Chapter Twenty-Six
I didn’t sleep that night. At work the next morning, I was a zombie—physically there, mentally elsewhere. Even as I went through the motions of my day, Sailo’s departure was never far from my mind, and I couldn’t get past it.
Every time I replayed my last conversation with Sailo, it made less sense than before. The words all made sense, but the ending didn’t. Going our separate ways. Calling this thing a disaster waiting to happen.
No. No, this was the wrong ending. There was no telling if our relationship had the legs to last forever, but now? No. Too soon.
Or maybe I was just out of my fucking head? It had taken time to accept that my marriage was over, so why not this?
By the time I was home from work, I barely remembered anything since that morning. I was vaguely aware that I’d driven to the office, made a valiant attempt to be a decent employee, and slogged through traffic to get home. Now I was here, and still flailing as badly as I’d been last night.
The next day, same shit. The next, again. The one after that, I was up, out the door, and halfway to work through unusually thin traffic before I realized it was Saturday. I didn’t even have the energy to feel like an idiot. I just drove home, took off my shoes and tie, and collapsed in bed again.
My ex-wife hadn’t turned my world on its head like Sailo had. Maybe this was just because Sailo’s departure was so close on the heels of hers—insult to injury, salt in the wound, whatever.
But that didn’t make sense. I wasn’t thinking about her. I’d more or less made peace with the divorce. I was settling into the life that came after Becky.
After Sailo, though…
God. What do I do?
One thing was for damn sure—I needed some advice from someone whose head was screwed on a little straighter than mine right now. So, I pulled out my phone and scrolled through my contacts, searching for someone wiser and saner than myself.
And the minute I saw Rhett’s name, I didn’t hesitate to send him a text.
You busy tonight?
He didn’t respond. After ten minutes, I decided I’d had my answer. Time to see what Netflix had to offer tonight. Something funny? Maybe a horror movie?
A good twenty minutes later, though, Rhett texted back:
Sorry, didn’t hear my phone. Free tonight. What’s up?
Oh, thank God. After a few back-and-forth texts, we agreed on a bar a few streets over from his place, and an hour later, Rhett slid into a booth across from me.
“Hey,” he said. “How are you doing?”
“I’m all right.” Liar. “Where’s Ethan?”
Rhett chuckled. “Sabrina dragged him out shopping for baby stuff.”
“Ethan? Really?”
“Yeah.” He shook his head, still laughing. “He made the mistake of telling her he can spot shoddy furniture construction from a mile away, so now he’s been recruited to help her furnish the baby’s bedroom.”
“Poor sap.”
“Yep. Teach him to open his big mouth.” Grinning wickedly, he added, “I’ve done my time going to Babies ‘R’ Us and all that. It’s his turn.”
“Smart move.” I chuckled, but it took some effort.
And judging by the way he eyed me, his grin fading, Rhett heard it.
“Something going on?” he asked. “I get the feeling this isn’t just a friendly beer.”
“I could, um…” Why do I feel like such an idiot? “I think I could use some advice.”
“Sure. What about?”
“Well…” I hesitated, struggling to even put the words together. “Sailo and I split up.”
“Wow. Really? Shit.” He held my gaze for a moment. “What happened?”
“That’s the part I’m still trying to figure out.” I sat back and told him about Sailo dropping the bomb on me. “Up until that night, everything was great. Shit, we even went on a double date with Mark and his boyfriend the night before.”
“With—” Rhett blinked. He put up his hands. “Back up, back up. First, your son is gay?” He lowered his hands again. “And second, you went on a double date with him?”
I nodded. “And then the next day, Sailo…” I gestured in the air, as if to say, do the math.
“Out of the blue?”
“Out of the blue.” I drew lines in the condensation on my beer glass. “Everything seemed great that night. I mean, it was an awesome night. Not just dinner with my kid, but me and Sailo afterward. It was…” Remembering the sex we’d had prickled my neck with goose bumps and twisted my stomach with renewed sadness. “I thought everything was fine.”
“Did he say why?”
“Yeah, he…” A mix of guilt and shame knotted in my gut. Everything was fine? No, it wasn’t, and I only had myself to blame. Shoulders sagging, I said, “He said things were moving too fast. That it was doing what rebound relationships do—getting way too intense, way too quickly, which—”
“Inevitably ends in disaster,” Rhett said softly.
I nodded again.
He watched me for a moment, absently thumbing the side of his glass. “Was it going too fast?”
“I…” I rubbed my eyes. “Fuck, I don’t even know. It was moving fast. I just don’t know if I agree with him that it was too fast.” Lowering my hand, I asked, “How do you even know if it’s really too fast?”
Rhett shook his head. “You’ve got me. Falling for someone usually happens on its own time. Some people take years. Some people take one date.”
“And some people think they’re falling, but they’re really just getting over the person who just dumped them.” I lifted my beer glass almost to my lips, and right before I took a deep swallow, grumbled, “Fuck knows how I’m supposed to tell the difference.”
“I don’t think anyone can tell,” he said with a shrug. “The only time you know for sure about a relationship is when you’re looking back after it’s over.”
I raised my eyebrows. “That’s a cynical way to look at it.”
“Think about it.” He wrapped both hands around his beer, his wedding ring clinking quietly against the glass. “How many people are blindsided by divorces and breakups? We all think we’ve got our shit together, but there’s no guarantee that any of us are going to make it to the next anniversary.” His shoulder lifted slightly. “I firmly believe Ethan and I will be together until we’re dead, but I thought that before we almost called it quits for good. If that separation taught me anything, it’s that we can’t take a damned thing for granted.”
I chewed on that for a moment. “How do you know when to give up and when to try again, though?”
Rhett shook his head again. “I wish I knew. Sometimes you’re beating a dead horse. Sometimes you’re bringing something back to life that will probably last.” He held my gaze. “I guess what you have to think about is what you had before you split. Is having that again worth the risk of another round of feeling like you are now?”
“Yeah,” I said without hesitation. “It is. Right now, I just…it doesn’t feel right.”
“That’s rough. So are you guys still talking, or…?” His upraised eyebrows finished the question.
Shaking my head, I ran my finger around the rim of my glass. “I don’t think so.”
“That’s a shame.”
“It is, and it’s…” My shoulders were suddenly as heavy as the ball of lead in my gut. “Can I be completely honest? Even if I might sound pathetic?”
No judgment in his eyes, Rhett nodded. “Sure.”
“To be honest…” I swallowed. “This hurts more than when Becky kicked me out. Shit. Maybe Sailo’s right. Maybe I was in way too deep.”
“Or maybe you’d checked out of your marriage.”
“I…” Had I?
Rhett sat up a little, resting his elbows on the table and clasping his hands loosely between them. “It seems like you’ve figured out a lot about your marriage after the fact. Stuff you didn’t see or know about before the divorce.” His brow creased, and he softly added, “Maybe you and Becky need to sit down and talk some of those things over.”
“Like what? We’re done. Why pick at the scab?”
He shrugged. “Maybe there’s stuff you both need to work through so you can move on completely. I mean, when Sabrina’s mom and I split up, we could barely talk to each other for like five years before we finally decided enough was enough. Then we hashed a few things out, buried the hatchet, and now we get along fine.”
“I’m assuming it’s easier said than done.”
He whistled. “Oh, yeah. But by then we’d been apart for a while, and we’d started seeing other people. I was already with Ethan by then. And I guess enough time had gone by for us to be objective about it. We could see the things we’d each done wrong, and I mean, maybe hindsight really is twenty-twenty, but it was a lot easier to see that our marriage had been coming apart long before we broke up.” He picked up his drink. “Something about that, it made it easier to put the whole thing to rest. Like, it really was something that needed to end because we just weren’t meant to be, not because one or both of us were horrible people.”
I sat back, exhaling. “That was a few years later, though. We’re not even out of the same calendar year.”
“And it would’ve been a hell of a lot better if we’d done it sooner.” He sipped his beer and muttered, “Trust me. And sometimes after you split with someone, the best way to make peace with it is to bury the hatchet with them, and then move on. Without them.”
I winced.
He pushed his glass away. “The thing is, you’ve raised your kids. It isn’t like you have to do a custody switch every other week. If you can’t see eye to eye, then maybe…” He held my gaze, his brow pinching slightly, and his tone was soft as he added, “Maybe a clean break is what you both need.”
Fuck. Splitting up with Becky had been painful enough. The thought of not having her in my life at all, of moving on alone without the woman who’d been there for better than half my life, was a tough one to swallow.
“It’s hard to imagine life without her.”
“I know. But if you two have to close the book on each other, maybe you can do it peacefully. You’ll always have all the good memories of her. You’ll always have the kids you raised together.”
“That’s true. Still…”
“It doesn’t mean either of you failed, or that you’re bad people. It might mean you’re just ready to move on.” He held my gaze for a moment, then added, “And I’m not saying it’s easy. It’s never going to be easy to let someone go after you’ve spend that much of your life with them.” He grimaced. “Believe me—I get it.”
“I appreciate the advice,” I whispered.
Silence fell, but it didn’t last long. “It might not hurt to talk to Sailo too.”
His name hit me in the gut. I pushed back the lump rising in my throat. “What’s the point? It was a fling. It’s over.”
Rhett tilted his head, eyeing me as if he saw right through me. “I don’t think that was a fling, and I don’t think you do either.”
I squirmed under his scrutiny and held onto my cold glass for dear life. “What makes you say that?”
“Well, for one thing, how quickly you said you’d be willing to risk hurting like this again if it meant giving what you had another shot.”
“That could just mean I’m not good at letting go.”
“It could, but…” His eyes lost focus for a good minute. Then he looked at me again. “Do you remember when we all went to dinner with you and Sailo? Before you moved?”
“Yeah.”
“You remember when he walked in, and you looked at me and asked what I was grinning about?”
I nodded.
Rhett idly ran his finger along the rim of his glass. “The thing is, I knew Sailo had walked into the restaurant before you said anything. The minute he was in the room, you changed. You just…came to life in a way I’d never seen before.”
An image flashed through my mind of Mark’s eyes lighting up when Devon had walked in for our double date, and I shivered at the memory of my heart speeding up when Sailo walked in the night Rhett was talking about.
“I was infatuated,” I said. “He was…the first guy…”
Rhett’s eyebrow arched.
I looked away and sighed. “I think I’m better off just letting him go. He’s probably right. It went too far, too fast, and I…”
“Who are you trying to convince?” he asked softly. “Me? Or yourself.”
I didn’t have an answer.
“I think you need to talk to him.”
So I can listen to him tell me why I’m an idiot and this is a disaster and—
“Greg.” Rhett’s voice was gentle and soft. “Talk to him. He might not be willing to give it another shot, but you won’t know unless you talk to him. Trust me—I know what I’m talking about.” A strange undercurrent worked its way into Rhett’s tone, like a mix of hurt and desperation. “Ethan and I were well on our way to moving on without each other, and one conversation put us back on the right path.” He swallowed. “Don’t think for a second I wasn’t scared out of my mind going into that conversation, because I had no idea what would happen. But I can’t even put into words how many times every day I’m thankful we had it, because now I know exactly what I would’ve lost if we’d kept walking away.”
“You guys had so much more history, though.”
“Doesn’t matter.” Rhett dismissed the idea with a sharp wave. “You and Becky had twenty-five years of history, and you’ve said yourself there was no salvaging it. Time guarantees nothing. But…look, just talk to him. It’s better to say your piece and walk away empty-handed than to leave it unsaid and still be empty-handed.”
I tamped down the emotions aching in my chest. “I’m just having a hard time believing there’s a chance of not being empty-handed when it’s over.”
Rhett nodded. “It’s a risk. It’s not easy, but…is what you and he had worth that risk?”
I swallowed. “I don’t know. I don’t… I just don’t know.”
“Just think about everything we’ve talked about,” Rhett said. “Don’t give up on him.”
“I’ll think on it. Thanks.”
We finished our beers, and after I’d paid, headed out for the evening. In the parking lot, I sat in the driver’s seat for a while, just staring out into the night and trying to make sense of…hell, everything. In a matter of weeks, everything I knew had changed. I’d had to get used to saying “ex-wife.” I’d come out to my kids. One of my kids had come out to me. I’d been with a man, fallen for a man, and lost a man. Things were different now.
But maybe Rhett was right. Maybe I still had more to do before I could leave the past behind and move on in peace.
So I finally texted my ex-wife:
Can we meet for coffee? I’d like to talk about a few things.
* * * * *
Becky didn’t respond to my texts until later that evening, but when she finally did, she suggested meeting at the house instead of a coffee shop. Admittedly, I was grateful we weren’t going to do this in public. It just seemed like something better handled in private.
It seemed like a good idea until I was walking up the familiar porch steps the next morning.
I paused with one foot on the bottom step and gazed up at the house.
We needed to do this. I needed to do this. Didn’t mean it was going to be fun or easy, but what had been recently?
Besides being with—
Yes. Besides that.
I took a deep breath and continued up the steps. Becky let me in, and in silence, led me through the living room. The house seemed bare, semi-skeletal, without the furniture I’d removed. There were some new pieces now—a new sofa and coffee table, a different TV stand, even though I hadn’t taken the original. Had she gone shopping? Or was someone else moving in?
I didn’t let that thought stick and continued into the dining room with her. At the familiar table, where there were still two placemats set at the adjacent chairs at one end, we sat down. She brought us coffee, and we sipped it in silence for a couple of uncomfortable minutes.
Her brow pinched as she watched me over the top of her coffee cup. “How are you doing?”
“Better. I think.” Sighing, I shook my head. “I don’t know. I was seeing someone, but we…”
She stiffened slightly. “Oh. It didn’t work out?”
“No. I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised. This soon after the divorce, I mean.” I hesitated, wondering how far to tip my hand. Finally, I decided that as long as we were going to be honest with each other… “He didn’t want to be someone’s rebound.”
Becky’s eyebrows flicked up. “He?”
Swallowing hard, I nodded. “Yeah.”
She lowered her coffee cup and clutched it in both hands. “When did that happen?”
“I’ve known for a while. A few years.” I sat back and folded my hands beneath the table. “I guess after we split, it seemed like as good a time as any to figure out if I was just curious, or if I’m really into men.”
“I see. And…are you?”
I absently stroked my jaw with the backs of my fingers. “Yeah. I am.”
“So you’re gay.”
Part of me wanted to correct her and say I was bisexual. At the moment, though, there was only one person in this world who stood a chance of turning me on any time soon, and he was a man, so… “Yeah. I guess.”
“Oh.” She clicked her nails rapidly on the table. “This might be difficult for the kids to hear. They’re still dealing with us breaking up.”
I shifted in my chair. “They know.”
Her eyes widened. “They do?”
“Well, Kurt doesn’t. He’s been so stressed with school and the divorce, I didn’t want to add to it. But April and Mark know.”
“You told Mark?” She exhaled sharply. “Greg, for God’s sake, you know damn well he has a hard time dealing with things. Why would—”
“Just trust me, okay?” I said. “We talked. The subject came up. And he knows.”
She scowled. “How did he take it?”
Better than you could possibly imagine.
“He took it well. Really well, actually.” I wrung my hands, watching them instead of looking at her. “It gave us a reason to really sit down and talk about things.”
“Things…like?”
I gnawed the inside of my lip. I wasn’t about to out my son to his mother, so this subject was rapidly turning into a minefield. “Just life in general. I guess opening up to him gave him a chance to do the same with me.”
“Oh.” She went quiet again, the silence stretching on for an uncomfortably long time. “So.” She met my gaze, and her expression hardened slightly. Walls going up, maybe? “Well. We’re here. You wanted to talk?”
“Yeah.” I ran my toe up and down the chair leg to get rid of some nervous energy. “I’m not even sure. I guess…I don’t know, maybe I’m looking for some closure.”
“Okay. What kind of closure? I mean, what else can we say that we haven’t already?”
Nervousness prickled my spine and twisted my stomach. I pulled in a deep breath. “Well, for one thing, I’d kind of like to know…” I hesitated, forcing my voice to be soft, nonconfrontational. “How long have you and Jase been seeing each other?”
She bristled, her fingers tightening around her coffee cup. “What does that have to do with anything? You’ve been seeing someone too, so—”
“Becky.” I didn’t raise my voice. Didn’t snap. I was too damned exhausted for any of that anyway. “Just tell me the truth.”
She leaned back in her chair and pushed out a long breath. “Greg, I’m sorry. I thought about telling you the truth, but by that point, I was hurting you enough by telling you I wanted a divorce. It didn’t seem necessary, and definitely not kind, to throw that in your face too.”
I wrung my hands in front of me. “That doesn’t answer my question.”
She turned her head, setting her jaw as she gazed out the window. “I met him last year. In a…on a forum.”
All those hours of sitting on the couch watching television while she used her iPad beside me…had they…?
“We met in person in November,” she went on. “And we…” She shook her head. “Look, there’s no point in dissecting it. We were friends, and then we were more.”
“For how long?” I asked as calmly as I could.
She pressed her lips together. After a long, long silence, she whispered, “About six months.”
More heavy, uneasy silence.
Finally, I asked, “Why?”
“Why?” She tilted her head. “Why him? Or…”
“Why anyone?” I struggled to hold her gaze, but managed. “What changed between us?”
Becky looked away and focused intently on something outside the window. “I don’t know. Honestly. All I know is that it did change.”
“But…why didn’t you say anything? If I had known…”
“I tried, Greg. I… God, I tried.” Jesus, but she sounded exhausted. As if the words took all the energy she had.
“You did?”
She nodded, slowly turning her head toward me again. “I tried to talk to you. I suggested going to counseling.”
“But, when I said we should see that counselor—”
“I know.” She sighed. “There was always something else. One of the kids. The baby. It…” Another sigh, and this time, her shoulders sagged as if under a real, palpable weight. “We just never made it happen. I don’t know whose fault it is. Or if it even matters. But I just… I realized one day I didn’t want to make it work anymore.”
She might as well have punched me in the chest. And the worst part was, I believed her. Looking back now, the pattern was there. The fights were fewer and farther between. The suggestions of seeing a counselor dropped off around the time we were down to one kid left in the house. She’d checked out. I’d checked out.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “The affair, it…it wasn’t what I should have done. And I didn’t tell you about it because I didn’t want to hurt you more than I had.” She swallowed hard. “I do still love you, Greg. But what we had, it’s over.”
Hesitantly, I reached for her arm and rested my hand on it, making contact with her for the first time in weeks. “I know it is. And I still love you too. I guess I just…wanted to know.”
She nodded. “I’m sorry.”
“Me too.”
* * * * *
I’d been driving this car for four years, and I couldn’t help but stop and stare at it now, parked in the driveway in front of my ex-wife’s house. It was the same plain old sedan with the dent below the door handle where Kurt had smacked it with the passenger door of his mother’s car during one of those teenage emotional blowouts. It didn’t look quite right between the slanted white lines of my apartment complex’s parking lot instead of tucked into the two-car garage that always seemed to need cleaning.
It was things like this—the things that hadn’t changed at all—that made me realize how much my life had changed recently. I had the same old job, which I drove to via a whole new route in the same old car.
Numbly, I drove back to my place, parked, and trudged up the steps to my empty apartment. Inside, I lounged on the couch with a cold beer but didn’t taste it. I wasn’t even sure why I was drinking it. For something to do? Some alcohol to make my muddled brain even foggier? Something cold? Fuck, I had no idea. Couldn’t think of a reason not to drink it though, so…bottoms up.
So this was my life now. My marriage hadn’t been what I thought it was. My sexuality wasn’t what I’d always believed it was.
Though everything had changed, it was all settling. The ink was drying, and the shock was rapidly turning into old news.
But the one thing I couldn’t accept was the empty space that would be beside me in my bed tonight.
And it wasn’t Becky I was missing right now. She had pulled the plug on something that, I realized after the fact, had died a long time ago.
But what Sailo and I had, it wasn’t dead. My feelings for him sure as hell weren’t. Being with him meant tearing open emotions that were tied to my ex-wife. Feeling them with him and letting go of them with her. And yet it meant all new feelings that were for him and him alone. And they were completely different. Completely alien.
The easiest thing would be to write off our fling as a rebound, an experiment, some infatuation gone bad, and move on. It was quick, it was intense, and now it was over. In the past. Done and dusted. At least then I wouldn’t have to risk hearing him say good-bye twice.
Except I didn’t want to walk away. I wanted to walk right back to him, even if all these emotions threatened to tear me to ribbons like no other feelings I’d ever had.
All these years later, I still remembered what it was like to fall in love with Becky. Time had done nothing to fade the memories of staring at the ceiling at night, with a stomach full of butterflies and a mind full of that gorgeous woman who I couldn’t wait to see again.
And yet, that had nothing on what I felt for Sailo.
Falling for Sailo…hurt. Maybe because he was gone, but I could’ve sworn it was already painful before he’d said good-bye. It hurt in the way I imagined getting a tattoo hurt. Intense, almost unbearable, but exhilarating at the same time. Like a temporary sting that would be over soon, but the mark it left behind was there forever.
If this had been a rebound fling like he thought, then the pain would be over and the endorphin rush would be gone, and I’d be able to see clearly that he was right. But the pain was the only thing that remained. That endorphin rush was long gone. Sailo hadn’t been a part of my world long enough to feel so permanent, but his absence was driving me insane. Like everything else could smoothly assimilate into this new reality except the lack of his body heat beside me, the absence of his tattoo beneath my fingertips, the low timbre of his voice in the darkness.
In my empty apartment, in between wondering how drunk I should get tonight, I went through the conversation I’d had with Rhett, the one with Becky, and the last one I’d had with Sailo. Rhett was right. Becky was gone. And Sailo…
I pressed my drink against my forehead. Well. What was I supposed to do? Sit here and think about how fucked up this was, or try to do something about it?
Couldn’t hurt to try, I supposed.
I pulled out my phone. Hesitating with every letter, I wrote out the message, and then my thumb hovered over the Send button for a solid minute. This was pointless, wasn’t it? Sailo had made up his mind and said his piece. And he was right that rebounds and first times were nearly always doomed to failure, so I was probably deluding myself if I thought I could convince him this was any more than a novelty. Anything more than stupid infatuation.
But Ethan and Rhett were right too. If I didn’t talk to him, then I’d never know. If I did talk to him, there was a good possibility nothing would come of it, but at least I would know.
So I steeled myself, held my breath, and hit Send.
Can we talk?