by Max Hudson
They discussed more trivialities, and eventually, Luca managed to steer the conversation to Derek’s family. They were all doing well, according to him. Luca was relieved and happy to hear it. He didn’t miss Derek, but his family were some of the nicest people that he had ever met, and Luca knew that breaking up with him also meant breaking up with his family. It was a shame—his mom had reached out to ask him how he was doing—and Luca couldn’t understand how someone as terrible as Derek had come from that amazing family.
Once they were done, though, once Derek had updated him on his second cousin’s pregnancy, Luca couldn’t put it off any longer.
The food had arrived and he was digging in, looking right at Derek and waiting for him to start talking. Derek took his stare as a cue, which was good, because Luca didn’t know how much more mindless conversation with him he could take.
As he bit into his burger, he listened to Derek speak. He had ordered a pasta plate that looked to be huge. Derek was a big man and Luca expected that he would eat the entire thing, which would end up extending his stay there.
That was the last thing that he wanted, but maybe it wouldn’t be too bad. At least not if he managed to keep Derek talking just until he was done with his food, so that he would finally be able to leave and never talk to him again.
“I’m sorry,” Derek said.
Luca nodded. “Yeah, you said,” he replied. “You don’t have to keep apologizing.”
“I do, though, because if it weren’t for me…” He trailed off.
“If it weren’t for you what?”
“I don’t know,” Derek said. “I feel responsible about what happened.”
“You weren’t there.”
“I know,” Derek said. “I meant in a more general sense.”
Luca blinked. He didn’t understand why Derek would feel responsible for the accident. Since he had no good retort, he went back to his burger and waited for Derek to say something else. Luckily, he didn’t have to wait long.
“When I got your phone call,” Derek said, his voice affected. “After I realized that you were serious, that it wasn't a joke, I didn't know what to do.”
“What do you mean?”
“You were in a real accident, Luca,” Derek said. His voice was more than affected this time; it was breaking. Luca didn’t know how he was supposed to feel about that.
As a response, all he could do was nod. It was a simple fact that he had been in an accident. There was no getting around it.
“You were seriously hurt,” he said. “And I couldn't face the prospect of you not being out there.”
“What do you mean?” Luca asked once he had finished chewing on a sizable bite of food.
“I mean, even though you weren’t part of my life anymore, the idea that you wouldn’t be out there living your life made me sick to my stomach.”
“It did?”
Derek looked away from him, his face red. If Luca didn’t know any better, he would have thought that there were tears in Derek’s eyes. He looked right at him, his eyes narrow. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” Derek said. “I’m fine, really. I just—I get emotional when I think about this, okay?”
“Okay…” Luca didn’t want to ask him why he got emotional when he thought about it, but he was sure that Derek was going to tell him anyway.
“I know that you have no reason to believe me,” he told Luca.
“You’re right,” Luca said.
“But I wish you would,” Derek said, shaking his head. “I don’t know how to convince you. I don’t know if I can. I just… I don’t know how I can convince you.”
“You don’t have to convince me,” Luca said. He didn’t want Derek to convince him, and even if he did, he didn’t see what difference it would have made. It wasn’t as if they were going to get back together. Luca knew that, and he certainly hoped that Derek knew it too.
“But I’m telling you the truth.”
“I know,” Luca said.
“Luca,” Derek said. “I’m going to tell you things that I don’t think you’re going to want to hear.”
Luca swallowed and put his burger down. “If I didn’t want to hear it, I wouldn’t be here. Talking to you right now.”
“I guess that’s true,” Derek said. “But talking about Las Vegas… things were bad for me at the time. I was in a bad place.”
“Okay,” Luca said.
“You might not remember, but things were bad for me. You finally convinced me to go to Las Vegas because you wanted to do something special for our anniversary and part of me didn’t want to go at all.”
“Right,” Luca said, closing his eyes. He did vaguely remember that. It never felt like Derek wanted to go anywhere with him, it never felt like he wanted to do anything with him. Luca remembered begging him to do something for their anniversary, because it never felt like it was special. Vegas had been a throwaway comment—Luca remembered it now. He was asking for dinner and maybe a movie, and Derek’s response had been to go overboard and ask him if he wanted to go to Vegas. Of course, Luca had believed that he had been telling the truth, and when Derek had taken it away from him, Luca had held on to it.
It was his condition. If Derek wanted them to stay together, then they were going to have to go to Las Vegas. It was a stupid condition, and on reflection, Luca knew that. Their relationship had been falling apart for so long, there was no way that they were going to be able to stay together. Las Vegas was a last-ditch effort, and it was one that Luca only offered to Derek after Derek practically begged him for another chance.
If it had just been up to Luca, he wouldn’t have given him one. But their lives were intertwined, their families knew each other, and everyone thought that they were great for each other. He almost winced as the thought crossed his head. There was that damn pride again. He bit his lower lip as he realized how he had fucked up his own life by being so prideful. He was in this fucking situation because he was so prideful. He needed to get out of it ASAP.
“Do you remember what happened when we got there?”
“No,” Luca said, shaking his head. “I don’t even remember going there.”
“We took the car,” Derek said, twisting his mouth. “I mean, you wanted to go by plane, but I talked you out of it. I told you that going on a road trip would be fun, so I drove us there.”
Luca closed his eyes. “I really don’t remember that.”
“I know,” Derek said. “The problems started pretty much immediately.”
“They did?” Luca asked. He hadn’t expected Derek to admit that.
“They did,” Derek replied, nodding his head. “We were… I didn’t want to go. I felt like you were pressuring me and I had started to take it out on you. Honestly, it wasn’t fair to you at all.”
“So we were bickering?”
“Yeah, we were bickering,” Derek said. “But it wasn’t lighthearted bickering, it was real hardcore bickering. We were on each other’s case and things, well, they weren’t working out between us.”
“That sounds about right.”
Derek shook his head. “It got worse.”
“That also sounds about right,” Luca said.
“I had us booked at this really nice hotel,” Derek said. “It was right downtown and I knew that we would be able to walk places. You know, drink and go back to the hotel. It also happened to be near a popular gay spot and I thought you would be into that.”
Luca nodded. He didn’t particularly like going out clubbing, but when he did, he preferred a gay club over a straight club any day. At least in gay clubs, he felt like he could dance. It was different in a straight club. Derek hated clubbing, but he would go out clubbing with Luca if Luca begged him to do so for long enough. Not that he tried very often. After being with Derek for a while, Luca knew exactly the reception that his suggestions would get—and more often than not, he knew that it would be frosty.
That was why he didn’t bother to ask Derek much a lot of the time.
He wondered what had led him to this, but as much as he closed his eyes and tried to recall, he simply couldn’t remember. He wished that he could, he felt like it would have been good to be able to recall his thought process. Unfortunately, he simply couldn’t. He looked at Derek, waiting for him to keep telling Luca exactly what had happened in Las Vegas. The longer that he talked though, the more obvious it became that he was struggling to talk about whatever had happened.
“It’s okay,” Luca said. “You can tell me. I promise I won’t get mad.”
“You probably should get mad,” Derek replied. “You were mad back then, and honestly, you had absolutely every right to be.”
Luca chewed on his lower lip, his heart beating fast in his chest.
“What happened?”
“We went out to Cowboys,” Derek said. “That was our first night in Vegas and you wanted to go out gambling, but I told you that we should go to Cowboys instead. We made jokes about ‘what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas’, you know, that kind of thing.”
“Right.”
Derek sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. “I never meant… what happened was never supposed to happen, Luca.”
Luca stared at him. This was hard, because part of him simply wanted to know what had happened, and part of him wanted to tell Derek that it was okay. That part of him was mostly because he didn’t want to deal with Derek, full stop, but he really did feel for him.
Whatever had happened had affected him so deeply that his face had turned a deep red and he wasn’t able to look straight at Luca.
“Okay,” Luca managed to say. He wasn’t sure what else he could say, he wasn’t sure if there was anything else that he could say. What could he tell Derek? That it was okay? He wasn’t sure that it was okay. Plus, if it were okay, surely he wouldn’t have just forgotten about it.
Going to a gay club with a boyfriend didn’t seem like the kind of thing that his mind would have blocked out on purpose. It seemed like something much bigger than that. He wasn’t sure, though, because he couldn’t be sure until Derek actually told him what had happened.
Derek took a deep breath before he continued, tapping his fingers rhythmically on the wooden table in front of him. Luca did, of course, remember that. It was the kind of thing that he only did when he was nervous.
“I’ll keep it together,” Luca said. “I promise.”
Derek looked at him and nodded. “Thank you.”
“I’m serious,” Luca said. He was. In a way, this felt good, because it felt like he didn’t actually care. He did, in the sense that he wanted to know, but he didn’t care about how Derek had hurt him and he didn’t feel the pit in his stomach from the hurt anymore.
It helped. Not feeling hurt by what Derek had done anymore helped. It helped him feel less powerless, which was important in this situation.
“We went to Cowboys,” Derek finally continued when he saw that Luca wasn’t going to let up staring at him. “We went there, and uh, we drank together for a while. That was until you went on the dance floor and I, you know, didn’t.”
“Okay…”
“Does any of this ring any bells?”
Luca shook his head.
Derek closed his eyes and let out a deep sigh, which made his entire body shudder. “This is hard for me.”
Luca narrowed his eyes.
“I went to find you on the dance floor, but I couldn’t. It made me get angry. I shouldn’t have done what I did next, but I was so mad, and I couldn’t find you. I thought… well, I thought that if you had decided that you didn’t want to be around me when we were supposed to be on vacation together, then of course I didn’t need to be around you.”
Luca winced. Even though there was obvious regret in his voice, Luca couldn’t help but be angry. This was the kind of thing that Derek used to pull all the time when they were together. It was bullshit. It had been bullshit back then and Luca couldn’t help but feel that it was still bullshit now, even though they weren’t together and the last thing that Luca wanted was for them to be together.
“So, I found someone.”
Even though Luca had been expecting that, it still made him wince. His hands started to sweat and he started to feel a little lightheaded. He didn’t want to feel like that, he didn’t want to care, but he couldn’t help it.
He did care. He remembered just how much he cared, how awful it was whenever Derek cheated on him. It had happened more than once, and like an idiot, Luca had let it go. He didn’t have concrete proof after all, and he had convinced himself that concrete proof was necessary if he wanted to dump Derek.
“You found someone? At Cowboys?”
“Yeah,” Derek said. “It was this guy who was by himself, and he was flirting with me all night.”
“He was flirting with you,” Luca repeated.
Derek nodded. “Yes, he was flirting with me,” he replied. “At first, it was just a nice ego boost. But when I couldn’t find you, I got pretty angry and I…”
“You what?”
“I don’t know,” Derek said, shrugging his shoulders. “I thought, well, what would Luca really hate?”
Luca blinked, unsure of what he should say to that. When it was clear that Derek wouldn’t go on without an answer, all that Luca could do was nod. “Well, you were right.”
“I know,” Derek said. “And part of me just wanted to show off.”
Luca raised his eyebrows.
“I just kind of wanted to show you that I could have a fun night without you. But I got carried away.”
“Carried away,” Luca echoed.
“Yeah, carried away,” Derek said, rolling his eyes. “You don’t have to repeat every single thing I say, you know.”
“Sorry,” Luca said. “Just processing.”
Derek nodded. “I just hate that I have to tell you this,” he said. “I mean, I know that you could have found out from Beth or from your sister, because it isn’t as if you keep any secrets from them. I just wanted you to hear it from me first.”
“Why?”
“Because I know it makes me look bad, okay? And I wanted you to hear it from my perspective before you heard it from someone else. You never gave me a chance to explain it to you after you stormed off in Vegas, and I figured this was the perfect opportunity to tell you.”
Luca watched him, saying nothing. As far as he was concerned, Derek had all but admitted that this was an ambush. He had basically just told him how little he cared about him. This had always been about Derek and Luca had been foolish not to see it. It was foolish to be there in the first place. He knew that from the beginning.
“Okay,” Luca said, trying his best to make sure that his voice didn’t betray just how angry he was. “And then what happened?”
“I took him back to our room.”
Luca’s eyes widened as his heart started to hammer in his chest. He had felt a little anxious before, but now he felt like he needed to throw up. This was a lot; it was too much. He could remember this part—not all of it, because remembering all of it would have been torture. But he could remember bits and pieces of it, he could remember the dread that he’d felt in Las Vegas when he had looked down at his phone and seen all the missed calls from Derek.
“You’re starting to remember.”
Luca licked his lips. “Yes,” he said. “Unfortunately.”
“So I took him back to our room and I thought I would have some fun, kick him out, and you’d never know.”
Luca shut his eyes tightly. “But I walked in.”
“Yes,” Derek said. “You walked in.”
Luca wiped his sweaty hands on his jeans as the memories flooded his brain. He could remember this. He was drunk, but he wasn’t drunk enough that he would be able to forget walking in on Derek with his hands around some other guy’s waist when the guy was in all fours and facing the door.
He could remember it now, clear as day, and it made him feel sick to his stomach. It wasn’t that he still cared about it—he didn’
t think that he did—but the very image of it made him feel sick to his stomach. He could remember all the emotions of the day, the way that he had felt when he had walked in. He could remember throwing up in the hallway outside the hotel room and feeling ashamed of himself when someone had chastised him for being that drunk.
He got it, but it didn’t make him feel good. He had stumbled over onto the wall and fallen until he was on the floor holding his knees up to his chest, feeling the nausea building up inside of him. It wasn’t the drinking, he was rarely nauseated when he was drunk. The worst part had been that the man that Derek was spending time with hadn’t left for a while, even though Derek had made eye contact with him when Luca had walked in.
“You remember,” Derek said plainly.
“Yes,” Luca replied. “I remember things very clearly now, actually.”
Derek looked at him, waiting for Luca to say something. After the night had happened, Luca had taken a plane home, and he had never spoken to Derek again. Derek had tried calling him, texting him, even sending him snail mail. He blocked his number and wrote RETURN TO SENDER in big block letters on every envelope that arrived. He had moved out quietly from their apartment, before Derek was due to arrive back from Las Vegas, and then he had gone out of his way to never see him again.
It had worked out nicely, at least as far as Luca was concerned. He really was done with Derek by the time Las Vegas happened and it seemed like the kind of thing that simply needed a push. Las Vegas had been Luca’s push.
It was the kind of thing that needed to happen, but it had still hurt to see his long-term boyfriend like that. It was the kind of thing that made him feel like a loser. He was the kind of person that needed things to look and be perfect, and he was the kind of person that didn’t share how bad things were with his friends. He knew that none of his friends loved Derek, so he had started to keep things from them about Derek.