Page 125 of Hamartia
Rage and loss threatens to incinerate me. It’s bullshit. All of it. I know he feels something and I know he’s scared, but I don’t know if this now is him deciding it’s just not worth it. Has Camille being pregnant just made that decision all the easier for him to make. Or is it something else? Does he want me to fight for him harder? I want to? But what’s the point in fighting something that isn’t fighting back?
All manner of disturbing notions play through my mind. Like going in there and grabbing him, fucking him senseless over the bathroom counter, falling to my knees at his feet and begging him to tell me not to go, to say that he loves me back, pleading with him to just say the fucking words. That I’ll do anything if he just…told me it’s what he wanted. That I’m what he wants. But I do none of that.
I pack, instead.
I pack while my brain vibrates inside my skull, a headache pounding at my temples. I didn’t bring much, I realize. I’d snuck out of LA like a fucking criminal and now I’d do the same in Korea. In the lounge, I eye the black lacquer case of the guitar he bought me. I could take it to the airport and pay whatever they want to fly it out of here but it feels wrong to take it now, under this storm cloud. If he wants me to have it after this then maybe I can have Halcyon arrange the transfer. It’s a heartache I can deal with another day. My heart feels too battered and bruised to deal with it now. A limping, war-ravaged thing.
An hour later he’s still not appeared from the bathroom. Maybe he has no intention of coming out until I’ve gone. I grab a beer from his fridge and sit by the wall of windows and look out at a snow covered Seoul. A notification from the airline tells me my flight is in three hours. Thirteen hours in the air to debate my entire fucking future.
Maybe I could ask Sam to arrange a last minute tour so I could lose myself in it and not need to think about anything else except getting from one stage to the next. Was that what Finn had done when my mom said she was pregnant? Run?
So no. I’m not running. Because I’m not fucking him.
“You are still here,” he says from behind me. Close. I hadn’t even heard him moving into the room, lost miles and years away. Twenty five years away. I’m on my third beer, the peeled labels littering his dining table. He slides into the seat beside me, fragrant and scrubbed raw, face wiped of any emotion I can name. My heart physicallyachesfrom how much I want to reach out and touch him. Pull him into my lap and bury my head in his neck. Breathe him into my body. Beg him not to tell me goodbye.
“Did you hope I’d be gone?”
He doesn’t have to say it. The guilty look is enough.Yes.
“I can call the company and have them arrange a car to take you to the airport,” he says.
“I’ve booked an Uber already. It’ll be here in a half hour.”
“You are going home to LA?”
“Yeah.”
He nods then moves to sweep up the peeled labels into one hand, lifts the two empty beer bottles in the other and goes to the kitchen. I hear him discard the trash and potter about in there for a few minutes before he’s back, cup of green tea steaming from a cup in front of him. I almost smile.Green tea reminds me of you.
He feels so distant, so formal, it reminds me of the night back in Frida’s where he’d sat across the booth from me. I could barely draw breath that night. At least he’d looked at me then. Something he isn’t doing now.
“I don’t want this to be over, Jae,” I tell him honestly.
What’s the point in leaving here with shit unsaid? I want to tell him I love him again but it feels like it would be unwelcome here, now.
“I know,” he says with a sad smile. “But this was never going to have the ending you hoped for, Raphael. I thought maybe I could have…” He looks down and shakes his head. “But this was never just about me. Having you would affect not just me but our whole group. Everything. A public relationship with a woman is not permitted.” He looks up at me, imploring me to understand this. “With a man? It is…it cannot be done.”
In that moment it’s not about me, or us, or about what he can and can’t give me. I’m angry for a whole other reason.
“So you just hide who you are? Forever.”
“No.” But he looks like he’s seriously considering it. “It is not forever. Only until we are no longer important.” He lifts a shoulder as he looks down at his tea.
I want to fucking hit something. Like there would be a time when he wouldn’t be important.
“So, I’ll wait. I can wait. I don’t need a public anything, we can do this however you want to do it. Quiet. We don’t need to tell anyone.”
I sound fucking desperate because I am. He looks up at me, eyes wide. He looks tired and so fucking young—like a kid. One who’s been worked too hard for someone else’s profit—and a flare of protectiveness so strong rises in my chest it burns all the way up to my throat.
“We can work through this, Jaehyun. I can wait and we can work through this. We’ll find a way of making it work. Look, I know this is harder for you, I get it okay. I just wanted…you to try.”
Foryou to think I was worth it. For you not to walk away. For you to fuckingchoose me.
“And what about this?” he asks gently.
I don’t know whatthisis right then, I’m so focused and ready to bat away any new obstacle he tosses in our way.
“You are going to be a father, Raphael. Your child will need you. That is where your focus should be now—not on this, us.” He waves a small pale hand, like it’s inconsequential. Like he’s nothing. Likewe’renothing. “It has been…fun being with you. But now we should both move on. I think that maybe it is better this has happened now. Now you do not have to choose.”
