Surviving the Merge

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Surviving the Merge Page 24

by C P Harris


  He tucked me into him tighter. We fell asleep that way. One of the best night’s sleeps I’d had in a while.

  In the morning I reached for Damon but found an empty cold spot instead. Stepping into the hall on the balls of my feet, I heard the faint sound of his voice coming from the living room. I allowed him his privacy and went to take a shower before heading to the community center.

  “You’re being too fancy, Mr. Justin,” said Samuel, the center’s ten-year-old, wise-beyond-his-years resident hip hopper.

  I agreed to allow a small segment of our show to include more modern moves and music. He’d shown me this one particular dance at least ten times, and although I believed I’d nailed it every time, according to Samuel, I had it all wrong. He tried, with an endearing professionalism, to hold onto his patience.

  “What do you mean ‘too fancy?’” I laughed at his exasperation.

  “Your posture’s too perfect. The angles you’re cutting are too sharp. You need to be more relaxed,” he said. “More... sloppy.” It visibly pained him to have to resort to such a word as “sloppy.”

  “My past dance instructors would all have heart attacks if they heard you.”

  “You’re too classically trained. I don’t think there’s much we can do for you,” he said, fists on his hips, shaking his head apologetically.

  Hiding my smirk at the serious expression on his face, I asked that he not give up on me so soon. “Besides, I’m not the one that has to learn it anyway. You come up with a two-minute routine, I’ll approve it, and then we’ll teach it to the other kids. Deal?”

  “Deal! But you still need to learn it. You’re always telling us not to give up.”

  “Touché, Samuel. Touché.”

  He scrunched up his nose. “What does tissue have to do with anything?”

  I chuckled. “Has anyone ever told you you’re adorable?”

  “My mom has a time or two.” His eyes rolled. “But don’t let Debbie hear you say it,” he whispered.

  There was a knock on the opened door. It was Pete.

  “Ah... do you have a second?” he asked.

  “Hey, Pete, yeah. Samuel and I were finishing up here anyway.” I gave Samuel the scout’s honor sign.

  “Byyyye, Mr. Justin!” Samuel raced out the door.

  “No running!” I shouted before turning my attention to Pete. “I haven’t made any final decisions yet, but I have it on good authority that you’re a shoo-in for the male lead in the fundraiser performance.” My smile reflected my pride for all his hard work.

  “I actually came to talk to you about the proposal you made to me earlier,” he said.

  “Oh. Made up your mind so soon?” I’d spoken to the chancellor at the OBH about Pete. He agreed to come watch the performance, and if he liked what he saw, he would recommend Pete for the winter apprenticeship program.

  “I’d like him to come. I... I think I’m ready.” He looked to me for validation, and I gave it with pleasure.

  “I know you’re ready. You’re going to blow everyone away,” I said. He gave a toothy smile.

  “Where’s your load?” I peered around the room.

  Rolling his eyes dramatically, he said, “I know, I know. I’m good enough for you.” He smirked, adding, “I’m good enough for me too.”

  “Wow, you kids grow up so fast,” I said with mock emotion.

  I changed, and we headed down to Sam’s class together. Pete was already scheduled to take it. I planned on surprising her with my attendance. “Hey, how about a game of basketball after class tomorrow?”

  Pete shrugged. “Sure, I think I can take you this time.”

  I laughed. At the sight of Sam approaching, Pete hurried to his corner, hiding behind his easel.

  “Hey, what are you doing here?” Wrapping her arms around my waist, she gazed up at me, smiling.

  “Ah, I volunteer here?” That earned me a slap to the forehead. “Ow.”

  “You know what I mean,” she said.

  Rubbing the abused area, I said, “I’m taking the class, then taking you out for lunch.”

  “Geez, I barely touched you. Stop being a baby.” She brushed my hand away and tiptoed to kiss the spot. “I’d love to have you sit in. Find a spot. We’re about to start.”

  I grabbed her hand as she turned to walk away. “Hey, I have a favor to ask.”

  “Sure, anything for you.”

  I retrieved a picture from my wallet. “Can you paint this for me? A portrait?”

  “Are you asking me if I have the ability to paint it for you? Or if I will paint it for—”

  “Sammmmm…”

  “Fine. You’re no fun today. When do you need it?”

  “Whenever you can get it done. I know you’re pretty busy here and with work back in the city.”

  “Okay, give me a couple of weeks.” She snapped a picture with her phone, handing me back the original.

  I kissed her button nose. “I love you.”

  Damon's car sat in the driveway. My dash clock read 4:00 p.m. I wasn’t expecting him until much later.

  “You’re early,” I greeted him, entering the living room.

  “Yeah,” he sighed. “I couldn’t get much work done, so I called it an early day.” He jumped topics. “Why is this here?” He pointed at the urn.

  “Why is he here?” I asked. Damon didn’t answer. “You need him. We need him. He’s my brother—”

  “Was your brother,” he interrupted.

  I didn’t know if that was in reference to our divorce or Benji’s death. Damon’s moods shifted in waves and took me along for the ride. It would appear we were sailing on annoyance, now. I dropped all pretenses. “I want to know more about him. I’d like for you to share him with me.” I’d seen Benjamin through Blake’s eyes. Not Damon’s. Not with any real emotion, only detachment. He turned away from me urgently. I watched the rapid rise and fall of his shoulders. Minutes ticked by without a word uttered. Maybe I went too far, too soon. Maybe I should—

  “He was small. Small like her. Even at two, I could still raise him in the air with his bum sitting in my palm.” He raised an empty hand.

  I almost made a quip about how big his palms were but thought better of it.

  “I knew he would always need to be protected. I knew.”

  “You couldn’t have known, Damon—”

  “But I did!” He faced me again. Heartbreak etched lines into his face. “I knew what could happen, but I left him with her anyway.”

  Remaining rooted to the opposite side of the room, steering away from any talk about who was to blame, I asked him to share a memory with me.

  Shoving his hands in his pockets, he looked to the ceiling, squinting and searching his memory. “He fell once. It happened on Ashton’s watch. It’s one of the few times Ash and I almost came to blows. Ben—”

  Damon swallowed. He couldn’t say Benji’s name.

  “He was running around the backyard with Ash and tripped on a toy hidden by the grass. He cut his knee. A shallow cut, but he cried hysterically anyway. I sat him on the toilet in the bathroom, cleaned and bandaged his knee. He looked up at me, his bottom lip still quivering, and held his arms out. I hugged him, but it wasn’t the right kind of hug. My hugs never were. They didn’t seep through skin, burrowing into bones,” he said.

  I internally disagreed. Damon’s hugs conveyed ownership and a warrior’s protection. A different form of love. But still love.

  “My hugs were the kind I would imagine she gave. If she ever gave them. Blake showed up for... Benji,” he pushed out. “Blake hugged Benji like loving him was his sole purpose. I felt it,” he confessed.

  Warmth filled me at the thought of Blake’s hugs. They lingered long after.

  “Benji lifted his head from Blake’s shoulder, searching Blake’s eyes for me, and said, ‘Hey, where Danon go?’ That’s what he called me.” Damon grinned at the memory.

  “You were good enough for him,” I whispered.

  A lone tear stre
aked down Damon’s face. Right before Blake arrived.

  Blake wiped the secretion from his cheek and stared at his fingers. His eyes questioned me. I pointed my chin toward the mantel.

  “I see. Your idea or Julie’s?” he asked.

  “Mine.”

  “Looks like there was success?”

  “Well, you're here, so…” My tone contained defeat. Blake held up his wet finger as evidence to the contrary.

  “Yeah. I guess you’re right.” I wrapped myself around him. “I hardly see you anymore. Feels like you’re leaving me,” I admitted. Blake didn’t answer. His silence said more than any words could.

  “Justin,” he said, tracing my face reverently with the tips of his fingers. “What did you think the outcome would be?”

  “I…” What did I think the outcome would be? Merging meant to become one.

  “You’ll still have me, only not separately.”

  “It’s not the same,” I said, gripping the back of his shirt in my fists.

  “It will be. With time,” he promised.

  Walking in a daze to the fireplace, I stared at Benji as if he had the answers. “Time. That could be a year from now or years from now. What’s it going to be like in between?”

  “I could never hurt you, Justin. Not even for your own pleasure. Julie’s assignment was never meant to work for me. Not in that way. My job was to let go.” He spoke as if handling a delicate flower. Unsure if I would wilt.

  A memory of a question Julie asked in our last session surfaced: “So tell me Blake, which poppa are you?”

  I also recalled a personal revelation of Blake’s shortly after: “I'm just wondering if all this time I’ve been overprotecting him.”

  “Things feel different since that night at Elite,” Blake said.

  I closed my eyes. “How so?”

  “I don’t exist until I’m here. I don’t see, hear, feel, or sense anything. I don’t know that there is anything to be missed, until I’m here.”

  His hand slipped into mine, and I looked over my shoulder to see him there.

  “Let’s make the most of this,” he said.

  About a month had passed since that night with Blake. We’d held each other on the couch, swallowed up by one another, conversing and professing our love into the wee hours of the morning. We fought to remain conscious, feeling the force of the inevitable as it called Blake back into that dark closet from which he came. Just a little more time, I’d asked the universe. I didn’t want our time to end because I didn’t know when I would have it again. But sleep won in the end.

  I awoke to Damon. It’d been Damon ever since.

  Sometimes I’d see a flicker of something in Damon that would raise my hopes, only to have them dashed away when he’d confirm, “It’s me.”

  One day, at my lowest point, I’d resorted to emotional manipulation. Pushing against his boundaries, hoping to encourage a switch. It didn’t work, and the next day, Damon brought it up during a session. I gaped at him for selling me out. He wasn’t the least bit sorry.

  At the end, Julie asked me to stay behind. “How long have you been doing this?” she had asked once we were alone.

  Slouching down into the cushions, I released a guilty breath. “This was my first time. It feels like a death, Julie. Losing Blake feels that big. When will I see him in Damon? For good, not just flashes here and there.” I got up and strode to the window, feeling confined all of a sudden.

  “Justin,” she’d said, her tone patient, understanding. “Integration is not an event. I can’t give you the place, date, and time of it. It’s a process. A gradual one. All things considered, you both are making great strides rather quickly. It doesn’t seem like it now, but trust me when I say that you haven't lost Blake—because he was never his own person.”

  The sun had gone down, but the office remained lit by only the small lamp over on Julie’s desk. A heavy drizzle began outside, adding a layer of comfort to the already intimate setting. “You know, in moments when Damon displays qualities of Blake’s, it’s so hard for me to wrap my head around it because I’m still calling him Damon. They’ve always been two different entities to me. It’s tough to now view them as one. I know it’s irrational to feel like I’ve lost something, but I can’t help it.” I thumped my hand against the glass.

  “Justin, look at me, please.”

  I turned her way and rested my back against the window. “I knew what to expect when dealing with them independently. Blake would be reasonable and Damon anything but. Now that they are mashed together, I don’t know if when I say, ‘I’m going for a run,’ if I’ll get ‘have fun honey,’ or locked in a room with no food or water. I’m having a hard time adjusting.”

  “Have you communicated this to him?”

  “No.”

  “Communication needs to be the foundation,” she said, adamantly.

  “What if I hurt him?”

  “Then he needs to communicate that to you as well. If we need to work on ways for you both to effectively get your points across, then we will. You can’t do this again, though. We need to be building him up, not sabotaging him. His mental health is at stake here. It’s bigger than you, Justin.” She regarded my culpable expression, placed her notepad down, and walked over to me, cupping my cheeks in her small hands. “You messed up. That’s what we do. But tomorrow, you’ll do better, yeah?”

  “Yeah. Tomorrow I’ll do better.”

  The days of Damon slinking away when faced with a challenge were over. Now, he shut down completely or punished me for what he lacked. Last night, I’d broken my unspoken vow of celibacy since the divorce. Having gotten a better handle on not using sex for validation of being loved or being worthy of it, I’d asked him to make love to me. An epic fail.

  Damon couldn’t get his hands positioned properly, his kisses missed the mark completely, and he almost couldn’t find my center. After a series of trial and error, he became frustrated.

  “Fuck! I can’t do this. Turn around,” he’d growled.

  I got onto all fours, and with his jaw locked around the meaty flesh at my shoulder, he fucked me in contentment. I missed connecting with him in that way. And although the reasons for needing it were different, how much I wanted it remained the same. I loved the intense physicality that came with sex. Being fucked by him still got me excited. And being owned before, during and after, still left me in the mood for more. So much more.

  We talked more and more about Benji. Those discussions were fueled less by anger and more by nostalgia as the weeks passed. Any mention of Emilia would set him off, though.

  “Don’t mention her name to me!” he’d yelled. “Her memory isn’t worth my time.” He left, slamming the door behind him.

  The other day, he wore formal attire when the occasion called for casual. I checked in with him to be sure of who stood in front of me.

  At this point, whenever he walked into a room, he’d say, “It’s me,” without needing to be prompted. It made me sad to hear it, sometimes. I yearned for the emotional stability Blake provided.

  The trigger for Damon’s abrupt mood swings could be anything.

  “Damon, I’m heading over to Max’s to watch the basketball game,” I said one night.

  “Have fun,” he replied, slipping a stray lock of hair behind my ear and kissing my nose.

  An hour later, he pounded on Max’s back door. “I decided I wanted to watch the game too,” he’d said, sliding around Max to enter the house. He sat me in his lap and kept a possessive arm around me the whole time. I sat there, fuming, but accepted that this was a part of the process.

  With the fundraiser approaching, rehearsals were stepped up, so my visits to the city were infrequent. Damon did the commuting. He preferred that to spending nights alone at the condo.

  We went to a Misfit gathering at Max’s place a week ago. To my surprise, Damon contributed.

  “This week’s been tough. Today’s Benji’s birthday. He would’ve been eighteen.”

&
nbsp; That was all he’d managed to get out. He kept looking over his shoulder at our house. I sensed he wanted to bolt, so I held tight to his bouncing knee, and he relaxed in increments. Instead of a big deal being made about what he’d shared, the next person took up the baton and kept things going. Everyone showed their support by also sharing what made their week hard. The few people who’d already had a turn went again. Pluto plopped down beside Damon, resting his head on his shoe. We were united, rallying behind him.

  I was punished that night. “Bend over and hold your ankles. If you scream, I start over,” he’d promised. He allowed me to hold him after.

  Deep, emotional intimacy still hadn’t been reached. We weren’t lacking for lust or even love—although he expressed his differently. But my heart sought complete and total vulnerability. It sought the annihilation of the walls protecting his mind, the fear that he wasn’t strong enough to handle what hid there, and the misconception that I’d leave once I truly saw him.

  Damon needed to deal with his mother.

  The next day, I caught Ash leaving the center as I pulled in. He volunteered a few days a week, supporting the nursing staff—when his schedule allowed. “Ash, I’m glad I ran into you.” I cut the car engine and got out. “How’s things been between you and Damon?” I asked. I wanted to know how Damon’s changes had manifested in his other relationships. I should probably pop up at his office well.

  He leaned against his car, hitching an arm along the edge of the roof. “He told me the other day that Max might be good for me. How’s that for ‘changes?’”

  “What?” My gym bag slipped from my shoulder to land on the ground.

  “Yeah, I know. I checked him for a fever, and he smacked my hand away, telling me to go fuck myself. A nice little whiplash to end my night is what that was.”

  His pager beeped. He checked it, muttering a curse. “I gotta go, babies to be delivered.”

  Sam sent me a text stating the painting was complete. I had her come by with it right away, anxious to put my plan into place.

  “It’s coming down hard out there. Put your wet stuff in the dryer. I’ll get you something to put on,” I said. It’d been a while since I’d asked Sam for the painting, but she’d been busy with her real-estate job in the city, her own art, and working with the kids at the center to get enough paintings done for the fundraiser.

 

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