And I think he gets it.
He gets without me having to say that I love him.
And he pales.
He blanches.
His muscles flex and shift before going solid.
But instead of backing away, I close the distance to the point where our toes go from almost touching to definitely touching. Where I crane my neck up and cradle his jaw as I whisper, “I want you to know that you’re not unloved, Alaric. First, Mo loves you. Mo has always loved you even if you don’t want to see it. But more than that there’s someone else who loves you as well. And that’s me. I love you.”
I didn’t think it was possible but he pales some more.
He even goes blue. As if all the blood and all the air is rushing out of his body.
As if I’m killing him.
God, I hope not.
I hope with this, he can find some peace.
He can one day see that he doesn’t have to live like this. He doesn’t have to live in the past.
I press my fingers on his bristled jaw and whisper, “I’m in love with you and I understand that you might not believe me. Because for as long as you’ve known me, the better part of our acquaintance, I was running after this loser guy that you already knew was a loser but I refused to see it. And I hate that. I hate I wasted so much time over someone who didn’t even matter. I hate that I realized too late that the only thing that has mattered to me in the past four years is you. Whether in hate or in love, you’re the only thing, the only man, I’ve thought about. You do something to me. Here.” I put my other hand to the left side of my chest. “You affect my heart. You mess with my heartbeats. You make it race. Even when I hated you, or thought I hated you, you made it fly, and now that you make me feel good, my heart hasn’t come down to the ground. It’s hanging from the ceiling. It’s hanging from the sky. It’s up there, on the roof where we spoke for the first time. It lives there now. Because you make me feel safe and cherished and protected, Alaric. You make me feel seen and worthy. You make me believe that I can do things. That I can finish summer school, go to a fashion school, dress people for a living. You make me feel like I can be anything I want, I can do anything I want.
“And it was you who taught me not to run after things, not to be desperate enough to chase after things and people. So what I did today, I’m sorry for that. I let you down. I let myself down. What I did back there was wrong. I almost turned something pure, something so fragile and soft and sweet like my love for you, into something dirty. And I’m not an expert in love — God, I’m not — but I do think that love shouldn’t be selfish. I do think that love shouldn’t be destruction but the building of things. Love shouldn’t be toxic but life-giving. And love definitely isn’t what I almost did for Jimmy with the whole camera thing, it’s what I want to do for you. And what I want to do is to give you this secret, okay? I want you to put it in your pocket and tuck it in your heart. This secret that there’s someone out there who loves you. That there’s a girl out there, in this world, who’s in love with you, Alaric. And she pines for you and longs for you and dreams about you. She thinks that you’re the most beautiful man that she’s ever seen. The most intelligent and complex and infuriating and endearing man. She loves your leather-bound books and your tweed jackets and your silver ring. She loves that you’re a history nerd and that you basically know everything there is to know in this world. She loves that you make the best chamomile tea and that you draw the best baths ever. She loves that you pamper her and spoil her and treat her like your baby. Like your queen. And she wishes that she could do the same for you and treat you like the precious man you are. Like her king. So I want you to stop, okay? Whatever it is that you’re chasing after. I want you to take a breath and see yourself. Because you’re loved. You’re so loved, Alaric. By that girl.”
With that, I go up on my tiptoes and press a soft kiss on his stunned and parted lips.
Our last one.
It’s a tragedy, a catastrophe, a fucking blasphemy of apocalyptic proportions that our last kiss is such a short affair, when I waited for our first one for years.