“You know what I thought when I got the call this morning? I thought, thank God. I thought, I hope it was quick and I hope it was painless, but please let that miserable bastard die.” She sniffled, and wiped the edge of her sleeve over her tear-stained face. “I guess that probably makes me just as much of a miserable bastard.”
“No,” I said. “I think it makes you human. You make mistakes and you hurt people, and you try to survive, and that’s what makes you human.”
*
My red Hunterboots squeaked against the gleaming new floors, and despite my thorough inspections, there was no slant to be found. Even though I didn’t have the first idea of what I’d say to him if our paths crossed, I had been lurking at Trench Mills most of this week, just hoping to see Matthew again.
When I wasn’t here, I was crying over every random memory of him, and the universe was blasting them all in my direction. A tie he left in my closet. A lonely Heineken in my refrigerator. The take-out menu from our favorite Spanish restaurant shoved into my mailbox.
But in reality, he was everywhere, all over my apartment, all over this city, all over my school, and all over me.
The raccoons and water heaters were gone, broken windows replaced, and it didn’t feel like the same button mill anymore. I had to look closely to see the places where Matthew and I had been, to call the memories of that September day to the surface. In the gray December light, those moments seemed foreign, distant, unimaginable.
But I remembered the wanting—wanting to touch him, be close to him, taste him—and I remembered denying myself. And I’d denied myself so much of Matthew these past months. Too much.
“It’s looking good,” Riley boomed over my shoulder. His deep voice echoed through the space and I startled, my hand flying to my mouth to conceal a yelp. “Just another couple of months, and you’ll be ready to roll.”
“Yeah,” I murmured, rising on my toes to look over his shoulder.
“He’s not here,” Riley said. “It’s his turn on deathbed duty.”
Their glib treatment of Angus’s condition made sense as a coping mechanism when considered alongside their personalities and his heinous nature, but it wasn’t my favorite Walshism.
“Oh, okay. I mean, I wasn’t—”
“Here’s what you need to know about my brother,” Riley said. “Even if something isn’t broken, he likes to take it apart, figure out how it works, and then break it. He’s not a sadist, he just likes trying to put it back together better than it was built. Don’t give up on him, even if he broke it and doesn’t know how to fix it yet. He won’t stop until he finds the solution. He doesn’t know how to give up.”
Inside my head, something new started forming, a link between all these words and thoughts and emotions, and I nodded, speechless. Synapses fired, neural pathways connected, and I felt the pieces pivoting, aligning, snapping into place.
Riley wandered off with a comment about checking on the heating and ventilation progress while I stared out the window, the mechanics in my mind sapping all of my cognitive processes while this hot ball of awareness pushed up and out, spreading through my cells.
If I had known four months ago that I’d be in love with Matthew, I would have fought for him, for us, and like every other challenge I accepted, I wouldn’t have surrendered until there was nothing left on the road.
Hindsight was a bitch.
In a burst of jagged, blurry consciousness, I understood it all.Finally.
I never gave up, never gave in, and always gave everything I had, and I’d always fought on the side of right.
Until now.
I gave up on Matthew—on us—the moment I crawled out of his bed in the middle of the night. I bunkered down, conceding everything to my work, and neglecting myself, my relationship, my Matthew. And it wasn’t just neglect, it was a refusal to acknowledge the challenge of living my life while simultaneously kicking ass in my career. The two were never mutually exclusive.
Sometimes I cried in stairwells and smothered my stress in chocolate, but I was standing in the middle of my school, the one I dreamed up and formed into reality. And I loved Matthew. Those words lived inside me all along, and I should have said them every time my heart ached to reach out and squeeze him. And none of that required a neat, sequential plan.
In a frenzy, my squeaky boots carried me down the stairs and to the curb where I found Riley talking with the crew.
“Are you headed to the hospital?” I asked.
“I can be,” he said. “Let’s go.”
*
I bolted throughthe halls, half running, half stomping, and never determining what I intended to say. Rounding the corner to the waiting room, I found Matthew hunched over his laptop, deep grooves of irritation carved into his face. It was the same expression he wore that day at Saint Cosmas, as if he was annoyed to find a building that didn’t live up to his exacting specifications.
“Hi,” I said, breathless and flustered.
It had been six days since seeing him last, and if the scowl, thick beard growth, and dark bags under his eyes were any indication, he was about as miserable as I was.
