Like the mature, responsible adult that I was, I started avoiding Michelle at home by claiming an unusually heavy caseload at the clinic, and avoiding Nate everywhere else by inventing an illness. I wasn't proud of it, but there seemed very few alternatives available, other than giving in to the welling panic that I barely had a lid on, and I soldiered through the next couple of days with my head firmly stuck in the sand.
To make at least some part of the lie a little less of a lie, I took to pottering around the clinic after hours, going through all my reports with a fine-toothed comb, paging through some of the old textbooks stashed around my office, reading newly published journal articles. By the time I left, I was incredibly well informed, but that did little to assuage the sick churning in my stomach, knowing I would be opening my apartment door to the sight of Michelle in it.
She had been there for a few days now, tiptoeing around me at first, unsure of where her place was, but after a little while, realizing I wasn't on the verge of throwing her out, she seemed to settle in a little bit.
It was bad enough that she had turned up at all, worse still that I somehow found it within me to let her stay. But worst of all was that she settled in in the way she used to, her familiarity draped all over the apartment, old habits come back in full force -- the way she'd plump up a couch cushion after sitting for a while, the spiral of hair that would wind around her finger when she was engrossed in a television program, how she liked to tuck her feet under when reading a book.
If it hadn't been for Nate's imprints all over the place, his distinct belonging, it would have almost been like she had never left at all. Maybe that was her whole plan, to simply impress her presence back into my life until I forgot the difference.
I couldn't bring myself to shut her out completely, but neither did I want to let her back into my life again, at least not without some kind of cathartic mock trial in which I'd play both charismatic prosecutor and cranky judge, as well as all twelve of the jury. I didn't have the nerve to simply sit down and talk it out with her, and I definitely harbored no designs on bringing Nate into it.
It wasn't that I didn't expect it all to catch up to me, but I had been hoping, futilely as it turned out, that it wouldn't be quite so soon. Or quite so horribly.
"Hey, Em," Michelle said, when I lumbered in late in the evening, having eaten a vending machine dinner at the clinic to get out of the possibility of having to dine with her.
"Hi," I said shortly.
"A friend of yours stopped by earlier. Um, Nate, I think?" she said, looking up at me from the couch, her makeshift bed still.
If I had been carrying anything at that point, I would have dropped it. "What?" I rasped.
"Oh," she said, looking off to the left in consultation with her memory. "I think that's what he said his name was. Dark hair, brown eyes?"
"Yeah, that's--" I said with some difficulty, finding it extremely hard to breathe all of a sudden. "I know who he is. Did he-- What did he say?"
"Nothing really," Michelle reported. "I guess he just came by to see if you were home. He kind of left in a hurry, though. I don't know him from before; is he someone from work or something?"
I stared at her, incapable of forming a coherent reply. Giving up, I said nothing at all, and instead turned away and locked myself in my bedroom.
Oh god.
Oh fuck.
I tugged my cell phone from my pocket and speed-dialed Nate, swearing up an electric blue storm of curses in my head, most of them directed at my stupid, unbelievably stupid self. The phone rang and rang, connecting at last to Nate's voicemail. I hung up without leaving a message and cursed myself again.
I tried a few more times throughout the rest of the night, but the speed with which I kept getting sent to voicemail made it all too clear that Nate was deliberately ignoring my calls.
It was pointless leaving a message; what could I say? How could I even begin to explain myself within the allotted three minutes of voicemail?
Fuck.
And furthermore,
fuck
.
I kept my phone close as I climbed into bed, heartsick, willing it to ring, willing Nate's picture to turn up on my display. It didn't work, and I fell into a fitful sleep, waking what seemed like every thirty seconds to check if I had accidentally missed a phone call, but each frantic inspection met with disappointment.
Morning rolled around, shining bright through my windows with callous abandon. It was to be an unseasonably warm weekend; there would doubtless be plenty of people out enjoying it while I remained steadfastly rooted to my mattress, holding my phone and wishing to any deity willing to listen that I get a chance to fix this.
My phone rang. Startled, I nearly hurled it across the room but managed to get myself under control and pick up the call instead.
"Nate," I said, clutching the phone close to my ear.
Dispensing with ceremony and any attempts at sounding any less pissed off than he was, Nate asked a curt, "Are you home?"
"Yeah."
"Is she there?"
"No," I said, remembering having heard the telltale sounds of her getting up, having a quick breakfast and slipping out the door. "Um, she's out all day apartment hunting, I think."
"Fine. I'm coming over," he said, and hung up.
Tossing my phone on the bed, where it skipped toward a pillow now that it could finally get some rest after I'd been working it all night, I leapt out and ransacked my closet. I wanted to look presentable, at least, while I pleaded my case, in something a little more acceptable than boxers and a T-shirt with a hole in the armpit. What kind of thing do you wear to plead your case in? A suit?
Fuck.
I scrubbed my face with a hasty palm and took a long, calming breath, letting my anxieties leach out of me as I let the air out through my nose. I threw on a normal set of clothes and went out to the living room to wait.
As I had suspected, Michelle was out, though the visible detritus of her presence throughout the room -- suitcase, blankets, a pair of heels -- made it impossible to pretend that she hadn't been here. In my fluster, I had made drastic plans to try to convince Nate he had simply imagined the whole encounter, but it was just as well that I didn't dig my grave even deeper by feeding him yet another lie.
It occurred to me then that I was a fucking terrible person, and Nate's sharp knock on the door only drove the point home.
I opened it, and he stalked in, his face cold and impassive.
"This isn't what you think," was my choice of an opening gambit, which only added to my collection in a long string of poor decisions.
Nate ground his teeth. "She's been here for
days
, and you've been canceling all your plans with me, pretending to be sick the whole time. What the hell am I supposed to think?"
"That I can't, in good conscience, throw somebody out into the street?" I proposed. "Look, she just turned up, completely unexpectedly, the other day, with no place to stay, and there was all this crying, okay? And I can't-- And then she said she wanted to work things out, and I couldn't--"
He held up a hand to stop my drivel. "She wants to work things out?" he said, blinking at me in disbelief.
I got the feeling that that was going to be a sticking point. "I mean, I-- That's-- Yeah, she said that, yes."
His arms folded over his chest tightly, as though that was the only thing keeping him together, and he started pacing. "And what did you say?"
"I don't-- I didn't say anything."
It was entirely possible that I might have said something, maybe even something profound, but whatever it was had clearly decided not to hang around in my memory banks. Things were already bizarre enough; trying to wrap my mind around them was impossible, to say nothing of being able to remember anything I'd uttered in the moment when Michelle had turned up at my doorstep and turned my head inside out.
"You didn't say anything," Nate echoed, and if I was supposed to understand the meaning behind the reiteration, then I was failing very badly.
"What do you want me to say?"
"I want you to tell me the fucking truth, Emory."
"I am," I insisted.
Nate stopped pacing, shot me a sharp glance; something steely glinted in his eye. He drew himself up, almost imperceptibly. "Fine then, I want you to tell
her
the fucking truth," he said.
"What?"
"You haven't, have you?" he said, not so much a question as a dare.
I turned from the heat of his glare, and I didn't say anything. There was a good chance I would remember my silence this time around, the pinpoint moment a crack appeared in his heart, the moment I put it there.
"Christ," Nate muttered to himself, rubbing a hand over his face. When his hand fell back to his side, his mouth twisted with scorn. "Let me see if I have this straight. Michelle shows up, you take her in. She wants you back, and you conveniently neglect to tell her you're already in a relationship. Is that right? Is that what's happening?"
"What-
No
," I said. "It's not like that. It's not that simple."
"Then explain it to me," he gritted. "Explain to me why it's so hard for you to tell your ex to find a goddamn hotel. And why it's so hard for you to admit that you even like me. Or, hell, you don't even have to admit that you like me, just that you occasionally enjoy fucking me."
"That's not fair," I protested. "That is not fair. Nate, I am not like you."
A sullen laugh tumbled past his lips. "What, gay?"
I had intended to say something along the lines of not having the same kind of courage he obviously possessed, even long ago when he'd been half my age now, but what came out instead was, "You're not even allowed to go home for the holidays."
He turned sharply to me. "No, I'm not. But that's their choice," he said firmly. "And I made the choice to be true to who I am. I'm not going to try to change that just because it's inconvenient for somebody else."
"You think that's what this is?"
"Isn't it?" His jaw shifted tensely. "You only seem happy to be with me when no one else is around."
"That's not true."
"Then why haven't you told Michelle?" When I had no answer for that, Nate nodded bitterly and went on, "Let me take a stab at it, then. She's safe for you, she's familiar and, more importantly, acceptable. And when this invariably becomes too much for you, and you decide to cut and run, you're going to run straight to her. She's your back-up plan."
Angry indignation flared in my chest suddenly. "Don't," I said, raising a warning finger. "Don't pretend like you even know anything about me and Michelle."
Despite my tone, his face softened a fraction. "I know she left you at the altar to run off with someone else. Isn't that enough?"
"It's not that simple," I said again, wracking my mind to find a way to make him understand.
We had a history, Michelle and I. We'd had a life together, we were going to spend the rest of it together. And despite what I had said, Nate had hit at least somewhere in the near vicinity of the truth -- that Michelle was what my life was supposed to have been. It would've been a nice life; it still could be.
With Nate, I had no idea. I couldn't imagine what sixty years down the road would look like for us, but neither could I imagine the next sixty years without him.
"Yes, it is," Nate insisted. He carded his fingers through his hair, frustrated, adamant in his rectitude. "God, you know what? This isn't even about me or Michelle. It's about you being too scared to see the truth, and too scared to ask everyone around you to see it too."
I shook my head, tired of him acting as if he knew me better than I did, tired of this fight. I didn't want to see where it would go. "That's not even-- Christ, Nate, what are you even talking about?"
A fist still in his hair, Nate's knuckles whitened, what was left of his patience in shreds. "You're
gay
, Emory!" he shouted. "Or-- Or bi. Or, fuck, whatever you want to call it that isn't straight. I know you desperately wish you could be, but when you have sex with a man and you like it, that should give you a pretty good fucking clue!"
His chest rose and fell with the exertion of the outburst, and I could only stare at him, cold and furious.
"Stop," he said, when calm returned to him. "Please-Stop pretending to be something you're not."
For some reason his softened tone infuriated me more than any of his shouting had. "Don't come in here," I ground out, "and preach all this self-actualization bullshit at me, all right? You don't know what the fuck you're talking about."
"
I
don't--" Nate threw up his hands. "Fine. Fine. Call me when you get your head out of your ass," he snapped, stalking toward the door.
When he got there, he stopped suddenly, struck by a new thought. With his hand on the doorknob, he tilted his head back, blinking rapidly. He sucked in a shaky breath. When he spoke again, he barely looked in my direction, but underneath the glow of the light in the hall, I could see that his lashes were wet.
"No," he said softly. "You know what? Don't call. I can't keep doing this with you and waiting for you to make up your mind."
"Nate," I said, with the kind of cautious voice you'd use when somebody is teetering on the ledge of a tall building; he was going jump, and he was going to do it without me.
He looked at me then, his face stricken, and it sent a stab of agony through my heart. I had made him hurt that way and I hated myself for it, even as I hated him for putting me through the same.
"Since this is so hard for you, let me make it easier. You want to be with Michelle? Go ahead. Do whatever the hell you want; you have my blessing," he said with a resentful smile. A tear sleeted down his cheek and he didn't bother wiping it away. "You don't have to keep this dirty little secret anymore. Consider me permanently out of the picture."
Ten minutes after he slammed the door behind him, I was still standing in the same spot, staring at my unmoving front door, willing him to come back.
Nate didn't come back that day, nor the next. And by the end of the week it was starting to look like he wasn't planning on coming back ever.
They say absence makes the heart grow fonder, which is all well and good, but nobody ever mentions the part about absence making the heart splinter into a million little fragments so absolutely that all you're left with is dust in its place.
That was where I was now, a week without Nate, a week knowing that in my passive-aggressive pursuit for selfpreservation I had destroyed our relationship, a week of nothing-dust where my heart should be. Missing it didn't help it hurt any less; it burned like an abscess burned, the larger the void, the more it hurt.