Freestyle Love

by Marcus Lopes

  “Where were you?” Cole asked in a steely voice. “I called Sarah’s, and she said you had left there two weeks ago.”

  Malachi said, “I needed time to think.”

  “Haven’t you had enough time to do that?” Cole studied Malachi, and wondered about the significance of Malachi’s moist eyes. When Cole had gone to see Malachi in Halifax, he was certain that Malachi would return with him. The incident with Jeremy, Cole thought of it as only a minor infraction, something that they could overcome. Cole had managed, during the time that he and Malachi were together, to “avoid” Jeremy, hold Jeremy in check. There were natural buffers. Cole was so in love with Malachi that, in a way, he had blocked out Jeremy. Cole didn’t love Jeremy, not the way he loved Malachi, but the kiss had reignited something in Cole, something that had been missing. The something missing was passion. Cole missed the passionate lovemaking with Malachi, the intent stares, the feeling of being loved. Had Cole imagined himself kissing Malachi while groping Jeremy? Cole said, “I don’t know what to think anymore, but I’m tired of this game we’re playing.” He sighed. “I’ve always told you that you can talk to me.”

  “I know.” Malachi rubbed his eyes. “I just, I don’t know how to explain it.”

  “Explain what?”

  Malachi fell back into the sofa. “That something’s missing, something doesn’t feel right.”

  Cole dropped his gaze. “Did I do something to make you feel that way? And I’m not talking about Jeremy here.”

  “I don’t know. I feel… I feel…” Malachi cupped his hands to the back of his head and then dropped them to his sides. “I feel lost here.”

  “Lost.” Cole looked at Malachi with open-eyed attention. “What does that mean?”

  Malachi brought his body forward and fixed his gaze on Cole. “Like I’ve lost my footing.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Well, I mean. I keep stumbling. I know this isn’t making any sense —”

  “None at all.”

  Malachi sighed exasperatedly. Malachi was trying to talk to Cole seriously. Malachi wanted them to see how much they had not only been damaged but how much they had been affected by each other, by their pasts. Wasn’t that the real issue? The past had cast a shadow, left a mark that scarred, and the shockwaves still lingered. There were too many phantoms in Malachi’s present, too many questions begging answers that eluded him. “All I really know, Cole, is that I can’t stay here. This isn’t home.”

  Cole said, “You need to do better than that,” and bolted off the sofa. Cole took up Malachi’s earlier position in front of the fireplace, standing with his back to Malachi, his arms folded across his chest. “I don’t know how many times I have to say I’m sorry, that I never meant to hurt you.” He turned around. “I want you to stay. I think we can work this out. I love you, and I need you.”

  “You don’t need me,” Malachi said dryly. “You’ve never needed me. Look around. This is your house, your décor, your imprint. I’ve been inserted into your life like a wedge, filling a crack but never becoming more than that.”

  “That’s nasty and untrue.” Cole took a step forward, his eyes filled with tears. “I’ve never had to play-act with you, I’ve never had to pretend to be anyone else. And home is more than these walls and the décor. It’s you and me. It’s how we support each other, love each other. It’s the present and how we nurture it, tend to it, see beyond. This is your home, Malachi, as much as it is mine.”

  “I don’t mean to hurt you —”

  “But you are hurting me. We’ve built something together, something that’s worth hanging on to.”

  “For whom?” Malachi looked coolly at Cole, and when Cole stiffened, he added, ruefully, “That was uncalled for.”

  Cole took another step forward. “What is it that you want?”

  Malachi shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  “Then how can you say that you can’t stay here?”

  “It’s complicated.”

  Cole threw his hands in the air. “Simplify it for me.”

  Malachi dropped his gaze. “I’m sorry if you feel like you’re my ‘silly plastic shadow,’ but writing, it’s my life, it’s who I am. I thought I did a good job at balancing my career and us but…” He looked at Cole. “My writing, it’ll always come first in my life, it’ll always be the most important. I hoped that you’d be the most important person in my life, and that that would be enough.”

  Cole unfolded his arms and shoved his hands in his pockets. “I was angry and hurt. I didn’t mean —”

  “Yes, you did, Cole.” Malachi sighed. “I can’t be what you want me to be.”

  “I told you before, Malachi, that I’m happy for your success.”

  “But I don’t feel that, Cole.”

  Cole looked away, blinking back his tears. “I just, maybe I’m jealous, that you have something compulsory in your life when I…” He rubbed at his eyes. “I feel like an absolute failure. I’m forty and I haven’t done a thing with my life.” He trained his gaze on Malachi. “I’ve never had your courage, the will to…” He cleared his throat. “Do you still love me?”

  “Cole…” Malachi hid his face in his hands for a moment, and when he uncovered his face, said, “Yes, I love you.”

  “But you don’t want to stay here, with me.” There was a silence. “What do we do next? I mean, are you moving out? Do you already have a place to go?”

  “I’ll move into the guest bedroom while I look for a place,” Malachi said and avoided eye contact with Cole.

  “I suppose you’ll head back to Claredon…”

  “Yes.”

  Cole pushed his pursed lips from side to side. “I don’t understand the hold Claredon has on you unless… Are you in love with Shane?”

  “Shane?” Malachi scrunched his eyebrows. “Shane’s nothing more than a very good friend. I’m going back to Claredon because it’s the one place that’s felt like home since —”

  “Since what?”

  “Since Taylor.”

  Cole ran his hand over his face and then through his hair. “Taylor’s been in our relationship from the beginning. I never understood his power over you. I had hoped that my love for you would have been enough.”

  “I’ve never doubted your love for me.”

  “I think you have.” This is it. There’s no place else for us to go. We’re impossible. Maybe we were impossible from the beginning and I was too blind to see. “What if I moved to Claredon with you? It would give us a chance —”

  “Why now?” Malachi looked at Cole with wide-opened eyes. “Why would you move to Claredon now? Besides, you’re entrenched here. Your friends are here, and they depend on you. And your work —”

  “I quit my job,” Cole said boldly.

  “Whatever compelled you to do something so utterly foolish?”

  “I want this to work.” Cole slipped his hands out of his pockets and sat back down on the sofa. “I feel like I’m missing something, that you’re not in fact being honest with me, at least not completely. I mean, how can you say you still love me but not want to be with me?”

  Malachi said, “I slept with Chad,” and held his gaze to Cole’s.

  Cole looked confused. “I know. You told me about that when we first got together.”

  Malachi was shaking his head. “After walking in on you and Jeremy, I was hurt, and I didn’t know where to go or what to do. I had to get away. When I left here that morning I ended up at the train station. I went to London before I went to Sarah’s. I knew what would happen if I went to Chad, and I didn’t care. I needed to feel like someone loved me, that I was actually real.” He bit down on his lower lip. “And I spent the last two weeks with him again. I couldn’t come back here. I couldn’t face you, not after —”

  “You lied to me?”

  There was a long silence. Malachi held his gaze to his lap and breathed deeply. He wanted to remain calm, in control. At least Malachi had been honest with Cole, and that h
ad to mean something. What surprised Malachi was that in confessing he did not feel remorse or guilt. He felt relief, as if he had, for the first time in his life, been true to himself.

  Cole closed his eyes, trying to check his tears and imagining himself elsewhere. Malachi had dealt Cole the worst blow imaginable, and a deep local pain swarmed over Cole’s body. It was too much, unbelievable. Was it real? Could this really be happening? Cole felt himself trembling and wanted to scream.

  “So is that why you’re really leaving, to be with him?” Cole opened his eyes but couldn’t look at Malachi. “Do you love him?”

  Malachi looked ruefully at Cole. “Yes, I love Chad, but I’m not in love with him, if that’s what you want to know.”

  Cole said, “I never slept with Jeremy,” and rubbed his moist eyes.

  “But if I hadn’t walked in when —”

  “That doesn’t matter. It’s not about what ifs.” Cole was shaking. “For the last two months I’ve been beating myself up for being weak.” He was almost shouting. “All the while you were the one fucking around.” Tears streamed down his face.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Are you?” Cole, gritting his teeth, looked menacingly at Malachi. “Christ, Malachi! All you had to do was come to me when you started to feel like things were falling apart between us. We could have talked about it.”

  Malachi rolled his eyes. “Would you have listened?”

  “Yes, if I’d been given the chance,” Cole said, stoically, and stood. He walked unsteadily to the other side of the room, blinking back tears. The weight of an unexpected loss hung over the room, the type of loss that cuts through to the core, makes breathing difficult. The sun trickled into the room in patches, through the oak tree in full bloom outside the living room window, casting a sort of hypnotic spell over the room. Cole clasped his hands together behind his head and closed his eyes. What could Cole say to Malachi now? Cole felt vehemently betrayed by the one person he had trusted. Cole let his hands fall to his sides, opened his eyes and turned around to face Malachi. “I don’t want to live in a world without forgiveness.” He tied his face up in knots. “What’s so funny?”

  Malachi, smirking, dropped his gaze. “I’m not laughing at you. It’s just, Sarah said something very similar, that’s all.” He drew in a deep breath, held it a moment and then blew it out through his nose. Malachi stood. “Look, I, I’m going to unpack, move some of my things into the guest bedroom.”

  Cole took a step forward. “I never said you had to leave.”

  “Cole, I can’t seriously stay here, not after…”

  Cole took another step forward and reached for Malachi’s hand. “Let’s take some time to get to know each other again, to get close, to feel at home. I’d still very much like to travel with you, tour around France like we planned.” Cole let go of Malachi’s hand and touched his hand to Malachi’s face. “Come home with me.”

  Malachi edged sideways, and he went to speak but said nothing, hunched his shoulders, and withdrew from the living room. He collected his luggage from the foyer and made his way upstairs. In the guest bedroom, Malachi tossed his suitcase and attaché on the bed and sat down. He stretched out on the bed, his left leg resting on his suitcase, his right hand cupped to the back of his head, and stared abstractly at the ceiling. Malachi could see the hurt in Cole’s eyes, the penetrating wound of having been betrayed, and that was the worst of all. Cole was right, they had built a home — together — everything they both had wanted. Had it been needlessly and carelessly broken up? Malachi could see Cole standing before him four years earlier. Cole’s hairy bronze cyclist’s legs spread slightly apart and arms folded across his chest, and Cole’s intent, penetrating stare. It was funny, when Malachi thought about it now, that he had tried to resist Cole then, hold Cole at bay, but had eventually fallen under Cole’s spell.

  His eyes swelled with tears as the full weight of what was happening to him, to his life, bore down on him. Malachi had been sincere — he had gone to Chad intentionally but had never meant to hurt Cole, to betray him so. Malachi had, in fact, wanted to keep that a secret but he had never lied to Cole, and to have kept that from him would have been just as criminal. How could he possibly still want me to stay? When Malachi imagined himself in Cole’s place, there would have been no hesitation in asking Cole to leave. But wasn’t that what Malachi loved about Cole — his generosity and selflessness? And Cole’s deep belief in love as a saving force?

  Malachi sat up and wiped at his eyes. He listened. The quasi-silence fended off the chromatic dissonance of his world, and he wondered if Cole was still in the house or if he had left. Malachi wasn’t sure if he could face Cole again, if he could look into those narrow blue eyes without being completely overwhelmed by grief and remorse. And guilt. Perhaps it would be better if I just left. Malachi lifted himself off the bed. I could stay with Shane, cut myself loose now, move on. But Shane was a new question mark in his life. Are you in love with Shane? The question itself was laughable but… Oh… my… God… Malachi felt panicked, and cringed when he thought about how much he had really hurt Cole, how he had, unconsciously, given Cole so many reasons to doubt him, doubt his love, but was uncertain if he had learned anything.

  He left the guest bedroom and went into the hall, and stood there for a moment. He could hear the faint hum of the radio in the kitchen. He made his way to the end of the hall and went into the master bedroom. The afternoon sun streamed into the room through the window, a narrow bar of light stretched diagonally across the bed. He sat down on the edge of the bed and breathed deeply before bending forward and pressing his nose into the counterpane, the earthy scent of Joop filling his nostrils. That was the cologne Cole wore. Malachi sat up and studied the photo on the dresser: Malachi and Cole were on the back veranda, Cole hugging Malachi from behind and both of them smiling broadly. Malachi felt the impressions of the past seize hold of him, and something else — a feeling that he was, perhaps, at home after all.

  Meanwhile, Cole had come into the kitchen, quietly rummaging through the cupboards so as not to disturb the relative silence that bounced off the tempered walls. He pulled out pots and pans and a white plastic cutting board. Then he went to the fridge and piled potatoes, onions, green and red peppers, garlic and frozen chicken breasts on the island counter. He had no idea what he was going to make, he just had to find a way to keep busy. Malachi had come home, was there in the house but completely absent to Cole. There were tears in Cole’s eyes before he even sliced into the white onion, and he blinked magnificently. “How did we end up here?” he wondered. Cole was in extremity.

  Cole was still processing all that Malachi had said to him, and wasn’t sure what any of it meant, if anything. Cole had said that he wanted Malachi to stay, but Cole was no longer certain how plausible that was. The deception was too great — not that Malachi had slept with Chad, but that Malachi had pretended to be innocent. Wasn’t Malachi the one who was really coupable? If there were degrees of infidelity, like there were degrees of murder, hadn’t Malachi committed the more serious crime? Malachi had acted with premeditation, fully aware of the consequences and unconcerned all the same.

  “How long has he wanted out of this, how long ago had I lost him?” Cole wondered about the man he had hoped to love forever. Cole used the blade of the large knife to slide the chopped onion off the cutting board and into a stainless steel bowl. Cole set the cutting board and knife down on the counter and stared blankly at the photos of him and Malachi held by magnets to the fridge door. Cole was directing the movers inside the house, guiding them towards the rooms where they could place Malachi’s boxes and furniture. Cole was four years younger, giddy with joy as he felt his life finally coming together. His career had lifted off, being named Vice-President at Borden & Co. He had given the keynote address at a Customer Experience Breakfast hosted by the Toronto Board of Trade, and a few weeks later had been approached to consider running in the upcoming provincial election for the Liberal Party. Althoug
h flattered by the attention, Cole wasn’t sure he had the stomach for politics, which didn’t really interest him since he didn’t hold strong opinions on any one subject. But most important of all, Cole had succeeded at winning Malachi’s heart — excited that they would fall asleep in each other’s arms at night, and wake up to each other in the morning. Everything Cole wanted, everything he had worked so hard for — his job, his home, his life — were in ruins.

  Cole picked up a medium-size pot, filled it half-full with water and set it on the stove. Cole thought about the times when he and Malachi cooked together, and how Malachi moved graciously about the kitchen. “Not too much salt,” Malachi would often say to Cole, grimacing. “No, like this…” and Malachi would stand behind Cole, place his hand on Cole’s and slowly cut into a pepper, demonstrating the technique of julienning a pepper. “That’s it,” Malachi would say after letting go of Cole’s hand but standing close enough to him that Cole could feel Malachi’s hot breath caressing the back of his neck. Cole, his gaze fixed on the water in the pot, was hard as he thought about Malachi pressed against him. “When did we lose that intimacy?” Cole asked himself, and sighed.

  Cole turned around and froze when he saw Malachi standing just inside the kitchen doorway. Cole hadn’t heard the squeaking of the staircase as Malachi had descended the stairs. They looked at each other, with mistrust, and uncertain as to what to do or say. Yet their doubtful gazes gleamed a sort of relief, as if they both knew that a great burden had been lifted but neither of them could say for certain — and nor did it seem to matter now — if their present was the road to heaven or hell, salvation or perdition.