We eat the dinner I cooked—chicken and mashed potatoes—and then go upstairs to my bedroom, where we peel off each other’s clothes and fall into bed together, bare skin on bare skin, with the kind of urgent intensity that only two young people who love each other can have.
Afterwards, lying with my head on his chest, I think that now could be the time to tell him about the secret that’s burning up inside me.
But he’s stroking my hair in that way I love, and it’s such a sweet and tender moment that I don’t want to ruin it.
Soon, I say again. Just a little while longer. A few more minutes before I shatter this perfection.
We talk for a little while about what will happen next in our lives. I’ve always known I wanted to be a computer programmer. That means college. Tommy is less certain. One day he wants to be a professional BMX racer. Another day, he wants to join the military. Some days I convince him that he’s smart enough to go to college too, but most of the time he doesn’t believe me when I tell him that.
“What would my mom do?” he asks. “She can’t pay for me to go to college.”
His mom. The one topic he refuses to broach. She’s had cancer for a long time, multiple bouts of it, and every time it goes away, I hope that it never comes back. But it always does. This round is the worst yet.
I can see him fighting the emotions. He thinks of himself as a warrior. Too tough to cry. Too tough to show his feelings, even to me. But something must have happened recently. A bad doctor’s visit, something like that. His lower lip is trembling no matter how hard he tries to stop it.
“You can tell me anything,” I whisper to him. “It’ll be okay.”
He stares up at the ceiling. I take his chin in my fingers and make him look at me.
“It’ll be okay,” I say again.
He shakes his head. A tear spills out—a lone tear. I kiss it away.
Tommy’s never been much for words. So when he kisses me fiercely, I know that this is his way of communicating with me. The sex that follows is different than any of the sex we’ve had before. It’s passionate and emotional, but also sweet. Almost tender.
We come as one, foreheads pressed together. Then we curl up together, him spooning me from behind in his strong arms. I’m wearing his t-shirt because I love smelling him all around me, feeling like he’s hugging me from every side.
As we’re drifting off to sleep, I hear his phone start to buzz on the nightstand. He goes to reach for it, but I pull his hands back around me. “Leave it for the morning,” I beg. “It’ll be fine. Just hold me.”
He looks at me, sighs, and comes back to wrap me up again. We fall asleep like that. It’s the best moment of my life.
I wake up in the early hours of the morning. I’m cold, shivering. I hear motion. The rustling of cloth. Rolling over and rubbing the sleep out of my eyes, I see Tommy stepping into his jeans and putting on his boots. His movements are tight and angry.
“What’s wrong?” I ask blearily.
It’s like someone replaced Tommy with an ice-cold marble statue that moves and breathes and looks exactly like him. He doesn’t so much as blink to acknowledge my presence.
“Tommy, what is it?” I ask again. I sit up and try to wrap an arm around his neck. He throws it off.
Panic is rising in my throat. I get out of bed and come around to kneel in front of him. But when he finally looks at me, I wish he hadn’t. His eyes are blazing with cold fury. I recoil, terrified.
“Please talk to me,” I beg.
When he does, his words are brutally clipped. “My mom needed me last night. But I ignored her call. Because you asked me to. She’s in the hospital now. It doesn’t look good.”
There’s no question who he blames for this. The hate in his face says all the words. “She needed me. And I was here.” He stands up straight. “She had to wait an hour for an ambulance because I was here fucking you. Instead of where I should’ve been.”
He looks at me, sees that I’m wearing his t-shirt, and scowls. It’s the cruelest thing he’s ever done to me.
He stomps out of the room bare-chested. I follow him. Tears are flowing down my face now, a waterfall of them. I couldn’t stop them if I tried.
We go down the stairs, out the front door. He’s halfway across the lawn to where his car is parked before I find my voice.
“Tommy!” I cry out. He stops but doesn’t look back. “I love you.”
Tell him, pleads the voice in my head. Tell him your secret. He has to know.
But I can’t. I just can’t do it.
He gets to his car, climbs in, and speeds away without saying a word.
I don’t see him for ten years. It hurts for a long time. I learn to live with the pain. I don’t have a choice; I’m sure I’ll never see him again.
Until he bursts out of the closet on my wedding night with a gun in his hand and pure fire in his eyes.
5
Corinne
I don’t know what’s happening. My brain has way too much to process.
Tomas Dubrovsky is here.
In my hotel suite.
On my wedding night.
Sadly, not as the groom, because that’s a wedding I would’ve wanted to go to once upon a time. He’s also holding a gun pointed at me and Alvin, but I suspect that’s because Alvin’s thrown his body on top of mine, though certainly not to protect me. I’m not so naïve as to think he’s suddenly embraced chivalry or heroism. He probably just doesn’t want another man to see the body he believes he bought and paid for.
I’m also still ciffed to the bed and naked as the day I was born.
And Tommy’s here. That seems to be the detail I’m sticking on since I can’t take my gaze away from him. He’s at the end of the bed in a suit that fits him like the very idea of a suit was dreamed up with Tommy in mind. The years have been good to him. His hair is darker. His eyes are the same arctic blue and his five o’clock shadow is gritty and hot.
But the gun and the long-lost ex-boyfriend at the end of the bed are only half of the strangeness going on in this room.
There’s also the fact that Alvin—kind Alvin, vanilla Alvin, stick-in-the-mud Alvin—is still holding some horrific purple monstrosity of a sex toy that he actually thought he was going to use on me.
Some sort of switch flipped in him as soon as he said, “I do.” He leered during the ceremony. Drank his body weight in vodka cranberries during the reception. And he’s still grunting on top of me even though Tomas Dubrovsky is long and lean and armed and dangerous.
“Get off of me,” I grit. Even though it’ll leave me on display in front of both of these men, neither of whom I particularly want to see me naked. But Alvin’s breath on my neck is hot, I’m uncomfortable, and starting to lose circulation in my left hand.
He rolls off and Tomas trains the gun on him at once. “Stand up.”
His voice is gruff. Hard. He’s still beautiful and my breath catches because I’m still caught up in remembering the boy he was. When I stare hard enough, I can still see that lanky, mischievous teenager.
I hate what he did back then. How he left me.
Not a huge fan of him to this day either, despite the unexpected rescue. Especially since, to even imagine that boy I once knew, I have to look past a whole lot of sorrow and rage.