Junction

You wouldn’t hold hands with a man, you said. Found it out of place and character. You’d fuck one, though. I remember thinking wow you talked a lot and it wasn’t the nervous kind I had a penchant for. Where did kids get their confidence nowadays? Huh, kids. Truth was you weren’t one any longer and you had proved it, through my mockery of your child-like looks and all. You said you were twenty-one and I twenty-eight. A lie, and later on I would tell you my real age — information you had casually flipped aside, no doubt wanting to seem mature enough not to care about trivial things like numbers.

Somehow, as I watched you shower, the conversation went to religion and I sighed loudly, already tired from an argument that hadn’t even started. Without needing to, I agreed I believed in God, just that I wasn’t sure he’d have approved of the ways we had used his name in vain not more than ten minutes ago. But you insisted and you kept the words coming, all the way back to the bed I fell in to, while you settled on the chair at its side.

You told me about your last girlfriend and how you fucked it up; your dead dad you couldn’t give a kidney to because the doctors said you were too young; your fear of ending up in a shitty life, void of the comforts you were by then too much accustomed to; the family you wanted to have; and the crushing confusion of why you suddenly liked guys. In between and through all that, I just listened. I thought to myself again wow you talked a lot but there was something else in my mind. I thought I would like to get to mentor you, maybe sex you on the side, fall in love with you in secret.

At last, you talked about true love and like a dog, my ears perked up. Said you were waiting for it. I told you wasn’t it the other way around? You didn’t know and of course, you didn’t — you wouldn’t even hold my hand. Then your eyes looked like you were about to cry but I wasn’t sure because it was dark.

“What’s happening to me?” you asked, sounding as though pained by the question

“You’ll be okay. You do what feels right.” I said, wondering how I made you feel, and if you knew I was thinking of coming after you.

“Fuck it,” you grunted, the twinkle in your eye gone.

Fifteen minutes later we were saying goodbye. I started walking away but just like in the movies, about twenty paces far, I looked back. There you were, looking at me and I thought to myself, were you coming after me, too? Or were you waiting?

I wouldn’t even give myself the chance to find out.