Knight #3
I think, in retrospect, what ended up having me crumpling to the floor when I got home was the For Sale sign I had to pass on my way in.
We all knew Mom was selling the house, but seeing it up close like that?
So many endings this year. Grief on top of grief on top of grief.
I don’t know how to sort through it all.
I only know how to let it have its way with me.
When I come up for air, my mom is in the room with me, sitting quietly on the floor a few feet away. Silent tears streak down her face.
“Maybe,” I struggle to say, “If I get it all out now, I can be done with it for the rest of the trip.”
She reaches out a hand, and I take hold of it. “Was it the sign?”
“It was a lot of things, but yeah. The sign sort of pushed me over the edge.”
“I hate it, too. What other things?”
“I think—Sullivan broke up with me last night.”
“What?”
“It was really confusing, but yeah. I think—he backed us into a corner, and he did it, and now I don’t know what the fuck is happening to me.”
“Sounds like you guys had a bad fight.”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“Did something happen?”
“Something happened, but it wasn’t—I didn’t think it would… Anyway, it felt like he’s been building up to it. Like he just needed the right time to do it. Like he needed to be mad enough.”
“And you know what he was upset about?”
“He said we couldn’t be what the other person needed, and I’m moving away next year anyway, so he just decided to pull the plug, I guess.”
“Is there anything I can do?”
“Remind me never to fall in love again.”
“I can do that, but I think you’ll find it happens without anyone’s permission.”
I take my hand back so I can drop my face into both of them. “I can’t believe this is happening.”
Almost like she’s remembering a dream, my mom says in a faraway voice, “I’ve watched him watching you when you play. It’s like he feels every emotion right alongside you. The frustration, the determination, the joy and hits you take, too. What you two have is intense.”
“Had,” I say.
“Have. It’s not like you’re not still feeling it. I imagine he is, too.”
I nod, but I’m not able to lift my head.
“Something’s changed, though,” she goes on. “After summer. He’s not the same person I met when he was here this summer.”
“How’s he different?”
“I remember thinking that as strong as you were getting—as well as you were doing, he seemed to be veering in some other direction. Like you got bigger, and he got smaller. Not physically. Just a presence thing.”
“He seemed the same to me.”
But that’s not entirely true, is it? Since the season started—since the blow job he gave me, he’s been much more physical with me, and I thought we were finding our way back to each other in that complete way we never got to have but I always wanted so much with him.
No lies. No secrets. No past. No future.
Just the two of us living a life that we now know can be stolen right out from under us—so make every fucking minute count.
What the fuck am I missing? Because it feels like I’m missing something important. A piece at the very center of the puzzle that’s always been Sullivan and me.
He was asking for help, sure, but there’s more to it than that, isn’t there?
And it can’t just be about sex. Months ago, he suggested I might need to try and do things his way, and he was definitely talking about sex then.
So we’ve been kissing, dry humping, holding each other tighter and tighter, coming in our pants, panting in each other’s faces while we jerk off facing each other.
We give each other head, we eat each other out, but none of it—none of it has involved anything other than me having to wait for him occasionally to relax some of his anxious stiffness.
We take a few deep breaths, we try again.
So why, when it came to penetration, was I expected to hold him down?
He said he was ready, but maybe I was the one who wasn’t.
Maybe he really doesn’t want me. Maybe he wants someone stronger. Someone with a tougher soul. Someone who might not love him more than I do but can give him what he needs to heal.
What he thinks he needs to heal, a bitter voice inside my head hisses.
I was stitched together following the loss of my father with one football game, at least for now, but Sullivan? Fuck, he needs therapy.
I shouldn’t care about this. He more or less dumped me.
I shouldn’t give a shit whether he ever gets better.
It just means I’ll have to think about the guy who comes along and heals him, and goddamn does that thought piss me off because he’s mine, and these years weren’t just some stupid pit stop.
They were supposed to be the on ramp for a life we started all the way back in the woods at The Front when neither of us—truth—could take our eyes off each other.
As much as he likes to say I was the simp that night, he was the one who made me think I was with the right person.
Fucking asshole.
No.
No way.
This isn’t over.
He said what he needed to say, I gave him a slight break, but I have a few things he needs to hear, too, before he makes the break permanent.
Then, if he still believes all we were was some stupid secret that never should have happened in the first place, well, then we can bury our dead love in the woods where it belongs.