Part Four: What He Should Have Said:

** Harry **

            I sat alone on my back porch, watching the sun sink slowly below the horizon. All that remained was as fiery red line, slowly fading into the dusky light of the evening. I took a long drink from the bottle held loosely in my hand before setting it back down next to me, eyeing the rings of condensation on the wooden table. I dragged the tip of one index finger through them, painting a small design onto the table. I wiped it away with the palm of my hand, a quick impatient swipe that left only a smear of liquid, beading on the smooth surface.

            I wipe my hand off on my legs, the liquid making the fabric of my pants darken as I turn back to the sunset before me. But I’ve missed the end. In those few moments that I was absorbed with the water, the sun has finally slipped down and all the sky is darkening before my very eyes.

I barely move, feeling the air grow cooler around me, until I shiver lightly, but I still don’t get up and go inside. Not yet. Right now, I like this. I like the way the night slowly steals the warmth of my skin. The shivers remind me of something, though I can’t quite remember what it is. It’s nothing more than a vague feeling at the back of my mind, but all the same, I like it.

            I spot a few weaving lights dancing off in the yard, fireflies. I smile to myself as I remember how I loved them when I was young, the flickering dance that could entrance me for hours. Tonight I don’t feel like watching them, and I finally push myself to my feet and head into the house.

            I haven’t talked to either Craig or Karl since that night. I don’t know what to say, and I can’t remember how to be normal with them anymore. I can’t even remember what it was like before that night.

My memory is playing tricks on me, showing me only moments, snatches of what it once was. Nothing solid enough so that I can remember how I am supposed to be around them. I can’t remember what person I am supposed to be anymore. I don’t know how it’s even possible to forget yourself like that. How can one night erase the person you are? But somehow it has. It took me almost no time to realize that it was a mistake. The whole night was the biggest mistake I had ever made.

** Karl **

            I miss him. I miss both of them. I miss Harry. Suddenly not having him a part of my life is hard. And I miss Craig. Even though he’s here with me, he’s not the same anymore. And I don’t think I am either.

I learned a lot that night, things I’m not sure that I was ready to know. I’m not sure how to handle all of this, and can only do my best, stumbling along, and try not to make a mess of everything. Or at least not make a bigger mess of all of this.

            I didn’t know how that one night would change things. Change everything. It scares me how much I may have lost. I swore to myself that Craig would always come first, that I could not lose him. Still I see us slipping farther apart with every day, and I’m helpless to stop it. And I’m not sure I even want to anymore. Not because I don’t love him, if anything I love him more, but now it’s with a bittersweet tang, because I’ve seen something that I don’t know how to understand, and now things can never be the same again.

            Harry changed this in a way I had never imagined would happen. He changed me, he changed Craig, and he changed the way things are with us. Suddenly the way I felt about Craig before is simply not enough now. I can’t sit still anymore, the guilt makes me restless. The unceasing gnawing that burns hotly right in the pit of my stomach. I’ve done a lot of thinking since that night. Too much and it’s made the feeling worsen. 

            I don’t even understand myself these days. Too many thoughts and emotions inside of me to even begin to understand half of them. It keeps me awake at nights, the bed that has always been so right now feels empty without that extra body there to make three. But three doesn’t work, can’t work I tell myself. Three’s not natural. It’s not how it goes. It’s two. Two that makes sense, three doesn’t. But now the things I’ve seen and felt, make me realize that maybe three can be right. Maybe three is what we need.

            That thought makes my pulse flutter oddly, because maybe, just maybe, three is right. Maybe three fills up a bed properly, fills up that hollow space in me. And that thought makes the guilt more insistent, a relentless presence that never lets me forget what I could lose if I tried to make this two that I love into a three that I need.

** Craig **

I can feel that Karl’s not all there in the way he touches me now, with nothing really behind it. I can feel it in the way he lies awake at night, staring at the ceiling. I know because I lie there too and stare at him. He doesn’t see me. I try to convince myself that this bothers me, but it doesn’t. Because I know things aren’t the same and I don’t know how to go back to where they once were.

I can’t figure out how to go back that way, and I can’t make myself believe that I want to go back. I want to go forward. I want to….I don’t know what I want, but it’s not this. I don’t want this Karl and I. I want another us, one that has something more than we do. More than we can ever have, because it’s not something that I know how to get. All I know for sure is that I want it, I need it in the same way that Karl does. He just doesn’t know it, not the way I do. I can see it in his eyes that he does though, I can see the same drive, the same desperation for that one thing that seems poised always just out of reach.

            I don’t know how to ask for it, or even how to say what it is that I want. I don’t know how to put it into words.

            I feel numbed inside, sluggish. I stood in the bathroom, staring at myself in the mirror for so long that it ceased to make sense. All I could see was a jumble of features, none of which fit together in any way that I could see.

I do that sometimes with Karl, my eyes slide over him and I suddenly feel that I don’t know him as the features that are so familiar slide around before my eyes and until he no longer makes sense. It’s so easy for him to slide out of focus now. And I’ve found I like him that way. He fits with the rest of my life, which suddenly doesn’t make any sense to me either.

            I feel like a traitor. I’ve never been unfaithful to Karl, never been attracted to anyone the way I am to him. But suddenly, there was Harry. He changed things then and he’s changed them again. And even though I knew it would happen someday I’m not at all prepared for the effect this has had. He’s done too much to both of us now, without really doing anything.

My head spins as the realization hits me, and it only confuses me more, because I’m even less prepared to handle this. I don’t know how to make sense of being in love with two men at the same time.  

** Harry **

            I make my way slowly through the silent house, throwing myself down on the couch. Simply laying there, staring up at the ceiling, the way I’ve done all too often since that night. The silence makes my head ache, but I simply don’t have the energy to get up, or even to move at all.

            Instead I think, mostly about how stupid I’ve been.  And this has to be the stupidest thing I have ever done, because I should have known that one night could never be enough. I should have known that those few moments could never erase this from my mind. They could never satisfy the yearning in me, but instead have made it stronger, until it consumed me.

Now I find my mind won’t let me forget the way their hands felt on my body. I simply cannot forget, but find every detail replaying in slow motion in my mind, every moment etched indelibly in my memory. Every minute that I’m by myself aches, because I can’t stop remembering.

            I finally find the energy to get up and stumble into the kitchen to find a bottle of whisky. I drink it straight from the bottle, feeling it sear its way down to my stomach where it created a soothing sense of comfort. I allow myself to let the searing heat make me forget the feel of Craig’s skin, the heat of Karl’s mouth.

I let every memory wash away in an amber wave. Let the warmth spread slowly through my body pushing everything else away, until I’m no longer aware of the way one night had made me want so much more than I could ever have, or how it had made me forget who I was. I drink until I forget everything.

To be continued….

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