But that was it.
The secret.
The clue.
He’d already seen the real me.
The scary sides, the good, the weak and vulnerable. The funny, loud sides. Every single piece of me was unfolded for him. Slowly, over years, but so fucking true. It was the equivalent of peeling the skin off my bones and showing him what lay underneath.
In Amsterdam, I talked. I let myself listen to my truths rather than hushing them quiet. Through group counselling sessions I heard other people’s stories and walked with them a while. I saw people at their worst, through their lowest moments and was fortunate to be part of their highest highs. I shed the selfish side of me and looked through different eyes until I realised that I was tired of fighting. I had a good heart. I deserved to feel that good heart working, stretching and breathing and full of life. My counsellor said I owed it to myself to create a life I wouldn’t look back on with regret. To think of the moment I would take a final breath and ask myself what I’d like that last thought to be. I wanted that thought to be the certainty that I’d loved and been loved. That Elliott’s death shouldn’t be the marker of my life.
I told her that someone used to say my veins were full of rainbow syrup and she smiled and said I know exactly what they mean.
My hands shook as I found his name in my contacts. The ringing seemed to last days…long months, a year.
“Hello?”
“Hey.”
“How are you?” he asked.
“I’m good.”
One word here, a few words there.
In other words, torture.
“Are you home?”
“Yeah. Just got back and found your messages.”
“Reminders,” he corrected.
I nodded against the phone. “Thank you.”
“My pleasure,” he replied.
“So…”
“How’s the film going?” he asked.
“Oh, yeah, great. It’s all finished,” I replied. “I erm, wanted to ask if you’d like an invitation to the premiere?”
“Is that why you’re calling?” he asked.
I bit my lip. No. I love you. I want to see you. “Yeah.”
“Oh,” he replied, disappointment in one word.
“And…it would be good to see you.”
“Would it?” he asked.
“Of course,” I whispered. I didn’t want to get upset over the phone, but I couldn’t read him. He felt like a book written in another language, a crossword I didn’t have the letters for.
“I don’t know what to say, Skye…what you want to hear from me.”
“Anything,” I replied, squeezing my eyes shut as I tried to stop the tears.
He went silent for a second, I could only hear his breaths. “I…I want to say…”
“Yes?”
Another breath.
“I couldn’t help seeing the spark in you that you felt no one else tried to look for.”
I dropped the phone. The sobs taking over. His words finding their way to my vulnerabilities and holding them all safely in his hands. He said everything I needed to hear and for once I didn’t question if I deserved it, I knew without doubt that I did.
29
Skye
The night of the premiere had taken a lifetime to arrive. Not only Elliott’s lifetime but what felt like mine, too.
Robson had taken over the arrangements and Margot had finalised the film, slicing it together, editing pieces I wasn’t sure about. I’d noticed they had some weird vibe going on. She giggled in his presence and he blushed down the line of his throat. They were getting it on, and I was happy the film had brought them together. I felt like it had a habit of doing that. Finding love in many different ways.
I tapped my pocket, feeling my notes of the speech that I’d slaved over for steady days and long nights. I knew they contained everything I wanted to say. They were together with Elliott’s note. The one I found on the bed beside him. Two keynote speeches with very different ends.
“Ladies and gentlemen, please put your hands together for Skye, the woman who had a vision and didn’t stop until she made this film her own.” Robson stepped back from the podium and joined in with the applause from the audience. I felt slightly spacey, that the film had been seen and received well by the audience full of porn industry giants, but more so now that I had to make a speech. A speech I’d spent days perfecting.
“Thank you,” I said, catching Stacey’s eye as she clapped and whooped. Matt stuck his thumb up, but the glaringly obvious empty seat next to him made my stomach flip. Will hadn’t arrived, and despite assurances that he wanted to be at the premiere, he wasn’t in his seat.
“Oh my goodness, this all feels like it’s been a long time coming. Not just the length of time it took to put it together, but the journey before that. The one that brought me here.” I looked to Dr Chris, sitting in the front row who was dabbing her eyes with a handkerchief. It had a rainbow flag embroidered in the corner and the bright colours were so vivid to me, it was like Elliott was shining a light on them.
“My brother, Elliott took his life when he struggled to accept his sexuality. I made it my mission to make his short life mean something. I started volunteering at the LGBTQ+ sexual health clinic – where we had been given so much support – and through this work I realised that young people are continuing to struggle in more ways than I had anticipated. Social media and instant connection are powerful. It’s both positive and negative, hard and soft. It has an impact. Young people are comparing each other. There is so much competition and most of it is unobtainable. The young people I work with are chasing perfection, whether it be body image, lifestyle, relationships or sex.” I took a breath and smiled before carrying on. “Porn is readily available. People are accessing it at a younger age, all tastes are catered for, all levels of soft and hardcore porn can be found with the click of a mouse or the tap of a screen. I’m not against the porn industry, but I am against the acceptance that in reality, sexual relationships have an anything goes mentality. This film is about the promotion of mutual consent and safe sex. It’s about taking the stigma out of testing yourself for sexually transmitted diseases and HIV. I wanted to show that it should be an acceptable part of self-care and sexual health. We want conversations to happen as a result of this film.” Margot held up her hands and whistled. “I didn’t want to be the next big thing in porn.” I laughed, stepping back from the podium and collecting myself. “I’m not going to change the porn industry. There will always be films catering for all tastes and kink, but if I can deliver one thing, it’s the message of safe sex and that porn doesn’t have to be nasty or scandalous. It can be beautiful and made out of love.”
I heard a door at the back of the cinema. Mickey opened it and his silver sequinned jumpsuit, catching the sparkles of the large chandeliers above was eclipsed by the person standing next to him. Will looked around until he found me in the middle of my speech standing at the front of the packed cinema. He was holding a bunch of red roses and he held them up, offering them to me from so far away. I smiled as Mickey looped his arm with his and took him to the seat that had been waiting for him since the beginning of the night.