Swimming in the Dark

“I adored this book more than you knew,” it read there in your stocky, right-leaning script. “I wanted to keep it . . . but it’s yours. Bring it back one day if you can. I’ll be here. J.”

Because you were right when you said that people can’t always give us what we want from them; that you can’t ask them to love you the way you want.

“Waiting for nothing, queuing for a possibility, that’s what we’re all doing now,”

we had no manual, no one to show us the way. Not one example of a happy couple made up of boys. How were we supposed to know what to do? Did we even believe that we deserved to get away with happiness?

And I cried, despite myself. All this time I’d meant to ask you whether you loved her. It was the one thing that I regretted not asking. I realize now that it never mattered. Because you were right when you said that people can’t always give us what we want from them; that you can’t ask them to love you the way you want.

You two walked off, arm in arm, and I watched you, the burning cigarette still in my hand, the last thing you’d ever given me.

You looked at me for a reaction. This has never been a game, I thought, and never innocent either. But I couldn’t bring myself to say it. It seemed as if we’d entered a realm where words had lost their meaning. I just looked at you, saw you struggle, harden again at my silence.

Our bodies formed one, protecting each other from the cold, perfect in the night. We kissed. You were mine. I realized then that this was the only thing that counted. Nothing else had ever existed. Just our lips and hips and sighs.

I saw you sitting near me, and all I felt was love. I closed my eyes and saw fields, and flowers, and the lake, the lake from that summer, and everything was there for me, only for me, and I loved myself—all of it, every atom—like I never had before.

I couldn’t see you on the crowded dance floor. I wished it could be us out there.