Page 36 of Lance
“Okay. Come on,” Aaron finally broke the silence which stretched on and on between them, like a long string of toffee, or silly putty. It seemed like it would eventually have to break, but it never quite did. It fell to Aaron to grab Lance around the wrist, and Jamie, too, and tug them both over to a private room.
“Aaron,” Jamie protested, but Aaron just shook his head and pushed them both into the room.
“I’m sick of this. Talk,” he ordered, and then he was gone, leaving Lance to look at his lover. Talk, Aaron said, like that was the easiest thing in the world, but now that they were alone, Lance had no idea what to say.
“Who was that girl?” When Jamie spoke, there was a hint of tension in his voice, but much more reflected in his eyes. One thing that Lance had learned about Jamie was that he hid his emotions pretty well, but they could nearly always be found, to some degree or another, reflected in those clear blue eyes.
“It was Amy.” Lance took a moment for Jamie to take that in, to realize what that meant, and he saw Jamie’s eyes widen immediately as a result. The slightest hint of concern somehow managed to overwrite a lot of the anger which Jamie was obviously feeling.
“Amy?” Jamie whispered, and Lance nodded, feeling how tense and tight his own lips were at the mention of her name. Amy was a whole other thing, one that he didn’t even know how to deal with.
The only thing he knew was that, when it came down to it, he would rather try to figure things out with Jamie than talk to her. Part of that was his anger with her. Part of that was the passing of time. But regardless, Jamie was his priority.
Just as he thought that, though, Jamie, who had dropped his gaze to the ground, looked up at him once more and his eyes were narrowed, his vivid face filled with anger once more.
“Amy! Well, Jesus Christ, Lance, I guess I’d better get in fucking line if I want any chance with you at all!”
Lance winced but forced himself to rally as quickly as he could. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly, slowly, but by the time it was done he hadn’t actually figured out what he was going to say to that.
“That’s not fair,” he tried. “Damn it, Jamie, I told you about Ken and me. I didn’t lie to you about that. And Amy …” his voice trailed off for a moment before he continued on. “Amy, I had no idea was going to show up. I didn’t even know that she was alive.”
Jamie frowned, his arms crossed defensively across his chest, everything about his body language screaming of his hurt and anger as he leaned away from Lance.
“Well, she is. So what are you going to do about that?” Jamie’s voice got louder and louder as he spoke, and Lance recoiled back, more than a little defensive himself. “Are you just going to stand around and kiss her some more? Some woman who took off on you without explanation?”
There was a strange edge to Jamie’s voice, and Lance’s brows furrowed as he gazed at the livid man who had come to mean so much to him. There was something in his eyes, some sort of guilt, and he was pretty sure he had some idea where it was coming from.
“Well, isn’t that what you did with Dom?” Lance asked, and Jamie pulled away as though Lance had hit him. “Did you tell him that you were leaving? Maybe … Maybe Amy was just done with me.”
Jamie gave a soft little noise, one that Lance wasn’t sure that he even knew how to interpret. But Lance didn’t have to wait for long, Jamie clarified things soon enough.
“Maybe I’m just done with you,” Jamie whispered. And with that, he was gone, ripping open the door and then slamming it behind him, leaving Lance behind without even so much as a glance over his shoulder. Without so much as a goodbye.
Which just went to prove, Lance figured, as he staggered and reeled and fell against the wall of the small room, that he’d been right all along. That this was a horrible idea, and that it had been from the beginning.
Amy showed up in his life, and once, he would have been ecstatic about that. Now, he mourned for what he’d lost, for the loss of his own innocence. And now, to lose Jamie on top of that, and who knew, maybe Ken, too, well, it felt like he was doing an awful lot of losing.
All at once, his whole life changed, and all he had to hold on to was a grim pleasure in the fact that he’d been right. That he had never fully allowed himself to trust Jamie, who had, in the end, just walked out on him.
Lance’s biggest secret, the one which he would never tell anyone, was that he could fall for people far too easily if he wasn’t careful. And he had started to do that with Jamie. It seemed that every time he let himself care, he lost that person.
At least he’d lost Jamie before it was too late before he went and fell in love and got his heart broken when Jamie inevitably left. Right?
