I need you. I need you.I played it over and over in my head at night.
I wasn’t a “stats guy,” but I made myself into one for him. My number-crunching hell-job wasn’t maths-whizzy in the slightest, but I loved the impression it gave him of me and the power dynamic. I was meek and lowly, he was high and hot.
What I hated—what I absolutely hated more than anything—was how much my boyfriend saw exactly what was happening, counting each one of my tiny self-manipulations, and never did anything about it, never called me out; seeing me watch a matchon TV—something I had never done before outside of maybe the World Cup or the Euros—and how my phone would blow up with each goal, my group chat with the lads, my private chat with just Callum.Gwon that’s my stats man! That’s it baby! Get in!He called me man. He called me baby. And I didn’t care what he called me as long as I could be just the one word that mattered most:my.
Was that all I wanted? To be owned?
I knew it had gone too far with Callum when I started to feel an old familiar childhood craving to hear him say that I was his best friend. Like an itch, I wanted it said out loud, each way, me to him and him to me. We had hiked the Pennines together, we had shared a tent, I had been to his wedding, become friends with his wife, helped him avoid financial ruin at work—he hugged me for the first time that day, then hugged me often, all platonically and I understood that, but we both knew it traipsed on the edge of something else, and that in some moments, all it would take was a certain route, a special formula, where things could be persuaded into something more, some discreet new dimension because the deepness was already there, the emotional fuel was there. I wanted to throw psychology at him: men have sex with each other because they’re gay, they’re not gay because they have sex with each other—so nothing to worry about, buddy. Easy-peasy. Ease him in. But I never did because that’d be perversion to a tee—yes, much better to crave in silence, boil myself to bits while he danced with me and toed the line, daring me to call him out because calling him out would only prove a thousand points. I couldn’t call him out because I couldn’t bear to let it stop.
I compromised myself a thousand times, told myself that itwas completely platonic even on my end, that all I wanted was to be his best friend like a chocolate cake with a cherry on top and for him to say it back—just say it, Callum—I could cry how much I wanted to hear those words, which had to be some bizarre emotional fetish left over from not growing up with a brother or an absent father or too much American TV. I wanted my subjugation rewarded and named. But the one thing I swore to myself was that I would never say it first, Callum would have to. Down on one knee. We were so close. We knew each other’s birthdays. We knew our star signs and checked in on them often.
Now I found myself lying under those same stars with Simon in my arms—this new friend, this boyfriend? thislover?—and I had to tell myself to let it go. Relax. But our hungry physicality for each other had dug up my same old fears, those unsayable words, and I felt the need to pull back. I needed to slow down. One night, we lay out in the field of our smallholding and watched the stars at night and I remained deliberately passive. I collected kisses like clues. I didn’t dip into easy ecstasies. I didn’t even bother trying to say something impressive about astronauts or the moon landing or satellites and simply relished the fact that nothing was more thrilling than having Simon’s head against mine, his voice in my ear, as he pointed out constellations. I clung to the edge of every word—those affirmatives, those directions—in awe of how a man could be so confident and exactly who he was.
He laughed.
“What?” I said.
Simon said nothing, only smiled. His eyes were cheery shadows in the moonglow. I asked again and kissed him like the peck of a bird digging for more.
“I was just thinking,” he said, “about how I wished we had figured all of this out sooner. And I was about to ask you: If you could go back in time and change anything so we could have come together quicker, would you? But then I remembered you actuallyhavetraveled back in time. It’s silly.”
I smiled. “I’ve thought the same thing—about how long it took.”
“I wish I had said something. I wish I had done something sooner.”
“You could have busted me out of that cell quicker.” I laughed, and Simon tried, but there was a falter at the corner of his mouth. There was still guilt there.
“I was so scared,” he said. “I waited too long.”
“No, how could you have known?” I said. I kissed his forehead and looked up at the forest of stars above us, more stars visible than I had ever imagined possible. Night was practically a purple daylight. And there was a silence that suggested every human on the planet was looking up in similar wonderment, all of us so few in number compared to what would someday be billions. “I don’t think I’d be able to go back in time and make this any more perfect than it’s already been. I wouldn’t change a thing.”
“Even to avoid all that pain you went through?” Simon asked. “If you had to do it all over again, you wouldn’t change a thing?”
I thought for a moment in silence. I had a vision of a thousand copies of myself, all the branches my life could have taken, looping through time. A thousand Georges beat to a pulp, brought to the brink. It had been unlike anything I had ever experienced. I sighed, searching for words. But before I couldgive an answer—some paradoxical mishmash about how if I had wanted to go back and fix something, I would have already known about it, by meeting myself already doing it, so there wouldn’t be a need, which all suggested that the initial instigation came from something external, beyond our control, like all this wasmeantto happen, both the good and the bad—Simon nestled his head closer and whispered into my ear, all too shockingly soon, “I love you.”
I did not mishear it. As much as my stomach dropped with unprepared shock, thrilling rush shot through me up and down and the temptation to overindulge was right there. Simon’s eyes were too open, large, and blue, asking for nothing, just pouring pure giving, and I said, “I love you too,” more as a reaction, like an umbrella for what was pouring out of him. Here was the affirmation I wanted—but I didn’t know whatI love youmeant, at least not here, not in this context.
“I’ve devoted my life to you,” Simon continued, and all I could do was look at him. He said this like he expected to hear nothing in return. Maybe he sensed my shock because he took my head in his hands and cradled it to his chest. Each pectoral was perfectly formed and taut, skin smooth beneath his loose shirt, smelling of charcoal and wet stone.
“What does that mean, exactly?” I asked, as abstractly as possible.
“It means exactly that. I love you, and I’ve sworn my life. I would lay down my life for yours. I would have done so even before allthis.” He ran his hand across my back. “Although this is a nice development.” He kissed the top of my head. I looked up at him. I didn’t know how to say what I wanted to ask, so Ikissed him first. His tongue enveloped mine. I smiled and so did he. No need to pull back and take this slow, George. I sat up and tried to remember what I wanted to say.
“But how does that work?” I asked. “What does that look like out here?” I gestured wildly around the field, at the whole strange reality around me. “Like, are we a couple? I remember you told the vicar back in Scarborough we were lovers, but is that what this is? We’re in love and we’ll just live here together? Forever? And that’s OK?” I didn’t know how to avoid sounding rude and completely too modern. Abstract feelings didn’t compute in this world. Everything was about satisfying immediate ends: survival, food, shelter, and now there was sex and not just sex but real feelings—amorphous, shape-shifting love. He’d said he’ddevotedhimself to me.
“Are there even gay people? Is that a thing?” I asked.
“Of course it’s a thing.”
“You’re gay.” (I said this in as specific a way as I knew how, using all the vocabulary that existed here.)
“Yes,” said Simon. “Very clearly, I am.”
“You’re a man who has sex with another man and falls in love and lives with him as a couple.”
“As a companionship,” he clarified.
“As a union,” I clarified.
