June (22 months since the biggest mistake of my life)
I knew the second I stepped off the plane at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport that I’d made the right decision. Walking up the jet bridge in the early summer heat had been the first time I’d felt truly warm since Madrid. I’d spent the entire plane ride rubbing my hands over my denim-clad thighs, the heavier material so strange after practically living in cotton sweats for the last two years. Strangely enough, it was the clothes that helped me draw a line in the sand: there was the Brandon of Speedos and sweats, and there was the world of blue jeans, thin V-neck T-shirts, and—if I let Aaron get me drunk—maybe a cowboy hat.
Aaron met me at baggage claim, and wrapping my arms around him had almost led to me breaking down right then and there, but I managed to keep it together long enough to collect my bags and get to Aaron’s beat-up old pickup before the walls came down.
It was a testament to our friendship that Aaron didn’t say a word on the drive back to his apartment. He just took my hand, gripped it tight, and let me cry until I was empty.
He didn’t once say, I tried to warn you, but he didn’t need to. It was clear in his face every time I tried to talk about Jeremy. Eventually, I just stopped talking about him.
But being back in Texas hasn’t been as bad as I expected. The heat is awful, of course, to the point where I only go outside to get groceries and go to work. Originally I thought I’d get a job, use my degree, but even the entry-level jobs want prior experience; how do I explain that I was too busy diving to get an internship my senior year? So instead I got a job at a funky little bar in Deep Ellum, where few people give a damn if I flirt with the guys for tips. Texas isn’t the best place to be openly gay, but there are pockets of sanity, neighborhoods I went to as a teenager that I get to relearn as an adult.
“It’s really good having you home,” Aaron says to me constantly. I’m staying on his couch, just like the summer after high school, and we’ve spent whole weekends reconnecting. He has a boyfriend, Xavier—a skinny black man whose hair changes color at least once a week, and who doesn’t seem to care that I sometimes curl up fully clothed with Aaron in bed, craving human comfort.
“It’s good to be home,” I respond, and it’s not entirely a lie, except for the home part.
But once I’ve cried my heart out, reconnected with Aaron, and settled into the new routine of sleep-eat-work, I’m able to finally start processing what happened.
“It’s the five stages of grief,” Xavier says to me one afternoon. Today his hair is orange, like the sun beating down outside. We’re sitting on the couch drinking Shiner—which is definitely the second-best part about being back in Texas, after Aaron—and talking.
Mostly I’m talking, because I woke up angry this morning at Jeremy, and I’ve been angry all day, and the more I think about him, the angrier I get.
“I’m not grieving.”
Xavier scoffs. “You’re totally grieving. You loved the boy, right?”
I nod, but refuse to say the words aloud.
“You’re, like, in mourning for the relationship. It’s . . . What’s it called?” He looks at Aaron, who shrugs helplessly. “Sadness, denial, anger . . . oh, I don’t know. It’s healthy, is what I’m saying.”
“It’s healthy that I want to fly to Ohio and punch him in the face?”
Aaron, being the awesome best friend that he is, scowls. “No way. You stay here . . . I want to go track him down and punch him.”
“It means you’re processing,” Xavier continues. “You were depressed, and now you’re angry. Soon you’ll be feelin’ better, I promise.”
It doesn’t seem like it. For the next few weeks, I alternate between wanting to rage, and wanting to never think about Jeremy again. Beneath the anger is a deep well of hurt, and some days I’m not sure how I’ll ever fill that hole.
But outside it keeps getting hotter, and slowly, like Xavier says, I start to accept that this is my life now. It’s going to take me a lot longer to forget about Jeremy and move on completely, but one day I wake up and the anger is just a memory. There’s still hurt—oh man, is there ever. Hurt because Jeremy shoved me away the second he got scared, hurt because I lost my team, and he promised that the team was going to be my family.
But I’m getting there.
I send Val a text with a little heart emoji. She responds back immediately with the same, and it makes me feel lighter. Maybe I don’t have Jeremy anymore, but there are some good memories to cling to.
I’m working at the bar on a Friday night, and it’s crazy as only a weekend in Dallas can be. I go table to table, grabbing beers and onion rings, smiling at the ladies and winking at the guys. My phone vibrates against my hip at half-past ten, but I assume it’s Aaron asking if I need a ride home.
When I go on break at eleven, I’m surprised to see Val’s name on the missed calls list. It’s only nine in California, but it’s still late for her to be calling. There’s a voice mail, which I ignore, pulling up my message app instead.
What’s up? I text her.
Her response comes immediately. Can you talk?
Sure.
My phone rings in my hand a second later.
“This is unexpected.”
Val laughs, and hearing her voice is equally painful and incredible. We’ve texted back and forth since she left Ohio, and I sent her a lengthy, typo-ridden series of messages while sitting in the airport waiting for my flight to DFW. Since then, we’ve kept in touch, but only ever in pixels on the screen.
I suspect we both needed the distance.
“What do you think?”
“I think a lot of things. What are you referring to, specifically?”
Val huffs in frustration. “You didn’t listen to my voice mail?”
“Nope. So fill me in.”
“I got a call from Jeremy today.”
The words throw me off-balance. While I’ve talked about Jeremy to Aaron, he simply doesn’t understand what I went through. He nods and lets me unload to him, and then hugs me and puts on Project Runway to cheer me up. But this is the first time I’ve heard anyone else say his name, and it shakes me more than I thought it would.
“Oh. That’s nice.”
Val’s laugh is not a happy one this time. “Damn it, I knew I should have called sooner.” I don’t know what to say to that, so I just wait. “He’s hurting. A lot.”
“Good.”
I spit the word out, and it feels amazing to admit it. If I’m hurting, I want him to be in just as much pain.
“He really did some damage, didn’t he?” Val’s words are soft.
I don’t dive anymore. It’s not that I can’t find a pool; there are a few in the metroplex with platform towers, and even more with springboards. It’s that the thought of diving makes me nauseous. The thought of diving alone is enough to give me nightmares. That’s what Jeremy has done to me: he’s left me alone.
“Understatement,” I say shortly.
Val exhales. “Do you have time to talk now?”
My watch says I have twenty-five minutes before I’m due back at work. “Yeah.”
“Okay. I’m going to tell you the story of the Jeremy I know.”
I slide down the brick wall out the back of the bar, and sit on the dirty cement next to the pile of cigarette butts that the smokers leave after their breaks. In my ear, Val talks about meeting a nine-year-old Jeremy, already too serious. She talks about the first kiss she ever had, and how Jeremy looked so disappointed after, as though he’d truly hoped kissing her would be enough for him. Of Jeremy realizing he was gay, and then realizing immediately after that the mere thought of those three letters shook him to his core.
“I went home with him for Thanksgiving, you remember? The fall right after you joined us in Ohio.”
I remember.
She tells me about pretending to be his girlfriend, and the fact that his family had bet on if he was gay or not. The way he tried so hard to live up to an impossible set of expectations.
“When I think about it,” Val says, “I know it could have been a lot worse. He could have turned just as vicious and cruel as his brothers. Instead, he hid his fear behind an iron will and vicious determination, and created a fiction in his head where he could be respected and loved if he could only prove himself to his dad.”
“It doesn’t work like that.”
Val hums in agreement.
“He can’t just turn off parts of himself to make someone else happy.”
“When Jeremy called me today, I got the feeling that he was finally starting to realize that for himself.”
I sigh. My watch says I have five minutes before I have to be back at work. “Val, what do you want from me?”
“I have two job offers.”
The tangent confuses me. “Congrats?”
She continues as though I didn’t speak. “One is in California, at the office I’ve been interning at while I got my certifications.” She pauses. “The other is in Ohio. Working with an Olympic athlete as his personal physical therapist. It doesn’t pay much, but it would be a great line on my résumé in the future. His coach reached out to me, actually.”
“Val.”
“When you know someone as long as I’ve known Jeremy, you learn to read between the lines. Today, Jeremy was miserable. He was lonely and unhappy, and I have no doubt that he wanted to ask me to come back to Ohio, but he didn’t. He knew he’d messed up, and he was lost and unsure how to fix it.”
“You can’t just swoop in and fix his problems for him.” I learned that lesson the hard way.
“But I can support him and help him find the strength to do what he needs to do.”
I need to get back to work, but I’m reluctant to end the call. I miss Val. I miss Andrey, and I miss Ohio. I wish I didn’t miss Jeremy, but I do miss him most of all. Still, Val is enough for now.
“Does Jeremy know you’ll be working with him?”
“I haven’t taken the job yet.” But Val doesn’t sound unsure, and we both know she wouldn’t have mentioned it to me if she wasn’t planning to. There’s another pause, but the silence feels more comforting than awkward.
Finally I push myself to my feet and dust off my jeans. “I need to get back.”
“Will you do me a favor?” Val asks.
“Sure,” I say. The last time she asked for my help, I was hesitant to provide it. But things have changed, and well, I’ve always been a jump first, look later guy.
“Find a pool and dive.”
I really need to learn to look first. “I can’t.”
“Because of Jeremy?”
“Because I spent two years diving with Jeremy, and being challenged by him. We were partners in every sense of the word, and he threw that away.”
Val doesn’t let up. “Did you love diving?”
Not like Jeremy does, but I did love it. I loved diving with Jeremy. “Yes.”
“Then find a way to love it again.”
My manager sticks his head out the back door, frowning. He catches my eye and taps his wrist, the universal signal for You’re late.
“I’ll think about it, Val.” I hesitate. “Let me know when you’re in Ohio, okay?”
She laughs. “Yeah, I will. Bye, Brandon.”