Chapter Thirty-Six In Pieces
On a shitty, gray, miserable day, they let me out of hospital. Bexley came to pick me up. We’d had a January thaw, and everything was wet and messy.
As we were riding in the Uber back to my place, Bex said, “My mom made you a casserole. I put it in your fridge. How are you feeling?”
“Like shit, thanks.” I didn’t want to look at him, so I sat there, twisting my engagement ring around my thumb.
“Ben wants to see you, but I told him to wait until you’re up to it.”
“Yeah.”
We got to my apartment building, and Bex came up with me.
“Got you some groceries,” he said. “You didn’t have anything in your fridge.”
“Thanks.”
The place looked different. I went to the bedroom. The curtains were wide open, but it looked dingy. My fish were all still alive. That was something.
“I was sleeping in your bed while you were gone,” said Bex. “Hope you don’t mind. I washed the sheets.”
“Did he come back while I was away?”
“Who?” said Bex. “Oh. No, he didn’t.”
He was never coming back. I checked my phone. No messages. Just texts Bex and Ben had been sending me for the past ten days.
I found Bex by the front door with his backpack on. “Guess I should leave you to settle in.” He looked at me.
Please don’t leave me too. I didn’t have to say it out loud. He knew.
“You want me to stay?” he said.
I nodded.
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Bex stayed for three days. I didn’t ask him to stay after the first night. He decided I shouldn’t be alone. He slept on the couch. He seemed to understand that sleeping in my bed would just remind me he wasn’t Eddie.
He made sure I ate three meals a day, though I wasn’t hungry. We finished his mom’s casserole, and then he cooked. He was a good cook, which was good, because that was another way he didn’t remind me of Eddie.
We didn’t talk much. Mostly, we watched TV. A couple of times, he made me come out for a walk. One evening, he played World of Warcraft while I watched.
After three days, Bex went home, telling me that if I needed anything, I should call him. Then I went back to work. I still wasn’t in good shape, but I’d burned through all my sick days and personal days.
Work was awkward. I didn’t know what to tell people about where I’d been, but nobody asked, which was a relief. Maybe my boss had said something to them.
The night after my first day back at work, Ben came over. I think Bex sent him because he was worried about me. I had to break the news to Ben that Eddie and I weren’t getting married. He got so upset that I had to comfort him. It felt strange being on the other side of things.
Things were hard after Bex left. Every now and then, I’d see something that reminded me of Eddie, and I’d start crying. I’d felt lonely before, but not like this. This felt worse than losing him the first time had, because that time, it wasn’t my fault I’d lost him. This time, it was.
A week after I went back to work, I had a meeting with my boss. I’d been planning to do a master’s in his lab, but I figured he wouldn’t want me as his grad student now. Turned out I was wrong.
“Most grad students have a breakdown in the middle of their program,” he told me. “You got yours out of the way before you started. You know you can handle the academic work, and I know you can handle the research. You’ll do fine.”
And he helped me apply for a scholarship. So I got my application submitted before the deadline. I felt pretty good about that.
I settled into a rhythm at work, but things didn’t go back to normal.
I never got used to sleeping alone. I kept reaching for him in the night.
I tried sleeping on his side of the bed, but it didn’t help.
Finally, I rearranged all the furniture in my bedroom so it looked nothing like it had when he’d lived here.
Now, when I woke up in the middle of the night, like I did every night, I knew right away this was my world without him in it.
I couldn’t stop missing him, and I didn’t want to.
I missed his laugh—his soft chuckle or the full-body laugh that folded him up.
Being able to make him laugh like that made life worth living.
But it wasn’t only that—having him in my life had made me feel more real.
Because he was the only person I’d ever known who really saw me.
With him gone, I felt like a ghost, like I could hold up my hand and see through it.
On Valentine’s Day, Bex and I were both single, so Bex suggested I spend the evening at his place. His parents were in Mexico, and his sister was out with friends. Bex had made me dinner, and we were sitting around afterward in front of the TV, when he asked me, “What happened in Timmins?”
“He left. On Christmas Day.”
“What did he say before he left?”
“Nothing.”
“What? He stopped speaking to you?” said Bex.
“Not like that. My parents wouldn’t let me be alone with him.
We were all out running errands the first day, then when they had to go out to dinner with their friends, my mom called one of my high school friends over to have dinner with me and Eddie, like a chaperone.
I sent her home, but then my parents came back early, just as she was leaving. ”
“They didn’t follow you into your bedroom, did they?” he said.
“My mom put Eddie in the guest bedroom.”
“What?” Bex was outraged. “Craig, you’re a grown man. You’ve got a job and your own place, and you pay your own bills. Your mom can’t stop you from doing shit.”
“It’s my parents’ house.”
“Listen, Craig, if I brought my fiancée to meet my parents, and my mom tried putting us in separate bedrooms, I’d get us a hotel room.”
“I spent the first night with him. I went to his bedroom after everyone was asleep.”
“Do you hear yourself?” said Bex. “You were sneaking around like a teenager. For fuck’s sake, spending the night with your fiancé isn’t something you should have to hide from people.”
Eddie had said the same thing. I’d been in bed with him in the guest bedroom the first night after we arrived. My mom had put him in the coldest guest bedroom in the house. We were bundled up under the blankets, and I was holding him, and he said, “Craig?”
“Uh-huh?”
He pulled himself away from me. “Is the reason your parents put me in another bedroom because I’m a guy or because they want to protect their precious little boy’s virginity?”
“I didn’t ask.”
“’Cause if it’s the second one, they’re a little late. And if it’s the first one, it’d be good to know.”
My parents probably did think I was a virgin. I hadn’t given them any reason not to think that.
“Did you tell them we’re sleeping together?” he said.
The conversation I’d had when I came out to them was a blur. “I think so.” Why wasn’t I sure?
“’Cause I want to know if your parents are more like Tommy’s uncle or my parents,” he said.
He sounded pissed off. “If Tommy and I had wanted to get married, his uncle would have paid for the wedding. Hell, he would have been the best man. He loved Tommy so much he didn’t care who he married as long as he was happy.
My parents wouldn’t even keep a roof over my head when I was seventeen. ”
“My parents invited you here for Christmas.”
“Did they actually invite me? Or did you just tell them you were bringing me?”
I couldn’t remember. “They didn’t tell me not to bring you.”
“Your parents know we’re engaged, right?”
“Yeah.” I remembered telling them that. They hadn’t congratulated me. How had they reacted? Why was it so hard to remember?
“I’m getting the impression they don’t think of me as your fiancé. They just think of me as your friend. Your really close friend. It’s pretty easy for them to believe that, since you haven’t touched me once in front of them.”
“Oh.”
“You get what I’m saying?” he said. “Why I’m saying this?”
“Yeah.”
“We shouldn’t have to sneak around like we’re doing something wrong. We’re adults. We’re not cheating on anybody, and we both want to be here, right?”
“Yeah.”
“And I’m not saying we should be making out at the kitchen table, or you should be sitting on my lap watching TV, or we should be fucking full blast right now, but come on, Craig. You’re acting like you did that night with Cub and Andy. Your parents are gonna have to accept that you’re bi.”
“You said you’d never pressure me to do something I’m not ready for.”
“Yeah?”
“Well, I’m not ready to be openly bi in front of my parents.”
“Then why did you ask me to come here?”
“Because I want to spend Christmas with you.”
He lay back in the bed, looking frustrated.
“Are you mad at me?”
“I’m mad at your parents.”
“They’ll come around. They just need time, like I did when we first got together.”
“It’s not the same,” he said.
“Let’s go to sleep, huh?”
“Sure.” He turned over so I could spoon him.
I wouldn’t call what we’d had a fight, but he wasn’t happy with me.
I lay down and held him. And I woke up super early and snuck back to my bedroom.
The next night, when I tried to go to his bedroom, my sister heard me in the hallway and called me into her room to “catch up,” acting like she’d missed me.
She spent an hour talking about herself, and when I finally got away, she watched me to make sure I went back to my bedroom.
Bex was looking at me now the same way Eddie had that night. “What else happened?”
I told him about the sleighride. My mom had booked a sleighride for us, as in, my parents, the Greenleys, and me.
“She’d booked it before I’d told her Eddie was coming for Christmas, so there was no seat for him, and he had to stay home.”
“So you stayed home with him,” said Bex. He looked at me. “Tell me you stayed home with him.”
“The Greenleys are my godparents, and—”
“Shit, Craig. How long was he there on his own?”
“My mom made us go out for lunch after the sleighride, and then we had to pick up some stuff across town. We got back at four.”
“You left him alone all day in a city where he doesn’t know anybody, and he couldn’t leave?” said Bex. “You thought that was okay? What else? Tell me you didn’t do anything else.”