“Ugh.You’resodisgusting.”But I hear her footstepstap-tap-tapping down the hallway in a hasty retreat.
Earns me momentary peace, though.As I expected.Locking myself in the bathroom is a common way I escape her.
Thank god I never wanted kids even before I met her.She would have made a horrible mother.Good luck getting her to change diapers.She can barely deal with her own literal shit, much less anyone else’s.Vomit and snot would send her scampering in a panic, I’m sure.
I return my focus to the screen and thumb to another e-mail.
Sent late the January night after I was sworn in as a US Senator, a little over nine months ago.
Sent only hours after Liam and I had our private reunion.
The e-mail Liam sent right before a flood of e-mails filled the inbox of my old secret account, and which kept me up most of that night, locked in this guest bath and claiming food poisoning while I read them and cried.
I swore I’d never send you all these e-mails.They were written more to preserve my sanity than anything.First, to help me survive and try to find some way to make peace with what happened.Later, to keep me from profaning my marriage to Daniel with the darkness I couldn’t shake, the one that filled my soul and kept me clinging to hope, no matter how desperately ethereal and impossible.
The darkness shaped like your memory.
But if you’re going to fucking waltz into my life like this, then you damn well deserve them.
All of them.
Behold the contents of my drafts folder, accumulated over the past twenty years.
Why can I hate what you did so much and yet still love you so damned hard that it takes me out at the knees?That it makes me want to be a stupid guy in college again, fucking your brains out any time we had privacy and five minutes of free time?
I was going to marry you, Ward.I wanted you to be my husband, my partner.You heard me talk about the plans I had for us and you let me go on, knowing you were going to ghost and shred my soul?
Who wasreallythe sadist, huh?
Despite me being happily married ten years now, why do you STILL have the power to gut me and rip my heart from my chest?Why do I know if you asked me if you could come back to me, if you knelt at my feet and begged me, I would take you back in an instant and without a second thought?
God help me, how can I STILL love you so much that it scares me the lengths I’m already contemplating going?That I want to drag you home with me?
I have broken my vows because of you.I don’t know if I’ll even have a marriage after I confess to him what’s going on.I wouldn’t blame him if he leaves me.
Here I thought I’d abandoned worshipping your ghost, and yet, all these years later, I’m still as devout as I ever was.
The question is, what are you willing to endure?You have now wrecked my world twice in one lifetime.The very least you can offer is worthy penance to atone.
Start by reading them all.
Every last fucking one of them.
Oh, how the situation has shifted since that day.
Reading those e-mails also triggers old memories I hopelessly tried so hard not to think about during my years away from him.
I remember the Sunday church services we attended in college, an hour or so spent sitting in a not-so-comfortable pew, usually made even less comfortable by the butt plug tightly wedged up my ass—and my accompanying erection—while Liam sat next to me and wore a smugly satisfied smile.
I think about the times we fucked or I blew Liam in a church bathroom because we couldn’t wait to get back to our dorm room.
I recall the times Liam’s hand crept into my lap in a darkened movie theater, or how he’d grind against me as we stood on a crowded subway train.
I relive the finite nights sharing a bed, an invisible clock only I could see ticking down to what I felt was the inevitable conclusion.
I knew he’d try to talk me into staying with him, but my fear of my father—and what he might do to Liam—was stronger than my love for Liam, back then.Not by much, but enough to fuck up the rest of my life.
And Liam’s, too, apparently.
