’Cause you’ll know it’s just for you… I’m the man who can’t be moved… I’m the man who can’t be moved.
His eyes lock with mine, impassable and sure.
I am able to draw strength and determination from it and wrap myself up in it.
I know I’ll be able to dip into this sense of security when mine wavers. When I won’t have anything to hold on to, I’ll pull out this memory, this contact right here, that has never been separated even by the years passed away from each other.
This is the tie that keeps me living.
This man is my life.
The music ends and the pub fills with its first drunken whistles of the night. Jason sets down his guitar against the wall and comes straight to me and I can feel all dubious eyes upon me.
I feel my heart go right to my throat and my legs turn to jelly. He stops just short of our table. Dad and Rain get up and walk away discreetly, as he sets his hands on the wood and leans towards me.
I can hear background noises, the buzz of the pub, the clinking of glasses and Liam talking at the microphone, but I’m not able to distinguish the different sounds.
I look at him and in an instant I realize that there is no other world.
There is no other face, other eyes, lips or hands.
Another man.
Another love.
“I want you to promise me something,” he says seriously. “You have to promise me now, Alex, that you’ll stay with me forever and that you’ll never leave me again.”
“Jay…” I whisper.
“Jason,” he corrects.
“I can’t promise you that, and you know it.”
“I need to hear it, Alex. Please.”
And even though I know it’s something I can’t say, I can’t resist the way he is looking at me and the words he is saying.
“I’ll never leave you again, Jason.”
“Okay,” he says, relaxing his shoulders, and he takes a chair and sits next to me. “Because that would be a problem.”
I shake my head and wrinkle my forehead.
“It would be a problem if you decided to do it because I will not let you go anywhere. I swear to you. You are the love of my life, Alex McBride, and I will never give you up again. I will be there. For you. Forever. No matter what.”
There are many things I’d like to reply, but in all truth I’m not able to emit a sound.
I’d like to tell him that what’s happened in the past isn’t important now because the only thing that matters to me is the way he is looking at me and I wish it would go on forever.
“And now, if you’ll permit me, I’d like to take you away from here. To kiss you too…not necessarily in that order.”
I laugh through my tears as he stands up and takes my hands, inviting me to do the same. He rests his forehead on mine and speaks into my lips: “God, Alex, I wish you could know what I feel just standing next to you. I’m not able to explain it…but I would, I’d like to try, believe me.”
And then he takes my face in his hands and he kisses me.
And I let myself be kissed, without anxiety, without thinking about my heartbeat or the operation or death itself.
I don’t think at all, and maybe I’m not even really here because I lose myself in him, forever.
