Page 29 of Any Given Lifetime
“I was a broken one. A freak. You and Mom are right. I should have let this go before now.”
“Why, though? Before now Lee was alive and you had no chance.”
“That’s not the only reason.”
“Right. Because Joshua was happy, and you didn’t want to hurt him. But now Lee’s gone, and, yeah, that’s sad, but if you just give Joshua some time to grieve…” Derek waved his hand around.
“Then what? After letting Joshua hurt for a year I just show up and say, ‘Hi, I’m your dead boyfriend from twenty years ago. How’s it hanging?’ He’d never believe me.”
“I believed you.”
“Because you’re…” Neil waved at him. “You.”
“What’s that mean?”
“You’re gullible.”
“Thanks, asshole. Also, no one says, ‘How’s it hanging?’ anymore.” Derek chewed on the inside of his cheek, thinking. “You’d know things only he’d know, wouldn’t you? Things you said to each other. Things you did together. How could he argue with that?”
Neil stared at him, his gut churning. Hope and despair and a weird grief he didn’t understand because he’d never known Lee, not really, mixed inside him like a highly reactive combination of corrosive chemicals. “True. But how can I do that to him? It would be selfish.”
“So?”
“He’s just lost his husband.”
“I’m not saying drive up there right now and tell him everything. I’m just saying that this is your chance. Eventually.”
Neil shook his head. “It’s been twenty years. He’s forgotten about me.” The words of Joshua’s post floated in his mind.When I lost Neil, my first love, I thought I’d never feel pain that bad again.Maybe he wasn’t forgotten, but he was in the past: dead, buried, and grieved.
What kind of asshole would he be to rip that scar open?
Derek tugged him close again. “You just need a good fuck to clear your head,” he whispered, unbuttoning Neil’s dark shirt. “It will all look better after an orgasm.”
Neil gave in, pleasurable oblivion preferable to the unbearable tumult of feelings inside.
Several hours later, Derek was asleep beside him in bed, the books were still all over the fucking place, and Neil’s balls ached from coming. He stared up at the ceiling, considering the speckled plaster.
He wouldn’t purposely reach out to Joshua. But if the time came where they met face-to-face due to nanite research or some odd accident, then he would take it as a sign from whatever source had brought him back. As for what he’d do or say at that time, he’d have to hope he could wing it. There was no amount of practice that would ever make it easier to say he had once been Neil Russell. Maybe the most he could ever hope for would be to simply be in the same room with Joshua again, as Neil Green, nanite researcher and grant applicant, and be content with that.
Until that time arrived—if it ever did—Neil would dedicate himself to making sure all of his future nanite trials and treatments went through the most rigorous trials and tests before moving on to human subjects, the way he’d wanted to do from the beginning. If only he’d been old enough to have any say in the matter. But, at the time of the proto-nanites’ introduction to human testing, he hadn’t even been in college yet.
Careful not to wake Derek, Neil climbed out of bed, bypassed the books, and found his computer. Then he made an anonymous donation of money he didn’t really have in honor of Lee Fargo to World Bicycle Relief.
It was the best he could do.
PART THREE
Chapter Eleven
October 2032—Bowling Green, Kentucky
The Barren RiverResort conference room was the same as it had been for as long as Joshua could remember: wood paneling on the walls and a long, beautifully polished table that took up the length of the room. The windows looked out on the shining lake, and the sky reflected in it. Geese flew in from the northern climes and dropped into the lake with a splash.
Joshua stuffed his hands into his pockets, wondering if perhaps he’d been wrong to insist that they have the meeting here instead of the lumber offices. After all, it was just going to be him and two people from Emory University. The pomp and circumstance of the resort conference room was unnecessary. He wondered if it was too late to ask for a smaller room, just to reduce the formality.
“Mr. Stouder,” Brian Peters, his contact from Emory with whom Joshua had worked in the past, called to him jovially. His silver-blond hair was cut shorter than usual, and his glasses glinted with the sun through the window. He was slightly taller than Joshua, but trimmer, with a narrow wrist and slim fingers.
Joshua greeted Brian with a smile and an open palm, shaking effusively.
