Sleeping with the Enemy

by Seth King

  My heart rips further. Oh, Thomas…I should’ve known you would leave again, just like last time…

  “So, yeah. Yesterday was fun. Really fun. But I’ve been thinking, now that I’m sober. And this…it can’t go on any further. When we go home, everything needs to go back to normal.”

  I just stare at him. I don’t know what to say. He steps a little closer, but his body language is still totally distant.

  “Wade. Please don’t look at me like that. I am a division one athlete. Do you…do you get what that means?”

  My face falls further. “You tell me.”

  “Come on. You know what it means. I don’t have to say it. Are there even any openly gay players, on any male sports teams?”

  “I…I don’t know. I haven’t heard of any…”

  “Exactly. There are aren’t any.”

  “Okay. So…so what are you saying?”

  Finally he faces me straight-on. “I’m sorry. But I can’t…do this. Let’s just nip this thing in the bud before it goes any further. This was fun, I’ll be the first to admit it. More than fun. But it’s not reality. We let the altitude get to our heads. We let the snow and the wind and the fire take us away. We got hypnotized. We weren’t thinking.”

  “Exactly, Thomas. We weren’t thinking. For the first time in four years, we were feeling.”

  He looks away. I think I see sadness in his eyes. Or maybe it’s just indignation. “I know. But I’m going home, and things have to go back to normal.”

  “But you gave me those Valentine’s gifts…”

  “And I shouldn’t have done it. I was carried away, and I was reckless, and I shouldn’t have gone that far. And I’m sincerely sorry. I take full responsibility for that.”

  “And…and you held me all night…”

  “I’m sorry for that, too. I can’t even – whatever. Regardless. It can’t go into the future. It just won’t fit.”

  “Why does this matter? Why are you thinking that far ahead?”

  For the first time, his façade breaks a little. “Well…why aren’t you? We’re going to have to cross this bridge one day…”

  “Just say what you want to say,” I say as a turn away again. “Just spit it out.”

  “Wade, this has been an amazing few days, but…I just don’t know if I can do this, going forward.”

  Holy fucking shit, I am so stupid. I want to sob and scream at the same time as the truth cascades down around me: I just got used for sex for a few hours of fun. I am just like every other fucking idiot in this world who looks in the eyes of a beautiful man and thinks I’m seeing the truth.

  Really, I was just another fool. Another coward. Another person to waste my time with.

  I jump up, but he grabs at my arm. I whip it away.

  “No. Don’t touch me. Fuck, I am so dumb.”

  “Why? Wade, I’m not – I wasn’t saying we had to, like, stop talking immediately, or anything. God, maybe I don’t even know what I was saying, really…”

  “Well you said it. What are we going to do, stop talking in a few weeks, after we’re more attached than today? Maybe you’re right. Let’s end it now. Are you sure you don’t want to use me for one last sex session, though?”

  His eyes change. “Stop. I didn’t say any of that…”

  “I know exactly what you said. I understood every word. And I agree.”

  And with that I flee to my room, my eyes burning. And soon I realize I don’t need this, either. I thought I did for one surreal, sublime moment, but I didn’t. I never did.

  I think back to my only big breakup I’ve ever had. Dating Ann, this girl who used me, kept me at her beck and call, stopped talking to me for weeks and then would text me out of nowhere, wanting sex and knowing I’d be unable to resist her – I couldn’t deal with that again. I just wouldn’t survive. Not emotionally, at least.

  And that’s how Thomas would be with me. I want this more than anything right now – but what I learned after my breakup with Ann is that you should never want anything more than you want to be okay. Maintaining my mental health in that grief battle took every ounce of fight I had. I can see it so clearly now – if I went down this path, I might never recover.

  Right?

  Ugh. Just as quickly, I waffle back to wanting him. I just got him back, after all, and I can’t give him up again. I can’t. We would be perfect together. Yesterday was a glimpse of what we could have, and it was wonderful. We could have the best of every world – we could be best friends and have crazy-hot sex, too. We could be companions and bedmates. All he has to do is want it.

  But he doesn’t. And I have to remind myself of that. What happened to Ernestine scarred both of us forever, and that is so clear now.

  So finally I take the deepest sigh of my life and decide he’s made the right decision. All I wanted to do was find a way back to his wild heart, but we stopped just short of the finish line, the turning point. Oh, well. We’ve got to get back to how it was. He’s leaving. And I’ll learn to get by without him. I did once. I can do it again. There is no other option.

  At the end of the road, I will turn and walk in a different direction. I will learn. And I will be okay. For some reason that silly Miley Cyrus song Wrecking Ball keeps coming to mind: all I wanted to break down all his doors. All I did instead was explode the situation and make him clam up and shut those doors for good.

  And all at once, I realize something else: I’m running out of time. I don’t have forever. Ernestine didn’t, and I don’t, either. She lived out her last days being the person she knew she was in her soul. If my bus goes off the road tomorrow and I die, I don’t want my last breaths to be spent with the knowledge that I waited too long, that I never became who I was supposed to be. I don’t even know who that person is yet, but after yesterday, I’ve clearly got a lot of thinking to do. Years of it, probably.

  But the message in my dream, wherever it came from, was correct – yesterday was a glimpse into something I desperately want to pursue, even if it’s not with Thomas. To me, the future is a bunch of shadowy figures moving around in a foggy window. But I do know that starting today, I want to figure out how to un-fog that window. No matter what it takes.

  I don’t know what I’m going to do when I get home. But I do know I don’t want to be this anymore.

  So it’s over. We pack separately, not speaking. And I am not overwhelmingly sad, just resigned. Defeated, kind of. But I don’t even have to wonder what will happen, because I know exactly what will play out. I’ve done it before. I will walk out of this condo devastated and holding in a gust of tears, and then I will go home and scream into my pillow, crying in my bed over him like I did four years ago. And the first few days will be a desolate hell, like how the days after a funeral are the worst of the whole grief process because all the action is gone and you have to get back to your real life and stare the truth in the face.

  So in the weeks and months to come, I will mope. I will try to jog, but decide on wine instead. I will descend. But one day it will get a little better. And the next day will be a little better than the one before. Then one day I will look around and realize that I am still alive – the second loss of Thomas didn’t kill me. I stayed alive, and I will be so fucking strong because of it.

  I know all that because I did it once already. I mourned Thomas while I had to pretend to hate him, pretend I didn’t even know him. I will survive. But right now, all I need to focus on is getting out of this Godforsaken town forever. This whole town feels like Thomas now. It has been stained. And I will never come back.

  We meet in the foyer. How is it that only one day ago I was arriving here, full of wild hope? I guess I was right – I really was sleeping with the enemy…

  I can’t ride back with him, the thought alone kills me, so I’m waiting an hour for the second bus. I assume he knows.

  “Wade,” he says when we’re both ready to leave, but I look away. “Wade. Come here. I didn’t want to not say goodbye. Will you just…hug me
?”

  I look at him, and I feel so alive in his eyes, it steals all the air from my lungs. For posterity, for when I am alone and old one day, I drink him in and photograph him with my eyes. I take in his slightly acne-scarred skin, his short, curly hair, his chipped front tooth. We got so close, but we just couldn’t make it happen. Oh, well. If anything I just feel bad for him. He’s so afraid. He will never get beyond the ghost of Ernestine.

  I walk forward and just let him envelop me.

  “God,” he breathes. “I’m sorry again. Life is just so…weird, isn’t it?”

  “Ha. You’re telling me.”

  I pull away.

  “Hey,” he says. “Maybe, in the future…”

  Indecision swims in his eyes.

  “Yes, Tata?” I ask.

  “Just…take care of yourself, Wadey. And if you ever…”

  And then he closes his mouth, turns for the door, and leaves. And that’s that. All of it is over now.

  I grab my bag, feeling one million years old all the while. I turn around and scan the condo: I let my eyes fall on the stack of wood, the burned-out fireplace, the room where we finally came together and made love for the first and probably last time. I take it in, breathe it in, for the long haul.

  We will go so many places in this world. We will surprise and wound and astonish each other, all of us. Thomas just wounded me, down to the bone. But the only thing we can do at the end of the road is turn and find a new road. That is life. That is being alive.

  And so I turn off the light and get on with this life of mine.

  Six Months Later

  Facebook Activity Log

  August 22, 10:51 pm

  Wade James is now interested in: Men and Women

  117 reactions, 52 comments, 2 shares

  Epilogue

  One Year After Beech Mountain

  Valentine’s Day

  “Wade!”

  The voice stops me in my tracks. (I never knew why they used that phrase until now – it’s like a train conductor inside me yelled “stop!” and threw on the brakes.) I tell myself it can’t be him, but it is. The sound of it makes me see snow-covered pines, icy hills rolling into the distance, a ski mountain towering above a quaint little lodge…

  Then I turn and slowly face the man who has been in my dreams for three hundred and sixty-five days. For some reason he smiles at me, hope (or something like it) burning in his eyes. And I try to smile back.

  Time is such a funny thing. Here I stand, one year after getting left alone in a condo by Thomas Harrison McPherson, and yet I am alive. I crashed, of course, I broke, just as I knew I would, but then the funniest thing happened – I survived. I moved on, somewhat. Things got bad, but they always get better. Everything changes, but most things stay the same. I’m alive. I have air in my lungs. Thomas was my twin, and I knew I would never get that back again. But I would find other things, because of what I’d had with him. We had the kind of connection that, even if it leaves, changes your bones forever. He threw me the curve ball of my life, and I was never really the same.

  I always knew Valentine’s Day was about love. I just got it all wrong – sometimes, it’s about starting the journey to love yourself. My whole life up until then had been about trying to figure out who I was, in relation to who the world was telling me I should be. I knew who I was to my mom, to my teachers, to my friends. But who was I to me?

  I knew I could never go back to being who I was with Thomas. But I could become someone new. And that’s what I did. That’s what I became. New. That taste of him, that glimpse of what living authentically could be like, opened up my eyes to a whole new world. I wanted a man to hold me like that again; I wanted to bathe in his affection the same way again. I didn’t act immediately, of course, because of how conservative my environment was. But after graduation, I started making new friends. I stopped ignoring the men who would hit on me at restaurants sometimes. I started reading novels about gay men on my Kindle. I got wine drunk and then casually “came out” on Facebook as bisexual, but I forgot to hide it from my timeline after I made the update, and of course the news spread like a winter cold.

  And then two months ago, I went on my first public date with a guy.

  Nothing happened, of course, and all I did the whole time was think about Thomas. And I haven’t even stopped seeing girls, because at the end of the day I think I still like them, too. But thanks to Thomas, my whole life is starting to look different. For the first time in my life, I no longer wake up in the morning and dread the day in front of me. I am thrilled for the future, and that makes all the difference in the world.

  One year has passed since that bus arrived to take me home. But that’s where I feel like I am now – at home, inside my own skin. Or getting closer to that point, at least. For the first time in my life, I appreciate myself. Thomas didn’t love me, but now, I love me. And everything starts from there.

  “Um…hi there. What are you doing in town?”

  His eyes twinkle at me. He looks different, but the same – just as I’m sure I look. I didn’t move, though. He did, as soon as graduation was over. He took a job teaching P.E. at some high school outside Atlanta. Sometimes I still pray for him at night.

  “Just got home for a little winter mini-break. I was hoping I’d run into you. What’s going on with you?”

  What’s going on? I ask myself. There was a hole in my life for three months. I saw you on the sidewalk on a morning run, I looked down the hall at school and you standing there, smiling. But it wasn’t you. It would never be you.

  But I try to stay calm. He looks…nervous, weirdly. Or does he? I still can’t totally figure him out, and never could.

  “Um…stuff,” I begin.

  “I know,” he says a little bashfully. “I, um…I saw your Facebook thing, a few months ago. Your…little life update. Congrats, Wade. I’m really happy for you.”

  Despite myself, I melt. It’s still a little awkward to talk about in person, but I’m grateful nonetheless. “Aw, thank you. Thank you very much. And I saw on Facebook that you’re enjoying Atlanta?”

  He stares at me, distracted or something. I was glad he moved – it meant I didn’t have to. Truthfully, I would not have been able to stay in the same town as Thomas. I would’ve lost my ever-loving mind.

  “Oh, yeah, yeah,” he says. “I am. It’s okay – maybe a little lonely, though. I’m, um…I’m back for a bit, though, like I said.”

  My insides rise probably six inches. I feel my posture straighten, too. He’s back. Thomas is back. “Cool!” I say.

  “Yeah, and what about you?”

  “Well, I really did the writing thing – I’m going to grad school. I’m pursuing it. Isn’t it crazy?”

  His face opens up like a doorway. “I’m so – God, I’m so happy for you. That’s amazing. It really is.”

  “Yeah. The student loans are wonderful, too. I’ll be paying them back until I’m in a nursing home.”

  He just stares at me. It’s getting to the point where we’re either going to have to walk away, or maybe talk about meeting up to chat, or something. Would that be stupid of me, though? Am I a fool even for speaking to him?

  “Wade – I’m sorry,” he says, sounding choked. “For everything that happened in that condo.”

  I wave it off. “Ehh, water under the bridge. Don’t worry about it. I still think it made for the most…interesting Valentine’s Day of my life.”

  But he doesn’t budge. “No, really. It wasn’t fair to you. I’ve been thinking, and-”

  A young woman bumps into him, then offers a muffled apology and keeps walking. But it doesn’t matter, and the moment is already ruined. I can’t face his eyes, and the overpowering truth they are slamming into me: I still love him. And I always will.

  I just have no idea what to do with that truth anymore. Nowhere to put it. Nowhere to send it. Something I had to come to terms with last year was that I hated myself. I truly hated myself, and I didn’t even know it.
Society had conditioned me to be disgusted myself – my whole life, friends hurled the word “faggot” as an insult, my parents told me to be “big and strong,” even “that’s so gay!” became a biting, one-size-fits-all critique. I had to acknowledge that my world had made me view myself with horror, and then start untangling my soul from there. I am not cured of the self-hatred society heaped on my own shoulders yet, but I am light years ahead of Thomas. I can even see it in his eyes now – he’s so lost. Oh, my poor friend…

  People rush around us, getting on with their lives. What about us, though? What will become of us, and of this magic that enveloped us when we were together? I miss my best friend.

  “Wade?” he asks, his breath catching.

  “Yeah?”

  “I need to tell you something.”

  He sways to the right a little, then catches himself and looks down. “I also…I made a mistake.”

  I don’t know what to say. My lips part as the memories come rushing back. “Oh...”

  “Yeah, I did, and I can’t…I can’t wake up into the memories anymore, like I have for a year. Can you…”

  “Yes?”

  “Fuck. I’ll just say it. Are you free? Care to grab a beer with me? It is Valentine’s Day…again…”

  I frown and smile at him at the same time. Oh, Thomas.

  Life is so hard, and nothing is guaranteed. We all go around giving away pieces of ourselves until there’s nothing left to give. We whittle our souls down to nothing. All of us are looking for the same thing, that miracle of miracles: someone to take your hand at the end of the night and just walk you home. Someone who wants to be there as much as you want them there. Someone who sees you, truly sees you for everything you are, everything you want to be, everything you never were at all.

  Thomas is not that person. But what’s wrong with a beer with an old friend, whom I happen to love very much? I know there was love here all along. That was never the problem. Fear was.