It took everything I had not to reply, “Thanks, I’m banging the dude I’ve been stalking, and I’m pretty sure I’m in love with him.”
It took me by surprise. Not the realization that I’m in love with Connor. That notion has been lurking beneath the surface for so long that hearing myself think it was validating more thananything else. What surprised me was hearing myself thinking of Connor as “the dude I’ve been stalking.” As weeks have turned into months, the reason I inserted myself into Connor’s life has become distant, so much so that it’s harder and harder to believe that it happened at all.
In the daytime, that part of my life hardly exists anymore. In the daytime, all that exists is Connor and me. All that exists is rushing home after work and finding him in the apartment, waiting for me. All that exists is the sound of his voice and the things he says to me. His smile in the morning. His hand in mine on the sofa at night. The way sunlight hits the side of his face and bounces off it. The way our bodies arch when they join.
It’s only late, late at night, in the early hours, the haunting hours, when dreams are stripped away and layer upon layer of clarity edges its way to the surface. When Connor is deep asleep, the thing that dug its claws into me all those months ago digs them in deeper and twists them.
In the echoing silence of the dark hours, a small vintage tin whispers my name. Some nights it gets so loud that my ears buzz, and I tiptoe to my closet and open the drawer to beg it to be quiet. Sometimes, not all the time, I pick the tin up and hold it in my hands. It’s icy to touch. Cold and lifeless. A tiny casket containing the ashes of my previous life.
Some nights I become frantic about it. Sleep deprivation does a number on me. Things that happened, and things that didn’t, become jumbled. My anxiety turns to liquid, a thick acidic concoction, injected directly into my eyeballs. On those nights, the bad ones, I do crazy things. I wake in a sweat and my heart pounds out of control. I reach for Connor to make sure he’s real and put my head on his chest to check that his heart is still beating. Sometimes, I get up and throw the tin in the trash can in the kitchen, convinced it will buy me some peace, only to remainawake, quaking in bed, until I retrieve it, wipe it down, and put it back in my drawer.
Last week, the tin was so loud that I got up during the night and left the apartment in my socks, fully intending to throw it into one of the big industrial bins along the side of our building. I got there and couldn’t do it. I wanted to, believe me, I wanted to, but when I got there, my arm wouldn’t move.
I put the tin in the trunk of my car instead and tried to go back to sleep. I couldn’t. I tossed and turned for hours, and eventually, I got up, fetched the fucking tin, and put it back in my drawer.
The truth comes in and out of focus on nights like that. In the nighttime, I start thinking crazy things. I think about telling Connor that I knew him before we met.
On the bad nights, I rail desperately against reality. I ache to tell Connor everything. To be as honest with him as he is with me. I want to be honest with him. I do. I want him to know me. All of me. I want to be something good in his life, not the worst thing that’s ever happened to him. In the dark, I lie as still as I can and play out scenario after scenario, trying to convince myself that he’ll understand. That he’ll forgive me. That he’ll keep me in his life.
No matter the night, good or bad, morning is always the same. Connor opens his eyes, and everything else ceases to exist. Goodness radiates out of him, and the acid eating me up is defused.
Every day is the same, no matter the night that came before it. When it’s light, and I see Connor’s face, one thing exists brighter, clearer, and louder than anything else. Every day, as the sun rises in his eyes, the darkness in me is expunged. Every dawn, he blinks, and a singular conviction rises and takes hold of me.
I’d rather torch my old life, myself, and everything that came before Connor than lose him.
49
Connor
I’veneverbeenthishappy. Never, not even when I thought I was happy before. Comparatively, that happiness was fleeting. A transparent wisp that touched down on me, settled, and drifted off. It was mine, but not mine. Mine for a moment, but not part of me. Not part of my soul.
The way I feel when I’m with Lennon is nothing like that. I feel it in my bones. I feel it in my marrow. It roots me to the planet and cracks my chest open wider than anything or anyone has in the past, and let’s just say, my chest has been cracked open pretty wide in the past.
I feel the connection between us as though it’s a real, visceral thing. A metal cable. An invisible rope that binds us. A rope that’s tied tightly.
I miss him so much when he’s at work that my heart aches. It physically aches. I listen to voice notes he’s sent me when he’s out and walk around the apartment smelling things he’s touched in a pathetic attempt to catch his scent. The other day,he messaged to let me know he’d be home an hour later than usual, and I started crying when I read the message. I didn’t mean to, but I did. Not bad crying, thank goodness. Not sobbing, just some sniffling and two or three tears that got away from me, but still.
It was hard to say who was more horrified, me, Georgie, or Tank. Tank was so worried that he threatened to call my mom if I didn’t book an appointment to see Dr. Wegner for a checkup.
Lennon is home now, and all is right with the world. We’re in the kitchen, and he’s trying to teach me to sauté garlic without charring it. I’m standing behind him, chin on his shoulder as I watch what he’s doing. My cock is resting in the valley between his cheeks. It’s distracting and making it hard to follow simple instructions.
“So you see, Con,” he says, taking my hand in his, and guiding it to move several minced cloves of garlic around the pan, “you want to use a low to medium heat. You don’t want to scorch it.” I snicker against his neck because we both know I’ve been responsible for quite a bit of scorching in the past. “You want to encourage the flavor, not force it, okay? You want to be gentle with it. Approach it tenderly. Move it around andcoaxthe flavor out of it.”
“Ah,” I say. “I get it. Cautious approach. Encouragement, not force. It’s like those little moans I coax out of you, right? You know, the quiet ones, the ones that take a long time to build. The ones you try to tamp down by clenching your teeth.” I move my hips from side to side, scraping the ridge of my boner across his ass. “The ones I tease out of you with my middle finger on your gland.”
He clears his throat, and I notice a swatch of pink appears on his cheeks. Despite his embarrassment, he smiles at me. It’s the kind of smile that hits me between the eyes, in the back of my throat, and punches the wind out of me. The kind of smile thatmakes the earth beneath me give way and sends me spinning through space.
“Something like that,” he replies gruffly.
He switches places with me and hands me the spatula, keeping a watchful eye on me as I perform this menial task with difficulty. He places one hand on my hip and supports my cooking arm with the other. He runs his palm up and down the soft skin of my underarm, and I love it. I love touches like this. Unnecessary ones. Touches that exist for no reason, no purpose, except that he wants to touch me.
“That’s right, baby,” he says, snaking the hand on my hip around my body and tightening it so I’m pressed against him. “You’re doing it.”
The joy in my marrow sizzles and swells. It grows to such impossible proportions that I can’t contain it. I can’t hold it in.
I can’t, and I don’t want to.
“Lennon.” There’s a faint trace of nerves in my breath because what I’m about to say matters. It matters more than anything I’ve said to him or anyone in the past. I want to say it though. I want to hear myself say the words because they’re true, and not saying them doesn’t do anything to erase their existence. “I’m falling in love with you. I can feel it happening right now.”
