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Frank’s hands are still shaking as he sits on the hard metal bench at the bus stop. He’s trying to light a cigarette, but he can’t hold the lighter steady and his thumb isn’t quick enough to spark a flame. The cigarette dangling between his lips is dipping up and down, as he shakes and struggles to breathe.
He waits and waits for what feels like hours, looking down the road for the bus as his fear steadily mounts.
He just wants to go home. He just wants to get in the shower and wash away everything that happened.
He tries harder and harder to get his lighter to work, but when he can’t he lets out a cry of frustration and shucks the piece of plastic away from him. The cigarette tumbles down into his lap and he brushes it away before pulling his knees to his chest, whimpering in pain as he did.
Everything hurt. His hands from punching, his back from the struggle, his throat from his muffled screaming…everything.
He shakes his head and tries to ward off the memories, desperate to stop the images from replaying in his head. He doesn’t want to remember. He doesn’t want to think about it ever again.
His efforts are wasted, however. The images start playing out and nothing he does stops them. He buries his face in his knees and sobs. He feels so cold, even with his hood on and his sleeves rolled down over his hands.
Minutes tick by and the bus never comes. The final bus was meant to come at eleven thirty and Frank was sure he would make it to the stop in time to catch it, but now his fear was confirmed—he was late. He’s missed the bus and has to walk.
He has to walk all the way home.
Frank sits on the bench and cries a little longer before he forces himself to take a deep breath and get to his feet. Pain shoots through his abdomen and up his spine, almost enough to bring him to his knees.
He doesn’t know how it got this bad. It started off as nothing, how had it ended here?
Frank pushes the memories back again and starts walking, limping at first but growing numb the more he moved. There’s a chill on the air as he makes his way down the streets, chilling him to the bone and making the feeling that much more prominent as the fluid begins dripping down his leg.
As soon as he feels it, Frank stops walking and gags. The images come back to him, the sick feeling overwhelms him and he drops to his knees on the sidewalk.
It started with kisses.
That’s all he can think—it’s all he’ll let himself think—as he kneels on the concrete and cries like a lost child. He hates the hopeless, helpless feeling that’s taken the place of all the love and warmth he’d once had in his chest.
It started with kisses, but even kisses can be forceful.
He doesn’t know how long he stays on the sidewalk. It’s only several minutes before he falls forward onto his hands and begins to vomit. He can’t breathe he’s feeling so ill. He doesn’t want to breathe, he’s feeling so ill.
Eventually, though, there’s nothing left in his stomach and he has no choice but to stand and carry himself home. It’s hard and it hurts, but he forces himself to move.
He wants warmth, he wants to feel safe again. All of his security had been ripped away from him so gruesomely and the cold fluid drying on his thighs reminds him with every step. Reminds him that he is weak. Reminds him that he is powerless. Reminds him that at any moment, someone else could come for him—maybe to rob him, maybe to stab him, maybe to pull him back to his boyfriend’s house and return him to that evil bed.
Frank keeps his head ducked as he walks, hoping that if he doesn’t acknowledge the men standing on the porches and stoops all around him, they won’t see him. Eventually, after what feels like hours of walking, he reaches his own home.
All the lights are on, even the porch lamp, and he can hear his mother’s frantic voice through the door as he nears it.
His fingers are still trembling as he pulls his keys out of his pockets. Just as he tries to slip his key in the door, he drops it and just stares at the metal ring where it lie on the welcome mat. He takes a deep breath and swallows hard as he bends down to grab it.
It hurts, and he makes sure to have a better hold on the key this time as he unlocks the door.
As soon as he’s pushed the door open, his mother’s voice grows louder. He looks up and sees her standing in the doorway between the living room and the kitchen, the landline phone pressed to her ear and her hand wound up in the curled cord.
“Oh, thank God. Thank God—He’s home. I’m sorry for bothering you. He’s home now.” She says her goodbyes and places the phone back on the receiver.
Frank barely has time to close the door before his mother is at his side. She can tell immediately that something is wrong, and not just because he’s home so late. His face, he knows, is probably bruised and stained red with tears.
“Why were you out so late? What happened?” She asks, immediately putting her hand under his chin and forcing him to look up so she can examine his face.
“Nothing,” Frank says, pulling his head away from her.
“What’s wrong? What happened to you?” She asks, her tone gentle—knowing that something was wrong, terribly wrong.
“Nothing,” Frank says again. He doesn’t want to talk about it. He doesn’t want her involved in it. This is his mess and he can’t tell anyone. No one can ever know.
He pulls away from her and starts for the stairs. He needs to change out of these clothes. He needs to shower. He needs to wash away all the evidence and hope the memories swirl down the drain with it.
His mother, however, doesn’t want to let him off that easy.
“Where are you going?”
“My room,” Frank says, sucking in a sharp breath as he begins to ascend the stairs. It hurts. That’s all he can think.
It hurts. He hurt him. Someone he trusted. Someone he loved…
“Frank, talk to me. You’ve been missing for hours. Where were you!?” His mother tries to grab his shoulder, but as soon as she touches him, he jerks away. Expecting him to go into his bedroom, Frank manages to escape her grasp as he ducks into the bathroom and quickly closes the door. He locks it and his mother immediately starts knocking, as if that will somehow change his mind and make him let her in.
She doesn’t know, however. She couldn’t possibly know that he’ll never, ever let anyone in again. That he is sure of. That he can control.
No one will ever have him again. No one will get as close as he had. No one will pry kisses from him or even hugs.
As he strips off his layers of clothes, the last bits of protection he had, Frank begins building up walls.
“Frank, just tell me what’s wrong! Did someone hurt you? Frankie?” His mother just keeps knocking on the door and calling to him, her words forcing Frank to remember what happened. Everything serves as a reminder and he know that no matter how long he stays in the bathroom—no matter how much time he spends under the hot stream of the shower—the memories are never going to go away.
( ) ( ) ( )
It’s time now, Frank thinks as he sits next to Gerard on the couch. It’s their one year anniversary and everything has gone well. For twelve months, Gerard has been respectful. For twelve months Gerard has been kind and understanding even though Frank has never confessed why he won’t accept deep kisses or any intimate touch.
He promised himself he’d never trust again, never love again, but then Gerard had come to him and Frank couldn’t resist. He’d felt drawn to the artist, entranced by his words and the worlds in his artwork. They’d met at the bookstore—the comics aisle.
At first, Frank avoided him as much as he could, going around and around the aisle, waiting for the stranger to leave so he could look at the books in peace. But Gerard stayed staring at the shelves, then picked an issue and started reading it there in the aisle.
Frank had crept into the row of shelves and tried to keep himself out of the stranger’s way as he went to grab the latest issue of his favorite comic book. As soon as he had it, he’d meant to duck out of the aisle with it and hide away somewhere to read it until the stranger went away so Frank could pick out a few more books.
But something about the man beside him compelled him to look up and look at his face. He wasn’t drop dead gorgeous. It wasn’t love at first sight. Frank looked at him and saw someone attractive, someone handsome that—in the past—he might’ve had the awful idea to try to get to know.
When he looked up, Gerard looked at him—then looked at the comic in Frank’s hand.
“I bought that one last week,” he said. “It’s great.”
Frank told himself not to say a word. He reminded himself that he shouldn’t be talking to anyone, especially not men. What good would come of it? He didn’t have enough warmth left in his soul for friends. It wasn’t safe to have friends. Frank told himself to turn and walk away, but instead his tongue grew a mind of its own and he’d responded to the conversation.
They went for coffee as friends. They met every day their schedules would allow for coffee, not because they were madly in love but because they both could use the company.
Gerard was lonely. Frank, though he loathed to admit it, was lonely too in his self-imposed isolation.
“I feel safer without anyone around me,” Frank had confessed. “If no one’s in my life…I guess no one can hurt me.”
“That’s no way to live,” Gerard had said. “Is it really worth it to be by yourself all the time? I mean…do you really want to be alone forever?”
“No,” Frank answered, even though in the past—when he asked that question of himself—the answer had always been yes.
It was safe to be alone. No one could hurt him if he let no one in. He’d built his walls for a reason, and he didn’t need to start tearing them down.
The walls were still there, even now, as Frank sits on the couch in Gerard’s small apartment. He doesn’t have to tear down his walls to be with Gerard.
His boyfriend sees them, has always seen them, and scaled them one by one. He’s made so many sacrifices that filled Frank with more guilt than delight.
Why date someone he can barely touch? Why love someone whose secrets run so deep? Frank wasn’t worthy of him or his affections, but he greedily lapped up all the attention he could get.
Every day he told himself it would be the last time he’d see Gerard. The other man would get bored or move on, love someone worthy of his kindness and patience. Every day he prepared himself for the call, or the absence of one. He waited at the coffee shops for their dates, expecting Gerard not to show.
Every day, Gerard proved him wrong and today Frank accepted what he’d been coming to realize for weeks—for months—for most of a year: He wasn’t prepared for Gerard to leave, and he knew that if he didn’t act soon, that was what would happen.
Gerard had started asking questions.
Do you really love me? Is this really what you want? Do you really want to be dating me? You know we can just be friends if this is too much, if this wasn’t what you wanted.
Frank doesn’t want it to be over.
For five years he’s been pushing back the memories, not even stopping to consider that he’s still living in that moment. He’s still out there on the cold, metal bench trying to find a light he’s not strong enough to bring into being. For five years he’s been living in the very memories he’s been trying to repress.
“Gerard?” Frank says, turning to face his boyfriend.
“Yeah?” Gerard says, turning to look at him as well and smiling just slightly.
“I…” Frank’s mouth runs dry, even though he’s said these words over a dozen times. Not every day, not even every week, but more than once in their time together. This time, he thinks, is the first time he’s confessing the truth. He’s not parroting or saying what he’s supposed to say. This time, he means it and he’s made sure that every bit of him know it’s true. “I love you.”
He doesn’t expect Gerard to understand. Gerard tells him he loves him every day. At the end of every date, the end of every phone call. “I love you. Goodbye.”
Frank doesn’t want the next word to be goodbye.
“I love you too. What’s going on?”
Frank stares at him, not sure where to go now. Gerard is one wall away from him—the real him—and he doesn’t know how to let him past the barricade. Telling Gerard his secret won’t change anything.
In all honesty, Frank is almost certain that Gerard knows somewhere in his soul that Frank is damaged, that someone made him this way through violence and force. No one is as closed as Frank because they want to be. No one is as guarded and caged as he without knowing some great pain.
Gerard scoots closer on the couch and Frank lets him, taking a deep breath as he prepares to let his boyfriend nearer than he’s ever been before. It’s not physical; it’s the heart. He’s going to let him in.
He’s going to make the first move.
“I’m… I’m happy with you,” Frank says, trying to force a smile. “Here with you, I mean. I… I know I’m not the easiest to love, but I…”
“Frank, what’s this about? Are you okay?” Gerard asks.
“Yeah,” Frank says, looking down at his lap. He doesn’t know what to say or what he’s trying to say. He knows what he wants, what he should want, but not how to offer—or if it’s even okay to offer.
What if he’s waited too long? What if he’s now adding pressure to Gerard to stay with him, even though Gerard—after a year spent in a relationship with a man he could hardly touch—was quietly looking for a way out of their tedious love?
“I… I was thinking… It’s been a year. We should… We should be closer than this,” Frank says. To him, it’s almost a painful realization. So what if he’s ready to let Gerard in now? He’s waited so long, there’s no way Gerard has any patience left for him.
“What are you—are you wanting to move in?” Gerard asks. He sounds excited, even though that wasn’t what Frank was about to propose. He was going to offer love—offer his body willingly for the first time in his life—but Gerard seemed to be so eager at the prospect of something else.
Maybe he didn’t want sex.
Maybe Gerard just wanted him. His mind, his presence…
It was the sort of slow, easy relationship Frank had spent years upon years convincing himself didn’t exist. Gerard had tried for sex in the past but Frank had always turned him down.
The first time, he panicked and ran—literally got up from the couch and fled Gerard’s apartment—the second time he politely said no and went home. Gerard didn’t ask anymore after that, but still called the next day to make sure Frank would still come to the coffee shop after work.
“Do… Do you want me to move in?” Frank asks, almost as if in shock from the question.
That was such a major step, and why would Gerard want to take it with someone as closed and cold as Frank?
“I’ve asked you before,” Gerard says. “I’d love to have you the house.”
“You don’t want to see me that much,” Frank says, quickly ducking his head to hide his smile. He didn’t want Gerard to see how happy it made him, terrified the man would take it away.
“Frank, why do you think I meet you every day at the coffee shop? I can’t get enough of you. I love you.” Gerard is smiling at him when Frank looks back up. “We could just get up in the morning and have coffee together in the kitchen instead of in town. It’d be nice, don’t you think?”
“Yeah,” Frank says. They’ve been together a year and he’s never even stayed the night at Gerard’s house. Now he was almost prepared to cave in completely and move in.
“Is—Is that what you were gonna say? That you were thinking about moving in?” Gerard asked, his eyes still bright, completely overjoyed at the prospect.
“I… I just feel you don’t want me to move in,” Frank says.
“Are you kidding? I love you—I want you here with me.”
“Why?” Frank asks. “We don’t even… We don’t even do the things that…that other couples do.”
“I don’t care,” Gerard says, his voice gentle and empathetic. “I knew the minute I met you that were the kind of guy to take things slow. I mean, I never imagined this slow, but you’re more than worth it.”
“It’s not fair to you,” Frank whispers, is spirits sinking as he remembers why he’s always told himself that he’s not right for this—that he’s not worth it to be loved.
“I mean… Do you ever want to do that stuff?—Do you ever even want to sleep with me or be with me like that?” It was a question Frank knew they’ve both been avoiding.
“Yeah,” Frank says, his voice so quiet even he can barely hear it over the sounds of the television.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes,” Frank says again, a little louder.
“Is there a reason you haven’t wanted to yet? You know we…we can’t get married. We can’t exactly wait for marriage, but if you want some kind of ceremony first then I’ll do that for you. I don’t care. I’ll buy you anything if it makes you feel that I’m more committed.”
“It’s not that,” Frank says quickly. It’s not about marriage, it’s not about commitment. It’s about a sixteen-year-old boy trembling in the cold at a bus stop, waiting for an easy way out that never came. No bus arrived. He had to walk and hurt and face the facts—he’d made a mistake in judgement and that night he’d decided he would never come close to making that kind of mistake again. Now, he wants to fight that choice. He wants it to be a choice and not a way of life he can’t escape.
“Then what is it?” Gerard asks.
“I…” Frank can’t say it. He’s not ready. He’s not afraid Gerard will leave him or be repulsed by him. He’s afraid of what he knows will happen. Gerard will tell him to get help, to seek a counselor so he can get better.
Frank doesn’t want his reluctance to be some illness he needs to cure. He’s been feeding on Gerard’s patience for a year. Gerard’s tolerance of his refusals to make love was one of the reasons Frank loved him so dearly. Gerard’s respect and blind understanding made Frank’s feelings grow stronger and stronger. He doesn’t want to confess his secrets and have that respect and tolerance turn to sympathy and pity.
He wants the love he’s been getting all along. He doesn’t want things to change.
“I just…don’t feel ready,” Frank says. It’s not a lie, but it’s not the truth either. He’s ready if Gerard is willing to ask, if Gerard is willing to take the risk and see what happens when Frank lets the very last of his defenses drop.
“Then I’m just going to have to wait, aren’t I?” Gerard says, smiling like it’s not an inconvenience, like he’s happy to have a boyfriend he can’t make love to.
( ) ( ) ( )
It’s time now, Frank thinks, smiling at the plates he’s set at the table. Gerard is still at work, but he’ll be home in half an hour. Frank has cleaned, he has cooked, he has dressed for this moment Gerard has no idea.
Everything is as he wants it and he can’t stop smiling. There’s a new bedspread in their room—new blankets and everything.
Gerard has no idea what he’s coming home to and that’s what’s making Frank the most excited. Whether he comes home happy or sad or angry, Frank knows what he’s got prepared will perfect it or repair it.
The timer goes off on the oven and Frank quickly takes the casserole out. It’s a little bit burnt, but he doesn’t care. Tonight isn’t about the food. It’s about three hundred dates at coffee shops and a year of living together, sharing a bed.
When Frank hears Gerard’s key in the door, he bites his lip in excitement. He doesn’t know what to do with himself—doesn’t know where he should stand or if he should sit. Should he act casual and play this whole display off as nothing, or should he play it up and show off all the effort he’s put in.
He doesn’t have time to decide. Gerard comes through the door, and blinks a few times when he sees Frank standing across the apartment in the kitchenette.
“You made dinner? It’s only four o’clock,” Gerard says as he shuts the door and locks it behind him. He shrugs off his winter coat and hangs it on the rack, then unwinds his scarf and slips off his boots.
Once he’s free of all the layers he comes to Frank in the kitchen and kisses him on the cheek. Frank is the one who turns his head and kisses him on the mouth.
“I love you,” Frank says, making sure to be the one who says it first.
“I can tell!” Gerard says happily, smiling as he notices the neatly set table and the meal put before him. “You did all this?”
“Yeah,” Frank says, letting Gerard wrap him up in his arms and burying his face in his boyfriend’s shoulder. The hug goes on longer than they normally do, but Frank doesn’t mind. Today, he wants this closeness.
Today, he’s ready for this.
Eventually, Gerard sits down to his meal and tells Frank about his day while Frank eats and listens, trying not grin too much and give away the other surprise he has in store.
“Do you want me to help wash up?” Gerard asks as Frank clears the table.
“I don’t want to dishes,” Frank says after all the plates and cutlery are in the sink.
“I can do them,” Gerard says, starting to roll up his sleeves.
Frank gets between him and the sink and leans up for a kiss. It surprises Gerard even though kisses have become much more frequent since Frank had moved in. It’s as though he can tell something else is going on.
“I want to show you something,” Frank says, taking Gerard’s hand and leading him to their room.
Yes, Gerard definitely knows before he’s even let in the bedroom that Frank has more in store.
“What’s all this?” He asks, his eyes lighting up and his mouth hanging open.
“I got us some new sheets,” Frank says, going over to the bed and sitting down.
He’s ready for this. He’s shaking a little, but he’s ready.
“W-Why?” Gerard asks, smiling still and looking caught between elated and concerned. He knows why, but he’s afraid to become too eager.
“It’s… It’s a good day,” Frank says. It’s not a birthday or a holiday, not even a random anniversary though he has all the dates saved in his mind. Even the first time they kissed.
“Yeah it is,” Gerard says, smiling and coming forward in order to lean down and kiss Frank’s cheek gently.
He always kisses his cheek first because he knows Frank will shy away from it if he doesn’t want anything more intimate.
Frank takes the next step and kisses Gerard’s lips and then grabs the front of his shirt, not sure what to do but willing to do anything he could to show Gerard that it was okay.
He pulls Gerard over top of him and lays back on the bed. Gerard is warm in his arms, soft against his skin.
It’s time for this.
He’s ready for this.