“I should go.” I stand to leave, but he blocks me. “Dare, what are you doing?”
“Dare, what are you doing?”Harlan’s question confuses me. I was thinking about him, so I came to this room to escape the suffocating mass of bodies in my house, and he appeared. Right there, on the bed that I last fucked him in. I can remember exactly how it feels to get lost in his body, and with him this close, I just want to chase that feeling again. Without permission, I approach him and cup his face. I can feel his breath stutter. Even in the alcohol haze I’m swimming in, Harlan is the most stunning human I’ve ever seen.
“You’re so beautiful, sweetness,” I whisper. “I miss you so much it hurts. I haven’t felt whole since you left, you know? I search for that anger that I felt when you told me, and I can’t quite reach it. All I feel is sadness. Jasper was so good for me, but you ruined that. He said you were my ghost, and I guess he was right. You fucking haunt me, Harlan.” My voice is strained as the words tumble out of my mouth, raw and unfiltered.
Harlan’s hands grip my wrists, and he pulls them from his face before stepping back. He looks nervous, and I fucking hateit. He’s looking at me like he doesn’t know me. Doesn’t he realize thatno oneknows me like he does? That he is buried so deep in me that I’d sooner die than cut him out. “You’re drunk, Darío. Let’s get you downstairs.” His tone pisses me off. I don’t understand why he isn’t listening to me.
“I don’t want to go downstairs. I want to stay here with you, just to be near you. I need to be near you, Harlan. You fuck me up, and it doesn’t make sense. Why can’t I get you out of my fucking head?” I crowd him until he’s backed up against the wall.
“We should talk about this when you’re sober,” he says gently. “Nothing good is going to come of this, Dare. You’ll regret it when you’re sober. Trust me,” he grinds out, bitterly. I grab his waist and bring my nose to his neck, inhaling deeply. He smells different. It’s not his soap; it’s nothing like I remember. I miss the strawberry scent of him.
“You smell different,” I mutter into his neck. He’s stiff and unyielding against the press of my body. His hands are clenched at his sides. I pull back to look in his eyes and find them full of sadness, instead of the desire I so desperately hope for. A small part of my brain wonders if he’s fallen in love with Oliver. It would be my fault if he has. Suddenly, telling him that I didn’t want contact with him seems so ridiculous. Not having contact with Harlan is akin to being deprived of oxygen. With him this close to me, my lungs are finally full. I can breathe again. I don’t want to let this go. I don't want to lethimgo.
“Dare, we need to get out of here,” he pleads. “This isn’t you.” He reaches to stroke my cheek, and I lean into the contact. His hand on my face heals another shattered piece of my heart. I take his wrist in my hand to make sure he doesn't stop touching me. Our faces are so close—so fucking close—I can almost taste him. My eyes track the way he licks his bottom lip. A nervous tic that most never notice about him. With one hand holding hiswrist, I reach up with the other to brush my thumb across his mouth.
I don’t give him a warning before I lean forward to kiss him. Harlan freezes for a split second before he shoves me back. “Darío, no. You don’t want this. I don’t want this. We can’t do this. I have a boyfriend,” he insists. I’m not too drunk to see the pain in his perfect eyes.
“He’ll never be me, Harlan,” I remind him. I’m still pressed against him, even as he tries to push me away.
“Dare, please. We can talk about it when you’re sober,” Harlan says. “You need to let me go.” I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to let him go.
Just as he attempts to move around me, the bedroom door slams open, and Oliver steps into the space. I see the rage in his face seconds before he yanks me off of Harlan. Something goes crashing, and Harlan starts to shout, but I can’t make out his words. Oliver has me pinned against the opposite wall, his fist raised, a red vein pulsing in his temple.
“Keep your fucking hands off him, you piece of shit,” Oliver roars. Even with the alcohol and the chaos of everything going on, I still manage to remember to protect my hand. I just started therapy and can’t afford to fuck that up. I don’t fight back, even though Oliver is still in my face, screaming at me, but more importantly, he’s screaming at Harlan.
“Oli, let’s go,” Harlan begs frantically, his hand tugging at his boyfriend’s grip on my shirt. “Nothing happened. He’s drunk. Please, Oliver!” Without warning, Oliver spins on Harlan and gets in his face. Lan shrinks back, and I feel rage at the fear in his eyes. Who thefuckdoes he think he is?
“It didn’t look like ‘nothing,’Harlan,” he spits. “It looked an awful lot like you couldn’t control yourself again. At least you know this one.” My movements are uncoordinated thanks to the drinks, but I lunge at Oliver to pull him away from Lan.
Harlan recoils from Oliver as though he’s been slapped. “You cannot be serious.” His voice cracks, his eyes shining with tears. He takes one last look at me, betrayal written all over his face, before he storms out of the bedroom, leaving me with this asshole. The guilt I have for what I just caused is overshadowed by white-hot anger.
Tomorrow when I’m sober, I know I’m going to hate myself for kissing Harlan like that. Even now, I know it was the wrong thing to do. I just want to go back to who we were before all of this. Nothing has felt right since he left this house. My days have all felt a little darker, and even though it isn’t always at the forefront of my mind, it’s insidious, and it taints every corner of my life.
The hurt in Harlan’s eyes sobered me a bit. “I suggest you get the fuck out of my house, or I will escort you myself. And if Ieverhear that you’ve spoken to him that way again, I promise you, I will fuckingend you.”
The vein in Oliver’s temple is still throbbing as he turns to me. “You don’t get a fucking say in his life anymore, Molina. He’s not your fucking business. Stay the fuck away from him.”
“Let me be clear,” I growl, stepping toward him. “He willalwaysbe my business. You better work to earn him every single day.” Without acknowledging me, Oliver steps out of the room, leaving me to contemplate what the fuck just happened.
I sink onto the bed, not wanting to return to the party. I have no idea how long I’m sitting before AJ comes in. “Dare, what the fuck did you do?” Concern is written all over his face as he sits down next to me. “Harlan left without saying goodbye, and I saw him and Oliver fighting on the sidewalk.”
“I kissed him,” I reply after a few beats of silence. “I found him in here when I came upstairs. I don’t even know what I was thinking, AJ. I don’t understand any of this. All I know is that I haven’t been the same since he left. Jasper was so good for me,and I couldn’t let myself love him. I was constantly comparing him to Harlan. How fucked up is that?”
“That was a fucked-up position to put him in, bro. Lan has beat himself up mercilessly for a fucking year about what he did. He finally found peace, and a chance at happiness, and you put all that at risk.” AJ’s anger takes me by surprise, even though it shouldn’t. He and Jules have always had a soft spot for Harlan, and I know that it hurt them when he wouldn’t speak to them.
Rage and regret sweep over me, along with nausea. “You know what’s crazy, AJ? He stopped me, but he didn’t stop that dude in the club.” The thought that Oliver means more to him than I meant makes me want to throw up.
“Let me ask you something. I don’t want you to answer it now. If you and Harlan were to ever end up back together, would you be able to trust him if he cheated on his boyfriend with you? What type of foundation is that? You’re better than wanting someone else to hurt just because you are,” he says before standing. “I’m going to walk Craig. You need to sleep off whatever the fuck this is and get your shit together. You also need to apologize to Harlan. This version of you doesn’t deserve him.” AJ walks out of the room, leaving me to stew in the mess I’ve created.
The rhythmic beatof my running shoes on the pavement is a welcome distraction from my thoughts. For a bit, I am only focused on the path in front of me as I run through the streets of Brooklyn. The smell of autumn is heavy in the air, even for early October, and I adore everything about it. It’s my favorite season in New York, and after missing it last year, I intend to make the most of every one in the future. The sun is just starting to rise, bringing the colors of the changing leaves into sharper focus.
One of my favorite memories is visiting AJ’s sister’s farm upstate two years ago. The team had been eliminated from the playoffs, so AJ invited Dare, Jules, and me to stay for a long weekend. Avery has a huge apple orchard on her property. If you’ve never eaten a perfectly ripe Honeycrisp apple directly from the tree, you have no idea what you’re missing. As much as I love Brooklyn, there was something deeply peaceful in being surrounded by trees and fields for as far as the eye could see. Ialso had my first taste of fresh apple cider. It was life-changing. Looking back now, it feels like a lifetime ago.
It’s been two weeks since the fight at Julian’s party. Two weeks since Oliver and I spent the entire night arguing. I still wonder how I managed not to end things with him when he accused me of cheating on him. In the end, I left to go back to Penny’s. I was afraid I wasn’t going to see him again before he went back to San Francisco, but the next morning, he was at the door, looking like he hadn’t slept.
“I shouldn’t have spoken to you like that, Harlan,” he had said, his tone full of remorse. I hadn’t been upset about his initial anger, not really. I know what it must have looked like when he found me pressed against a wall with Dare’s body flush against mine. It’s the fact that he hadn’t believed me. It stung that he thought I would betray him that way. It felt like a punishment for being honest with him.
“When I told you about cheating on Darío, I didn’t think we’d end up as anything more. I went out that night intending to bring a guy back to my flat. I hadn’t slept with anyone since him and I broke up. I didn’t think my heart was ready to let someone else in, and somehow, you changed that in me little by little. I was so thankful that I chose to be honest with you from the start, because Idoknow how important trust is in a relationship. The fact that you threw that in my face last night really fucking hurt, Oliver.” I wouldn’t meet his eyes, even as tears welled in mine.
