Page 41 of Exquisite Things
“You beg me to leave, and when I do, you ask me what the birds are saying.” I can’t help but smile. I love that he can’t seem to let me go. To letusgo. “I think they’re telling you to kiss me one last time.”
“Funny, I was thinking the same thing.” He practically lunges on me. Pins me onto the bed with feverish anxiety.
“Whoa there. This is love, not wrestling.” I remember James again. The way he asked me to tie him up. The aggression he craved from me. I want that sometimes too. But not right now.I kiss Oliver’s long neck tenderly. Little kisses as I travel back to his lips.
He sighs. “That feels nice.”
I keep kissing him. I try to put James out of my mind. To be in the moment. The last time I saw James was a few years after that fateful night when my life changed. I was asleep on the street outside one of the brothels where Wilde liked to find his young boys. I watched as James walked toward the brothel alone. His hat worn low to cover the top of his face. His scarf wrapped over his mouth. He had grown even taller. Thicker. Hairier. He sported a bushy beard that didn’t suit his face at all. He had changed. I had not. He didn’t see me. I could feel the shame in his every step as he entered the brothel. Off to bugger some lad before going home to the woman he would marry someday. That was when I realized I had to leave London. James wasn’t the only person I knew there. There were others. Students. Professors. Deans. I couldn’t risk being found out. I began my life of escape.
Oliver takes my face in his hands. “What are you thinking about?”
I shrug. “Nothing.”
“I wish I understood you the way I understand the piano. But maybe that’s the whole point of love, that it’s not an instrument that can be mastered. It’s meant to leave you guessing, isn’t it?” He smiles. “You leave me guessing.” He tries to take my shirt off.
I pull it back down. I want a lifetime of love from him. Not a frenzied night. “Your mother will be back very soon. This might not be a good idea.”
The tables seem to have turned now. I’m pressing the brakes. He’s the one pleading to speed ahead. “But this really is goodbye. If we don’t do it now—”
“Stop pretending you know the future.” I walk to the door and open it. “You’re the one who wished we lived in a better place and time. Anything could happen.”
I walk out of his bedroom and down the stairs. Descend the staircase. My eyes on all those images of Oliver’s past. The boys he’s been. He follows behind me. Argues as he chases me. “But anything can’t happen! That’s the whole point. The only time we have is the time we live in. And right now, Cyril is dead, Brendan is expelled, Mother is overworked.”
I could keep arguing. But my mouth feels too dry to speak. Our conversation and our kisses have left me parched. I desperately need water. I go to the kitchen and pour myself a glass.
He hovers at the kitchen door. “Being ourselves is a crime!” His sharp gaze challenges me to contradict him.
I’m so nervous that I spill the water on myself. “Oh, come on.” I’m soaked. I remember the fire is still raging in the living room.
I head there. Sit in front of the fireplace to dry my shirt. Oliver sits next to me. Leans his head on my shoulder lovingly. He whispers sadly into the flames. “Mother will be home soon.”
I look into his eyes. Illuminated by the glow. “Tell me one last time. Do you love me, sincerely and eternally?”
“I do.” He bites his lip. “I can’t be with you, but I’ll always carry you in my heart.”
“And if you could be with me in some other world—”
“Stop with the fantasies. Of course I want that. Of course I do. I would do anything if I were a magician.”
He kisses me on the lips gently. I pull him close feverishly.
“I don’t want to stop.” He scrunches his face up into a mask of torment. “I don’t know what to do, Shams. Tell me what to do.”
“Shh.” I can feel the crumpled remaining pages of Wilde’s manuscript in my pocket. They seem to be vibrating. Telling me to pull them out. The pages have remained with me since that day in 1895 when I saved them from burning. Parting with them would be like parting with a piece of myself. I often wondered about their power. Could they do to others what was done to me? I never burned them, though. Because I never found someone I wanted to join me in this journey. Not until Oliver. Immortality has been like a curse without him. But to be immortal together with the one you love... eternal love... isn’t that what we all dream of? “Let’s not rush the best thing either of us will ever find.” I take a breath. “Oliver, there’s something I need to tell you.”
He stares at the pages in my hand. Tries to make out the handwriting. “Are those pages from your journal?”
I shake my head. “This isn’t easy to explain.”
“Is it a love letter you wrote and never sent?” I try to find the words to begin telling him what I am. What these pages can do for him. For us. But he keeps talking and I love the sound of his voice too much to stop him. “It’s a poem you wrote for me! Do you know something? A street poet in Provincetown wrote a poem for me and Mother. We haven’t opened it yet. We’re saving it for a time when we need poetry, I think. That’s something Mother and I have in common, I suppose. Always living for the future, putting others first and our own little pleasures last.”
“Oliver, please. Listen to me. We don’t have much time. These pages—”
“BOYS!” The front door creaks open. Slams shut. She’s home. I missed my chance to tell him.
We need more time.
We deserve more time.
