Love Me Again (Stonewall Investigations Blue Creek 1)

I reeled back, almost as if I’d been slapped, that’s how unexpected this all was. “What? What happened?”

“I started to remember. On the drive here. I started to remember what happened between us.” He shook his head, lifted a knuckle to his parted lips. Bit down. “It’s coming in bits and pieces, but I can see how angry you were. I remember you punching straight through a wall—your fists were bleeding. You were crying. And I—I wasn’t. I remember… fuck, Austin. I remember telling you to leave, that I never wanted to talk to you again, or see you, or hear about you. Fuck.” Both his hands came down to grip the counter behind him, knuckles pale, his teeth marks clear on one of them.

“What else did I say?”

I stumbled on my words. Rarely, if ever, did I lose my ability to speak, but this moment leeched me of my sentences.

“What was it, Austin? What did I say that made you punch the wall?”

Fuck. This wasn’t how I wanted to talk about this. Of course, I hoped beyond hope that Charlie would recover all his memories one day, and I knew that meant we’d have to confront the one fight that tore us apart and appeared forever irreparable. Life had different plans, and forgiveness was easier to find for me than resentment was to hold. So I let it all go. I found myself genuinely moving on and accepting that Charlie and I were completely different men now than the boys we had been back then.

But Charlie didn’t have the same luxury of time as I had to cope with everything. Seven entire years of his life had been stolen from him, and three of those years happened to be the three that included me.

I rubbed my face, took a breath. This was gonna be tricky. “Char, what happened in the past between us was… unfortunate, but it happened, and I need you to know that I’m okay with it now. I understand it’s going to feel brand-new to you, but I don’t hold on to any negative feelings from that night.”

“What happened that night?”

It played clear as day for me. I remembered every detail about that night, from what we ate to what underwear we had worn to what exactly was said that triggered the nuclear blowup. “It was the night before our graduation. We were spending it together. Your parents were flying in the morning of, so we had the entire house to ourselves.

“After about the third time of us going at it, I felt like I was on a different level with you. I opened up, and I let everything out. I told you how I hated being a secret and that I wanted to come out of the closet, and I wanted you alongside me. You immediately clammed up, and you said how you couldn’t see yourself disappointing your family. I hated hearing that, and I decided I’d just be fully honest with you. I told you that I loved you.”

Charlie’s eyebrows rocketed upward. His memories must not have brought that fact back. I wanted to reach out and grab his hand, only because I knew this story got much darker, but something told me he needed some space to process this.

“How did I respond?”

“Not well.” He winced, and it pained me just as much to say my next words. “You called me a faggot.”

Charlie covered his entire mouth with a hand and braced himself on the counter with his other. He shook his head. I felt sick. This was so fucking far from how I envisioned this night playing out.

“I’m a monster,” Charlie said, so low I almost missed it. “I’m a fucking monster.”

“No, no you’re not.” I moved closer to him, throwing out my idea of personal space. Charlie needed me. He needed—

He brushed my hands away and turned around, leaning over the sink as if he were about to be sick. I tried rubbing his back, but he pushed me off.

“I don’t deserve this,” he said with his breaths coming in faster, deeper. “I hurt you, so fucking bad. How do I deserve a second chance? Holy shit. Holy shit.”

This was exactly what I had been scared about. “Char, we were different people back then.”

“Time isn’t an excuse. It isn’t an excuse. Parents in the seventies, they had posters, they had love, they weren’t monsters. Holy shit.”

I didn’t ask what parents in the seventies had to do with this. I didn’t say anything, afraid I would say the wrong thing and send Charlie on a deeper spiral. I reached out and put a hand on his back again, and he didn’t shake me off, but he didn’t relax. His breathing became sharper, and his shoulders were as stiff as the countertop.

Charlie pushed away from the counter and moved past me, hands on the back of his neck. “I called you one of the nastiest slurs under the sun—fuck me, how can you ever look at me again after that? I feel like I fucked up bad, like I fucked up twice.”