Total pages in book: 24
Estimated words: 23821 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 119(@200wpm)___ 95(@250wpm)___ 79(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 23821 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 119(@200wpm)___ 95(@250wpm)___ 79(@300wpm)
That was nice. “I appreciate that, Graham.”
“It just sounds like this Varro guy is bad news. Like he brings you down.”
“No, he doesn’t,” I said softly, and even I could hear the adoration in my voice. “He’s been there my whole life.”
“Until now.”
“Yeah.”
He cleared his throat. “You missed him.”
“I did.”
“Brian,” he sighed. “I need you to let me come over there.”
“Just to have you leave when he gets here? That makes no sense.”
“You’re not hearing me.”
All the men in my life had gone insane. “Can I just call you tonight?”
“No,” he said after a moment. “I’ll call you next week, all right? See if you’re still in the same place to start something with me.”
That was fair. I had no idea what I was or wasn’t going to be like even in another thirty minutes let alone a week from now. Varro was coming to see me. What would my life look like after he showed up?
“I want to be with you, Brian, but if you’re not ready to take that step… what am I supposed to do?”
“I understand.”
“No, Brian, that’s not what I want. I don’t want you to understand and be nice and let me walk out of your life. I want you to fight. I mean, do you ever do that? Do you ever yell and make demands and hold someone else accountable? Christ, do you ever get mad? Do you ever get excited or frantic or—”
“You’ve seen me be all those things. Of course I—”
“No,” he said firmly. “I’ve barely seen any emotion from you at all. At first I thought it was cool that you were so unflappable, but now I see it for what it really is.”
“And what’s that?”
“You just don’t care.”
“You’re wrong,” I said flatly.
“No. I mean, you explained about the foster homes before—”
“Wait, now—”
“And maybe that’s what you did. Maybe that’s how you handled it. You just shut down and turned off and insulated yourself from—”
“I’m gonna hang up now, Graham, before I say something I shouldn’t.”
“Even in bed you’re so sedate, so calm, so… I don’t normally have to ask a lover if the sex was good—I can usually tell.”
He was judging me, and I hated it. “Bye, Graham.”
“Wait. Just—”
“I’m sorry I wasn’t exciting enough for you.”
“Whatever. If that’s what you heard, that’s what you heard. But you can’t go through your life with everything being fine, Brian. I’ve never met anyone as calm as you. You’re not truly passionate about anything.”
“Then why even pursue a relationship with me?”
“Because like I said, the world through your eyes is a wondrous place full of possibility and hope, and of course, there’s the challenge to see if I could actually bring some life and heat out of you. I feel like if you just let yourself love and be loved in return, then—”
“Thanks, Graham, I appreciate the advice. Why don’t you call me next week, and we’ll have lunch or something.”
“Brian?”
“Okay?”
“Yeah. I’ll try and remember to do that,” he said and hung up.
I swallowed down the quick ache and then braced my hands behind me. Stretching my legs out in front of me on the three steps, I sat there and waited for Varro Dacien to show up.
SIX
The cab stopped in front of my house, and when he got out, my whole body suffused with warmth as I stared at the man.
And just like that, it was official.
Even if we spent the rest of our lives on opposite ends of the earth, I still had no business dragging any poor, innocent man into the devastation that was the remains of my heart. I had given it to Varro when I was too young to know better, and there it would stay. Nothing to be done about it. Graham was right. I needed to be loved, but there was only one person I wanted that from, and I was looking at him.
“Hey,” Varro called over to me as he walked up to the white picket fence, opened the gate, and then closed it behind him, his eyes never leaving mine the whole time.
“Isn’t my house awesome?” I threw out just to be saying something.
“I like that you have a yard.” He smiled, stopping to look around. Even close to downtown, the homes, because the neighborhood was old, had decent-sized front yards. So where I was, on the porch, sat a good fifty feet back from the sidewalk and under the wide overhang from the roof. We didn’t get a lot of traffic on my street, which was nice. “Did you put the cobblestones in, or were they here when you moved in?”
“I did it.”
“Nice. You did a good job.”
“Well, the contractor did, right?”
“Sure.”
It was weird. It felt odd, stiff, static—we were having the most polite conversation ever. All at once I realized I had to return us to normalcy.