Love Wins

by David C. Dawson

  “Sure,” Greg said. He gathered up his things. “Let’s go.”

  THE REST of the week crawled by in ordinary fashion. Win left his job each day and rendezvoused with Greg at his home. Greg made lasagna on Monday and chickpea curry on Tuesday. Win brought lettuce and other fixings for salad on Wednesday. On Thursday they gobbled up leftovers along with a fresh loaf of rosemary garlic bread Greg bought at a local bakery. They munched on brownie bars that Greg had stashed in the back of the pantry in case of desperate need of sugar.

  All through the days, Win helped with dishes, watched some television while they snuggled into the love seat, made love if they hadn’t glutted themselves on too much dinner, and then left for his own apartment as bedtime drew near. Pulling away in his car felt lonely and awful because he did not want to leave the sanctuary of Greg’s arms nor the comfort of his home, but Win knew that the moment the lights went out, he would not stay happy. The snoring would start. There would be no comfortable retreat. No possible escape. For his own sanity, Win drove home and crawled into his own bed. It was empty and blessedly quiet.

  When Friday rolled around, Win left work and drove straight to Greg’s house. He pulled into the driveway and parked.

  Greg came out of the house and waved. Win frowned. Greg usually got home later than Win did. It was unusual for Greg to beat Win home.

  Plus, Greg looked flustered. A manic energy surrounded him, and he bounced a little as he walked, looking happy and nervous.

  “Hello there,” Win called as he exited his car.

  Greg came over to him, kissed him fiercely, and then pulled him into a hug. “I have something to show you,” he said.

  “Is everything okay?” Win asked. He stuffed down the thread of anxiety that wound its way through his gut.

  “Everything is fine,” Greg assured him. “I did something today. I came home a little early to finish it, but I’ve been working on it all week. I don’t know if you’re going to like it, but I hope you do.” He tugged at Win and pulled him toward the house.

  “Okay.” Win allowed himself to be pulled along. Greg brought him in through the front door. Greg’s house was small, barely a thousand square feet. The front door opened directly into the living room, which led to the kitchen. Win couldn’t see anything different in the living room or kitchen. The door to the small bathroom off the living room rested in an open position, and nothing in there seemed disturbed either.

  Greg led Win through the living space and into the short hallway that split left to the master bedroom and bath and right to his office.

  “Close your eyes,” Greg said.

  Win gave Greg a look but closed his eyes. Greg covered them gently with his hands, and Win was surprised to note that Greg’s fingers were slightly sweaty. The poor man was nervous. Greg prodded Win to the right, and Win could hear him open the door to his office. Slowly Greg guided Win forward a few steps.

  In the darkness behind his eyelids and Greg’s twitching fingers, Win wondered what he was about to find. Strange guesses flooded through his mind. For some reason he kept thinking there would be a giant bachelor party cake with some beefcake holding champagne about to pop out. Or, he supposed, and this idea seemed very likely, Greg had adopted a puppy.

  Greg had to put his older dog, Kip, to sleep just after he and Win met. The sweet dog had been sixteen and miserable with severe arthritis and blindness. It had been time, and Greg had treated the dog to a wonderful last day, full of love and treats, before letting his best companion die with grace and dignity. Win thought it was an act of bravery and utter love on Greg’s part.

  No other dog could ever replace Kip, but Win knew it would only be a matter of time before Greg was ready to welcome another dog into his home and heart.

  There had to be a new dog in the room. Win had seen the rescue shelter website up on Greg’s laptop several times over the past few weeks. He thought Greg might include him in the decision, but if Greg had fallen for an adorable furry face, then he’d have had to act quickly or risk the animal being adopted by someone else.

  Greg steadied Win in a spot. “You can open your eyes now.” He took his hands away and Win blinked his eyes open. It took a moment to adjust to the brighter light after the minute of darkness.

  He looked left and right, not quite understanding. There was no dog in the room.

  Neither was the futon.

  The room was completely empty.

  The closet door was open, and Win walked over to look inside. The house was small, but it had amazingly plentiful storage. Some wiser-than-usual architect had designed the house with sufficient storage to offset the smaller living space. The unusual ratio made this house more efficient in many ways than larger homes.

  This particular closet was entirely unoccupied. Not even a dust bunny survived at the bottom in a corner. The shelves were bare and wiped clean of all dust and grime.

  Win turned back to stare at Greg. “What happened to your office?”

  “I moved it. Into the bedroom.”

  “Where’s the futon?” Win couldn’t image such a large piece crammed into the bedroom too.

  “Donated. It went to a coworker. She has a kid in college who wants to move out of the dorms.”

  Win figured the teenager had a much younger, better back than he did, but it still brought a moment of triumph to his heart. The wretched futon was banished.

  Win surveyed the empty room again. Without anything in it, it seemed both somehow smaller and larger at the same time. The curtains had been left hanging over the windows, but otherwise it offered a blank space to fill. Win walked past Greg and opened the door to the main bedroom.

  Things were mostly the same. The bed was there, but an overly large dresser was missing. In its place was a much smaller office desk than had been in the other room, and all of Greg’s computer equipment and papers were piled there.

  “Putting that thing together made me want to tear out my hair,” Greg said. “I think they write the directions purposely wrong so they can have a laugh.”

  Win swiveled his gaze back to the empty room. “When did you do all this?” he asked, then added, “Why did you do all this?”

  Greg laughed, but it was filled with nervous energy. “It seemed like the solution to the problem. Bring your bed here. Bring your things here. This room is yours. It’s silly to think we have to conform to all those notions of what couples do. We don’t have to sleep in the same bed.” He grinned and ran a finger down Win’s cheek. “Well, we can spend some time in the same bed. Sex it up in the same bed. But we don’t have to do the actual sleeping in the same bed. Don’t get me wrong—I love having you in bed with me, near me. But sleep is sleep, right?”

  “Right,” Win said. A tumult of emotions cascaded through him, some of them exactly opposite in nature. Slight annoyance that Greg would take matters so drastically into his own hands surged against pure joy that Greg would do something so fantastic to surprise him, and over both of those, sheer hope that this would be a brilliant solution to an obstacle that had been so mundane and ridiculous, it seemed stupidly impossible it had caused such heartache. “I don’t know what to say. Thank you. This is incredible.”

  “I just want you here with me.” Greg put his hands on the sides of Win’s face, staring into Win’s eyes. All his nervous energy had dissipated and only implacable calmness remained. “We can move most of your stuff this weekend. Or paint first, if you want a different color, and move things next weekend. Say you’ll move in with me. Tell me you’ll stay.”

  Win licked his lips. “I will.” It felt right. It felt perfect.

  Greg kissed him, light and quick. Then he raised a finger. “Hold on a moment.” He ducked into his bedroom, and Win realized with a start that Greg’s magnanimous efforts had now relabeled the rooms. Greg’s bedroom. Win’s bedroom. Housemates and lovers.

  Greg brought back a box wrapped in shiny green paper with a red bow stuck on top. “Forgive the wrapping. It’s what I had left from last Chr
istmas.” He handed the box to Win.

  Win peeled the paper off. The side of the box depicted something that looked mildly like the bottom half of a vacuum cleaner. He read the writing on the side. “A white noise machine?” he asked.

  “Covering my bets,” Greg said. “I may not be able to stop snoring. It might be here to stay.”

  Win looked at the empty room behind him and the insightful gift in his hands. “I’ll be keeping it company. I’m going to be here to stay too.”

  TRAY ELLIS grew up across from an empty field, where she spun a lot of imaginary adventures, helping to prepare her for a lifetime of writing. When she isn’t writing, she keeps busy by hiking, cooking, stacking the odd cord of wood in the shed, baking, and being too busy to keep her home in any semblance of order. Currently she tries to find a balance between the logical way she thinks and the flights of fancy that she often daydreams about. Mostly, the daydreams are winning.

  Website: trayellis.dreamwidth.org

  Facebook: www.facebook.com/tray.ellis.54

  Blog: trayellis.blogspot.com

  Twitter: @TrayEllisWrites

  Pushing Back Oblivion

  By Alicia Nordwell

  Fighting a rapidly growing brain tumor, Cohen promises his partner, Jaime, that he’ll never give up. Through surgeries and setbacks, at times that promise and Jaime’s voice are all Cohen has to cling to.

  “NO, NO, no. You have to stay with me.”

  His voice was always with me. He was always with me, and I was leaving him. Not because I wanted to, but because I had no choice. I tried to squeeze his hand. All my effort barely resulted in a flutter, but he felt it.

  “Cohen.” Jaime’s voice broke on my name. “You promised.”

  I wanted to keep my promise to fight, but it was so hard. We’d been through all this before. The visit to the doctor. The MRI. The grade II rapidly growing intradural extramedullary meningioma. Risky surgery. Radiation. Long, painful story short… I had a tumor at the base of my skull, sitting right on my spinal column, and it was growing again. The surgery to try to remove all of it this time was risky, but I faced paralysis and death soon if they didn’t go inside my brain and scoop the diseased part out. Even if I survived the procedure, my recovery wasn’t guaranteed.

  Our plans didn’t matter. The fact that I’d met the best man I’d ever known in my late twenties and planned to ask him to be my husband on Christmas Eve after four years together didn’t matter. I should’ve expected something like this. Life had put me through the wringer enough times, and it might just be done with me.

  The erratic beeping faded into the background. The bland white walls disappeared. My voice was already gone. My sight was too blurred to see him. All I had left was his voice as Jaime told me he loved me and begged me to not give up. I clung to the press of his hand against mine, marshaling what reserves I had left to squeeze it again. I’d promised I’d fight to stay with him, no matter how hard it was. Breaking that promise was unthinkable.

  “I REMEMBER the first time we met. Do you?”

  “Of course I do,” I said. I stopped dead midstride, stumbling to a stop in surprise, but I wasn’t sure why. I panted for air, my thighs trembling. “Jaime? Where are you?” I spun, but the only thing I could see was a dirt track stretching ahead of me and behind me, my footsteps marring the smooth surface. A small cloud of dust wafted past, and I coughed.

  “You were so dedicated.”

  Every year I organized a race to benefit local foster kids. I’d been one of them for most of my young life. I didn’t have the worst of horror stories, but it was hard to open up when you spent your growing years knowing no one really wanted you. They might take care of you, but they didn’t care about you.

  But I made it through school without screwing up too much, got a full-ride scholarship to college as a government handout, and became a chemical engineer. I wanted to give back to kids who were in the same boat I’d been in, but I didn’t have it in me to be their emotional support. I couldn’t fake a positive outlook on what they faced day-to-day, not after I escaped it.

  But I could help raise money to get them shoes, clothes, school supplies… things that would help them fit in a little better and take away some of the stigma of being a foster child. We had a drive for donated items, but we also did a 5k run and 3k walk for sponsored participants.

  Jaime was a reporter doing a fluff piece on the annual event, and I’d thought things were going well during the interview until he broached my past specifically. He’d done too much research on me, and I had to restrain my temper. It was a good thing the run was about to start, because I had an excuse to burn off the anger at his invasion of my privacy.

  An echo of that livid mortification flooded me, and I turned to face forward. The track went on into the distance. I took one step and then another, then broke into a jog. Each time my foot fell into the dirt, another small drop of that anger and embarrassment dripped away. It wasn’t easy, and my chest heaved as I worked hard to reach something… even though I wasn’t quite sure what it was.

  “Remember how I apologized? Coffee? Lunches? Our first official date at the diner? We didn’t talk about your childhood for a long time. I knew you forgave me with the first story you told me, when you knew I wouldn’t use it against you.”

  I nodded, too out of breath to say anything as I pounded down the miles. Eventually I’d told him everything, things I’d never said to anyone before. The catharsis of it was unexpected but welcome, and I’d let the chip on my shoulder fall away.

  An orange line appeared around the bend, and I broke the ribbon as I crossed it. The ends fluttered to the ground. I bent over and put my hands on my knees, taking deep breaths and blowing them out.

  Jaime always waited for me at the finish line. I looked up, but no one was there. The finish line had disappeared, and in its place was a deep chasm with a balance beam across it. The narrow chunk of wood, just inches wide, spanned the dark crack in the ground. Glancing over my shoulder, I somehow knew going back wasn’t an option.

  A strip of ribbon appeared in my hand.

  “Trust.”

  “What?”

  “How hard was it, those first few trips I had to go on? To believe I’d be back and we’d still be together?”

  Jaime didn’t always do fluff pieces about races; that interview had been a favor for a friend. He usually covered stories that put him in danger, ones where he lived or died by knowing exactly what the story was and how to get it. We’d only been dating for three months when he had to leave the first time. The first bloom of trust between us was all I had to depend on, and it felt like I was walking blind, danger on either side.

  Would I be tempted while he was gone? Would he?

  I knotted the ribbon behind my head, covering my eyes with the orange cloth. Then I stepped up on that beam. My first few steps covered inches. I kept my head tucked, even though I couldn’t see anything. My arms out to my sides, I wobbled as I found my center of balance. A trickle of confidence infused me, and I lifted my head as I took my first real step forward. I trusted my ability to stay on that beam, and I ignored the distraction of my fears.

  “We got through it.” Jaime’s voice assured me as soon as I stepped off the beam.

  A blast of heat seared my face, and I ripped off the blindfold. A bed of coals with flames flaring high stretched to the right and left. No way around it. I had to go over it, but I couldn’t see past the flames. Where would I land?

  “That leap of faith. We had that talk about promises, what living together would mean to you, what you hoped it meant to me.”

  Not only did Jaime want me to move in with him, he wanted me to move with him. A new career in a new city would mean that we spent more time together, and the trips he made for that first year, sometimes spending months away and only weeks at home, would be over. But I’d have to leave the job I’d worked at for three years, my home, my friends….

  I’d only had two weeks to make a decision. Not m
uch time to decide to uproot myself and dare to make that leap. We hadn’t said the words then, but if we were going to build a life together, I’d known I couldn’t hold anything back. Wrestling my fears down, I made that decision.

  I leapt again, shouting, “I love you.” Searing heat made me aware of every cell in my body as I hung in the air for a long moment, facing the unknown, adrenaline coursing through me.

  The landing jarred every bone in my body. I fell from my feet to my knees, but the ground was soft. I dug a hand into the mud, thankful I’d taken the chance. So many firsts faced: a new job, new house, new love. We’d made it through the hardest part—or so I thought.

  Settling into a new life was both easier and harder than I expected. I got up and swiped at the mud clinging to my hands. A new challenge was ahead of me, one I remembered from those childhood days on the playground. A pit of mud turned the ground into an impassible quagmire, but a path of swinging rings swayed in the breeze that dried the sweat trickling down my back.

  I wiped my hands on my shirt. I could do this; it’d be a cakewalk. The first swing was easy. The second not much harder. By the fifth ring, my arms were getting tired. It hadn’t looked like it would take that many to cross the mud, but the rings stretched out in front of me, spaced farther and farther apart, and I wasn’t sure where they ended.

  “Who knew living together could get so… ordinary?”

  Ordinary. Normal. Off to work, come home, dinner, dishes, showers, and bed. Rinse and repeat. I’d always imagined finding a partner to share a life with would be like those romances we’re inundated with from a young age without even realizing it. Sure, I was gay, not straight, so Prince Charming was looking for another Prince Charming instead of a princess, but that big moment at the end of the story when their love was declared meant they got to live happily ever after. The hardest part was over.

  Learning that loving someone meant a lot of hard work day in and day out was a shock. It took a lot of energy, and after the first year, gathering up that energy became a struggle.