Mr Garcia

I’m sitting with Jeremy, and boy, are we fun to be around, each of us now silent and sulky. Bart’s loud laughter can be heard all the way from over at the bar. I look over and see he’s talking to Sebastian, as well as a few other men. Each of them are laughing and having fun without a care in the world.

Fuckers.

I look back at Jeremy, who is forlorn and miserable.

“I have to ask… what do you see in Bart?”

He shrugs. “I wish I knew.”

I glance back to the bar to see Bart is telling an animated story. The men around him are hanging off his every word. Whatever he’s saying is apparently very funny.

“I overheard your fight with him today at lunch”

Jeremy rolls his eyes and sips his wine. “Sorry.”

“Don’t apologize, although you’ll have to explain it to me because I’m confused as hell.”

He drops his forehead into his palm, his elbow resting on the table. “That makes two of us,” he mutters dryly. “I met Bart at a conference in Atlanta about seven years ago. I was a PA to another lawyer at the time. We were out with a large group and, one by one, they dwindled off and went home. It ended up being just the two of us left in the bar. We drank and laughed, and somehow the conversation turned to our sexualities. I told him that I was gay and that I’d never been with a woman. He told me that he was straight and that his only regret in life was that he hadn’t experimented in college like everyone else. He’d always wondered what it would be like to be with a man, but now that he was older, it was never going to happen. The more we drank, the more we clicked. The chemistry was like nothing I’d ever felt before.

I imagine the scenario as he explains it, I can almost see the two of them alone in a bar.

“He told me he and his wife had fallen out of love, and that they had decided to separate. It was completely amicable, and they were only friends now. He said he loved her like a sister and that it was sad for both of them because they had four young children together. Having a separated family wasn’t anything either of them ever imagined.”

His eyes rise to mine, and I offer him a soft, reassuring smile as I put my hand over his.

“When we were walking back to our hotel, he kissed me.” Jeremy drops his head, as if ashamed.

I squeeze his hand. “And?”

“And it got heated outside my hotel room. I told him that he was married and that he should go home. I didn’t see him again for the rest of the conference. I heard that he’d left at some point because he fell ill. But I knew the real reason was that he was disgusted with himself for making out with a guy.”

Bart’s loud laugh drifts over from the bar again, and my eyes rise to him. I exhale heavily. Sebastian is now smoking a cigar. I watch him lift it to his lips and inhale as he listens to Bart.

Fuckers.

“Six weeks later, Bart turned up at my office. He told me that I was all he could think about, that he was going insane over me, and that he had left his wife because of it.”

Jeremy exhales, clearly frustrated. “We went out for dinner then back to his new apartment. Everything was still in boxes. We ended up having sex.”

I watch him struggle, knowing he’s ashamed.

“It was the best fucking sex I’ve ever had. I’d like to tell you that it was nothing special, but we fell madly in love. From the moment he first touched me, I was done for. We were inseparable, and I moved in eight weeks later.” He stares off into the distance.

“So, you live together now?”

He raises his eyebrow and sips his wine. “Not long after I moved in, he started having trouble with his eldest daughter.”

“Didn’t she like you?”

He scoffs. “Bart would never admit to being with a man. To everyone else, I was his roommate. Nothing more. When his kids would come over, he would treat me like he didn’t even know me. I understand why, but that didn’t make it hurt any less.

Anyway, his kids were desperate for Bart to get back together with their mother. His eldest daughter Heidi became depressed. It was a terrible time. Bart was worried sick, and I was worried, too. I’d gotten to know his children, and I cared for them as well. They are great kids.”

He drains his drink in one gulp. There’s a lot of pain in this story. I can feel it oozing out of him.

“When Heidi was twelve, she tried to commit suicide.”