“You were right,” I cried a little too loudly over the music in the bar. “This was a good idea. I feel much better now.”

I’d only had a few drinks, but it was enough to loosen me up, to shake off the tense feeling in every one of my muscles.

“Thank you for suggesting it. It’s been really fun. I can barely remember what I was so worked up about before.”

“I’m glad. It’s much better when you smile.” Gio was looking at me with concern, like he couldn’t totally get over my mini breakdown earlier, which I couldn’t blame him for. But I just wanted to put it behind me for now.

“Do you want another?” He asked.

“Actually, I don’t,” I shook my head a little too rapidly. “I want to get out of here. If that’s okay with you?” There were things that I wanted to say to him now that I was on the track of honesty, and I couldn’t do it here.

I’d made a mess of the last few times I’d tried to express the truth, and I didn’t want to make that mistake again.

“Yeah, okay.” Gio pursed his lips thoughtfully for a moment, as if he wanted to consider his next words carefully.

“Do you want to come back to mine for a bit? We can have a couple more drinks there if you’d like. It is only around the corner after all.”

I had hoped that’d happen when Gio parked up in his car outside his home. I really wasn’t ready to give him up, and I desperately hoped this would be the second (or maybe third by this point) chance that I needed.

“Sure,” I replied whilst linking my arm through his. “Sounds good.”

As we walked, my chest felt much lighter, all the emotions that I’d been bottling up for far too long began to escape their prison and creep through my veins. Maybe things hadn’t gone very well with regards to my parents, maybe I hadn’t been given the welcome home I craved, but at least now I knew how good it felt to say the truth, even if it was ugly and it resulted in violence.

“Thank you for coming to speak to me tonight,” I told Gio smilingly. “I really do appreciate it.”

“Of course. There was no way I wouldn’t come.”

“What, even if you didn’t want to hear from me again?” I meant it to come out teasingly, but it didn’t quite work that way. I actually sounded far bitterer than I meant to.

“Oh I don’t mean it like that, you know I’m only joking.” I bumped my hip against his.

“I understand why you said that, but I’m glad you came around, it really means a lot to me.”

We walked through the door to Gio’s apartment, and it hit me again how well he’d done for himself. He had everything here; it truly was incredible.

Gio held out his arm toward the couch, indicating for me to sit down while he went to grab a bottle, which I did happily. I liked being at Max’s home, but it was nothing like here. Here contained Gio, and that was everything.

“Only a little bit for me,” I told him as he handed me a glass. “I didn’t really come here for the drink.”

“Oh yeah? So why did you come?”

I watched him sit down slowly, with his eyes fixed upon me the entire time. He was waiting patiently, giving me time to work up to everything that I wanted, needed, to say, for which I was utterly grateful. Nothing that I’d spoken since coming back home was easy, but this would be one of the hardest ever.

But if I got it right, it would give me the best rewards.

“I just want to start out by apologizing to you. I never should’ve left you in the way that I did. Young, or not, it was wrong. I vanished with no explanation, and I didn’t even bother to write to you during my time away.” I felt sick as I spoke, but I forced myself to continue.

“I just assumed that a clean break would be the easiest. Also, I was so lost in my own world of pain that I wasn’t really thinking about anyone else.”

“It’s okay,” Gio rasped. “It doesn’t matter now.”

“It does, of course it does. You need to know how sorry I am. I’m also sorry for the way I’ve been since I’ve been back. I didn’t exactly mean what I said before. What I meant to say was that I came back looking for closure because I hadn’t ever managed to move past you. I thought if I came back and said sorry, and we spent some time together getting over the past, then everything would be okay. I thought we’d both go our separate ways and everything would be alright again.”

After a brief pause, Gio spoke out in the quietest tone of voice that I’d ever heard.

“Is that still what you want?”

“No.” I shook my head hard.

“No, it really isn’t. I didn’t expect to feel so many things for you when I saw you again, and I certainly never thought that you would feel anything for me too. I mean, look at what you have. You’ve got everything, you’ve created a life for yourself, and I’m still just me.”

“What the hell do you mean?” Gio was angrier now; his words inflamed.

“You got away, you left this place. I’m still here. You’ve got out there into the world, seen things, done things, and I’m still just here.”

“I’ve done all those things, and I still want you,” I replied simply, no longer beating around the bush. “After all this time I’m still utterly in love with you.”

The world stopped at that moment. I could see Gio’s face frozen in time. I had just made the grandest gesture in the world, and we both intensely felt that.

We used to use the word ‘love’ when we were kids, but it didn’t mean so much then. We assumed it did, we thought it was everything, but then real life tore us apart and reminded us that it wasn’t.

This time as I said it, we both felt the magnitude of it, and I wouldn’t have said it if I didn’t truly, seriously feel it.

“I love you too,” he eventually replied thickly, as if he had something stuck in the back of his throat.

“You say that you haven’t been able to move on in the last few years, well nor have I. There hasn’t ever been anyone that’s compared to you.” He leaned forward and placed his hands into mine.

“I mean, I love my life now, but whenever I’m down I think about the plans we had, the amount of the world that we were going to see, and it reminds me that everything isn’t as great as it could be. But it isn’t all the stuff that’s missing. It’s just you.”

I ran my hands over his cheeks, holding his face close to me. Everything that we’d shared, all the love we’d felt, all the heartache we’d experienced equally… it was all bringing us to this. My breaths were shallow, my cheeks stinging from the bright smile I had plastered across my face.

For the first time in a very long time, everything felt right.

“So, what now?” I asked curiously.

As an adult with some actual wisdom behind me, I knew that it wasn’t simply as straightforward as we loved each other. Much as we didn’t want them too, external influences would get in the way, and impact upon us.

“Where do we go from here?”

“First off, you kiss me,” Gio murmured gleefully. “And then… well, the rest we work out later on.”

There was a part of me that wanted to disagree with Gio, that wanted to really talk this out, but he was so tempting. His smile was adorable, his wet lips luring me in, crying out for me.

We could talk anytime. For now this seemed to be something that we both desperately needed, so I leaned in and I pressed my lips gently up against his.

“I love you,” I murmured against his lips, just wanting to get the message fully across. “I truly do love you, you know.”

“I love you too.”

With that the kiss deepened, the passion overtook us both. My hands slipped under his shirt, tracing over the incredible muscles that lay beneath, and Gio knotted his fingers up into my hair where the sheer desire overtook him. He wanted me, and I wanted him, and that was the only thing that truly mattered at that moment.

“Come on, let’s go to my bedroom,” Gio whispered headily to me. “It’s warmer in there.”

As he pulled back to look at me, a wicked smile played on his lips.

“And there’s an awesome bed for us to have some fun on.”

“Well, how am I supposed to resist an offer like that?” I replied. “Especially with the man that I love.”

God I would never get tired of saying that, or feeling it.

It warmed up my chest, made my heart hammer noisily; it made all the bad stuff blend into the background. I should’ve known that it was always Gio, that the reason I couldn’t move on was because none of them were him. What we had as kids wasn’t puppy love. It was genuine, and if it had survived this long then chances were we’d find a way to make it last forever, whatever life threw at us.

As I watched Gio walk in front of me, I couldn’t stop myself from brightly grinning happily. He looked so wonderful. He made me fly higher than air. Why would I ever want anything but this?