by Laurie Loft
“It’s not like that. It wasn’t like that.” Sebby pulled Todd’s arm more tightly to his own chest, digging his fingers into the flesh.
Todd shifted. “I feel that I don’t even know you. You hold things back, you manipulate me, and now this. This is not what I want from a relationship. I want—” Todd scooted forward, and he swiped at his tears; his eyes sparked. “Someone who is everything to me and to whom I am everything.”
If they could just get through this, it would be all right. “I’m sorry, Todd, I’m so sorry. But ‘everything’? You expect too much from a relationship.” Sebby squeezed and kneaded Todd’s arm. “I’m human, you’re human, things happen.”
Todd shook his head sharply. “It isn’t too much. It’s everything. I want what I had with Vivian. Someone who completes me: my other half, my split-apart. My soul mate.”
And Sebby went dead inside. He was sure he was dead, except death couldn’t hurt this much. All that broken glass in his heart was working its way out through muscle and bone. The tortured look on Todd’s face had had nothing to do with Sebby; it had been the Vivian look after all. A vicious desire to hurt Todd pierced him, and so he spoke the truth out loud, because nothing hurt like the truth, and Todd was so blind. So blind. “Todd. You didn’t have that with Vivian. You only thought you did.”
Todd sprang to his feet, wrenching himself from Sebby’s grasp. “Oh, fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck.”
And he stormed out.
Sebby wasn’t sure how long he’d sat, staring straight ahead at nothing, before the phone rang. He didn’t make a conscious decision to answer it, but somehow the phone was at his ear. “Hello.”
“Hello. It’s Wayne. I just got your message. Is everything okay?”
Sebby had to think. His brain moved like sludge. He had forgotten that he had told Wayne and Ethan to call him. “Fine.”
“Oh. Okay.” There was a pause. “Do you need to talk to Ethan?”
“No.”
“Oh. Okay.”
Sebby knew he should say something, but it was too much work to fish anything out of the sludge.
Wayne said carefully, “Well, okay. Good-bye.”
“Wait. Wayne?”
A silence. “Yes?”
“Is Ethan your soul mate?”
More silence, and then a guarded, “Y-y-yes.”
“Is he . . . everything to you?”
“Everything? Nothing’s everything, what do you mean? I have my work, and that’s something; I have family, and that’s something; and my home; and hobbies. Books.”
Sebby leaned his head against the sofa back and stared at the ceiling, pressing the phone hard against his ear. It hurt. “Do you feel like you need him?”
A note of panic sounded like a doorbell in Wayne’s voice. “Of course I need him. What the hell are you talking about? Why are you asking?”
“Dios mío,” Sebby cursed under his breath. “Ay, Wayne, I’m sorry. I don’t mean to worry you. Todd, he— We had a fight.”
“Oh.” Another pause. “Again?”
“I asked him to move in with me, and he said no, because he wants a soul mate!” That summed it up pretty well, as far as Sebby was concerned. “What do I do, Wayne? I don’t know about soul mates!”
After several beats of silence, Wayne said, “Here. Talk to Ethan.” There was the noise of the phone being shuffled and Wayne saying, It’s Sebby, and then Ethan’s voice.
“Sebby?”
“Ethan, I asked Todd to move in with me, and he said no, and he said he wants what he had with Vivian, and I said he didn’t have that with Vivian, and he said fuck you and left, and—” Sebby gasped and grabbed a tissue “—he said he wants a soul mate, someone who’s everything, and I don’t even believe in souls, and what should I do?”
“Oh, Sebby. Honey, I’m sorry. He really said no?”
“I can’t be a soul mate! He just wants too much.”
“Well, he was on the rebound, wasn’t he? That’s never a good thing.”
“I knew that he was, though. But I thought I could make him forget.” Sebby gave in and wailed the pain of unrequited love. “I don’t care! I love him, and he doesn’t love me!”
“Aw, honey. Look, you want me to talk to him? Maybe it’s a misunderstanding, or maybe it’s just too soon. You’ve known him, what, six months?”
“Four,” Sebby admitted.
“Uh-huh. What’d he say, exactly?”
Sebby tried to calm down enough to relate what had passed.
“What a mess,” Ethan said. “I don’t know, Seb. Not every guy likes your cheating-with-approval thing. He probably feels rejected. It sounds to me like he thinks you don’t love him.”
“I asked him to move in, didn’t I? ¡Mierda!”
“Did you tell him you love him?”
Sebby breathed noisily into the phone. “Not in those exact words. He should say it first.”
“Why? Because he’s ‘the man’? I thought you didn’t approve of stereotypical gender roles in homosexual relationships.”
“That isn’t why! It’s because he’ll say it when he’s ready, when he’s over him.”
“If you love someone, you should tell him, and fuck the consequences. Otherwise, every moment you spend with him is a big lie.”
And Todd had accused him of being dishonest. “But he said he wants a soul mate!”
“It’s just a word. It means the one you love, doesn’t it? The one who’s a match for you, who you take care of and who takes care of you.”
That was poignant, coming from Ethan. There had been times when Wayne had needed a lot of care. Soul mate. Everything. Was that kind of love too much for Sebby—to be adored beyond reason, to be idolized, treasured—as he assumed it had been too much for Vivian?
But Todd never said he loved me. All he said was that he wanted what he had with Vivian. He didn’t even say he wanted it with . . . me.
“Anyway, he’s so mad this time, he might never speak to me again.”
“Tell him,” Ethan said. “Tell him, and figure it out.”
They said good-bye. Sebby cradled the phone, but the thought of calling Todd made him jitter. Procrastinating, he called Barry and Lawrence, who yawned and stretched and blinked. Sebby could see it all in his mind’s eye as their sleepy voices ambled over the signal. They put the call on speaker, as they always did, so they could both talk. “Sebbyyy, it’s so earlyyy,” they complained.
The clock showed 10:36, and Sebby had no sympathy. “Well? How was it? What’d you do to him?”
There was a pause, and Sebby imagined Barry and Lawrence mouthing at each other. Finally, Lawrence spoke. “He’s gentle, isn’t he?”
“Yes. Yeah, he is. So?”
“He’s just not that into us,” Barry said.
“Figuratively. ’Cause, literally, he was,” Lawrence said.
“Several times,” Barry agreed.
Sebby rolled his eyes. “He said he was lonely. I told you not to ignore him!”
“We didn’t!” Lawrence protested in a hurt voice.
“Lawrence got up out of a nice warm bed to go fetch him.”
“Barry tried real hard not to sound like anything was hurting.”
“Like I said, he’s just not that into us.”
“Figuratively.”
“Literally too, at the moment.” There was giggling.
Sebby was too irritated to laugh. “Well, did anything happen that I should know?”
“He was a gentleman,” Barry said.
“He likes us,” Lawrence said.
“But I don’t know if he’d come back.”
“Are you . . .” Sebby hesitated, for he’d never pried much into Barry and Lawrence’s personal relationship. He took them for granted, a constant, BarrynLawrence, they just were. “Are you each other’s soul mate?”
“‘Soul mate’?” Barry repeated, and laughed.
“You mean, like, do our souls fuck?” Lawrence said.
“I’ve heard of mind fu
ck, but—”
“Maybe he meant ‘sole,’ like, you know, feet.”
“Foot-fuck?”
“That was your thing, Sebby.”
“Never miiind.” Sebby sighed in exasperation. It was all delaying tactics. Time to face the music. He said good-bye and dialed Todd.
“I’m Todd, and my mother is an alcoholic.”
“Hi, Todd,” polite voices chorused.
Todd drew a deep breath and knuckled his eyes. “Yesterday, I realized that I expect too much from a relationship.” He sighed. “I realized this because my boyfriend told me that I expect too much from a relationship.” There were some appreciative chuckles. “Naturally, I screamed at him and stormed out.” Rueful smiles. Been there, done that. “But I thought it over for a day and a night. And I’ve not been to a meeting for . . . months, so I hunted up Denver-area meetings, and here I am.” He paused and scrubbed his hands against his thighs. “Because I’m fucked up and can’t make it without the program. My childhood was fucked up, my adolescence was fucked up, and I couldn’t wait to get out of there, because they were fucked up, not I. Once I was away, I knew my life would be . . . happy. Normal. Perfect. I want it so desperately I place far too much pressure on my loved one. And on myself.” He tilted his head back and regarded the ceiling, an effort to keep tears back. “He made a mistake. He is not perfect. Nor am I. And . . . that’s all. I pass.”
“Thanks, Todd,” came the chorus. The woman next to him patted his knee. Relaxing back in the folding chair, he prepared to hear the rest of the confessions, epiphanies, and sob stories.
Todd had turned his phone off upon exiting Sebby’s house and left it off. After the meeting, there were numerous texts, seven missed calls, and one voice mail. He scrolled through them: Sebastián, Sebastián, Sebastián, Sebastián, Vivid—his eyeballs froze to the word on the screen like a tongue to a winter lamppost. He had heard nothing from Vivian since the gut-wrenching call when Viv had been ill. Todd’s heart knocked about in his chest. Was Viv all right? Did Viv need him? As he stood there, staring, the phone went off in his hand. He started, nerves singing, but it was Sebby. He hesitated before answering. “Todd here?”
“Oh, you. I’ve been calling and calling. Todd, will you please come over here so we can talk?”
Todd’s stomach tightened. “I— You— I should. I should.” He couldn’t think. Viv had called. Viv had left a message . . . or had Sebby left it? “Did you leave me a voice mail?”
“No, I didn’t leave a message. I just kept calling. Toddfox, I’m sorry about everything. Can we talk about it? Please, I . . . care about you, and I know you do too? And I had no business saying that about Vivian. Will you please come home?”
”I—I— Let me call you back.” He pressed End without waiting for a response and accessed voice mail. Viv’s voice chimed in his ear. There was a chair, he sank into it.
Vivian’s voice was sober, rational, neither weepy nor spacey. Vivian missed him, Vivian wanted him to call. Todd played the message again and once more, Vivian wanted him. He sat paralyzed for several seconds that stretched like spandex, till they snapped back on him and he called.
Vivian wanted to see him. Vivian offered to meet him halfway, somewhere in flyover country, if that would work. Vivian had had a lot of time to think things over and felt he had made a terrible mistake. Vivian was lost without him. Vivian had never expected that Todd would move across the country. Vivian had thought Todd would be there when he needed him.
Vivian wanted to maybe get back together. With split infinitives and everything.
The sun was setting behind the mountains. Nervous energy sent Sebby zooming around the place, combing his hair, changing his clothes, tidying up his already tidy home. Todd’s voice had sounded grim; after hanging up on Sebby, he had called back and said he was coming over, that he had something to tell him. Breakup buzzed unsaid in his tones. If Sebby could speak before Todd did, he could head it off.
There was a knock on the door; Todd wouldn’t use his key? Sebby flew to the door, tripping over the vacuum cord and banging his shin on the coffee table. He threw the door open and flung his arms around Todd. Sebby pressed his face to Todd’s neck and kissed him. “Querido, do you forgive me?”
Todd’s muscles tensed under his lips. “Yes . . . it’s fine. I—”
“Come in here, mi casa es tu casa.” Todd was already in, but he was standing there, and Sebby tugged until he moved and allowed Sebby to tow him to the sofa to sit. Todd’s eyes were glued to his shoes. “I don’t want to fight anymore.” Sebby smiled, but his dimple was wasted. “You’re no good at it, Toddfox; it’s no fun.”
Todd shook his head, looking dazed. “I’m leaving.”
Ack, no, he said it. “Oh.” He sat back. “Oh no. Because of Leo? I’m sorry! I fucked up but don’t leave!”
Todd’s eyes met Sebby’s, in complete surprise. “What? No. I don’t care about that. Well—” And he laughed once, like the bark of a seal. “That’s untruthful. I suppose it was rather obvious that I cared. But it’s not . . .”
His voice trailed off; his eyes roamed the floor. Sebby took Todd’s limp hand in both of his.
Todd drew a deep breath. “Viv called. He wants me back.”
Sebby’s heart dropped like a swatted fly; it twitched and buzzed somewhere on the floor of his bowels. His eyes snapped to Todd’s face. “I’d be halfway there if I thought he meant it!” Todd had said, and so he must be convinced that Vivian wanted him back this time, and Sebby couldn’t even muster any anger at Vivian. He could feel nothing but sorry for himself, and aggravation that he’d fallen in love with a hopeless cause. He had fucked it up—fucked it all up.
Could it have been any different? If he hadn’t made Todd go with Barry and Lawrence, if he hadn’t slept with Leo . . . Or would it have ended up this way anyhow? And Todd was squeezing Sebby’s hand in both of his. “What can I do? It’s Vivian!”
He spoke as if Vivian were a force of nature. As if Vivian were an act of God, a thing that would be listed in an exclusion clause of an insurance policy, and when you filed a claim, your insurance adjuster would say, Sorry, that’s a Vivian, it’s not covered.
“I understand,” Sebby mumbled. “It’s . . . him.” Sebby’s eyes locked on his bare toes. He wiggled them to prove he was awake. To prove he was alive.
“I’m sorry!” Todd cried, and Sebby winced.
“Liar,” he breathed. ¡Ay, Dios! Wrenching his hand from Todd’s, he pressed his fingertips to his eyes. He swallowed. A gluey lump like refried beans had lodged in his throat. Moments passed before he could force the lump down. Todd got up. Sebby raised his head to see Todd standing in the middle of the room, wringing his hands.
“I have to go to New York.”
“I know.” Sebby managed a smile, though it felt ghastly.
“I have to see him,” Todd said, as though Sebby were arguing, as though he’d said that Todd must not go, as though he’d begged him to stay. “We parted badly. There was never closure.”
“Liar.” And he said the word louder this time, and Todd blinked. “You’re not going for closure. You’re going for reopener. And . . .” Sebby took a deep breath “. . . it’s good that you’re going. Because . . . if he is your soul mate . . . then there’s no room for me.”
“I’m leaving tonight. Get as far as I can. I’ll be gone about a week, I should think. If I do decide to relocate back to New York, all my things are here, in Denver. Sebby. Sebastián . . .” Todd’s face crumpled; he was going to cry, Dios! If Todd cried, Sebby would cry, and that was not how he wanted to say good-bye.
Wanting Todd to remember him as pretty and desirable and what-fucking-ever, Sebby rose, smiling, and glided into Todd’s arms. Todd’s entire body was tense as a coiled spring, and Sebby guessed that as soon as the good-byeing was over with, Todd would be gone like a shot.
“If I could wear you like a tattoo under my sleeve . . .” That got Todd’s attention. His gaze sharpened, curious. “. . . M
aybe then you’d finally believe . . . I can’t remember why you can’t forget . . .” And Sebby brushed his fingers over Todd’s forehead, trying to erase erase erase, make him forget. Todd drew Sebby’s hand to his mouth and laid a kiss in his palm. Sebastián Jonathan Nye, be strong. Nothing lasts forever. Be glad for what you had.
“I believe.” Todd’s lips moved against Sebby’s palm. “I cannot forget.”
Apparently, he didn’t recognize the song, and that made Sebby smile. Maybe someday Todd would hear it on the radio and think of him. He stroked Todd’s cheek. “I have to tell you one thing before you go. I hope it works out for you. I do, because, when I met you, you were so pitiful, and all I wanted was to see you smile a real smile, and I’ve seen it. Probably, it will work out for you. But—” Feeling Todd shift restlessly, Sebby took a firm grip on Todd’s shirt and spoke to head off an interruption “—if it doesn’t . . . come back to me. I know you won’t want to. You’ll feel guilty. But don’t. I’d want you to come back, I’d throw my arms around you and kiss you helpless, I’d—” Feeling his throat begin to close, he stopped.
“I promise. Sebby, if things could have been different . . .”
“But they can’t. And . . . I always knew it would end this way, didn’t I?”
Todd kissed him. It was a good-bye kiss, a kiss that could lead to nothing. Todd pulled away, and Sebby followed him out into the evening twilight. On the front walk, Todd stopped and fumbled for his keys.
“Oh,” Todd said, and Sebby saw that he was jimmying the catch and working Sebby’s key from the fob. Todd held out his hand, offering the key, and Sebby took it. His arms went around Todd and locked, and he did not imagine how he could let go. It was going to be embarrassing. Todd was going to have to pry Sebby’s hands loose, and there would be a struggle, and Sebby would be left gasping and sobbing on his front walk. They stood there, Sebby’s face pressed to Todd’s throat, Todd’s cheek pressed to Sebby’s hair, and then he was gone—Sebby had let go—and that old, ugly truck started. It backed out of the driveway, the headlights came on, and Todd left.