you.
That was about me leaving early. Because they expected me to stay after he’d gone.
It was a bad flight. I didn’t have him to hold onto. I was petrified the plane would crash, and I’d die without having the chance to tell him I loved him again.
I took a cab home because I couldn’t ride the subway that long without breaking down, and I didn’t want to do that in public.
I got back to the apartment and unlocked the door. The apartment felt...different.
“Honey kid?”
No answer. It was too quiet. I knew he wasn’t there. I looked for him anyway, checking the kitchen, the living room, the bathroom, and the bedroom. I knew he was gone because I couldn’t feel him.
Where are you?
I checked the linen cupboard and the closet, not that I thought he’d be there, but things would have felt unresolved if I hadn’t looked.
I found his hat and gloves—the ones I’d given him—on the shelf above the coat rail.
He wouldn’t have gone outside without them.
For a second, I thought he must be in the laundry room, so I ran out and checked.
I opened the laundry room door, but it was silent, and the lights were off.
I flicked them on, and I walked through the whole room.
I even checked behind the vending machine, feeling like an idiot.
Then I stood in the middle of the room and called his name.
Nothing.
I went back to the apartment, and I checked every room again.
I noticed what I hadn’t before. He hadn’t slept in the bed.
When he made the bed, he left wrinkles and folds in the blankets.
The bed looked exactly the way I’d made it before we’d left.
His drawers in the bureau were empty. And the poster of me on the wall was gone.
I felt hopeful thinking he’d taken it with him, until I found it rolled up in the closet. The frame was gone.
I looked in the bathroom again. The tube of “fancy” striped toothpaste I’d bought him because he told me he used to love it as a kid was still on the bathroom counter.
The thing was, he didn’t own much, so superficially, the apartment looked almost the same with all his stuff gone as it had when he’d been here.
But he’d left his hat and gloves behind, and I worried he’d be cold.
I checked my phone and saw that text from my mom again.
We’re so disappointed in you.
I had a lump in my throat and didn’t think I’d be able to talk to him, so I sent him a text, Please come home, honey kid. Or at least tell me you’re okay.
No reply.
I unpacked my stuff and did a load of laundry while staring at my phone. All I had to eat was a box of KD, so I made that and used water because I didn’t have any milk.
It was dark outside when my phone rang. I snatched it up.
“Eddie!”
“Yeah.” It was him, but he sounded cold, unfamiliar.
“Where are you?”
“That’s my business,” he said.
“Come home, please.”
“It’s not my home anymore.”
“At least tell me where you are so I can see you.”
He paused. “Come to the bleachers at Christie Pits, tomorrow at two.” He hung up before I could say anything.
––––––––
The next day, I showed up early. An hour early. I had no pride left. I was shivering in my coat. I always felt the cold when I was tired, and I hadn’t slept.
He showed up exactly on time. I knew because I checked my phone, and when I looked up, he was walking through the snow toward me.
He wasn’t looking at me, and his shoulders were up around his ears.
He wasn’t wearing a hat or gloves. He walked up without saying a word, swept the snow off the bench and sat far enough away I couldn’t touch him.
“I can’t believe you moved out.”
“Why?” he said. “Did you think I’d be waiting for you when you got back? You thought I’d be mad at you for a few days, and then we’d go back to how we were?”
“I know my parents were shitty to you, but—”
“You stood there and let them treat me like that.”
“I didn’t! I didn’t let them make you eat in the kitchen.”
“She made me eat at a fucking card table!”
“There was no room at the dining table.”
“She introduced me to her friends as your “friend.” And you didn’t correct her. And what happened on Christmas Day, huh? When you saw there were no presents for me under the tree and stockings for everybody but me?”
“Mom said she put them away.”
“Bullshit. There were never any presents for me. When you were out on your fucking sleighride, I looked. On Christmas Eve, the stockings were up, and there wasn’t one for me.
Your sister’s boyfriend got one. They’ve been dating, what, three months?
I left because of how they were treating me, and you stayed with them. ”
“They just need time.”
He looked outraged. “Craig, I was willing to listen to what you had to say, but now I’m done. I don’t want to hear any more of your bullshit excuses for your parents. They stabbed me in the back. They stabbed you in the back, and you’re still defending them.”
“Okay, I won’t talk about my parents.”
“You don’t understand,” he said. “I am done. With you. We’re done.”
Even though I knew it was coming, it hit me like a freight train. “You’re breaking up with me?”
“What the fuck do you think?”
“You can’t throw away everything we have.”
“You’re the one who threw it away. Because your parents’ approval means more to you than I do.”
“They don’t approve of me!” I said.
“The fact you give a shit what those homophobes think is the problem. Go find yourself a nice girl to marry. Someone you can hold hands with in front of your mom, ’cause you wouldn’t do it with me. And when you do, give her this.”
He wrenched off his engagement ring and held it out to me, but I put my hands in my pockets. He set the ring on the little pile of snow between us.
“But I love you,” I said.
His eyes were hard. “I believe you. But it doesn’t matter, because I don’t trust you anymore. I can never trust you to have my back.”
“Don’t do this. I need you. I can’t sleep at night.”
“That’s your fucking conscience talking.” He stood up, and I realized he was done.
“Don’t go, Eddie. Please. What do I have to do to make you stay?”
“There’s nothing you can do. You’re living in a dream world if you think I’m going back into the closet because you’re afraid to come out. You’re on your own.”
And he left.
I sat on the bench, sobbing. I didn’t care if anyone saw. When I looked up, he was gone. Part of me hoped he’d still be there, that he’d give me another chance. That we could talk, work things out.
It started snowing in tight, stinging pellets. I wiped my nose on my sleeve. I looked at his engagement ring sitting on the little hump of snow beside me. It was the only thing of his I had left. I picked it up and put it safe in my pocket. Then I got up and walked away.
I kept walking until I didn’t know where I was.
I couldn’t go back to the apartment. It wasn’t home anymore without him.
Sometimes when I was walking, the pain hit me in a wave, and I’d sit down and cry until my whole body shook.
Then the pain would ease off, and I’d get up and start walking again.
The cold had sunk into me so deep I couldn’t feel it.
The next thing I knew, it was dark, and I didn’t know where I was.
I called Bex. My hand was shaking so much I could barely hold the phone.
“What’s up?” said Bex.
I was so choked up I could hardly get the words out. “Can you pick me up?”
“What’s wrong?”
“Please?”
“Sure. Where are you?”
I looked at the street signs at the nearest intersection and read them off to him.
“Stay there,” he said. “I’ll come get you.”
Bex didn’t have a car. He pulled up to the curb in an Uber half an hour later. He opened the door and said, “Get in, man. It’s cold.”
I got in and shut the door.
“Back to the place you picked me up from, please,” Bex told the driver. Then he looked at me. “Is it Eddie?”
I nodded.
“What happened? Did he hit you?”
“No, he didn’t hit me! He’d never do that.”
“Then what happened, Craig? You’re a mess.”
“He dumped me!” It came out all strangled, and I started crying again.
“I’m sorry, man. But why can’t you go home? It’s your place, not his, right?”
My throat was so tight it hurt to talk. I shook my head.
Bex didn’t say anything else for the rest of the ride. He lived with his parents and his sister in Riverdale, but the house was dark and quiet when we arrived. I didn’t know what time it was.
“I’ve got to be up early tomorrow,” said Bex. “Couch okay?”
“Yeah.”
Bex gave me blankets and a pillow. After he went to bed, I lay on the couch, still shivering from the cold. I hugged the pillow, but it didn’t feel like Eddie. It was too soft, and it didn’t smell like him.
When I held Eddie at night, it always felt like everything was going to be okay.
Now, nothing would ever be okay again. I stared at the quilt draped over the back of the couch, pictures of apples and peaches, blurred and shiny, and I remembered how I’d felt hearing his key in the door when he came home.
I took his wooden ring out of my pocket and squeezed it.
I couldn’t sleep. I just lay there all night.
The next morning—I guessed it was morning because it was lighter in the room—Bex came in to wake me.
I was already awake, but I couldn’t move.
I felt like I was lying under a boulder, and it was crushing me.
I could hardly breathe. I couldn’t get up.
I felt like I was looking at the world from the back of my head, and everything was far away.
Bex tried to get me up. Then he got his sister, Holly, and they called an Uber, and they had to pick me up to get me into it.
They took me to see my therapist, but I couldn’t talk.
I just curled up in the chair trying to disappear, staring at the gold ring on my thumb. What was the point of anything?
Oh, Eddie.