by Seth King
I think of something he’d said once, just in passing conversation. “Only you,” he’d whispered to me at an ice cream place, after the clerk had asked us what we wanted. Only you…
Slowly I start to think about things a little differently, surrounded by the relics of our time together. I’ve always put my life into compartments, separated things to make it easier for myself. My childhood was hard so I put my life into clear boxes. That’s what I did with Adam – shoved this into the corner of my mind and told myself I didn’t care.
And for a while, it worked. But tonight just tore me open again, and now I can see everything.
Being around him didn’t feel any different – I still felt the same energy, the same love. I know there are cracks in the foundation – I mean, shit, when I met him he was studying to be a Baptist pastor. But that’s who I fell in love with. Love is never a choice, and that’s a lesson I try to let every bigot, every closed-minded person in the world, know. Nobody chooses to be gay, just as they don’t wake up one day and decide to be heterosexual. So maybe I can’t be a hypocrite and walk away from Adam because I fell in love with someone who happened to be in a complicated situation. (The most complicated of situations, probably, but still.) No matter what I told him before, no matter how much the logical side of my brain wants me to hit the brakes, I still love him. And this isn’t logic. It’s just love. He is still in my dreams every single night. I wake up staring at the ceiling, wishing it would stop, wishing I could change. But I can’t. I was born this way.
I rock back a little. Oh, no. That scene at the restaurant was so premature of me. Why did I do that? Why did I just let him go again? So he disappeared on me for a little. So he rejected me. Betrayed me. But the whole time at that restaurant, I felt sick to my stomach, like I was watching a car crash in slow motion. On some level, I knew it was wrong the whole time I was doing it. Why would I throw all this away? Why didn’t I do anything? Why didn’t I just forgive him and tell him we could start working things out? Why am I so fucking prideful?
My mom never got over my dad cutting her off and kicking her out of his life. Never, ever. To this day her eyes are hollow with grief, her shoulders curl forward with sorrow, even though she does her best to pretend she’s fine. But she’s not fine. Do I really want to risk that future just because my relationship isn’t perfect? Sure, he’s closeted, and it’ll be hard. But I can help him. I can put in that work, and then some. What was wrong with me back there?
I lean in and smell the shirt, letting the scent take me away on a cresting wave of memories. I’ve got to get him. I’ve got to let him fix it. I can’t carry all this anger with me. I’ve got to give him the chance. And I think I know just where he would be right now.
I stand up as the crowd cheers and the countdown begins. Maybe we can still make it work. Maybe we can’t. Maybe it’s not too late. Maybe it is. But I still know I don’t want to go down the road of life with anyone else. Our days and nights together, our winding road trip, our walks in those shitty little towns – these were probably the best times of my life. I don’t care if that road leads us to Savannah, or wherever else, or even to fucking Mars. Whatever he goes, whatever he does, I can go with him. I can follow him, to heaven and to hell, to wherever this road takes us…
I rush to my car and probably break several land speed records on the dark Georgia highway. Ten minutes later I park alongside St. Marys’ only Catholic church, which holds a midnight service every New Year’s Eve to signify new beginnings. I’ve seen the signs all around town for weeks, and I know without a doubt he’ll be here. After all, I’ve known such things before – I can just feel him sometimes. And Adam can have a new beginning – God knows the poor guy needs one. He has a dead mom; a school that doesn’t want him. But his new beginning can contain me, too. We can just start over somewhere else.
A light drizzle falls as I run up the steps and push open the door. It makes all the sense in the world, and also no sense it all, for this to be happening back where it all began for us, back under the ceiling of a church. But then again, we don’t need sense. We never made any sense at all. We just need each other. Everything else will work itself out after that. In Adam, I found something I’d never had before: faith. And that will make all the difference. It has to.
A choir of old women sings angelically as I enter the candle-lit chapel and make my way down the left side of the pews. It looks like a sparkly little snow globe scene, something straight out of the movies, and suddenly my body fills with wild light as a potential forever opens up in front of me.
Should old acquaintance be forgot,
And never brought to mind…
To the sad, triumphant chords of Auld Lang Syne I look from face to face, but I find him quickly. He’s right there in the second row, right where he needs to be. And I’m back. Adam and Fabian, forevermore…
I stop and stare, a tear in the corner of my eye. He looks up and meets my eyes, bewildered. I shrug and smile, then mouth the words “only you” to him as he watches in thrilled disbelief. And then, with hymns in my ears and a glittering eternity stretching out before me, I settle next to him, kneel, and start to pray.
The End
