Page 38

AS HE SAT on their couch, knees pulled tight to his chest, Kai thought back on that day when he and Nicholas were still just kids.

“I’ve been worried you’re going to move on. From me.”

“Kai, you’re in my life. You’re a part of me, of who I am. You’re there in every decision I make. You’re my best friend, just because we’re together less doesn’t mean I’ll ever forget about you. You’ve got me forever.”

Forever turned out to have had an expiration date.

Nicholas sat at the other end of the couch, so far away. He was visibly shaking, face ashen, eyes welling up. Kai wasn’t really sure why Nicholas was the one who was so distraught, since he’d been the one to just drop the bomb on their entire life.

“Aren’t you going to say anything?” Nicholas’ voice came out strained, as though he had to work to push the question out. He’d never seemed so scared to talk to Kai before.

The room filled with an aching silence. Kai felt as though he were growing smaller and smaller in the space, as though the world around him were expanding, enlarging, leaving him far behind and too frozen to do anything about it.

His hands were pulled into his sleeves, gripping the cuffs so hard his fingers began to throb .

“What am I supposed to say?” Kai finally responded.

His voice sounded far off, even to his own ears.

It was a struggle to get the words out, it was always a struggle when things became overwhelming.

But besides that, what was he supposed to say?

What did Nicholas want from him? In seven little words he had brought everything to a crashing halt, and Kai was powerless to change it.

I think we have to break up.

The words were still echoing in Kai’s head, seeping into every part of him, pushing at his pieces, snapping them apart and leaving the bits shattered and broken on the floor.

“I-,” Nicholas began, his voice choking on the word. He looked away, breaking Kai’s unrelenting stare as though he couldn’t handle that weight any longer. “I don’t know. Anything. Please just talk to me.”

“I can’t change your mind, can I?” Kai knew the answer, even as he felt his throat growing tight, choking him off. He might have known it for a while now, that constant strain of worry that had played on loop in the back of his mind for months.

Nicholas shook his head, the movement small but steady. He still wouldn’t look at Kai.

“Then I don’t think there’s anything for me to say.”

The face of the man he had loved for so long crumpled at the words. Kai had rarely seen Nicholas cry. It satisfied something in him to know that he wasn’t the only one hurting. That he could control one thing in this situation, could twist a single knife little by little.

“There’s so much to say, Kai.” Nicholas finally looked back up, tears spilling onto his cheeks.

Kai’s own eyes felt dry, as if when his emotional well had dried up it had taken all the moisture from his body too.

His tongue felt heavy and sticky in his mouth, his skin felt paper thin.

All of the physical sensations became his focus, because inside, where everything had been scared and hurting for so long? Inside he felt nothing.

“I don’t want to lose you in my life,” Nicholas kept going, voice turning frantic.

He seemed to shrink under Kai’s unending stare, his words turning shaky.

“We’ve been friends for so long, we were friends before anything else.

I think we can still have that! I just… I just think it’s time to move on. For both of us.”

Time to move on. Nicholas was finally moving on from him, just as Kai had always feared he would.

For a moment, Kai’s memory of the boy he’d first befriended seemed to transpose over the man before him.

That same messy hair. A small, smiling face, eyes set wider with childish glee and mischief.

The image blurred atop the man crying before him, hair wilder than usual from the way he kept anxiously running his hands through it.

Face crumpled, something broken in his eyes.

What right did Nicholas have to feel broken? He had done this. He had taken a hammer to the life they had built together, smashed it into a million pieces in a handful of words.

“Please just talk to me!”

Kai’s attention focused back on the present, the image of that young boy fading away, disappearing forever.

He chewed on the inside of his lip, his mouth sealed shut against his will.

It didn’t matter, though. Kai didn’t want to say anything.

He didn’t want to talk about all the reasons why everything he’d wanted hadn’t been enough to keep the man before him.

“Kai, we aren’t happy! Not as happy as we should be,” Nicholas said, his voice filling with panic.

“Not as happy as we could be. We fell together when we were kids, and neither of us have ever known anything else. We were friends, we are friends, and I think we both deserve the chance to find something more than that.”

Friends. If he could, if his body would let him, Kai almost wanted to laugh.

He loved Nicholas with everything he had. He may have felt unsteady sometimes, they may have felt unsteady, but Kai was sure of how much he loved him. Was sure that he would never feel more for anyone else. And Nicholas was whittling it down to what they’d been to each other as children.

“I think you need to leave.”

The words were hardly a whisper, but Kai watched them land like a blow.

“You have nothing else to say?” Nicholas looked angry, finally. Kai only continued to stare at him, unblinking, masking the cracking pieces inside of himself.

Nicholas deflated, that tiny trace of anger disappearing completely.

Fresh tears slipped past his long lashes.

He wiped them away, breathing deeply. Nicholas always had been able to steady himself quickly.

It was something Kai loved about him, something he could always depend on. Only he couldn’t anymore, could he?

“I’ll go stay with Ori,” he finally said. He waited several more long, tortuous moments, watching Kai, willing a response to come. Kai moved his gaze away from Nicholas, his stare intently focused on a bit of paint chipping away from the wall across from him.

Nicholas left the room quietly, moving quickly throughout their home to gather a few things.

Kai continued to stare at the wall. He imagined that small chip spreading, spider-webbing out from that central place.

Cracks forming along the paint, crawling toward the floor, toward the ceiling.

Pieces chipping away one by one, until the ugly surface beneath was fully exposed.

“I’ll call you in a few days.” Nicholas’ voice snagged his attention, but Kai didn’t pull his eyes away from the wall. “ We can talk then.” His voice sounded so tired.

Footsteps receded across the room. The sound of their door unlatching froze Kai.

He suddenly wanted to jump up, wanted to run to the other man, beg him for time to mend what was breaking between them.

Was he making a mistake, sitting in silence, attempting to punish Nicholas for doing what he thought was right?

“I don’t want to lose you in my life.” Nicholas voice was soft, almost a whispered echo of his earlier sentiment. “You’re my best friend, Kai.”

Kai’s walls crashed back down into place. He held perfectly still, not moving a muscle as Nicholas left, the door clicking shut behind him.

He was Nicholas’ best friend, but Nicholas was the love of his life. Kai could never go back to less than that.

He continued to stare at that chip in the paint until the tears finally came. Kai curled into a ball on their couch, crying long into the night, aching for the touch of the person he’d just lost.

Nicholas had been true to his word. Kai let his phone ring through to voicemail several days later. He listened to the message, listened as Nicholas asked him to call back.

Kai didn’t call back.

It became a new routine, Nicholas calling every couple of days, his messages turning more and more desperate, until something resigned replaced the urgency in his voice. Kai listened to them all, read every text.

He never responded to any of them.

Time healed all, isn’t that what everyone always said?

Kai let the time slip by, days and weeks and months.

He was sure that if he waited long enough, if he pushed it all down, pushed past the anger and the agony, that eventually his cracks would begin to heal.

That eventually his sharp edges and stabbing, broken shards would stop threatening to tear through his skin.

It did get easier over time. Easier to not cry through the night, to put on a fake smile and pretend that he was moving forward. Easier to hide it.

A handful of blind dates and hookups convinced all of his friends that he really was past it. They couldn’t see the web of cracks spreading under his skin, chipping pieces of him away bit by bit.

Over time, the messages from Nicholas stopped coming.

It hit Kai one day, like he’d walked into a brick wall.

The seed of doubt that had been there since that terrible night, the seed that whispered of regret, it seemed to finally grow roots, to latch itself into place permanently.

Nicholas had stopped trying, but Kai’s grief and rage were still there.

Still going strong. He couldn’t bring himself to let go of them, because suddenly they were all he had left of the man he loved.