Once you said it, you found it hard to believe you hadn’t said it sooner. You’d always been stubborn and pig-headed thanks to your contrary Irish heritage, but the relief that you felt when you finally breathed the truth into the shell of his ear, with the smell of sulfur and hatred burning in the night all around you, was like a living thing finally loosed from your cautious heart. 

You felt the impact it had on him, another shock that was added to an already traumatic evening, yet you only clung to him more tightly, repeating the words that suddenly flowed from your lips to his, knowing how fucking close you came to losing everything tonight.

Even though he had technically left you weeks ago, exercising that fucking escape clause once again, you couldn’t bring yourself to see it as good-bye, rather just another detour on the road to nowhere. You figured he would be back at least one more time when he changed his mind again and realized that domestic bliss really was bullshit. 

You assumed he would show up at the loft one day, maybe in six months or a year, however long it took him to get bored searching for that cock of gold at the end of his special rainbow. He’d use his key and quietly kick off his ratty sneakers just inside the doorway, adding that fucking duffel bag right next to them, waiting silently for you to acknowledge him. 

You’d walk down the steps from your bedroom, maybe still damp from a shower, club clothes half-on, one of your favorite black shirts that really show off your still impeccable biceps. You’d stop for effect on the last step and watch him, your eyebrows raised in question, although neither one of you felt any confusion about why he was there, half-smile on his face, his head cocked to one side, the ubiquitous Justin Taylor. 

But then you’d met him on the street a few days ago, and there had been an awkwardness between you that had never been there before, not even when he’d been playing house with Ian, and you’d suddenly felt just a hint of doubt cloud your mind. 

So, you’d made plans to go to Australia, about as far away from the disquiet that had invaded your soul as you could get, trusting that the ultimate White Party on the other side of the fucking globe would do the trick as it were, and give you the time and diversions you needed to fix the gaping holes Justin had left in the walls that had once surrounded your heart.

You had convinced yourself that you had apparently made a huge mistake in letting down your guard where he was concerned, but cancer and words like commitment had weakened your resolve and before you knew it, he was entrenched in your life once again. Even when he was across the country on the West Coast, and you’d concluded he was never coming back to a shithole like the Pitts, things were good between you, no strangeness shadowed your separation, and when he ultimately came back and finally fucking moved in, you’d thought that maybe you had found the perfect balance between your life prior to a non-conventional non-defined relationship, and the life you were attempting to build with Justin post-Hollywood. 

And now, while your empire of fucking and sucking burned around you, destroyed by homophobic hatred and intolerance, in a moment that should feel surreal at best, like something from the aborted Rage movie; you finally had some fucking faith in yourself, made the ultimate sacrifice and set him free. 

Only time would tell if he would be coming back to stay.