Page 112 of Catching Kyle

“No,” I whisper to myself. “This isn’t happening. No, no, no, no.”

“So what now?” Linda asks. “Plan to tell your boyfriend you’re leaving him after a wonderful Thanksgiving?”

There’s a silence, and it feels like my entire body is filled with lead.

Listening here, I almost feel disembodied. Like I’m a ghost imagining this whole interaction. But if I move, then I remind myself that I’m corporeal. That I’m here, alive. And that I’ve just heard my boyfriend say he’s breaking up with me.

“I’m going back to Portland,” Kyle says. “I have everything I need with me.” I hear the front door open, and it feels like my heart is tying itself in knots. He must have packed a bag while my back was turned to him. All while I thoughthow I was a fool to consider breaking up with him. And now he’s breaking up with me, and he doesn’t even have the balls to tell me.

“So you’ll just abandon your boyfriend here?” she asks. “And leave me to clean up your mess?”

There’s a beat long pause, and then…

“I’m sorry, ma.” I hear the front door shut, and then Kyle’s rental car starts.

“What’s that?” Linda says out loud.

She makes her way to the kitchen to find me huddled against a cabinet on the floor, weeping into my hands.

“Oh, my sweet child.” She lowers to the ground and wraps her arms around me, and Miss Beautiful scurries away. “Did you hear all that?”

I nod.

“My damned boy,” she says. Her head rests on my shoulder, and I can feel her shaking it.

“I don’t know what I did wrong,” I say, lifting my face from my hands. “He had been so distant the past few months. But something in him changed. He was his old self again. Present. Before this, I even thought that I was going to break up with him. But he was so emotionally available that I let go of the whole idea. But now…”

Sobs pour through me, preventing me from speaking.

“My son is a troubled man,” Linda says, rubbing my arms. “For the longest time, I’ve suspected that he was gay. He never told me, but I had that feeling. And seeing you was like seeing the light through the clouds. It was finally confirmed.”

I let out a sharp laugh. “He never said anything about being gay? Or us?”

“He mentioned you were a friend, but I connected the dots.”

Friend.Sheesh.

“I should have known this would happen,” I say. “I always fall for guys who aren’t emotionally available. And no matter how much I’m hurt, I keep coming back for more. I’m cursed. I’m a fuckup.”

She shakes me. “Look at me.”

Startled, I obey, and there’s raw determination in her eyes.

“You are not cursed. You are not a fuckup. You are broken. Hurt. Betrayed. But that does not mean you can’t bounce back from this.”

“But Linda,” I say, using all my strength to hold my quivering lip. “Ilovehim. I’m in love with a man who walked out on me and didn’t have the decency to say goodbye. A man that I tried to keep at arms-length because I knew he was emotionally unavailable. And yet I still let myself fall for him. I’m the least self-respecting man out there.”

“And you listen to me, Michael. You and I have spent a lot of time together today. I’ve gotten to know you. There is a light within you. A bright one. And I won’t have you sitting on my dirty kitchen floor putting yourself down like that.

“You’re right. Kyle is not emotionally available, as least as available as I hoped he would be at his age. But that is not your fault. I can see that you’re the kind of person who loves, and loves, and loves. But what you need to learn how to do is direct that love to yourself first and foremost. This is what I had to do when I left Kyle’s father.”

Her words sound just like my sponsor’s right after I ran into David.

“I’ve been trying to do this for years,” I say. “Why isn’t it working?”

She releases me and leans against the cabinet just like I am. “Maybe it has been this whole time,” she says. “And this was the push you needed to bring your self-love to the next level.”

I sigh, taking her words in. They ring true, but my mind is too muddled and angry and sad to really internalize them.