Tuesday afternoon by cable. You never came through the front door. I want to start there because for a long time, I told myself that detail did not matter. The back door was closer to where you parked anyway. The porch light had been burned out since October. My neighbors were nosy. You had people who knew people. Small towns have a way of making everybody related by somebody’s business. There was always a reason. You would text when you were already on your way. You up? Sometimes I would look at those two words for a full minute before answering, trying to convince myself I had some dignity left. Then headlights would crawl across my bedroom wall 20 minutes later and dignity would become something I could deal with tomorrow.
You knew to park down the street. Not directly in front of my house. Never directly in front. You would come in smelling like outside air, whatever soap you used. Sometimes cigarettes, even though you swore you only smoked when you drank. You always locked the door behind you. Both locks. I noticed. I noticed everything. That was part of loving you, too.
Inside my house, you were different. You took your shoes off. You ate whatever I had cooked without pretending you were not hungry. You knew there was a chipped blue bowl in the cabinet that I liked better than the others. Once you stood at the stove in your underwear eating spaghetti straight out of the pot because neither of us wanted to dirty another plate. I remember looking at you and thinking, this is it, not the sex. That. Your hip against my counter, a fork in your hand, tomato sauce at the corner of your mouth, you laughing because I kept telling you to use a plate. That was the kind of thing that made leaving you difficult. If all you had wanted from me was my body, I could have survived that. I had survived men wanting my body before. You wanted strange little pieces of my life.
You called when your tire blew out. You called after fighting with your brother. You called once from a gas station almost 2 hours away because your father had said something at dinner and you could not go home yet. You sat in your truck and cried while I listened. I knew the sound you made when you were trying not to cry. I knew the difference between your angry silence and your scared silence. I knew you hated tomatoes on hamburgers but would cover french fries in ketchup. I knew you slept hot and stole the blanket anyway. I knew that when something was really wrong, you rubbed the center of your chest as though the feeling had gotten stuck there.
Tell me what I was supposed to call that because I have tried calling it lust. Lust would have been easier. You told me once about being 13 and praying every night for God to make you different before anybody found out. You said you used to bargain. You would be good. You would stop lying. You would stop touching yourself. You would read the Bible all the way through. You would never look at another boy again. Just please, please. You laughed afterward embarrassed by your own confession and said, “That sounds fucked up when I say it out loud.” I did not laugh. I held you. I thought that meant something permanent. I thought because you had trusted me with the thing that hurt most, you would eventually trust me with the rest of you.
I became very good at eventually. Eventually, we would go somewhere together. Eventually, I would meet one of your friends. Eventually, you would stop looking over your shoulder when we were in my car. Eventually, I would no longer be saved in your phone under a name that was not mine. I hated that name. I never told you. Every time your phone lit up on my nightstand and I saw it, I felt myself disappear a little.
You would tell me I had to understand and I did. God, I understood you. I understood why we could drive 40 minutes to eat at a restaurant where nobody knew us but could not sit across from each other at the diner 5 minutes from your house. I understood why you could fall asleep with your face against my stomach, but would move away from me if a car pulled beside us at a red light.
Once somebody knocked on my front door while you were there. You had been laughing at something stupid on television. I do not even remember what. The knock came again. Your whole body changed. You muted the TV. You stood up so quickly you knocked your knee against the coffee table. “Who is that?” “I don’t know.” You looked toward the hallway, not at me, at the hallway, at the bedroom, at the back door. For a second, I watched you calculate where you could go that would make you disappear fastest. The person outside knocked one more time, then left. You stayed quiet until we heard a car pull away. I said, “You okay?” You nodded. Then you sat back down and turned the volume up. Neither of us laughed again. I knew then how scared you were. I also knew I was beginning to disappear inside that fear with you.
There were rules I do not remember agreeing to. No pictures, no posts, do not leave anything in your truck, do not call unless you called first. If somebody you knew came into a place where we were, I became somebody you knew from somewhere. Work, school, around. You were always good at around.
Once I saw you at the grocery store. I was holding a carton of eggs. You were standing with two men I recognized from pictures on your phone. Our eyes met. I smiled before I remembered I was not supposed to. You gave me that little chin lift men give each other when they do not know each other well. That was all. A chin lift. I stood there with 12 eggs in my hand and felt stupid enough to cry. Later that night, you came over. You kissed me the second the door closed. I asked, “Who was I today?” You said, “Come on.” I asked again. You took your jacket off. “Cable.” “No.” “Who was I?” You got irritated then, which was your favorite way to avoid being ashamed. “You know how this is.” Yes, I knew how it was. Still, you stayed that night. Still, I let you hold me. Still, sometime around 3:00 in the morning, half asleep and warm against my back, you said, “Love you.” So quietly, I was not sure whether you meant for me to hear it. I did not move. I remember staring at the dark shape of my dresser, afraid that if I turned around, you would take it back.
For years, I lived off those two words, not even properly spoken, not even given to my face. Whenever I started thinking I deserved more, I took them out again. “Love you.” See, he loves me. See, this means something. And maybe it did. That was what made it hard. The end did not happen dramatically. I wish it had. I wish you had thrown something. I wish I had slapped you. I wish there had been rain against the windows and some perfect sentence that made you understand what you had done to me.
There was a spoon in my sink. That is what I remember. One spoon. You stood in my kitchen and told me you had met somebody, a woman. You said she was nice. I looked at the spoon because I did not know where else to look. I asked, “How long?” “A little while.” I asked whether you had slept with her. You said that was not the point, which meant yes. Then I asked, “Do you love her?” You rubbed your chest. There. That little movement. “I think I could,” you said. I looked at you. “I think I could. Not I do. Not even I think I do could.” Something in me went very quiet because I had spent years learning every tense except the future. I knew what you had done. What you had wanted. What you were afraid of. I knew what happened when you missed me. I knew what happened after midnight. I had never known what happened next.
I asked if she made you happy. You did not answer right away. Then you said, “I can just be normal with her.” I remember looking at your face and thinking about all the places I had made room for you. My bed, my kitchen, my car, the other side of the couch. The phone beside my pillow at 2:00 in the morning. I asked, “What does she get?” You looked confused. “What? What does she get that I don’t?” You said my name in that tired way people say your name when they want you to stop making them answer for themselves. I kept looking at you. Finally, you said, “I don’t have to hide her.”
That was it. No speech. No cruelty. You just stood there in my kitchen and told me the truth. I almost told you to stay. I need to admit that. I almost said I would take what I could get. I almost offered you the darkness again. Keep parking down the street. Keep changing my name in your phone. Keep passing me in grocery stores. Keep loving me after midnight. Just do not leave. I wanted to say it so badly that I could feel the words sitting behind my teeth. Instead, I looked at you and thought about her. Not in your bed. Not kissing you. I thought about the two of you buying groceries. You pushing a cart. Her asking if you needed coffee. You two arguing over what kind. You walking out together without checking the parking lot first. Maybe stopping somewhere for lunch. Maybe sitting by a window. Tuesday afternoon. That was what broke me. You had given me hours nobody could see. She was getting a whole day.
You hugged me before you left. I let you. Your face found the same place it always did, right between my neck and shoulder, and your whole body softened for 1 second. I nearly changed my mind. That is the truth. I nearly said, “Forget it. Stay.” I nearly became smaller one more time. But, I did not. You walked to the door, then stopped. You looked back at me like you were waiting for something. Maybe I had always given you something there, permission, comfort, a way to leave without feeling like you had left anything behind. I had nothing that night. You opened the front door. Neither of us mentioned it. Morning was already outside. A garbage truck groaned at the corner. Somebody across the street was loading a child into a car. A dog barked behind a fence. The sky was gray. You stood there for a second with one hand on the door. I had known your body in the dark so well, I could reach for you without looking. Now, there was nothing between you and the morning. You stepped outside. I watched you walk toward your truck. Usually, I waited until you pulled away before opening the curtains. That morning, I did not. I opened them while you were still there.