Page 9 of Splintered
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Chapter Three
Argumentative essayson the Medieval Ages lay scattered on the dining room table, loosely sorted into piles of ‘to be read,’ ‘read,’ and ‘putting off until the second glass of wine.’
Ben hunched over Jennifer’s paper, a comparative analysis of the role of women in French and English Medieval societies, scribbling in the margins with his red pen. When he was a kid, he thought teachers and their red pens had been ridiculous, a trite aphorism that belonged thirty years before his own childhood. Now, he kept a coffee cup stuffed full of red pens on his desk in his classroom and at home on the dining room table, his makeshift office.Way to play into the stereotype, Ben.
The tradition of it appealed to him, somehow. The length of history, teachers of generations who helped to shape young minds with their rituals, keeping the shared culture, the collective Americana educational mores, alive.
Or he was a stick in the mud, stuck forever in what he knew and what he liked. Stuck in his childhood home, teaching at the school he grew up in, in the town he was raised in. Wanting a future that was a mirror of his past.
No wonder he taught history. The future was too terrifying, wasn’t it? Change was evil. Was he any different than the Medieval churches, refusing to accept the future, the tides of change?
Well, of course he was. He was a devout atheist. He could count on one hand the times he’d stepped into a church.
Faith was a curiosity to him, something to be turned over and examined and questioned, a sociological exercise. Why did people believe in their rituals, their summonings, their magic? And wasn’t that what any religious service was, from pagan to Christian? Sympathetic magic, the consecrated host changing from bread to holy flesh. What was that, at its bare bones, other than magic?
He was too far removed from faith to understand it, too far separated from the rituals to comprehend. Churches were buildings on street corners, temples to happenings of ancient millennia. Dusty books and ancient traditions, candlelight that flickered in the past and cast shadows on the present.
Much like his own life was a consecration to the past. Was Evan the equivalent of Luther nailing hisNinety-Five Thesesto the door of Ben’s soul?Change, or you’ll lose it all.
New York.
He dropped his red pen and closed his eyes, squeezing the bridge of his nose.
New York was impossible. He couldn’t, wouldn’t, move. But he loved Evan.
Thumping sounded upstairs directly over his head. He eyed the trembling chandelier. Evan was awake and in their home gym.
When Evan had moved in, they’d started renovating room by room, turning each of the three extra bedrooms into something different. Renovating had been a struggle at times. The house was old, and like all old homes, resistant to change. They’d run into problems, poured more money into each room than they thought they would have. But his mom’s old office slowly became a library. His dad’s, Evan’s home gym, stuffed with a treadmill and a weight bench and a free weight stand. Hauling each of those dumbbells up the stairs had been an afternoon of hilarity.
Would Evan move the gym with him? Would he move a thousand pounds of dumbbells to Manhattan, up seventeen flights of stairs to some penthouse apartment overlooking Central Park where he could curl as he watched scullers in the lake, yoga on the lawn, dogs and people and all the hustle and bustle of the city? Or would he leave it all behind, a dusty ghost to live in Ben’s house next to the memories of his mom and dad and his failed love?
They’d left Ben’s old bedroom alone. “It should be a nursery,” Evan had said once, one afternoon when they were tossing ideas back and forth on what to do, on whether wallpaper or paint would be a better choice. “We have time to work on it.”
And then they’d made love, like Evan was trying to give him a baby, like they could create a family themselves, just between the two of them, and had kept making love all weekend until they couldn’t move, just lay in a pile of arms and legs and sweat and fluids, trading kisses and smiles and breaths and lazy strokes over shivering bodies.
Eventually, the thumping overhead stopped, Evan’s treadmill routine over. The intervals of weights began. Ben knew Evan’s routine by heart, could tell whether it was a push or pull day by the reps and the rest periods. Evan was pushing today. He knew this man like he knew his own soul. Maybe even better.
Which was why this, this fracture, this splinter of their lives, was like something inside of him had ripped down the center.
He kept count of Evan’s reps in the back of his mind as he moved to Missy’s essay on Joan of Arc.
An hour later, Evan appeared at the foot of the stairs, sweaty and breathing hard. He bypassed Ben, skipping the customary kiss he usually dropped on the top of Ben’s head, and went to the kitchen. An army of protein powders rested in a line on the kitchen counter next to the blender. Time for the protein ritual.
Finally, after he’d mixed and blended, Evan turned to him, leaning back against the counter as he drank. He had earbuds in his ears, his phone still strapped to his bicep, music tuning the world out.
“Good workout?” Ben asked. Evan could see his lips move.
Evan rolled his neck, stretching. He closed his eyes. Bobbed his head in time with the beats from his earbuds.
“Evan?”
Nothing.
He headed for Evan, ditching the essays and his red pen. Something inside him was peaking, something that had simmered for weeks suddenly boiling over. Damn it, he was so sick of being ignored, of being left in the dark. He had toknow, whatever it was. Whatever was happening.
He tugged out Evan’s earbuds, the tinny sound of rock music blaring from the little speakers. Hard bass, thrumming guitars, and angry vocals filled the kitchen.
