Chapter Text
I.
The night before Boris left, I had a panic attack. In retrospect, I was probably responding to some unexpressed temperament of Boris’; maybe he was more agitated that night than I remember. He probably was. But I had drunk too much and smoked too much -- I felt sick with it -- and I remember concentrating very hard on not touching him and thinking to myself, writing down even, over and over that I needed to quit, I needed to get clean.
“Boris, you need to help me. I need to get clean. You need to -- I need you to remind me.”
He’d nodded seriously. “Is good idea. No good for you, this drugs.” (He was quite drunk himself, at this point.) “Makes you dissociated. You think, is good idea to hurt yourself.”
“I’m not like that anymore,” I’d muttered. He didn’t respond, but I saw the cynical tic of his expression, and it angered me. “Fuck off. I’m not fucking crazy.”
“No, you’re not crazy, but you’re very depressed. You are anxious. You are probably traumatized. No, I know it, you are traumatized.” He looked at me squarely. “Tell me, Theo, you are happy?”
“Stop calling me that.”
We were sitting cross-legged opposite each other on the rug of my bedroom. He leaned onto his elbows, into my space, regarding me. “Answer the question. Are you happy?”
I thought about telling him to leave, to shut the fuck up and stay out of it.
“You are happier now, I think,” he mused, tapping his chin with a long finger.
I looked at him. Boris. “I am.”
He spoke at length. “Not cured, I know, but you are better now, yah? Not so repressed.” He barked a laugh. “Is funny, no? After all that shite in Amsterdam, god. I don’t know, maybe it helped. I don’t know. You tell me.”
I leaned back, away from him. Watching my fingers pick at the rug. “You know, if you had come any later --” I began. I tried again. “If you hadn’t come when you did, I might be dead. I got close. I fucked it up, but I started thinking, there are other ways. I was going to do it.” Boris was silent, listening. I glanced quickly up at him, found him looking at me. “You know, I wrote letters. Did I tell you that part?”
“Yes,” he said quietly. “In your story.”
I thought about my coldly informal, otherwise rambling and incoherent attempts to apologize, explain, and absolve at once, utter mockeries -- insulting, really -- of the succinct, artful expression of love that I wished to convey, and I felt almost angry at those before me who had succeeded, who had left a bit of wisdom, even humor, in death, and I wondered how that could possibly be, how one could be so hysterical as to kill themselves and still have the presence of mind to be clever. I thought about the note I’d written for Boris, my only success; he was the only person to whom I needed to confess very little, and it was the only note that I felt carried a ringing sense of finality.
“Potter?”
It was also the only page that I omitted from the manuscript when I sent it to him. “I wrote one for you. I didn’t include it,” I blurted in a rush, and then I hated myself, because now he would want to know. “It’s -- I didn’t want you to have to read it. I mean, it was pretty dark. I didn’t want you to feel guilty, or anything like that. Not that I blamed you in it. I just imagine it would be hard to read a suicide note addressed to you. That’s all.” I ground my teeth, I was so embarrassed, and still I couldn't stop talking. “I don’t even know where it is. I think I threw them all out in that, you know, that little trash can they keep in hotel rooms. I don’t even remember what I wrote. I was really out of it.”
When I finally met his eyes, Boris looked terribly pale, and I felt awful at once -- how could I lie to him about this? When would I tell him? How could I tell him? “I’m sorry.”
He smiled and put a hand to my cheek, gave it a jaunty little slap. “Do not be sorry, kochanie. Let’s talk of happy things, yes? No good to dwell.”
I nodded, though I was stuck on the word he’d used. Kochanie . “Yeah. You’re right.”
The night crept on, and then at something like three in the morning -- the two of us were sitting against the headboard, my laptop open on the bed before us and playing Tarkovsky’s The Mirror , which Boris said I would like -- I got up to use the bathroom, and when I came back Boris was sitting there in the blue light of my laptop, the world soft and black around him. He’d taken his shirt off, I noticed: He was reclined, one arm bent back behind his head and the other scratching gently through the hair on his chest. I knew -- I thought -- he had heard me come in, though his face was turned away from me; I saw him in profile. The hand at his chest slid down, rubbed at his hip bone. Something about the way he touched himself with his long fingers. The light made him bluish, iridescent.
“Boris,” I said, and I couldn’t predict what I would say next, I was possessed. “Are you --?”
He’d looked up, recalled from his still, pensive gaze, and now he frowned at me. I hadn’t finished my question. What was I asking him?
I shook my head, flustered. “Nevermind.” I joined him on the bed, watching my feet, the bedspread, anything but him.
“What is it?” he asked me frankly. He was frustrated; I could hear it in his voice.
I shook my head again. It was as though I was trying to shake the very feeling from my skin, the fever of knowing, of greed. “Can’t remember,” I lied. “Doesn’t matter. Let’s keep watching.”
He didn’t ask me again -- uncharacteristically pliant, unaggressive of him, though I now realize the tension I felt was equally his as it was my own. There was a heaviness to our silence, and I felt it on my tongue, the weight of the words I couldn’t say. And as he unpaused the film, I began to speak.
“I like it so far,” I said quietly. “You were right.” And then, “I haven’t watched any Tarkovsky. I should, though -- I watched so many Russian films in the early years, after leaving Vegas. I watched that adaptation of The Idiot . I liked hearing their accents. It reminded me of you.”
The movie was playing in earnest, now, there were important scenes I was speaking over, and still I couldn’t stop, even as I felt paralyzed inside myself with dread, even as I made no conscious effort to speak. And even then I could not say the words to him, the ones I should have said.
“I listened to your favorite songs, too. I mean, just over and over. ‘Dear Prudence.’ I listened to that a lot. And that Velvet Underground song you were humming the night I left. I had, like, copied the lyrics down from some website, and I would look at them -- I don’t know, like I could figure it out if I looked long enough. You know one of my shirts, some of the clothes I packed, they weren’t washed -- I was in such a rush to leave that night, I just grabbed everything. Some of them, I guess you’d worn them recently. Remember we would share clothes. Anyway, they still smelled like you. And I -- I would sleep with them, you know, they helped me sleep. Especially in the beginning.” I was blushing, humiliated with myself, but I couldn’t stop. He’d paused the movie, though I noticed this somewhat belatedly; I wasn’t watching the screen, but my hands, which had begun to shake. I realized I must have spoken for minutes. “Sorry, I’m rambling, let’s --”
“Theo,” he interrupted me.
My voice shook. “Fuck,” I said. “I drank too fucking much.”
He was quiet. I could feel him looking at me, black eyes laid heavy and searing upon my face. I had to ball my hands in fists, nails cutting into my skin, I was shaking so bad.
A tide of nausea swept suddenly over me. I stumbled up, gasping, and launched myself into the bathroom, where I proceeded to vomit profusely, unfeelingly, sweating buckets as a foreign hand came to rest on my back and words floated whisperingly into my ear. I was so dissociated that I was not out of my body, but deep inside of it, as though the whole of me was sitting behind my eyes. I could hardly feel my own skin.
I leaned back, found myself cradled against him. I took his arm and held tight.
“Potter,” he said, “is okay. You are safe. Come on, breathe.”
I realized I was hyperventilating. My vision blurred at the edges, my hands and feet felt prickly.
“Come on, Potter.” He put a hand on my chest, breathed slowly, exaggerated, against me. “In, out. In, out. Like that.”
As I calmed down, I began to cry, and he came around to kneel before me and wipe the vomit, sweat, snot from my face with a cold washcloth.
“There’s something wrong with me,” I said.
“Is alright. You are just spooked. Come, look here.” He tipped my chin up, and I finally looked him in the eyes.
“I’m sorry, Boris.”
“Do not be sorry,” he scolded me. “Let me help you.”
He led me back to the bed, where he discarded my laptop on the floor and crawled in next to me, cocooned in my bed covers. We lay on our sides, facing each other, his arms around me and my hands balled, fisting his shirt. He held me; we fell asleep like that. And in the morning, he was gone.
II.
Boris had left a shirt behind in my room. I had to wonder if he’d done this deliberately, remembering my drunken confession, or whether he really had just forgotten to put on his shirt. It was impossible, right? He hadn’t brought any jacket or change of clothes. A one of my sweaters was missing -- the one he always pushed his face into when I wore it, nosing at my shoulder, the soft-as-clouds angora and cashmere.
In the days that followed his departure, and then the email, I lay in bed holding it against me. It was a guilty habit: sometimes, as I worked upstairs, I would bring it with me -- I kept it in the bathroom, the desk drawer, somewhere hidden out of sight, and on breaks I would return to it, lower my face to its scent-soaked cotton and picture him. What else could I do?
I had no idea where to begin looking for him. I couldn’t go to Norway -- I had no idea where he was, and besides, I couldn’t afford to spend the money; I’d taken enough cash away from Amsterdam to buy back the furniture, but there wasn’t a lot of wiggle-room, not enough to warrant a spontaneous -- and likely fruitless -- trip to Scandinavia.
It was hard, because -- here was the thing -- I thought of him constantly.
I had thought of him before, of course. But now I knew. And he’d gone, left me with this, the burden of my desire. I didn’t have a fucking clue what he expected from me -- Did he want me to follow him? Did he want me to wait?
I tried to email him back, and it didn’t go through -- he’d deleted the account. I was angry. I was sorry. I missed him so much that it hurt.
I thought about what I’d say, if I found him. ‘I have something for you.’ His shirt. That would be my excuse. ‘You left it here. I brought it back for you.’
It was comical, poignant that I should think of excuses. What was wrong with me? Couldn’t I take him by the shoulders and kiss him, tell him how I felt, be honest with the both of us?
I finally got the idea from Kitsey, of all people. She’d shown up at my doorstep -- I was coming back from lunch, and there she was, huddled under the awning with a frankly enormous handbag and a raincoat slung over her arm.
“Theo,” she’d said. “Thank god. I thought you wouldn’t come, and I’d be stuck waiting out here for hours.”
I was frowning. “Sorry, I totally forgot you were coming.”
She shook her head, scurrying after me indoors. “No, don’t worry about that. I didn’t call or anything. Well, I did, but you weren’t picking up. I just figured I’d stop by, in case you were around.”
She’d brought some things with her -- a teapot, a blender, some heinously overpriced condiments, all gifts from the engagement party that she couldn’t return.
“Where are you off to next?” she asked me, and I had to think about it.
“Uh, Paris, I think,” I said, and I realized this must be true, for Hobie had mentioned something about the Louvre this morning and the subtext had gone completely over my head.
“Hm,” she said, and she left shortly after, once she’d said hello to Popper and I’d asked after her mother.
And I started thinking, what if I did that. What if I took a train from Paris, just hung around at his apartment until someone let me in, took the key from the doormat and wasted away in there until he came back.
III.
“Boris?”
For a split second, I thought I’d imagined him -- he was an apparition, a mirage -- but then, miraculously, I saw him turn, and he looked at me.
His beautiful face. He wore an ushanka-hat, stallion black, and the ear flaps furred lushly against his cheekbones, his jaw, his hair curling within it, a single black lock wreathed coyly against his brow.
“Potter,” he said, and he took a step towards me, and then seemed to stop himself. “What are you doing here?”
“You left,” I said. “I -- You said you were in Norway.”
“I was in Norway,” he agreed. “Am back now, as of yesterday.” He shrugged, sudden and familiar, and I remembered with a start why I was here. “Good timing, yours. Are you just now arriving?”
“Yeah.” I didn’t know what to say. “Um, you left something. I brought it back for you.”
“I see.” His voice had gone quiet, and I realized with some shock that he was blushing.
“Uh, yeah,” I said. “It’s --” I gestured at my bag, though I didn’t look away from him.
I paused. Smiled. “Are you going to invite me in?”
We took the stairs -- he was a couple flights up, but he had that thing against elevators -- and then he let me into his apartment, and I smelled it: that clovey warmth, the soot of his cigarettes and that invariable, almost subliminal redolence of vodka.
I liked his flat. It was, as he always described it, an artist’s loft -- it had been a garment factory before the original owner purchased it years ago, and it had since been converted into condos, one to each floor. The space was enormous, truly; it’s vast openness reminded me of the desert, the museum, the feeling that you are shipwrecked and alone in an empty world.
Though Boris had tamed it: Every inch, it seemed, was ornamented in some personal treasure, some fragrant, exotic token of his nomadic lifestyle. There were great Persian rugs that hung from the walls, overlapped on the concrete floor and an enormous yellowed map of the world, others of the various nations and territories he’d visited in his life -- even one of Las Vegas alone. There were paintings, none of which I recognized -- this comforted me -- and vases, and sculptures, and flags: The hammer and sickle, the circle-A, and his old homes, some of which I couldn’t place. And batiks, of course -- at least eight of them, maybe ten, and the old one he’d saved all these years from his bedroom in Vegas, which he’d draped along a wall in his bedroom. There were antiques -- nearly every piece of furniture looked thrifted, borrowed, found -- and the smell of old books, which lined just about every flat service, and some of the vertical ones, too, where he’d stacked them in teetering towers of dust and thick, age-softened paper. He had, it seemed, started something of a collection of knick-knacks from the countries he visited, and they cluttered tables, hallways, window panes in a manner that reminded me strongly of Hobie’s place. As was his wont, Boris had retaken to offering me his possessions as readily as though they were my own. If I lingered to admire a painting, a carved teak box, a stoneware tea set, he would nudge them invariably toward me, or say something to me like, ‘Is yours if you want it.’ I had to wonder how far this offer extended.
As much as the building, the dimensions of the space conveyed alienating wealth, the contents of his flat were so plainly his own that I found myself at ease in all its enormity.
So it was with comfort, curiosity that I followed him into his kitchen, his enormous kitchen with its state-of-the-art wet bar and the utter mess of mugs and flutes and bottles that littered its pretty surface.
It was dark outside, and the light he left on was yellow, filtered through a stained-glass lampshade on the island counter that I paused to admire (and which he inevitably offered me, and I politely refused).
We had barely spoken the whole way up, and while this hadn’t bothered or troubled me -- it was Boris, I was me, and we were nothing if not fundamentally impolite -- I began to feel, as I watched him uncork a terribly expensive but obviously tasteless bottle of wine, that I ought to say something, that maybe this was immoveable -- that we were static, timeless -- until I said it.
“I got your email,” I said, and immediately something in my body seemed to still, breath-baited, waiting.
“Mm?” It was so unlike him, a foreign sound from his voice. He was frowning, swirling his crap wine on the countertop like I’d seen Kitsey’s friends do. I almost laughed.
“Your story,” I began, and I could feel the tension in him, the heat of him beside me. He took a long drink from his glass, lips stained and puckered, and I reached out to him. My hand on his arm. “Boris --”
I heard his glass set down, saw the sudden change in his body. And it happened in an instant: He was kissing me.
His hands, cold, on my face -- his nearness -- the pinch of my glasses, pressed roughly into my skin. And there was the bittersweet taste of his mouth, his wine-wet lips. They opened against me, a hot breath of hell and the scent of his skin so close to me. There was a startling, immediate ache in my chest, a want so thorough and true that I shook with it, clasping his bare slender wrists in my shivering hands. Toeing closer, trapping him, so that he couldn’t get away this time.
I thought: We did it .
But God, for his voice, and the sound he made when I threaded my greedy fingers in his hair, when I pulled the curls at the base of his skull. I opened my eyes at intervals and could see his eyelashes, a black fan, blurry with his nearness, and I remembered it was him all over again -- Boris, my Boris, who had kissed me so long ago, who grabbed me now and moved our bodies so I was the one pinned brutally into the countertop.
My glass crashed to the floor. We looked: it was a mess, splinters of glass and a spreading, bloody stain.
“Jesus fuck,” I said. “Fuck, I’m sorry.” I stumbled back, but he caught me -- grip reckless -- and pulled me roughly into him. Kissing me, my cheekbone, my jaw, the hollow of my neck.
“Fuck that,” he said, and I remembered again that a glass had broken, it would stain, we should clean up. “Fuck the glass. Does not matter, Theo.”
He held me by the back of my neck, his other hand in my hair. I melted for him. “Are you sure,” I said, hardly recognizing my voice, and he silenced me -- hand clasped briefly to my lips, his own mouth laving at my collarbone.
He began to kneel before me.
“Stop --” I gasped -- “you’ll hurt yourself --” And I put my arms around him and wrestled him up, held him there, pressed head to heels against me. I felt his shallow breaths hot on my neck, his chest ballooning against me, the warm press of his erection on my thigh.
He fisted the back of my shirt, leaning against me. I heard and felt him curse into the skin of my neck. “Let me,” he said, “I want to taste you, Theo, god I want it.”
“Not here,” I said. It was hard to concentrate. His smell was everywhere. “Let’s -- Your bedroom.”
“Bed. Yes. Good idea,” he said. And he pulled my forehead to his, eyes a searing flash of contact, and then released me.
He put a hand to the small of my back, suddenly gentle, and we wandered, stumbling, into his room. It was dark: he went to turn on the light, and I stopped him.
“The moon,” I said, and he understood.
We undressed quickly and laid on the bed, hands heavy and curious, my skin alight with the mark of him. I ended up beneath him, and I loved how he felt: pressing me down, a perfect, steadying weight. His skin, his hair, his scars -- he felt amazing, sliding against me like that, hands on each other's chests, backs, arms, our mingled sweat and precum a slippery mess between us.
“We need condoms,” I remembered to say. “Have you been tested?” I was panting, holding his hair back from his face as he sucked my nipple.
He surfaced, licking his lips, and watched my mouth as he spoke. “I’m clean,” he managed, “are you?”
“I’m clean,” I echoed him. “Lube,” I said.
He climbed off me to root around in his bedside table. I watched his ass, milk-white and hairy. His muscles jumped as he moved. I held my weeping dick at the base, squeezing, begging my body to behave.
My legs were bent open, but this was not enough, and he ushered me to lift my hips for him so that he could wedge a pillow beneath me.
“Good, good,” he murmured. His moon eyes touched my body like a heavy hand, flicked across my chest and down between my legs, where he brought his thumbs to part me open. I was open for him.
A faint ringing began in my ears -- my breathing was shallow, pulse quick like a spooked rabbit. I took my glasses from the pillow and slid them gracelessly up the bridge of my nose, which elicited a smile from him -- this expression, more than anything else he was doing to me, made me blush like a virgin. I felt his thumb slip into the crevice of my ass and stroke me there. Up and down; tenderly. His other hand came to spread me more aggressively open, fingertips tucked against my balls.
He gave my cock a little squeeze and brought his fingers to his lips and swallowed them -- gaze flicking between my eyes, my mouth. He spat, dribbling down his chin for he lathered them so well, and his red lips shone with it -- wet jewels, slippery with spit. It was cool on my skin when he brought them to my asshole -- I shivered -- and then he wiggled them a little and pushed, and suddenly, strangely, I felt him.
“Fuck,” he whispered. He swirled around, moved back and forth, squeezed in a second finger. “Fuck, Theo.” His voice was soft, broken. “You are so tight .”
He began to piston them -- fucking me, I realized, so slowly, gently, and my dick jerked and weeped on my stomach. I liked it when his motions went fluid, feeling me out -- rubbing, circling inside me.
It was dirty. His spit in my ass. His fingers pushing, slippery, inside of me. The utter focus of him -- biting his lip, a little furrow between those expressive eyebrows. His eyelashes fanned on his cheeks; and then he looked up at me, suddenly, and smiled. Fingers crooking wetly inside of me.
I stared up at him, stunned.
“You like that, Potter?”
His voice had fallen into something deep, distinctly Slavic. I closed my eyes on the picture he made; it was too much. A shuddering breath fell out of me. I whipped my hand up to the headboard, grappling to fist around a column of buttery oak, and I soothed it with my fingers, grounding myself, then opening my eyes to look at him: Boris, watching me, fingers more confident by the moment, as though digging me open, a slick well.
“Tell me,” he said.
I felt my face contort in pleasure, frustration. “Boris,” was all I could say.
He smiled. “Tell me what you want, Theo.”
I had to close my eyes again. I was gritting my teeth, panting through my nose.
“Open your fucking eyes.”
I inhaled sharply and obeyed. God, the sight of him.
“Such a good boy for me,” he praised. He was smiling like he’d told a joke.
He had brought his other hand to my dick and was palming the head, teasing the glans with his thumb. A dribble of precum rolled down his fingernail.
By now he had three fingers in me; he leaned down and spat again, the feel of it ticklish and warm. I kept my eyes on him now. The ringing in my ears was thick, I was dizzy with it.
I felt him move somehow, shift his fingers inside of me, and then, god, I felt it, he was hitting my prostate.
My mouth fell open on a sound. For once, his face went slack as he watched me, seeming fascinated by my expression.
He held my dick at the base of the shaft as he pumped into me, hitting that spot every fucking time, making me gasp and chant:
“Ah -- ah -- ah -- ah --”
“O, moy Bog, detka.”
I rocked back on him, shameless, and clenched my hands until I had to bring one to my dick, I was so hard --
But he slapped my hand away, and I watched in astonishment as his tongue slipped kitten-like from his lips and lapped up the shedding precum from my cock, my balls, my stomach. He moaned greedily as he went, so that I felt a hum of vibration where his mouth touched me; then he pulled back, still fisting the base of it, and pillowed his cheek on my thigh as he watched his fingers move in and out of me.
He began babbling, muttering in Russian -- Polish -- Ukrainian, I could hardly distinguish one language from another. It was like he was drunk. Though I caught this:
“Kocham twoje ciało. Kocham Cię.”
“Fuck. Speak English.”
He leaned over me, fingers slow and deep, lanky black hair tickling my stomach, and laid a lingering kiss on the stretch of skin along my hip bone.
“Theo…” he murmured. “Don’t be mad… I want you to fuck me.”
I was so dizzy with pleasure that I had to ask him to repeat himself. When I understood, I frowned.
“Why the fuck would I be mad? God, Boris.”
He pulled his fingers out of me very gently, mumbling endearments into my skin. “Kochanie. My Theo. So good to me.” He kissed the crease of my thigh, my belly button. “I have thought about this, I imagine it. To have you fucking me.”
I counted my breaths, white-knuckled his shoulder. “Come here,” I said.
He looked up, eyes innocent, and rose to kiss me. He tasted like cum and bad wine and sweetness.
“I always meant it,” I whispered when he moved to kiss along my jaw. “You know that?”
He rested a moment, put his forehead to the curve of my neck. “I know,” he said.
We were still for a moment, as though we both were waiting for the words in me to present themselves, a prayer. “I love you.”
He breathed in, out. “Theo,” he said. “Theo. Blood of my heart.” His lips touched my neck as he spoke. “I am in love with you.”
Something in me swelled, lifted. “Well,” I said quietly, “I’m in true love with you.”
His hands, where they touched me, held fast, squeezing me painfully, even as he laughed.
“God,” he said, “I have wanted this.”
I pushed his shoulder, and he went with it, rolling onto his back and allowing me to comb his hair back from his face, curls of ink on the pillow.
“No condom?” I asked again.
He nodded, firm. “I want you to cum in me.”
I had to close my eyes for a moment. “Fuck, Boris.” I felt him take my hand, guide it down between his legs. As I watched him guide me, my fingers landed on the soft skin of his perineum. He had spread his legs for me, as I’d done for him.
“I have not prepared,” he confided quietly.
“Doesn’t matter,” I said, kissing him.
We went slow. I made myself relax, withdraw from my instincts, as I fingered him. We got a pillow under his hips, as he’d done for me; I used a lot of lube. The whole time, he watched me, not making a sound as he studied my face, rocking back on me.
When I aimed, pushed into him, I had to still there -- halfway inside him -- both for his sake and because it felt so fucking good, so plainly right, that I was afraid I’d cum in him on the spot like a teenager. And I wanted to make this good for him.
He coaxed me forward, taking me by the ass and pulling me steadily into him. I felt him pulse around me, tight and slick and searingly hot, and as sweat dripped from my forehead, my chest onto his prone body below me, I bent my head and kissed him, and I told him I loved him, that he felt so good, that his body was incredible, it had always been incredible. I said he was beautiful, he was so fucking beautiful, and I rocked into him again and again, and he pushed his hips up until he had me where he wanted, so that he threw his head back and howled with pleasure -- I was hitting his prostate, I guessed -- and held his dick and squeezed himself, cockhead purple and saturated, and began chanting, babbling in other languages, incomprehensible to me even as I knew without looking, without hearing, without asking how he felt.
He came in ribbons. I was bent over him and sliding in it, his cum and our fragrant sweat, and as I finished inside him he stared at me, begged me to look at him, and I did.
I pulled gently out of him. Cum dripped, stained his sheets. I lay beside him and took him immediately, sweaty and flushed in my arms, and kissed him bruisingly.
“What is wrong?” he asked, and I realized I was crying.
I wiped wonderingly at my eyes. “I don’t know. I’m just -- I don’t think there’s anything wrong.” I looked at him, his beautiful face, flushed and glowing with perspiration. “I just feel so happy.”
IV.
Boris,
A part of me accepts that you’re dead, or in trouble, but for the sake of my own selfish piece of mind right now I’m pretending it isn’t true. As vampirish as you are, pale as death, I can’t fathom the idea of your life, over. Maybe you feel the same about me. I don’t know. I’m sorry if you do.
More than anything it feels like a betrayal to kill myself now after I promised I’d wait for you. But it also feels like a betrayal on your part, that you never came back. I don’t know, maybe you will, and you’ll find me first. I would hate that, but it makes a sick sort of sense.
But I know you would understand. Of course you would. You know, better than anyone in the world, how I exist in this life, and the depths of my misery, how far I would go to end it. Thank you for cleaning up after me. Thank you for dragging me inside when more than anything I wanted to sink into the very earth. Thank you for saving my life so that I could meet you again, all these years later, so that I could live with Hobie and take care of Popchik and deal antiques. I am grateful for all of it.
I feel with every day that passes I’m becoming more like my dad. You never met my mother -- I wish you had -- but if I could choose a parent to become, it would be her. We’ve talked about this, I’m sure of it: We would both choose our mothers. But you don’t get to choose the parent you become. You don’t get to choose the parent who dies last. It makes me sick to look in the mirror and see him, his features, his stupid confidence, where I wish I could see her. I know you didn’t hate him, not like I did, but you always said you were on my side. I’m grateful for that. Maybe now you will understand, too, why I hate myself.
I have always wanted to hold on to the years when she was with me, when she shaped me in her image and made me good. I spent too many years with my dad, and not nearly enough with my mom, and I will never forgive God, or the universe, or whatever the fuck for this. This was the final nail in my coffin. Before she died, I could have been good.
Boris, I’m sorry. As I’m writing this my hand is shaking and I’m so high and drunk that the paper I write on feels at times like all there is in this room. It surrounds me. It begs of me. I have nothing to give it, I’m famished. But I have so much to tell you. There is so much I wish I had told you in person. So many times I look at you and I know what I need to tell you, but the words refuse passage. I don’t know, maybe you get it. You usually know what I’m talking about. This is my last chance, though.
I want you to know that I loved you. I guess I still do. Well, I know that I do. I was going to tell you, the night that I left Vegas for good. It was right on the tip of my tongue. But I have a hard time being honest sometimes. I have always been this way. More of my dad, maybe.
In spite of your taking the painting, or perhaps in my sick way because of it, I feel like you are the only person alive I will ever really trust. I am in love with Pippa, but you are my only friend. You are my true friend. I always struggled to put a word to us, but I know how I feel. You are the only person who knows me. And I’m sorry that I am such a difficult person to know. I’m sorry for being a jealous, maniac friend. I’m sorry I didn’t beg you to come with me. God, I miss you. I missed you.
I need to stop now, or I’ll ramble on forever. You know how I get.
For some reason, although I think I know why, that song is coming to me. I hear you humming it.
This is the second time I leave you. I’m sorry, Boris, that I have never been patient, or honest, or wise.
I’m in love with you. There, I said it.
Theo