Page 206 of Two Marlboros

Nathan brought his face even closer to mine, with an amused expression that I was beginning to love.

“Well?”

“Well,” I replied, and thought about it for a moment, “that’s pretty much what I thought.”

“Uhm. Pretty much.”

He curled his lips and gave me a look, that, yes, third-round look. I tried to back him up without giving him a hard time, but it only took a few seconds to realize it was all useless. We both burst out laughing again, me because I had told a lie, and him because he hadn’t fallen for it for a second. When our laughter died down, however, he was again left with that lost expression I had seen on his way out of the bathroom. He lowered his eyes, raised them again, and his lips twitched into a forced smile.

“So, this is how it ends?”

His question was like a slap in my face that brought me forcefully back to reality. We had laughed, we had joked, but we knew that looked a lot like Cinderella’s spell and that our time was coming to an end.

I sighed and said nothing for a while. Neither did he. We just watched each other as if looking for an answer in each other, and I knew I owed him one. I gathered all the courage I had, the courage I needed to destroy what we had built and shared.

I sighed again. “This is how it ends.”

Nathan lowered his gaze again and nodded slowly. I saw him tease a little cuticle around his thumb, then lift his eyes to let them wander around the room, until I noticed that they were becoming glazed over. I instinctively brought a hand to his cheek and stroked it and did the same to wipe the tears from his face, as I had done only a few hours before.

“Then I’ll take this opportunity to tell you something.”

His voice was broken with emotion, and so would have been mine if I had said anything. He sniffed and continued.

“Thank you for this evening. Everything was perfect, from the first moment to the last. And in general, I don’t know where I would be now if you hadn’t been there. I really owe you so much. Thank you.”

His words left me without an answer. For the more I looked at him, the more I realized how much in those two months we had been each other’s crutch, in an unlikely pairing that no one would have bet on, beginning with those different worlds to which we belonged, and which had instead dovetailed perfectly. How much had been chance and how much had we been the architects of our own destiny?

Nathan had stopped crying, so I gave him one last caress; and meanwhile I had found, within myself, words worthy of his.

“You know it’s the same for me. You’re an extraordinary young man, and I think you’re the only one left who hasn’t noticed,” I said, and that last sentence brought a smile to his face. “Do you remember how I was when you met me? Here, look at me now. It’s only because of you. And if you owe me something, I owe you just as much.”

He smiled, lay back down, and laid his head in the hollow of my shoulder. I encircled him with an arm and stroked his head, and neither of us said anything more. Several minutes of silence passed, during which I had continued to caress him and listen to the rhythm of his breathing. Occasionally he would blow more loudly, and I had the impression that he was crying. I held him a little tighter to me, and he did the same.

I turned off the light on the bedside table and let the darkness envelop us both. We went to sleep like that, snuggled into each other, me alone with my thoughts and Nathan with his.

He succumbed to sleep after a while, and I noticed because his breathing became heavier and more cadenced. I spent my time listening to him, feeling his chest rise and fall, and wondering if he was dreaming. I tried to imprint in my mind thesound of his breathing and that feeling of completeness I felt at holding him in my arms, but I knew it was not possible. I tried to hold on to sleep a little longer, because closing my eyes would break the spell, and that magic, that chemistry that had never been there with anyone else would fly away in a puff of wind.

As the eyelids began to droop, and thoughts became muddled, I felt assailed by a sense of defeat and helplessness, for I had succumbed to exhaustion; and it became clear to me that this would be, without a doubt, the last time I could hold Nathan in my arms.

I closed my eyes, and that was my goodbye - to him and to us.

The clock radio read 5:58. For a moment I jerked, thinking that it was late, but instead it was still an hour or so before the alarm clock we had set so that I could calmly accompany him to the airport.

Nathan’s breathing had swelled, and I thought that in all likelihood it was that noise that had woken me up. It was not actual snoring, just a dry exhalation interspersed occasionally with a few soft moans. I smiled and wondered how many other little things there were about him that I did not know, but that smile quickly died when I realized that I would never know.

I let my eyes adjust to the darkness and noticed that Nathan was clutching the pillow. Somehow, during sleep, we had separated and now he was resting on the side of the bed that had been Oliver’s for a couple of years.

Could two people have been more different than that?

If I had to sum up Oliver in one word, I would have said he was perfect. A studious boy with a brilliant career ahead of him, polite in manner, friendly, an ideal candidate to introduce to my parents. Not that I found anything wrong with that: I liked that he was perfect like that, he gave me a sense of order and stability.So how had I ended up falling in love with Nathan, the most screwed-up person in the universe?

Almost as if he had heard my thoughts, Nathan bellowed something, then settled back into bed stealing a substantial chunk of space from me. Maybe he wasn’t used to sleeping with someone, or maybe his bed wasn’t that big... or maybe he was just made that way, and he took the portion of the bed he thought was most appropriate so he could sleep well. A smile escaped me because I knew I would love that little detail as well.

I tried to fall asleep again in the quarter of the bed I had left, but the harder I tried to clear my mind to get back to sleep, the more it became crowded with those thoughts that only come to visit you at night.

All night long he had been my boyfriend, and I his, from the first moment I had seen him in front of the Royale, even though we had not told each other, because acting like a couple had come naturally to both of us. And that detail seemed so incredible and powerful to me that the thought of giving him up seemed almost inconceivable. Was there anything I could do to make survive thatuswe had so longed for weeks?

I could have begged him to stay, sure. Maybe he would have even agreed without wavering too much, but I knew that New York was a city that did not make him peaceful. He had experienced so much emotionally in those two months, not to mention all the past he had only told me about, a past that had often trapped him in a role he no longer felt was his own. Leaving is not always a solution, and I knew that well, but in his case, I also knew that it could be a solution for him to regain some balance. The question was, how long would it take? A month? A year? A lifetime? And even if he regained some well-being, would he ever come back for me?

---