Chapter Text
“Did I not make myself absolutely clear?” I inquired, slowly.
“I did what you asked,” Oliver countered, in a way that made me suspect he’d prepared for this talk. “Everything that you had a right to ask me, I did.”
“Everything I had a right to,” I repeated.
“I didn’t call. I didn’t come over. At least… not until your parents called me, to ask if I knew where you were, because they hadn’t been able to reach you. Everything that I did, I did for them. You can shut me out, Elio, but I care a great deal about your parents, and they care about me. You can’t ask us to stop being friends.”
“I told you not to come back here.”
“You had no right to do that.”
No right. All the peace I’d felt upon seeing him with his family was gone, and I was seething. I glared at him so fiercely from where I was sat at the piano that he actually backed up a step, raised his hands as though I had pointed a gun at him.
“Elio…”
“I hate you.”
He flinched. His expression tightened, as though he was making a great effort to keep himself under control. Slowly, he lowered his hands, and walked over to one of the green armchairs, and sat down. I couldn’t help but remember the last time we’d been here, just like this: me at the piano, him sitting down and letting the music wash over him. I wished more than anything that we could go back there; things had seemed complicated then, but I now realized that they were so, so simple.
“I don’t hate you,” I admitted quietly. “I just wish that I did.”
He nodded, understanding. “It would make things easier, wouldn’t it?”
“Do you wish that you never loved me?” I was curious.
“No,” Oliver replied immediately. “Even with how awful things have gotten, loving you is one of the best things that ever happened to me. I’ve never regretted it, not for a second. Only how I handled it.”
I glanced towards the door. “Things don’t seem that awful,” I commented. “You’re back with your family…”
Oliver laughed - a hollow, unamused sound. “My wife and I are sleeping in separate bedrooms back home. Elaine thinks I’m gay.”
“Have you tried telling her that you’re not?”
“I’ve tried. She doesn’t believe me. And every time I try to… she thinks it’s just out of obligation. Or pity.” Oliver stared off into the middle distance. “I don’t think she wants to be married to me any more.”
I despised the way the words kindled a flicker of hope in my chest. “I can’t really blame her,” I said coldly.
Oliver didn’t take offense though; merely nodded, as though he was in full agreement. He was silent for a moment, looking down at his hands. Then he said, “I really did try to let you go. I told myself that I was going to leave you alone to your life, to whatever you chose to make of it. But then you disappeared, and all I could think about was how we’d left things, and that you might be dead - that you might have died thinking that I don’t care about you.” He looked up at me, his expression desperately earnest. “And I do. Care.”
I was sick of it - sick of being told that he cared about me with words, while his actions said otherwise. So I lashed out. “I thought about killing myself,” I told him, just to see the look of devastation on his face. “A few times, actually. While I was gone. It would have been so easy, and being alive is so hard.”
Oliver looked like I’d stabbed him in the chest - or rather, like he’d just watched me stab myself. “Elio…” he began, but couldn’t seem to continue. Suddenly I felt ashamed.
“I never actually did anything,” I added hurriedly, already regretting being so open. “Just thought about it. Everyone thinks about it sometimes…”
“Don’t,” Oliver cut in. “Don’t try and spare me. I don’t deserve that. If you… fuck.” He dashed a tear from his eye angrily, and took a steadying breath. His voice was even deeper when he spoke again, thick with emotion. “If you want me to leave now, really leave, I will. I can… I can cut ties with your parents, tell them something that will make them understand. Whatever you need…”
“Oh my god, shut up. I only told you to stay away because I’m sick of you leaving me,” I snapped at him. “Every time you come back to me I’m so happy, and every time you leave it rips my fucking heart out.” My voice was shaking. “Now you’re offering to leave me again like it’s some big favor. So don’t ask me if I want you to leave because I never want you to leave, I never wanted that, but you did it anyway, and you’re going to do it again, so don’t ask me for permission just so you can feel better about it!”
I was yelling now. Probably the whole house could hear me. I brought myself back under control with great care.
“You have to choose, Oliver,” I said, speaking in a lecturing tone, as though he was one of my students who had been turning in sub-par work. “You can’t leave again and then come running back as soon as it seems like I’m in trouble, because I’m going to get in trouble again. I might get into hard drugs, or alcohol, or date someone that I really shouldn’t, or become HIV positive, or run away again, or even try to kill myself. You’ve got to accept that these are all things that might happen, and that none of them are excuses for you to come back.”
Oliver had been nodding throughout the speech, like he didn’t know he was doing it. When it was clear that I was finished, he cleared his throat, then asked, huskily, “And if I were to stay?”
It wasn’t what I had been expecting him to say, but I blinked at him in surprise for only a moment before replying. “If you stay,” I said. “I’m going to get in trouble again. I’m not going to automatically be happy for the rest of my life just because you’re around. But you will be around.”
He considered this silently. He looked out of the window, perhaps thinking of his wife and his son, who were out there somewhere. I braced for him to say, definitively, that he was going to leave, and leave for good this time. But when he spoke again, all he said was:
“I need time.”
I sighed, irritated. “You’ve had time.”
“Please, Elio. Every bad decision I’ve ever made has been something that I rushed into. Let me think this over.”
I rolled my eyes, considered his plea, and then said, “June 25th. You can have until June 25th.”
Oliver smiled a little. “Why June 25th?”
“Because ‘time’ is too vague, and I don’t usually have much going on in June.”
“OK. That’s fair.”
“Yes. It is.”
We regarded each other carefully from across the room - like two characters in a Western who were pointing guns at each other, and had just negotiated a peaceful resolution, yet neither wanted to be the first to lower their gun. We both jumped when Mafalda rang the bell for lunch.
I moved back to Boston, and applied for another teaching assistant position. I had no interest in resuming my degree, however; I felt that I’d had quite enough of being a student. While I waited for the new school year to start in the fall, I organized all of my notes from my time in the Aosta Valley and started playing the music that I’d written while I was out there. I made an appointment with my cousin and he sorted out a treatment program for my hand, giving me exercises to strengthen it and restore flexibility.
“You’re lucky the break happened while you were young,” he told me. “It’ll be easier for you to bounce back.”
Oddly, I did not think about Oliver much in the interim months. Knowing that his decision had a date on it made things easier. It meant that I was not constantly waiting for the phone to ring, or waiting for a knock at the door. Occasionally I wondered what he was doing - if he had worked things out with his wife, if they were still living together, if they were sleeping together again. But I felt at peace with the fact that things were out of my hands now. Whatever Oliver did, it would be his own choice.
The evening of June 24th rolled around. I was trying to take my mind off things - playing a fiddly little guitar piece that I’d composed, and occasionally cursing my still-stiff fingers for not obeying my wishes. I’d moved to a smaller apartment, on the top floor of a building, with sloping ceilings and a small balcony where I would sit on warm evenings, reading or writing or practising my music.
I lost track of time, and didn’t realize how late it had gotten until I heard a knock at the door and frowned, looking at my watch.
It was midnight.
I stopped breathing for a second or two.
There was another knock at the door.
I shifted my papers off my knees and stood up from the couch, approaching the door like it was some wild animal. I leaned my forehead against it for a moment and just breathed, my hand on the handle, imagining another forehead pressed to the other side of the door, barely an inch away.
I opened the door.
Oliver was out of breath from climbing the stairs, but he was smiling.
“You didn’t say what time…”
I dragged him through the doorway, crashing my mouth against his, cradling his head. He kissed me back, desperately, making soft noises in the back of his throat. He broke away briefly, and panted:
“I decided…”
“I know,” I said impatiently. “I know.”
Later, much later, we lay entwined in my bed, my head on Oliver’s chest, listening to his heartbeat. He stroked his fingers idly through my hair, his other hand resting on the bare, damp skin of my back.
“I was in the mountains,” I murmured sleepily. “The Aosta Valley.”
He knew immediately which period of time I was referring to. “What’s it like there?” he asked softly, the words rumbling in his chest, vibrating against my cheek.
“It’s peaceful. Cold, but peaceful.”
His hands caressed me, slowly, thoughtfully. “Do you want to go back?”
I smiled, and his chest hair tickled my nostrils. “Maybe one day,” I said. “But I like it here, in Boston.”