62. Indy
SIXTY-TWO
INDY
The slide of fingers through my hair feels so good I manage to relax for the first time since that whole domestic crap with Nick started. I close my eyes and lean into the touch.
“You want to tell me what’s wrong now?” Dylan asks.
I’m lying on his and Adrian’s couch in their new living room with my head in Dylan’s lap. It’s an upgrade from when I was lying on their couch earlier, trying to smother myself with the cushions.
I showed up on their doorstep at the crack of dawn when all the world was still sleeping. Dylan stumbled to the door, still half-asleep, squinting and staring for a long moment before he ushered me inside without a word.
“Here.” Adrian holds a plate out in front of me. “Breakfast.”
I blow out a breath and take the plate. “Thanks.”
He hands a second plate to Dylan, who tilts his head back and smiles at him.
“Thank you.”
Adrian presses a soft kiss to Dylan’s lips.
“Where’s my kiss?” I ask.
He rolls his eyes and smacks a quick one on the top of my head.
“No tongue,” I say. “Figures.”
“You want me to lick your hair?” Adrian asks, then glances at Dylan. “You clearly traded up when you picked me instead of him.”
Dylan’s lips twitch as he takes the fork and starts eating the omelet on his plate.
“So?” Adrian says. “What brings you by at—” He glances at his smartwatch.
“—five fifteen in the morning. Not that we don’t love having you,” he says quickly when Dylan nudges his shin with his toes.
“I just had plans for this morning,” he mutters sulkily before sending Dylan a heated look that leaves very little doubt about the kind of plans I’ve ruined for him.
Adrian and I have the kind of relationship where we both fight for Dylan’s attention.
A spot in his sunlight. Only it’s not really a contest, and even if it were, Adrian won it a long time ago, somewhere around the time Dylan and he were both just ten years old, which was when Dylan fell for him, hopelessly and for good.
So no, I’m not a contestant in that game.
But it’s fun to tease Adrian. He gets so jealous for no reason at all, then does his best to hide it.
It’s the little things that get me through the day.
I sit up and moodily attack my own omelet, shoveling it into my mouth without really tasting it.
“I’m just really stupid,” I say after I’ve finished and put my plate down on the floor because they just moved in and only have a few pieces of furniture.
“You’re not stupid,” Dylan says, immediately and loyally.
“You can’t really make that judgment before we’ve heard why he’s stupid,” Adrian says. “Let the guy speak.”
Unexpected laughter bubbles up from my throat, and I flip my middle finger up at him before I slump against the back of the couch and rub my fingertips over my eyes.
“This is a supremely uncomfortable couch,” I say.
I can feel Dylan watching me. “Indy,” he says. “Are you okay?”
I start to nod, but then I change my mind halfway through and end up with some sort of shrug and shake hybrid.
I need somebody to knock some sense into me. That key Nick handed me yesterday morning? It fucked me up beyond repair, I think.
I was so useless at work that even Callum noticed, and Callum isn’t exactly some tough, tyrannical boss. Half the time it feels like he’s working for me, not the other way around.
I can’t focus. All the regret of the last six years has accumulated interest, and I can’t seem to push it out of sight anymore.
I can’t hide it away and pretend it’s not there.
None of the ways I use to cope work anymore.
I lay awake the whole night, relive all the bad choices I’ve made, and, holy fuck, do I regret a lot of them.
I’ve finally stopped lying to myself.
I can’t tell myself I don’t know what I’m doing when I fall into his bed at night. I do know.
I’m hoping.
And it’s terrible and terrifying and awful because… because I love him. And I don’t know if he can ever love me again. Or trust me again. I don’t know if he can forgive me.
I can’t change the past. I can’t go back and make better choices. But I also can’t see a future where he’ll ever be able to move past it and trust me again.
And that’s terrifying. And terrible. And awful.
“Indy?”
I blink as Dylan’s voice brings me out of my head again.
“Okay, seriously,” Dylan says. “What the hell is wrong with you? I’ve never seen you like this.”
I glance at Adrian with raised brows.
“Tough love,” he says. “If you annoy him some more he might even swear.”
I press my lips together and look away, and there’s that fucking lump in my throat again.
“I’m just so freaking dumb,” I say. And when those words are out and past the lump, the rest follow like they’ve broken through a dam.
It all comes out. The whole story. Every sordid detail and every moment of heartbreak.
The whole damn mess. From the moment I first laid eyes on Nicholas Hayes in that boat shed all these years ago.
The way he hated me.
The way he loved me.
And the way he left me.
I tell them about the plans we made and how nobody really knew about us but they were going to sooner or later because we were going to be so ridiculously happy.
I tell them about falling in love with him.
About being giddy with love and filled with adoration. I tell them about the butterflies and fireworks and how it was all because of him. Because I was in love with a funny, smart, gorgeous guy.
And then I tell them about Dia. And finding out that all those years, my parents had been lying. I wasn’t their son, and they knew and didn’t tell me.
I tell them about how I lied.
About how scared I was, and how I didn’t know what to do, and how I lied.
How angry he was when my dad told him the truth.
How he still stepped up for Dia.
How he left.
And how I tried to forget him.
How I tried so hard.
And failed again and again.
And now I’m here.
And I’m still not over him and never will be over him, and I’m a fucking mess. And so freaking dumb.
And then I sit on their couch with my head in my hands.
Arms come around me from both sides, and I suddenly find myself engulfed in a tight hug.
“Um, Dylan?” I say. “Your boyfriend is hugging me.”
“What do you expect me to do after you unload all of that?” Adrian asks. “Have you ever told anybody about any of this?”
I shake my head.
“Not even your sister?” Dylan asks.
I look down, plucking at the edge of the couch cushion. “I was trying to forget. I needed to forget. Talking doesn’t help with that.”
“Did it work?” Adrian asks. He sounds very much like he already knows the answer, so I don’t bother with a reply.
“And now you’re—you’ve reconnected?” Dylan asks diplomatically.
I let out a bitter laugh. “Sure.” I rub my face tiredly. “Reconnected. It’s the worst.”
“What are you gonna do?” Dylan asks.
“I don’t know!” I say desperately. “I was kind of hoping I would tell you, and you’d have all the answers and some great wisdom to share. So go ahead. Impress me.”
They exchange one of those in-love smiles that do nothing for my mood, and I let out an impatient breath.
“Stop making eyes at each other,” I mutter.
Adrian’s grin widens, but Dylan makes an effort for me and stops staring at his boyfriend like he just hung the moon for him.
“You should tell him,” Dylan says.
That’s exactly the kind of reasonable answer I didn’t want to hear. I cover my mouth with my hand and stare at nothing for a bit.
“He’s not going to forgive me,” I eventually say.
“You don’t know that until you talk to him,” Adrian says, “so stop being a coward.”
I turn my head and eye him warily.
“Look, you’ll tell him how you feel, and he’ll either feel the same way or he won’t. Either way, you’ll know.”
“Yeah, but that’s the thing,” I say. “I don’t want to know. As long as I don’t know, I can still hope.”
Dylan sighs and shakes his head. “There comes a point where it’s not hope anymore, it’s torture.”
Adrian presses his lips together and looks at Dylan. There are a lot of unspoken words flying back and forth over my head, and Dylan’s squeezing the back of Adrian’s neck wordlessly.
“You know why you and I got along so well in San Francisco?” Dylan asks.
“I mean… I’m hot. You’re hot. I’d continue speaking, but I’m pretty sure Adrian will stab me.”
Dylan gives me a look and shakes his head. “We both kept everybody, including each other, at arm’s length. You didn’t want anything from me, and you didn’t have anything to give me, and vice versa. Two lost souls in love with other people. I guess pain recognized pain.”
He purses his lips and leans closer to me.
“When I left this place to run off to San Francisco and away from my feelings and Adrian… It hurt more than anything else ever had. But when I left, when I cut that cord… there was also relief. It was a kind of closure. I shut that door. I don’t think you ever got that.
I think Nick left, and you stayed in a state of limbo.
One foot out the door, but always ready to drop everything and run back inside if there was any sign he was holding it open for you.
That’s why you never managed to even begin to move on.
You never got closure. I think you owe it to yourself, first and foremost, to tell him how you feel.
I think you owe it to yourself not to be silent this time around. ”
I lean forward, prop my elbows on my knees, and stare at my toes.
And I let myself remember that moment. The realization, standing in the doorway of his empty room, that he was gone. That he’d left me. Forgotten me.
And I remember the waiting. Because he was going to calm down, and he was going to come back.
Dylan’s right. I’ve been waiting ever since.
“You made a mistake when you were nineteen,” Dylan says. “Nineteen. We all fucked up when we were nineteen. You need to figure out a way to let it go, because you deserve better.”
I don’t know why those words catch me so off guard.
You deserve better.
Do I?
For the first time in a very long time, I don’t immediately dismiss the sentiment.
Instead, I think...
What if I do?
I leave Dylan and Adrian’s place in the afternoon and drive back to Boston along the coast. The window is down and the sun is shining through it. I can feel the warmth of it on my skin, even though my mind is elsewhere.
I keep replaying what Dylan said, trying to set my thoughts in some kind of order. It’s like I have too many of them all of a sudden, so my head feels claustrophobic, almost. There’s too much in there, and I get sidetracked, jumping from one thought to the next with no rhyme or reason to it.
I drum my fingers on the steering wheel impatiently as the coastline moves past my window.
Usually, I would enjoy the view. Right now I’m too restless to settle into anything. I want to be here and also not be here.
I’m a mess.
Again. Or still. Depends on the viewpoint, I guess.
A mess with too many thoughts. I grip the steering wheel tighter. I feel too much. I haven’t in a long time.
Nick left me and forgot me, and then I hurt. It was simple. One feeling. It broke my heart into tiny pieces and those tiny pieces had sharp edges, and when I moved, the pieces scraped and cut, and I hurt more.
I was made up of nothing but hurt back then. It was easy to process. Not easy to feel, but at least I knew where I stood.
It was simple.
I hurt.
Everywhere.
All the time.
Hurt is clean and straightforward.
It’s different now.
Now there’s the promise of hurt. Now I’m stupidly in love with a man with no idea whether he feels the same or not.
Now there’s hope. Slippery, treacherous hope.
And fear. Uncertainty. Longing. Dread. Jealousy.
Anger. Doubt. Regret. It’s all piled up on top of me, and I can’t seem to breathe anymore.
I make it back to Boston, but once I’m on the familiar streets again, I have no idea where to go or what to do with myself.
Home? I look up at the building after I’ve parked the car.
But Bridget and Dia’s apartment has never felt like home.
Even less so now that I’m barely there, only stopping by to get a change of clothes before rushing off to Nick’s.
I use this place to get a few hours of sleep, if I even make it back here.
Let’s face it, home is where the heart is. And my heart has always been Nick’s, whether he wanted it or not.
I’m being torn in half, desperate to go to him and rebelling because I’m not ready to face him.
I’ve longed for him and waited for him. I’ve yearned for him and missed him.
I’ve missed him so long and so much, that missing him has become a part of me.
It’s who I am; an integral part people should notice the moment they look at me.
Like the color of my eyes or hair or the birthmark on the hollow of my throat.
If somebody were to draw up a missing person’s poster, it should be mentioned because it’s a thing about me.
This is Indy. Black hair. Green eyes. Misses Nick.
I kept waiting for him.
I waited.
Hours and days that stretched into weeks and months and years, waiting for him to come back to me. Hoping that maybe, just maybe, somewhere he was missing me too. Because he loved me. That much I was sure of. It wasn’t just me feeling this way for him. He loved me too.
In the months right after he forgot about me, I left countless messages and texts. I called him. I wrote emails. I tried to explain as best I could. I begged for forgiveness. Asked for a sign of life. Anything so I knew he was okay, at least.
He never wrote back. Never called. About six months in, he changed his number.
I squeeze the steering wheel so tightly my knuckles turn white. I lean forward, pressing my forehead against the dark brown leather.
All those feelings are too vivid. Too much. It’s as if I’ve been transported back in time, and I’m suddenly nineteen again, alone and lost and broken.
You deserve better.
Dylan’s words echo in my head.
Do I?
I straighten my back and stare out the window. The city makes my head feel even more cramped. Buildings everywhere. Buildings and people and concrete.
My gaze lands on my keychain. On the key Nick handed me. The one I’ve studiously ignored so far. I grab it, squeezing it until the edges dig into my skin.
I suddenly know where I’m going.