Counterpoint

Note: This is a companion piece to Pointless. 

I wish it hadn’t happened. God I wish that.

 

If I could do it over again, I wouldn’t have, OK? I wouldn’t have taken Ethan’s hand and I wouldn’t have walked out and I wouldn’t be remembering the look on Brian’s face until the day I die.

 

It’s just that he never said it. I wanted—needed—to hear it and he just fucking wouldn’t so I left with Ethan and now he’s sleeping next to me in this crummy apartment on this crappy bed he probably picked up on dumpster day and I can still feel his dick up my ass from about two hours ago and I just want to be back in the loft with Brian curled around me like he was last night.

 

I want Brian.

 

I want him next to me and inside me and beside me and walking in the door and driving the car and calling me on the phone and leaving me e-mails.

 

I don’t want Ethan, not really. I want—fuck. I don’t know what I want.

 

Damnit, yes I do.

 

I want Brian to love me and I want us to be together for a long time and I want him to care if someone else is fucking me. I want him to get angry and jealous and pissed off and hurt that he’s not the only one anymore.

 

I want him to give a shit.

 

I want to walk back into the loft and have him wrap those fucking long arms of his around me and kiss me and take me to the bedroom or the shower and make love to me and then I want to start all over again and then order Chinese food and make love in front of the TV while some crappy old movie is playing without the sound.

 

He was crying last night, after he thought that I was asleep. He had his arms around me and he didn’t make any noise, but I could hear the hitch in his breathing and the snot he sucked back up into his nose and I could feel his body shaking when he tried to stop. I think I felt some tears on the back of my neck.

 

God, I wanted to roll over and hug him back and tell him that we’d work it out and that it would be alright, but I didn’t. I just pretended that I was still sleeping.

 

I wish that I had. I wish that I had hugged him back or said something, but I fucking couldn’t. And then in the morning when I woke up he was gone to do some errands and I didn’t see him again until the party when I walked in and he was fucking that actor they hired to play Rage and he looked at me almost like he was throwing down some fucking gauntlet.

 

Goddamn it and Goddamn him to fucking Hell.

 

It’s the Kinney Cliff. I know that now and I knew it last night. He pushed me off just like he did with Michael. He thinks that I need to break away from him, that he’s bad for me and that I need to be out on my own, making my own decisions without him.

 

I did make my decision—doesn’t he fucking know that? He’s so Goddamned smart, why doesn’t he know that?

 

I made my decision that first night on Liberty Avenue two years ago. I got in his car with him and then later I said “I’m going with him.”

 

I’ve never changed my mind, despite all the shit. I want to go with him.

 

I still want to go with him.

 

Fuck.

 

That’s the truth.

 

I still want to go with him.

 

I don’t want to be with Ethan or anyone else. I want to get up and get dressed and get my ass over to the loft and let myself in and take my clothes back off and then surprise him in bed and kiss him awake and them feel him inside if me. But if I did he probably wouldn’t even be there. He’s probably in the fucking back room or with some trick and I’d walk in on him like I have before and he’d just look at me and probably not even stop fucking to say hello.

 

Goddamnit.

 

Goddamn him.

 

Why couldn’t he just say it? That’s all I wanted. Just to hear him say it. Just once.

 

Fuck.

 

He did everything for me. Christ, I know that.

 

He taught me everything—where to go, who to talk to, who to avoid, what to eat, who to fuck—how to fuck.

 

How to make love. He taught me that, too.

 

And honesty. Even when he said shit I didn’t want to hear, he’d make me listen instead of telling me some lie that would be easier.

 

I hated that about him until I realized that it was one of the best things he did.

 

OK, shit, he’s no saint, but he never lies.

 

Sometimes he just doesn’t tell the whole truth. Like when he knew what a sleaze Sap was but let me get the fucking job and work until I couldn’t even get out of bed for class because I was so fucking tired. He didn’t stop me from getting the job or from dancing on the bar, even though he knew how I’d gotten it.

 

He was just there to catch me afterwards.

 

Like he caught me when I was bashed and on Pride Day and when I saw at the hospice or had another run in with my father or the assholes at St. James or a crappy PT session.

 

He caught me.

 

He caught me, alright, like a deer in the Goddamned headlights. One look from him and I just stood there and he could have run me over and I wouldn’t have even cared.

 

He went to the prom. I looked up and he was walking towards me.

 

I finally remembered.

 

I remembered him being there and us dancing and the look on his face when he pulled me up to kiss him as we went into the final spin and when we were down in the garage by the car—I remember the look on his face.

 

He loved me. I knew it. If I’d ever not known, I knew it then.

 

When he agreed to the stupid rules I made up, I knew it then, too.

 

When he fixed the mess he made of the comic, apologizing, I knew it and when he brought home my computer I knew it then, too.

 

And when we made love.

 

God, I always knew it then.

 

It’s like I told Michael when Brian thought that he’d be moving to New York. I love him.

 

As simple as that.

 

Why did I have to hear it? I knew that he loved me. I fucking knew it and then I screwed it up so badly that he pushed me out like he did Michael.

 

He says that he doesn’t believe in love, but he does.

 

He believes in it so much, so Goddamned fucking much that he’s terrified that he’ll fuck it up.

 

I did.

 

I’m the one who fucked up. I asked him to say the one thing that he didn’t have to say because I knew it and I fucked up.

 

Now Ethan thinks that I’m going to stay with him, that we’re together when all I want is Brian and I know that in a while I’ll go over to the loft and empty out my drawers and take my shit. If I’m lucky, he won’t be there.

 

He loved me. I know that.

 

Fuck.

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