Page 61 of What We Had

No, no, no, no, no.

“Connor, talk to me,” Bennett said.

Tears formed in my eyes and fell, one fat droplet at a time. “Ididignore that call,” I said. I didn’t know it was Bennett calling. Marcus never told me it was Bennett. And Marcus knew—heknew, goddammit—what Bennett meant to me. He was my nurse through the surgeryandrecovery. A knife-wound of betrayal tore through my belly. Marcus had visited me in LA after my discharge. He and I… we…

Gonna throw up, I thought as I connected the pieces.

I remembered that call request because it came through the day my entire life changed. That was the day the film exec, who had been scoping out the infirmary, met with me in private to offer up my very first role when I came home.

I ignored a call from the most important person in my life who had just been sexually abused. He needed me.

I couldn’t comprehend that. Couldn’t wrap my head around how severely I had fucked up. I sobbed into my hands, mourning what could have been, what became of it, what Bennett must have gone through when he was told I ignored him. The lowest moment of his life and it seemed like I had kicked him. No wonder he remained reserved these past two weeks. Hell, the past twelve years. He wasted the single most important call he could have made, and he thought my ignoring it was intentional. What does that do to someone’s psyche?

“Connor,” Bennett implored. He was off the balls of his feet and kneeling in between my legs, his hands over mine. “Connor. Look at me. What’s going on up there?”

“I didn’t know it was you. I swear. I didn’t know it was you,” I said through a pathetically small whimper. I had never broken down like this. Why did my body keep shaking? “I swear to god, Benny, I didn’t know it was you calling. He never told me it was you. Thatfucking nurse,Marcus. Lieutenant Carillo. He was the one who told me about the call andhe knewwhat you meant to me and didn’t say it was you? I’ll fucking kill him. I’ll find him and kill him.”

I took in as much air as my lungs would allow, but I still felt breathless. “I would have answered. I swear, I would have answered.” I looked up from my hands. Grabbed on to his. Fierce determination hit me like electricity. “I swear toeverythingthat I would have flown home and to you, if I knew. I would have dropped everything in my life. I would have risked discharge if it meant getting home to you. Oh, god, Bennett you have to believe me,I didn’t know it was you.”

He fell into me. My arms went around him, holding on like we plummeted through the sky and only one of us had a parachute. I felt his tears slide along my shoulder, both of us crying out as our history was laid bare before us. Both of us wrong, both of us right. The potential for what could have been, swelling between us like a balloon, suddenly burst apart by the sharp pin of reality. The present was all that remained, the consequences of reactions beyond our control, shaped by the cruel irony of fate.

I continued to mumble “I didn’t know” to Bennett, as if the mantra would force him to realize the mistake I had made, the guilt, the shame that threatened to swallow me whole.

We came up for air after two minutes or twenty. I had lost track. Tears wetted our faces, Bennett’s eyes bloodshot, mine likely the same. I cradled his face in my hands, ran my thumbs along his cheekbones.

“I am so sorry, Bennett,” I tried to say. The words came out hoarse and raw. “Please forgive me. Please.”

His hands were holding on to my wrists. “You didn’t know, Connor. There’s nothing to forgive. You didn’t know.”

“I never stopped thinking about you,” I confessed. “Never. The ghost of you kept appearing. All the time. I could never get you out of my mind, not ever.” Abruptly, I crawled halfway across the kitchen, reached up and fished on the countertop until my hand snatched my wallet. I returned to Bennett and dropped beside him.

I opened my wallet and pulled out an old, familiar picture. “I keep this with me.” The Polaroid of Bennett on the rings. Faded, worn. But still him.

His eyes took in the sight of himself. A slight dip in his eyebrows. “You kept this?”

“Kept it? More like treasured it. That thing has been with me through a dozen different wallets.”

Bennett stood and ambled toward the entertainment center. He opened the left cabinet, slipped out a DVD, then returned to the kitchen. My mug on the cover ofMortal Evidencestared at me, half shrouded in shadow, with my name written in neon blue at the top. Bennett popped the case open. There, atop the first disc of the collection, lay an old photograph of me, the one I had sent him. I held my M4, cigarette clenched between my teeth while I smiled wide, thinking of Benny.

“I never got rid of yours, either,” Bennett said. He snickered, a rush of air through his nose. “I mean, you look like a total douche. But I thought it was so sexy. Still do.” He traced a fingertip over my face in the picture. “I held on to this after everything. Used to pretend that you would come out of the blue with that rifle and protect me.”

That guilt swelled in me again. I knew with absolute certainty that I would need to work at assuaging that feeling. My absence from his life would require penitence.

“I wish I had been there,” I said. My hand balled into a fist and I slammed it into the linoleum. “God, I wish…”

“We can’t dwell, Connor. We can only move forward.” He would know. He had plenty of therapy to help cope with situations like this. “I know that’s easier said than done. But itdoesget easier. We just need to work through this. Together.”

He slipped my picture from the DVD, took his picture from my hand, and held them together. Then, he held his hand flat against mine with our pictures in between, placed his other hand on top as if we were praying with joined hands.

Bennett looked me right in the eye. “I fell in love with you that summer, too. I never stopped. Fourteen years and I never stopped. I love you, Connor. I love you.”

We came together in a mess of tears and kisses. My body filled with a sense of pride that this man, who had been through a gauntlet of tribulations,loved me. After everything, he loved me. And how I loved him in return.

Eventually, we found our feet. Bennett’s tea had gone cold and his eyes found my note before I tore it from his hands and ripped it into little pieces that made confetti in the air. The note reminded me that I needed to leave.

I had him by the shoulders, planted a kiss on his lips, then didn’t let go. “I’m going to go home for a little bit, but I’ll be right back, okay?”

“Why? I don’t have to leave for work until tonight.”

---