Page 90 of The Evening Wolves

“Oh, definitely. And after a while, when I wasn’t so scared of it anymore, I could tell myself that it was validation. I hadn’t done anything irredeemably awful to you—I was always trying to convince myself of that. A little bullying, sure. But maybe it wasn’t as bad as it felt. Hell, maybe you even got off on it. You still liked me, after all. Or you wanted me, and that felt close enough. And sometimes I could almost convince myself it was true. But you know what? I never believed it, not really. Because I knew what I was doing. And I knew how awful it was. And I did it anyway because I was scared of you, and because I hated you because I couldn’t be you.” He drew a deep breath, surprised at the strength of the emotion sweeping through him. “And then you were here, and I was here, and I just…couldn’t anymore. Couldn’t keep fighting. Didn’t want to keep fighting. It was a shitty thing I did, because I knew it was safe, and because I knew no one would ever believe you if you told. And, if I’m being honest, because I knew you wouldn’t tell. So, I guess I’m apologizing. Again.”

“Always so hard on yourself,” Emery murmured. “That was another thing that surprised me, you know.”

John-Henry was trembling, and he wiped away tears that hadn’t fallen yet, but he managed a sound that might have been a laugh. “Overcorrecting, I guess.”

“You did something that was brave and beautiful and that gave us each other, if only for a moment, John. You’ve got nothing to apologize for, even if you were scared at the time. Maybe because you were scared.”

“Really?” He tried for that laugh again, and the first hot splash of a tear fell. “Because it doesn’t feel like that.”

In the silence that followed, the plonk-plink-plonk of dripping water seemed almost musical.

“I’ve done this all wrong,” Emery said.

“No, it’s ok.” John-Henry’s nose was a little snotty, but he dried his face on his sleeve. “I appreciate you bringing me here. You’re the most important person in the world to me, and I hate when we fight. I fucking hate it. This was a good reminder. We’ve made so much progress. I love you. I told myself I’d never hurt you again.”

“John.”

“It’s ironic, though, right? I mean, this whole town hates me now. Beyond hate. They despise me. And the irony is, they should hate me because I’m a piece of shit, but they hate me for the wrong reason.” Another tear fell, stinging his cheek. “Hey, maybe it’s karma.”

“John.”

But Emery stopped there. Because he knew John-Henry was right. Because there wasn’t anything that anyone could say to that. John-Henry’s face pulsed in time with his heartbeat. Sweat dampened his shirt under his arms. In the rush of strong emotions, he felt cored out, empty and exhausted in a way that went deeper than the body. His gaze wandered the locker room, found the blank faces of the mirrors. They covered mirrors, in some cultures, when they were mourning. Because mirrors were where you saw demons.

When Emery spoke again, his voice was rough. “When I was growing up, I knew what I wanted. I wanted to get away from here, away from the bigotry, the intolerance, the petty hates and small minds. I was going to go somewhere else, and I was going to be someone else. Even during the worst of it, I knew it was only a matter of time. If I could make it through high school, I told myself, I’d be free. College would be a whole other world. And then, after that, I’d have a job, I’d be independent, I’d find people who loved me and respected me for who I was. I was sure of it.” For a long, silent moment he seemed to be wrestling with something. And then the strain in his body eased, and he gave a quiet laugh. “And then my life fell apart, and I lost everything.”

John-Henry said nothing. He didn’t think he could have said anything even if he’d known what to say.

“I came back here,” Emery said, “because I’d lost everything. My career was in shambles. My relationship was over, even if I wasn’t ready to admit it. The entire future I’d dreamed for myself—for years, John, years on years, the dream that had kept me going when it seemed like it would be so much easier to give up—it was gone. And I had nothing.” John-Henry couldn’t identify the note that entered Emery’s voice when he added, “And then there was you.”

“Insult to injury.” John-Henry’s jaw cracked as he worked it. “I know—”

“I don’t think you do, John. Know, I mean. You’re very intelligent, and you’re sensitive, so I’m sure you have an idea. But I don’t think you know, not completely. It was like I’d died. I’d lost everything I’d worked so hard for, and now I was back in the place I’d promised myself I’d never come back to. And even though I didn’t know how to say it, even though I’d never put it to myself that way, I can look back now and see that a part of me—a part of me was ready to stop fighting. It would have been easier, I think. To find a way not to hurt so much, and let that escape become the sole purpose of my life.”

“Easy for people like me. I don’t think it would have been so easy for you.”

“Maybe.”

What happened next, John-Henry didn’t have a name for. But he knew it: the way birds settled onto trees at dusk; the spin of iron filings drawn by a magnet; how he reached out at night, in the dark, to find him, to lay a hand on him, and then sleep again. It raised the hair on his arms. The skin across his chest tightened with goose bumps.

“You were here,” Emery said, his voice buckling under that same emotion John-Henry couldn’t name. “You were here, and everything changed. Everything, John. The life I have with you, I never could have imagined. Not in my wildest fantasies. Not even here, not even that first, singular moment when I thought maybe there was hope. I never could have imagined loving you the way I do, or the happiness of sharing your life, or the joy of raising children together. This wasn’t in any of the plans. It wasn’t the dream. It wasn’t the future I’d built myself. It is so much more.” He stopped, and the soft sounds he made suggested tears, but his voice was steadier when he spoke again. “I’m not saying that your situation is the same. I know it’s different. What was done to you was unfair and unjust. It was cruel. It was evil. And I can’t promise that what comes next will be better than the life you envisioned for yourself. All I can say is that I’ll be here, John. With you. For you. And there will be a future. And things will get better.”

John-Henry crossed the distance between them, the years falling away, Emery resolving out of shadow into the man John-Henry loved here, now—warm, solid, present. He was almost running because he didn’t think his legs could hold him much longer; the walls were coming down, and everything he’d worked so hard to stave off threatened to wash over him. He crashed into Emery’s chest, and Emery wrapped him in an embrace, and the last barrier fell, and John-Henry wept like a child.

21

It wasn’t exactly like the fantasies. In the fantasies, John-Henry hadn’t had to deal with the inconvenient realities of how cold the metal benches were, or how narrow, or the fact that—bottom line—the locker room was downright disgusting. But in some ways, it was better. He lay on the bench, his head in Emery’s lap, and this Emery had a very nice lap, unlike the scrawny teenager John-Henry had known. And this Emery knew exactly how to run his fingers through John-Henry’s hair, and he knew how John-Henry liked him to rub circles over his chest and stomach with the flat of his other hand, and he knew, most of all, how to be silent together.

In the aftermath of the tears, John-Henry felt wrung out, the emotional fatigue compounding the physical exhaustion of the strain of the last few days, his lack of sleep, and his injured body’s efforts to heal itself. He ached all over. His joints throbbed. He remembered high school and how, by the end of a week of a two-a-days, after the double practices in the August heat, how he had felt like this. Back then, the solution had been eating an entire extra-large pizza and sleeping for most of the weekend.

But strangely, in its own way, the weariness was also pleasant. John-Henry could have done without the aches and pangs from the beating he’d taken, but otherwise he felt...purged. Cleansed. Like something festering inside him had been washed out, and the relief was in the knowledge that, no matter how he felt now, he could heal.

Emery’s thumb traced his smile.

“Just thinking,” John-Henry answered the unasked question. “About pizza.”

Emery laughed quietly. “We can do that.”

John-Henry took his hand and kissed it. “Thank you.”

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