The table looked the worst, still full of beer caps and empty bottles with morning sun bouncing a little too brightly off the dull brown glass. I adjusted my sunglasses, the better to see the crumpled pizza boxes and overflowing ashtrays where roaches outnumbered cigarette butts. That smell always overpowered the delicate sea-salted breeze, but that’s what comes of all nighters.
As I sat staring at it all, the mess shifted and I realized my gaze had slipped to near the floor where booted feet appeared on my Astroturf. A cardboard tray with steaming paper cups descended from above smelling of dark, pick-me-up joy. I hate party mess but I love Mitchell for always bringing the black gold and the green garbage bags that make it bearable. On those day after days, I never care about recycling or blue boxes or land fills until my apartment no longer looks like one.
“So.” He had to shift more mess to sit next to me on the rickety metal swing. I couldn’t bother moving to make room. “Who came?”
I shrugged and stared out over the railing at the waves. “Oh, everyone. Katie and Josh. Steph and his new boyfriend. A real bruiser.” I shuddered at the memory. “Steph’s going to get his heart broken again. I just hope it’s not going to be at the cost a few bones. He has the worst taste in men.” I hesitated before continuing, but what I hadn’t told him yet I knew was the thing he really wanted to know. “Alex, Mick.” While I waited, I sipped, and it took a whole minute for him to ask.
“Alex and Mick together?”
“I don’t know Mitch.” Already, he’d set down his cup and picked up a bag and I watched him fuss with the edge. “Do you think they’d tell me if they were?”
“I guess not.” He sounded dejected, but these days, I could never be sure. It irritated me, though.
“Why don’t you just tell him you’re sorry?”
He started shoving trash into the bag. “Because I’m not.”
“Then why do you care if he’s with Mick?”
“Who says I care?”
“Oh, for crying out loud.”
“Well,”
“Well, nothing. If you don’t care, stop asking.”
“What do I do, Liz?” Now he really did sound miserable, and maybe because I was hung over, and the sun was too bright, I couldn’t find any sympathy. It’d been months now, time he got over this.
“You step up, or you step back and let him get on with his life. All he did was tell you how he felt. You shattered him. What did you expect him to do?” Silence. “What would you have done in his place? You said it yourself, you’re not sorry.”
“I’m sorry I hurt him. I’m not sorry I don’t feel the same way.” If I didn’t know Mitch so well, I would have had to laugh. But I do know him, and he’s not that kind of guy.
“You didn’t hurt him, Mitch. You ripped him apart. You humiliated him and left him bleeding on the sidewalk. What did you expect he would do? Forgive and forget?”
“What did he think would happen if he told me that? Honestly?” He stuffed things into the garbage bags indiscriminately and I don’t think he even saw what he was doing. This is one of the things I hate most about him, this blind emotional mess I can’t reason with. “We were best friends,” he mumbled. “He violated everything.”
“He violated everything?” I swear sometimes Mitch has no clue. “You broke his nose.”
“He-” Mitch actually sputtered. “He-”
“He what?” Coffee is not enough amour against this moody Mitchell. My head hurt and I suddenly wanted him to go away. There was too much in his voice I didn’t think I wanted to deal with.
“I trusted him.”
“You make it sound as though he handed you your liver on a plate, when all he did was show you his own heart. Just because he told you something you didn’t want to hear was no reason to beat the crap out of him. You are the one who violated his trust. After all the shit he’s been through, you should have handled things better.” I could see his anger, but so what. No one’s told Mitch any of this. People are too afraid of him. I’m not. Not any more. “No one is asking you to fall in love with him, Mitch. Just apologize to him. You’ve known him your whole life. Doesn’t that count for anything?”
“Our whole lives, he lied to me.”
“I wonder why.” Mitch has this glare. If I thought he would hit me, it would be terrifying. I know he won’t. But then, maybe Alex had thought that too. I’d come this far, though, and Alex deserved to have someone speak for him if he wouldn’t speak for himself. “When he told you the truth, Mitch, look what happened.”
I watched him warily. He’d stopped stuffing the bag and just stood there holding it. His curly hair fell in his eyes, but I didn’t need to see his eyes. “Do you blame him for hesitating?”
“How do I go back now? After so long?”
It was progress. At least he admitted he wants to go back. “You just do,” I said, more gentle than I had been up to then. I stood and took the bag from him, pushed the hair out of his face. “You just do, Mitchell. You decide your friendship is important enough. You decide you love him enough. It’s time for you to take the risk this time.”
“Would he even talk to me?”
“Of course I would.” That’s Alex for you, always stepping into a room on cat feet so you don’t hear him. We both turned around.
I once saw a rabbit in the road in front of my car. It froze in the headlights as if, if it stayed still enough, the tones of steel and rubber bearing down on it wouldn’t notice its presence and would just barrel on by without touching it. Mitchell had that look on his face. Alex only tossed his keys on the hall table and came out onto the balcony with us.
“I’ve been waiting for you to talk to me for six months, numb-nuts.”
“Alex,”
“I’m with Mick, yes.” He smiled a little. “You asked, right?” He looked to me. “He asked?” I nodded. “Of course he did. But that doesn’t change what I said that night.” Mitchell frowned, but he managed, this time, to control his temper.
“Why does it scare you so much, Mitch?”
“I’m not.” Mitch was actually backing away, but he caught himself, glancing from Alex to me as though to ascertain if we’d noticed. “I was mad, Alex. We’ve known each other for twenty years. You couldn’t have told me sooner?”
“We’re grown men, and you beat the shit out of me.” Mitch had the decency, at least, to wince. “What would you have done to me when I was a skinny fifteen-year-old? When I needed your protection? I should have alienated you then? I’d be dead now.”
“Alex,”
“I would be dead. Because people like you would have hounded or beat me into the grave.”
I felt for Mitchell. Alex is not one to pull punches. As skinny as he is, with his delicate piano player hands, he can always bring bull-riding cow-roping Mitchell to his knees with just his words.
“What do you think I would have done to you, Alex?” I heard his voice break over the words. I heard his heart break over Alex’s insinuation. Mostly, I think, because he knew Alex was right.
“Exactly what you did do. Except, at fifteen, it would have changed everything. It would have killed us. So I didn’t tell you then because I needed you. Eventually, I just knew I couldn’t keep going the way things were. I had to get on with my life. I had to tell you the truth even knowing how you would probably react because I needed to know how you felt more than anything else.”
“And now, you don’t need me anymore.”
“Not in the same way, no. I’ve learned to look after myself.” Alex moved further out onto the balcony. “I don’t need you to protect me any more.”
“So what do you need?”
“Just for you not to look at me like you don’t know me. Like you don’t want to know me. I need you to know who I am and what I want, and to still be my best friend.”
“Best friends.” Mitchell’s brows drew together and he pushed his hair off his face. I had the sudden impression I didn’t know him at all. I didn’t recognise the look on his face or the way he stood there, uncertainly, on hand on top of his head, the other balled up on his hip. He didn’t resemble the cowboy I’d grown up with, but some fatally damaged soul who’s only salvation was this skinny piano player he was staring at. He’d forgotten I was even in the room.
“And Mick?” Mitchell asked at last. “He makes you happy?”
“That matters to you?”
“Does he?”
“What are you really asking me, Mitchell? Do you want to know if I love him? I haven’t known him that long.”
“But you’ve slept with him.”
“Mitchell!” I couldn’t help my outburst, but no one seemed to notice.
“Did you?”
Alex was awkwardly pale, maybe even trembling a bit. “So?”
Mitchell’s lips tightened. The hand in his hair clenched into another fist. “We said it was just us.”
“When I said that, it was.”
“You swore you weren’t-”
“I was a kid.” Alex moved again. He was close to Mitchell now. Within swinging distance, I noticed. “You were a kid too. I’m gay. That doesn’t mean you are.”
“But we-” Mitchell cut himself off with a hand over his mouth. His eye flitted over to me, but I was too surprised to say anything, and his attention went back to Alex.
“I can’t tell you who you are, Mitchell, or what you want, or who you love. You have to figure it out for yourself. All I can do is tell you how I feel. I did that and you-”
“I know what I did. I’m sorry.”
“I know you are.”
“So why?” Why didn’t you talk to me the last six months? I knew that’s what he wanted to ask and couldn’t. This rift was his rift, and he knew it. He’d told me so a million times. That he’d slept with his best friend he’d never mentioned, but that had been before my time. At least now I knew why he’d done what he’d done. He hated himself because he loved Alex too much, or because he couldn’t love him enough.
“I want it back, Alex,” he confessed finally from behind his hand.
“You want what back?” I could see it now. Alex was trembling.
“Us. I want us back the way we were. That night, that week, when it was just us, I want that back.”
“We were seventeen. We can’t pretend we’re the only two people in the world. We’re not even the only two people in our own lives anymore.”
“I know that.” Again, he looked at me. “You think I don’t know that?”
“I think for ten years, you’ve been pushing me away. You got married. You had kids.”
“He got divorced,” I reminded him, holding up my empty left hand. “I have no claim on him.”
“And he has no claim on me. It was ten years ago. We’ve both moved on, and I don’t want what he has.” Even I winced. Alex should have hit him. It would have been less cruel. “I don’t want that life. I want to know the man I love is going to always be there, no matter who’s watching. I want you to be brave enough to love me out loud, Mitchell, not just in a dark room or on a deserted beach where no one knows who we are.
“I want to stand on a street corner and tell you I love you and not get a broken nose for it. I want to stand here and tell you I love you and not have to face your clenched fists and your stiff back and the impossibility of ever hearing you say it back.”
“I love you.” It came out of Mitchell through teeth clenched so tight, his jaw popped. It came out of a body so tense and close to shattering it seemed a real possibility. It came out of a man I thought would have rather died than admit he loved another man. It couldn’t be anything but the truth.
When Alex looked too pale to stand, like he might turn and run, Mitchell moved. Alex backed away from him, forcing him to pursue him across the green plastic grass. Mitchell finally raised one hand and caught Alex around the back of his neck, holding him still. He hesitated only a fraction of a second before he leaned close and kissed him.
Alex was so surprised, he did nothing at first, then he reached over and wrapped an arm around Mitchell’s waist, pulling him closer still. As I watched, that kiss turned into something as primal as the beating Mitchell had administered to Alex when he’d first told him the truth. It was something I’d never shared with my husband of seven years, the father of my children, the man who I’d grown up knowing I was going to marry, and married knowing it could never last. I think I always knew, deep down, this was how things would turn out and I’d given Mitchell up a long time ago. Maybe now he’d finally be happy.
Admit It by dontkickmycane