SAGE #2
My mom had her addictions, addictions that ended up killing her.
But she was the best mom she could have been.
Better than Mac’s piece-of-shit mother. Mom welcomed Mac like she always dreamed of another son.
There wasn’t a night she didn’t ask if he was coming over.
There wasn’t a night she didn’t keep whatever gross shit she tried to make warm in the microwave. Just in case he showed up hungry.
No matter how fucked up she got, she always tried her best to take care of us. Tried to make sure we had everything we needed. Even went as far as buying Mac school supplies every year. Dollar Tree pencils and Goodwill clothes for both of us.
Apparently, I don’t have to say a word. My face must tell him for me. I can’t look at him. I stare at the wall like it has all the answers for the questions I desperately want to ask. I take another drink.
“Sage…” he starts, but I don’t want to hear it. Don’t want to hear his explanations. I don’t want his condolences or his concerns. Not anymore, and definitely not right now.
“Don’t.” Another drink from the plastic bottle in my hands. “Just. Don’t. She’s…she’s gone.” I finally get out the words he already figured out.
The alcohol thankfully turns my grief back into anger. Anger at him. Anger that he wasn’t fucking here. That he can call her Mom, even now. Even after he wasn’t there for her when she died. Worst of all is the anger directed towards me, because neither was I.
“Fuck,” is all he says. I feel him looking at me. I can always feel him, like he is an extension of myself. A part of me is glad we at least have that. The other, the more resentful part, hates it. Hates that he still holds so much of me.
For a while, we just sit in silence. Passing the vodka back and forth. My thigh is pressed against his, but I don’t move it. My fingers brush his whenever he passes the plastic bottle back to me. I didn’t realize how much I missed being physically close to him.
That’s a lie. I did. I just tricked and lied to myself that I didn’t. Filled my bed with the warm bodies of people I didn’t care about to quell the emptiness he left behind. I did everything I could to shove his memory away.
Just like I lied to myself for a long- ass time that I didn’t enjoy him pressed against me in my small bed. Just like I lied that I never looked at him for too long. No, those things are better off as a lie.
Even back then, with my suspicions of his sexuality and the questions regarding my own, I never wanted to cross that line.
Never wanted anything to change. It was supposed to be us against the world, just like he promised.
Pressing against that invisible barrier would have just fucked it all up. Joke’s on me, I guess.
Mac’s the one to break the silence this time. He lets out a heavy sigh before asking, “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Would it have changed anything?” I ask harshly, already knowing he’ll say it would have.
And maybe he’s right. Maybe if I wasn’t so angry, I could have called him.
Maybe he would have shown up. But the damage was done.
He left me. He made his choice, and I made mine.
I let my anger swell and swallow me whole.
“You know it would have!” he practically yells, his anger rising to meet mine. Great. Another thing that hasn’t fucking changed between us. My thoughts are bitter and resentful.
“I would have come back. Goddamn it, Sage! Of course I would have.” I keep my face turned away; I don’t want to see his sincerity. I don’t want to face that right now.
He grabs my chin roughly, forcing me to turn and look at him. My scowl meets his glassy eyes. I swallow down my rising nerves. Fighting against my body that wants to lean into his touch. The calluses on his fingers scrape against my jaw. I force myself not to notice.
“I would have come back.” His voice is pleading, begging me to believe him. And I fucking hate that I do. I hate that I practically melt into his hands, becoming malleable. But this is Mac.
My Mac.
Urgh. Why am I on the couch? The morning sun blaring in my face jars me awake. I have a massive headache and sore neck. My mom’s knitted blanket is half thrown over me.
Mom went on a knitting or crocheting spree—I don’t know the difference.
One of the many times she tried to get sober.
She said the constant focus and movement of her hands helped distract her.
It only lasted a few months. Who knew yarn was so expensive?
She traded in needles or hooks or whatever for booze from a neighbor.
But now there are tons of terrible blankets littered around, and I can’t bring myself to toss them.
I pull up this particular blanket—frogs?
—and try to curl back into the couch. But a foreign sound stops me cold.
Someone is in my house. Fumbling around in the kitchen in a hysterical fit to find something to kill me with.
It wouldn’t be the first time someone broke in.
I sit up and let the blanket fall to the floor.
Crotched low, I move around the coffee table to the baseball bat that rests against the wall by the TV. Sleep long forgotten, I prepare myself for whoever is in my kitchen.
Curling my fingers around the metal bat, I hear the intruder curse. “Son of a bitch.”
Wait.
I know that voice. Mac. Last night comes back to me in stops and starts. A Claymation rendition of events. Calling Mac. Mac showing up. Anger, grief, and longing for the life he left.
Resting the bat on my shoulder, I waltz into the kitchen, finding the man I never thought I’d see again standing by the coffee maker. A pool of dark liquid surrounds the mugs on the counter. Coffee drips down the white, chipped cabinets, pooling at his bare feet.
“It’s busted.”
He startles, his back tense. Muscles under his black shirt bunch together. Hold up—that’s my fucking shirt.
Motherfucker stole my shirt.
I shake my head, choosing to ignore that he is now wearing something of mine. And ignoring how my cock seems to take notice of that fact, too.
Morning wood—totally unrelated to the asshole wearing my clothes in my kitchen.