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  “Just go, Derek,” my dad warned, but I ignored him.

  I felt like I was getting through to Mom, just a little bit. Maybe if I just tried a little harder, she would finally cave.

  “Mom, just speak to me.” I stepped forward, just an inch. “Just for a minute, or I truly am out of here.”

  She nodded, just slightly but it was enough. My dad huffed loudly and slammed his fist against the wall, but I could tune that out now. I was finally about to get some answers, and after all those years without them, it was exactly what I needed.

  Chapter Eleven

  Gio

  I sighed deeply and dropped all my stuff on the dining room table in my apartment, the horrible day washing over me.

  I hated how low everything had me feeling, all I wanted to do was crash into bed to just sleep it off. I wanted to forget all about Derek, and the fact that I’d shut him out forever. I wanted this horrible funk to blow over so I could finally start moving on in the way I should’ve done all those years ago.

  Ring, ring… Ring, ring…

  I groaned loudly as my phone blasted out, dragging me right back into the present moment. It seemed that life hadn’t quite got the message that I wanted to shut it all down quite yet, and it was insisting on interfering with me anyway.

  “Hey, Max,” I answered, unable to keep the glumness from my tone. “You alright?” I was expecting an onslaught about what I’d messaged him before. Either that or he was going to reel off the engagement details that I had, to be fair, asked for.

  “Gio, you have to get over here now,” he gushed instead. “I need you, and he needs you.”

  “Wait, what?” This had me sitting up straighter, panic bolting through my system. This sounded like an emergency to me. I felt much more awake now, knowing that my friend needed me.

  “Calm down, Max, tell me what’s going on?”

  “It’s Derek.”

  Fuck, despite the fact that I’d told him I didn’t want to know any more, the fact that he was in trouble amped up the terror.

  “He went to see his parents. He’s a mess.”

  “What? Why?”

  Something wasn’t fully adding up here. I couldn’t quite fit all the jigsaw pieces to clip together.

  “What happened?”

  “Just come over here.”

  With that, the dial tone rang out, leaving me confused and alone with my thoughts. I slid the phone away from my ear while I considered the implications of all of that.

  This wasn’t a ruse. I didn’t think my friend would ever do that to me, which left me with a choice. Did I put my friendship and past with Derek over what I had with him right now? After all, we were good together when things were good, we did have a wonderful bond. Could I really just ignore all of that just because I was mad at him?

  I remembered all the times he’d been good to me, like when I was struggling with the prospects of my exams and future. I was scared that it’d all fall apart, that I’d fail and be stuck. Of course, what I didn’t realize at the time was that I was totally focusing on the wrong thing, but still… Derek was good to me. He held me close, he whispered comforting things, and he let me moan for hours and hours on end.

  Didn’t he deserve someone to talk to now that he was having some issues of his own?

  Maybe it would hurt, maybe my heart would bleed just that little bit more, but it would be worth it.

  “Fuck,” I muttered to myself while I grabbed my car keys, accepting defeat willingly.

  “Don’t be a dick, Gio.”

  I had to go. I needed to see what was wrong. It was the right thing to do. And now that I’d made my decision, powerful adrenaline was racing through me, driving me forward, taking me right back toward the person I vowed never to waste time on again…

  ***

  I shoved the door to Max’s apartment open without bothering to knock, such was the state I felt in when I got there. On the drive over my mind continually dreamt up the most horrific possibilities going, so by the time I actually saw Derek with a bruise surrounding his eye, it was a shocking relief.

  “Oh my God, are you okay?” I panted breathlessly regardless. I didn’t like the thought of him being hurt, even if it wasn’t as bad as I’d imagined. “What happened?”

  Derek didn’t say anything for a moment, but his eyes welled up and I could see the emotion getting the better of him. Whatever had gone on with his parents, it had to be truly terrible.

  “His dad hit him,” Max slid into the room and eyed me seriously.

  “What? Why?” I had only met Derek’s dad once, and it was only for a brief second, but he seemed like a nice enough man — certainly not the type to hit his own son.

  “Because I’m gay,” Derek finally spat out wryly. “That’s what it comes down to. He hates who I am, and that led to this.”

  I raced over to Derek’s side and gently stroked my finger down his cheek. He flinched a little, but grabbed onto my wrist before I could pull away. He seemed to like my touch, even if it wasn’t good for him.

  “I went over there to see them, to confront him for the way they reacted to me coming out all those years ago. Their reaction was so bad, so hurtful that I ran away to join the army the next day. Purely because I couldn’t see any other way out.”

  I fell silently back into the nearest chair as I finally got something of an explanation from this hurt I felt all those years ago.

  It wasn’t what I expected at all.

  I thought he planned it in advance, and that he didn’t want to tell me about it, but now… it seemed like everything was different.

  “I didn’t want to go, and now I can see that it was the wrong choice to make, but I was young and scared.” He sighed loudly and dropped his hand from mine. “I guess I figured that a part of what I needed to do while I was here was put all of that behind me. I wanted to speak to them, to put everything in the past, but it didn’t quite work that way.”

  “What happened?” This was too much. I had no idea what any of this was like; I’d been accepted with open arms. I guess I never considered what it might be like to be anything else.

  “Dad didn’t want to let me in. Maybe he was right. Maybe he knew exactly which way this was going to go. Mom did. Well sort of, she agreed to hear me out anyway.”

  I felt guilty, sick that I hadn’t been around for any of this.

  “So we tried talking. I really did do my best to get everything out in the way that I wanted to, but I got too emotional. I kept shouting because I’d lost my temper, and well… and…”

  At that moment he burst into tears, so I grabbed his head to hold it comfortingly against my chest. Everything was stirred up inside of me, and not in the way that I was expecting. My heart went out to Derek. I wanted to help him in any way that I could, but I just wasn’t sure how.

  “Then Dad hit me, just to shut me up.” He eventually pulled back to stare into my eyes. “He wouldn’t even listen to me. I was making some good points, and he just didn’t want to know.”

  “I’m sorry,” I rasped sadly, shaking my head in dismay. “I’m sorry that happened to you. It sucks.”

  “I’ll never go back there again,” he insisted angrily. “Never. They’ve blown their chance with me forever.”

  “Okay.” I glanced helplessly up at Max, who shrugged his shoulders with the same sense of hopelessness.

  “Okay, well if that’s your decision then there’s nothing else that can be done.”

  I gulped and nodded, desperately trying to find the right words to make all of this alright again.

  “So, what we should do is take your mind off of it. Why don’t we… go out for some drinks, or something?”

  “Yeah… yeah okay.” Derek gave me a weak smile.

  “Yeah, that sounds nice. I’ll just go and clean myself up.”

  As he walked from the room, with his shoulders hunched forward, I turned to Max in shock. “That was insane, wasn’t it? Don’t you think we should… report his father, or som
ething?”

  “I already suggested that, and he doesn’t want it. He just wants to forget that it ever happened.” Max looked as defeated by this situation as I did.

  “I’m sorry for calling you. I know that wasn’t what you wanted, but he staggered in and he asked for you.” He patted me on the arm, giving me a look that showed me how much he understood what I was going through. “But at least you now know why he left.”

  “I do.” I nodded slowly while I thought that through. I did now know the truth, but I wasn’t sure how I should feel about that.

  “I do know that, but does it make it any better?” I still wasn’t going to find it easy to move on, I still felt like I was all jumbled and twisted up, like nothing made any real sense.

  “Anyway, it doesn’t matter. We’ll go out and have some fun, forget all about our problems and go from there.”

  Max gave me a look, and opened his mouth to speak with regret. “I don’t think me and Bryant should come out with you tonight. I think what Derek needs is to spend some time with you. If we’re there we’ll only be in the way.”

  “And what about what I need?” I wasn’t totally sure that I was mentally equipped for a night out with just Derek. Not after everything that we’d been through. I was already overwhelmed and we hadn’t even left yet!

  “I think it’s what you need,” he replied honestly. “I think you both have a lot that needs to be said, don’t you?”

  He was right. Of course, there always would be a lot that needed to be said between us, however hard that would be.

  Chapter Twelve

  Derek

  “You were right,” I cried a little too loudly over the music in the bar. “This was a good idea. I feel much better now.”

  I’d only had a few drinks, but it was enough to loosen me up, to shake off the tense feeling in every one of my muscles.

  “Thank you for suggesting it. It’s been really fun. I can barely remember what I was so worked up about before.”

  “I’m glad. It’s much better when you smile.” Gio was looking at me with concern, like he couldn’t totally get over my mini breakdown earlier, which I couldn’t blame him for. But I just wanted to put it behind me for now.

  “Do you want another?” He asked.

  “Actually, I don’t,” I shook my head a little too rapidly. “I want to get out of here. If that’s okay with you?” There were things that I wanted to say to him now that I was on the track of honesty, and I couldn’t do it here.

  I’d made a mess of the last few times I’d tried to express the truth, and I didn’t want to make that mistake again.

  “Yeah, okay.” Gio pursed his lips thoughtfully for a moment, as if he wanted to consider his next words carefully.

  “Do you want to come back to mine for a bit? We can have a couple more drinks there if you’d like. It is only around the corner after all.”

  I had hoped that’d happen when Gio parked up in his car outside his home. I really wasn’t ready to give him up, and I desperately hoped this would be the second (or maybe third by this point) chance that I needed.

  “Sure,” I replied whilst linking my arm through his. “Sounds good.”

  As we walked, my chest felt much lighter, all the emotions that I’d been bottling up for far too long began to escape their prison and creep through my veins. Maybe things hadn’t gone very well with regards to my parents, maybe I hadn’t been given the welcome home I craved, but at least now I knew how good it felt to say the truth, even if it was ugly and it resulted in violence.

  “Thank you for coming to speak to me tonight,” I told Gio smilingly. “I really do appreciate it.”

  “Of course. There was no way I wouldn’t come.”

  “What, even if you didn’t want to hear from me again?” I meant it to come out teasingly, but it didn’t quite work that way. I actually sounded far bitterer than I meant to.

  “Oh I don’t mean it like that, you know I’m only joking.” I bumped my hip against his.

  “I understand why you said that, but I’m glad you came around, it really means a lot to me.”

  We walked through the door to Gio’s apartment, and it hit me again how well he’d done for himself. He had everything here; it truly was incredible.

  Gio held out his arm toward the couch, indicating for me to sit down while he went to grab a bottle, which I did happily. I liked being at Max’s home, but it was nothing like here. Here contained Gio, and that was everything.

  “Only a little bit for me,” I told him as he handed me a glass. “I didn’t really come here for the drink.”

  “Oh yeah? So why did you come?”

  I watched him sit down slowly, with his eyes fixed upon me the entire time. He was waiting patiently, giving me time to work up to everything that I wanted, needed, to say, for which I was utterly grateful. Nothing that I’d spoken since coming back home was easy, but this would be one of the hardest ever.

  But if I got it right, it would give me the best rewards.

  “I just want to start out by apologizing to you. I never should’ve left you in the way that I did. Young, or not, it was wrong. I vanished with no explanation, and I didn’t even bother to write to you during my time away.” I felt sick as I spoke, but I forced myself to continue.

  “I just assumed that a clean break would be the easiest. Also, I was so lost in my own world of pain that I wasn’t really thinking about anyone else.”

  “It’s okay,” Gio rasped. “It doesn’t matter now.”

  “It does, of course it does. You need to know how sorry I am. I’m also sorry for the way I’ve been since I’ve been back. I didn’t exactly mean what I said before. What I meant to say was that I came back looking for closure because I hadn’t ever managed to move past you. I thought if I came back and said sorry, and we spent some time together getting over the past, then everything would be okay. I thought we’d both go our separate ways and everything would be alright again.”

  After a brief pause, Gio spoke out in the quietest tone of voice that I’d ever heard.

  “Is that still what you want?”

  “No.” I shook my head hard.

  “No, it really isn’t. I didn’t expect to feel so many things for you when I saw you again, and I certainly never thought that you would feel anything for me too. I mean, look at what you have. You’ve got everything, you’ve created a life for yourself, and I’m still just me.”

  “What the hell do you mean?” Gio was angrier now; his words inflamed.

  “You got away, you left this place. I’m still here. You’ve got out there into the world, seen things, done things, and I’m still just here.”

  “I’ve done all those things, and I still want you,” I replied simply, no longer beating around the bush. “After all this time I’m still utterly in love with you.”

  The world stopped at that moment. I could see Gio’s face frozen in time. I had just made the grandest gesture in the world, and we both intensely felt that.

  We used to use the word ‘love’ when we were kids, but it didn’t mean so much then. We assumed it did, we thought it was everything, but then real life tore us apart and reminded us that it wasn’t.

  This time as I said it, we both felt the magnitude of it, and I wouldn’t have said it if I didn’t truly, seriously feel it.

  “I love you too,” he eventually replied thickly, as if he had something stuck in the back of his throat.

  “You say that you haven’t been able to move on in the last few years, well nor have I. There hasn’t ever been anyone that’s compared to you.” He leaned forward and placed his hands into mine.

  “I mean, I love my life now, but whenever I’m down I think about the plans we had, the amount of the world that we were going to see, and it reminds me that everything isn’t as great as it could be. But it isn’t all the stuff that’s missing. It’s just you.”

  I ran my hands over his cheeks, holding his face close to me. Everything that we’d shared, all the love
we’d felt, all the heartache we’d experienced equally… it was all bringing us to this. My breaths were shallow, my cheeks stinging from the bright smile I had plastered across my face.

  For the first time in a very long time, everything felt right.

  “So, what now?” I asked curiously.

  As an adult with some actual wisdom behind me, I knew that it wasn’t simply as straightforward as we loved each other. Much as we didn’t want them too, external influences would get in the way, and impact upon us.

  “Where do we go from here?”

  “First off, you kiss me,” Gio murmured gleefully. “And then… well, the rest we work out later on.”

  There was a part of me that wanted to disagree with Gio, that wanted to really talk this out, but he was so tempting. His smile was adorable, his wet lips luring me in, crying out for me.

  We could talk anytime. For now this seemed to be something that we both desperately needed, so I leaned in and I pressed my lips gently up against his.

  “I love you,” I murmured against his lips, just wanting to get the message fully across. “I truly do love you, you know.”

  “I love you too.”

  With that the kiss deepened, the passion overtook us both. My hands slipped under his shirt, tracing over the incredible muscles that lay beneath, and Gio knotted his fingers up into my hair where the sheer desire overtook him. He wanted me, and I wanted him, and that was the only thing that truly mattered at that moment.

  “Come on, let’s go to my bedroom,” Gio whispered headily to me. “It’s warmer in there.”

  As he pulled back to look at me, a wicked smile played on his lips.

  “And there’s an awesome bed for us to have some fun on.”

  “Well, how am I supposed to resist an offer like that?” I replied. “Especially with the man that I love.”

  God I would never get tired of saying that, or feeling it.

  It warmed up my chest, made my heart hammer noisily; it made all the bad stuff blend into the background. I should’ve known that it was always Gio, that the reason I couldn’t move on was because none of them were him. What we had as kids wasn’t puppy love. It was genuine, and if it had survived this long then chances were we’d find a way to make it last forever, whatever life threw at us.