I can still feel him inside of me, even a few days later.

Things get busy at work and we don’t have time for each other. I keep wanting to talk to him, to apologize for not noticing what he went through with his asshole dad, but it just never happens.

Things slip through the cracks, back in reality.

I want to run away, back to the compound. It’s like a shadow world following me around now, teasing me with its fake reality.

I get a taste of it working on Spine’s project. I dive into it, updating Justin each night with my progress. He sends me suggestions and updates in the morning, and our working life goes on like that for a few days. We stick to Spine, and in the back of my mind, I can feel questions starting to spin.

I want them to stay away. I don’t want questions right now. I just want to work with him, to try and pretend like nothing’s the matter. Still, it haunts me, presses against me.

Why would he side with an abusive asshole like that?

I know the answer and I don’t know the answer. I can see the little boy he was back then, but what I don’t get is why he stayed away from me the whole time we were in school. Eventually he could’ve come back to me, said something to me, maybe even tried to explain what happened. Instead, there was nothing, not until he slipped back into my life all these years later.

I can still feel him, moving around inside of me. I want him back there, his hands rough against my body. I want him to control me, dominate me. I want him to hurt me, just a little bit.

Maybe I’m afraid and coming up with excuses. But it’s still there, haunting me, taunting me.

A work week passes. We’re back on a Monday, and by that Friday, I’m up late at the office again. I’m drafting some Spine ideas, trying to come up with a new, updated logo but hitting a wall.

He doesn’t call or even knock. Justin comes into my office and leans up against the doorframe.

I look up at him, a little startled.

“I knew you’d be here,” he says.

“What can I say, I’m predictable.”

“Just a hard worker.” He looks at his watch. “Let’s get dinner.”

I bite my lip. “I don’t know. I’m finishing up some stuff for Spine.”

“I know you are. Let’s go anyway.”

I hesitate, but I sense that this could be important. He watches me carefully as I close everything, make sure it’s saved, and gather my things. He’s scrutinizing me, and I feel almost naked in front of him.

It’s strange, wanting your boss to fuck you so badly you’re willing to do stupid things to make it happen.

It’s even stranger, hating him so much.

I follow him downstairs and outside. “We can walk or drive,” he says.

“Walk.”

He nods and we set off. It’s a nice night, the sun sinking down. The streets feel clean for once, although that’s probably just an illusion. We round a few corners and stop outside of a small spot with nothing but a steaming bowl on the window.

“Hope you like pho,” he says as we go in the front door.

“Love it,” I say.

We’re seated right away. The place is crowded but there’s a table for two near the window. “This place is great,” he says. “Just discovered it a few days ago and I can’t stop coming here.”

“I’ve never seen it before.”

“They don’t exactly market themselves,” he says, grinning. I look around and realize that I have no clue what the place is called.

He orders beef and I get chicken. The waitress brings a beer for him without him having to ask, which clearly makes him happy.

“Guess I’m a regular now,” he says, sipping it.

I watch him carefully. He seems like he’s in a good mood but there’s something else happening here. I know it has something to do with what happened between us on Monday, that intense moment in his office. I want him to ask him but I’m afraid it’ll just spook him, and he’ll close himself off to me again.

Instead, we eat dinner.

The food is good but I find myself watching him the whole time, unable to stop myself from wondering what he’s thinking. It’s almost frustrating, and I barely taste my food, although I taste it enough to understand why he keeps coming back here.

“Martin is on my ass about the Miner project,” he comments.

“He can be pretty abrasive sometimes.”

“Abrasive?” He laughs. “Downright rude. Doesn’t seem to care about his job.”

“I think it’s more that he knows he’s talented, and a smart manager wouldn’t fire him for being a jerk.”

His eyes sparkle at that. “Any advice on handling him?”

I give him my best rundown of Martin, and the rest of the meal is spent talking office politics. As we’re finishing up and he pays, it strikes me just how normal that was. I was a little stiff at first, a little uncomfortable, but quickly I got used to the idea of being out to eat with him, talking about regular things, and I fell into the flow of conversation.

It was a taste of what things can be like if we can just forget the past. A glimpse of the future, maybe.

But like most easy facades, it collapses as soon as I look too closely. We’re up and back outside. Instead of heading back to the office, he grabs my hand and pulls me along, smiling the whole way.

“Where are we going?” I ask him.

He shrugs. “Nowhere, really. Just thought a walk would be nice.”

“Taking me out for a walk, huh?” I grin at him a little. “Guess we’re old people now.”

“We could go to a club, get wasted, and fuck if that’s what you’re more interested in.” He says this without a hint of irony or sarcasm.

“No, thanks.”

I feel myself drifting back inside, trying to reason with something that’s unreasonable. We keep walking, past an ice cream shop full of parents with their kids, past a tiny little postage stamp-sized park, past a homeless guy sleeping under the awning of a closed laundromat.

“I always thought this would be easier,” he says softly, out of nowhere.

“What?”

“This job.”

I frown. “Why?”

“I thought that once I had it, I could just dictate what I wanted and everyone would just… do it.”

“Did you always do everything your boss told you to do?”

“Yes,” he says but immediately hesitates. “Maybe. Most of the time.”

“I never did,” I say softly. “And I loved Diane.”

He frowns at me. “What do you mean?”

I reach for the words, not sure if I even want to share this with him.

“Diane always had an image in her mind,” I say softly. “She had a vision, a really strong one. That’s what people always respected about her, that vision.”

“I always figured that would make it easier to implement.”

I shake my head. “Makes it harder, actually. It’s like… have you ever had a client that knew exactly what he wanted but couldn’t ever put it into words?”

He laughs softly. “Yeah, I have.”

“It’s impossible, right?”

“You’re right. They know what they want, but they can’t put it into words… and it’s impossible for me to give them that perfect image. I’d have to read their mind or something.”

“And you can’t do that. You have to convince them that even though you’re not doing exactly what they have in their head, you’re doing something better.”

He nods slightly, frowning at the ground. “So with Diane, she had this vision in her mind, but nobody could ever live up to it.”

“Exactly. She was good at communicating what she wanted, too. She was just a perfectionist.”

“And she could never be satisfied.”

“Right. Her big vision drove this company and really did some amazing things, but that’s just the stuff you hear about. You don’t hear about the late nights, about losing your social life to her whims, about her tearing up weeks of work because it’s not just right, about how she could insult you so casually it almost sounded rehearsed.”

“You couldn’t read her mind,” he says softly, nodding a little. “If she was so harsh, why did you love her?”

“Exactly for that reason. She didn’t compromise, not even a little bit, and everything had to be incredible. I always thought that was amazing.”

“And she made some amazing things.”

I nod. “That’s how it can be with people like her. They achieve a lot, but their personal lives, and the lives of those around them…” I trail off and shrug. “Anyway, she taught me a lot.”

“Sounds like it.” He frowns slightly and looks off into the distance. I know what he’s thinking but I don’t want to say it out loud.

He comes around to it on his own, though. “Do I really want to be like that?”

“You don’t have to be,” I say.

“I want to achieve the sorts of things she did.”

“That’s not the only way.”

“Maybe you’re right.” He laughs softly and pulls me against him. “How did this conversation get so serious?”

“I don’t know,” I admit. “I blame you somehow.”

We drift on in silence and suddenly I remember something Diane said to me. We had been working late on a project and I was fed up with her, completely sick of working, and ready to just call it quits. I wanted to scream but she just kept turning my work down. It was never good enough.

Finally, I went into her office with my last attempt. I told myself I’d quit if she turned it down, and when I handed it to her, she pursed her lips.

“What’s this?” she asked.

“The layout.”

She chewed her lip. “Not quite.” Handed it back.

I stood there, staring, and didn’t take the papers. She sighed and quirked an eyebrow.

And then said something that I’ve carried with me for a long time.

“Honey, if you have something to say, just say it. Even if it’s hard and nobody wants to hear. I never got anywhere keeping my mouth shut.”

I told her I wanted to quit. She smiled, told me to suck it up, and accepted my next attempt.

Now, walking along with Justin, I can’t keep my mouth shut any longer. Thinking about Diane has me thinking about my future. I don’t want to go through my life not asking the questions that bother me. I don’t want to stay too afraid to take a risk.

“I need to ask you something,” I say.

He shrugs. “What’s up?”

“All those years ago,” I say softly. “Why did you choose your asshole dad over me?”

I feel him stiffen as soon as the words are out of my mouth, and hearing them actually spoken out loud, I feel so petty and stupid that I wish I could just take it back or run away.

He slows down and stops. I go on for another couple steps, thinking he’ll follow, but he doesn’t.

“What did you ask me?” he says.

“I just, I mean, I was wondering.” I’m stammering like an idiot. “He was an abusive asshole, and you still ignored me. You never spoke to me, not once, not even to explain or to say hi in the halls. I was destroyed by it, Justin. I don’t understand why you’d choose him.”

He looks more defeated than angry all of a sudden. I step closer to him but he flinches away and I stop, not wanting to upset him even more.

“You want to know?” he asks softly. “You still don’t get it.”

“Help me understand.” I feel like I’m pleading, like this is what I need to finally move on.

His eyes flash suddenly, and that passion returns. It’s almost overwhelming. He comes toward me and I back away until he grabs my wrist.

“He beat me,” he says softly, pulling me against him. “Here, here, here.” He puts his palm gently against my body with each word. It’s like I’m feeling his father hitting him through his memory. “He left me whimpering in the bathroom once, unable to get up for an hour. Two days later, he did the same thing to my mother.”

I stare at him, horrified all over again, and I hate myself for making him relive it.

“You want to know why I chose him over you?” he asks softly, pain evident in his every word. “I was afraid of him. I was terrified that if I didn’t do exactly what he said, he’d beat the shit out of me.” He leans closer, lips against my ear. “Because that’s what he told me, Remi. If I didn’t ignore you, break off all contact with you, he’d hurt me, and I believed him.”

I pull back, horror reeling through me. What sick man would threaten to beat his child if he doesn’t break off a friendship? That’s the most disgusting thing I’ve ever heard. We were just children, barely little kids. The abuse is bad enough but using it to make Justin give up his only friend…

And finally, the full picture becomes clear in all its true disgusting form. Justin didn’t break my heart and scar me back then because he wanted to. He didn’t leave me because he chose his father over me.

He did it because it was either that or get beaten again, and he chose self-preservation.

I can’t blame him. In fact, I feel like a terrible person, the worst person in the world, for ever being angry with him. It suddenly clicks into focus for me and I can see how selfishly blind I’ve been all this time. I can see how stupid and absurd and whiny. I haven’t been able to get over what he did to me, but what he went through was so much worse.

I got a taste of what he went through every single day. I can’t even imagine how bad it was to live with that.

He steps away from me suddenly. I can feel his absence in the space between our bodies.

“Now you get it,” he says, reading the recognition on my face. “It took you this long, but now you see.”

“Justin, I… I would never have been angry if I had just known.”

“I couldn’t tell you, not at first. I was too afraid. And as my father got himself together and I wasn’t afraid of him anymore, I realized that I couldn’t go back. You hated me already and I couldn’t fix it. So I kept my distance, watched you and wished I could have you… but I kept my distance.”

“You should’ve… I would’ve…”

“Told me to go fuck myself?” He smirks, but there’s no joy in it, only bitterness. “We both know that if I had gone years without speaking to you and suddenly broke the streak one day for no reason, you would’ve told me to go to hell.”

I stare at him and I want to argue, but he’s right. I held that anger inside of me like a flame and I fed on it. I loved that anger so much, and it essentially replaced him in my life. I lost my best friend, but I gained that fire.

“All this time,” he says softly. “You never really saw, and I’m afraid you never will.”

Without another word, he turns and walks away.

A thousand things bloom in my throat and die on my tongue. I can’t get any of it out. I want to beg him to stop, to come back. I want to apologize, explain myself, excuse myself. I want to tell him that it’s all over, we’re not kids anymore, I was stupid. What happened between our fathers wasn’t his fault, even if I did blame him for a long time.

I can’t speak. I feel stunned, destroyed. He keeps walking, and he doesn’t look back as I’m left there on the sidewalk, alone and slowly crumbling.