FIRE AND ICE: BOOK II: CHAPTER TWO: ADORE

DREW   

I know I have to let this go, but the absolute NERVE of that asshole! Justin is one of the kindest people I’ve ever met. Now that’s not to say that he doesn’t have his faults… everyone does, but they don’t warrant some insignificant little prick wishing him dead. It’s a good thing that Emmett stopped me, because if I had my way, I would have bent him into a pretzel, driven him to the city zoo and threw him into the Lion Den, and wished them a happy meal. UGH!! What is it going to take to make them see that they should have ditched his self-important ass a million lifetimes ago?

I try to refocus my attention on the task at hand. I’ve always been pretty good at disregarding what’s unimportant and weeding through bullshit, to get to the real heart of things. That’s what I need to do now, instead of thinking of ways to throw Michael from the plane… while it’s still in the air! I take a deep breath, knowing that Emmett is watching me like a hawk, ready to intercept me if I even think about moving from this seat. It’s one of the things I’ve always loved about Em. He has the ability to see everything going on around him, to perceive and anticipate what’s about to happen with me, even before I know it sometimes. Sometimes, with our work schedules, it feels like we’ve lost that connection. I denied feeling it at first, since I was involved with Sierra, but over time, I’ve tried to honor it. I think I would still be fully entrenched in the closet if not for Emmett. It took me a while of living the ultimate lie I’ve told myself to see that life is much too short to be miserable. What’s funny is that he’s never betrayed my confidences, even when he had numerous chances and reasons to do so. And for that I’ll always be grateful to him.

Many people wouldn’t take me for a Prince fan, but I am. And he did this song called Adore that reminds me of Emmett in every way. It also put what I want in perspective, like no other song can. My goal for therapy is simple: I want US back. Not only do I want us back but I want us better than we ever were.

I didn’t ask Emmett to marry me to jump on the heteronormative bandwagon, or to prove a point like many, including Michael, thought. It was for one simple reason alone… I didn’t want to live without him. I didn’t want him to wake up one day and wonder what the hell he was still doing with me; didn’t want him to ever question what he means to me or my commitment to him. And I still don’t!

I’m as committed to him as I was the day I metaphorically turned twenty-one.

What’s funny, and I never told anyone this, including Emmett, is that while I was out there ‘sowing my wild oats’ as he called it, there were times when I would have a thought, or come across something I knew he would find hilarious. Then I’d go to make a comment about it to him, only to remember that he wasn’t there with me. After the fifth time it happened, I knew, I just knew that I was in the wrong place. I wanted to be with him. I needed to be with him.

What was surprising is that he didn’t automatically take me back. He put me through my paces, made me wait to have sex with him again, made me prove how much I valued him. It was difficult for me to understand at first, until he explained it to me. He said he didn’t want me to feel like he was the only one who would ever want me. He didn’t want me to tie myself to him and then later down the road regret it; wanted us to give it time to see if we really could be what I’d envisioned and he’d only daydreamed about.

That was hard for me to hear, since it was also proof of how much I had hurt Emmett in the past. So we began to hang out as friends… Well that’s what he would tell you, but for me, I was auditioning for the part of Emmett’s one-and-only. Sometimes he would cook dinner and introduce me to the ‘Gay Goddesses’ of Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, Lana Turner, Judy Garland, and Audrey Hepburn. But my personal favorite was the nights that we would have dinner and watch RuPaul’s Drag Race.

Oh the heated discussions we would have! I chuckle inwardly remembering the night Emmett bet me that he could dress in drag and not one person would be able to tell that he was a man. We fooled almost everyone that night, except when some broad thought being forward with me was sexy; Em’s voice deepened real quick as he ordered, ‘Back off, Bitch. This Stud’s taken.’ Little did I know then that my man would end up accosted the whole night for makeup tips from the other bystanders- both men and women. That was also the night that I fell even deeper in love with my husband.

So yes, I want Em back. I want my crazy, sexy, sassy, cool husband back, and I’ll do whatever it takes to have him.

EMMETT

It hurts me to know that Duke is right about me. Not because I’m smarter than everyone thinks I am, but because through my inaction in disabusing Michael of his notion that I’m stupid, he’s now gotten completely out of control. It took everything in me not to lay a haymaker on the jackass, even after I stopped Drew from doing so. But I can’t even put all the blame on him… I think we’re all guilty of letting him get away with his shit for far too long.

Maya Angelou once wrote that you teach people how to treat you, and I’m thinking that it was definitely a true statement. Most of my life, I felt that I had to dumb myself down so that people would like me. It took me awhile to get out of that notion before I left Hazelhurst behind. The sad thing is I fell right back into that thinking when I arrived in Pittsburgh. People like Godiva, Brian, Teddy, and Mel saw through my shenanigans almost right away, but I allowed others to only see the facade I erected.

Strangely, Justin is the one who convinced me to stop.

When I we first met him, he seemed like such an innocent. He was sweet and kind; you just wanted to do anything you could to protect him. I suppose that’s why the Big Bad fell so hard for him, despite how he tried to fight it. But Justin knew who he was. He knew his own self-worth and wasn’t afraid to show it to anyone who would but take a closer look.

I remember the night his father attacked Brian outside of Babylon. I thought for sure that the idiot’s ultimatum would make Justin resign himself to his father’s wishes, even as Michael stood there hoping it would. But little Justin squared his shoulders, and told his father that he was never coming home again. I found myself wishing that I had his courage, his conviction and strength in living by his own rules. And it was that precise moment, which changed me forever.

Spending time with him, both before the bashing and afterwards, gave me several eye-opening experiences into how the dynamic between Brian and Justin works. Brian would give Justin choices, not tell him what to do the way he did Michael. Brian respected Justin by not handling him with kid gloves, but acknowledging that he was a man in training. Nothing brought home that point more than the situation with Sapperstein. No one, Justin included, knows that I was there for a brief time that night. I worried about him, especially when the drinks and drugs started flowing heavily. By the time I had gotten through the crowd to get to Justin, he had disappeared. I didn’t think anything of it at first, until he ran past me and right out the door, while many men were yelling behind him. Turns out the feisty young man kicked the Sap’s teeth in when he tried to force himself on him. In retrospect, I probably should have said something to Justin, instead of marching to the back of the house and warning Gary that he’d better not say a fucking word about what happened that night. As for why I didn’t say anything to Baby, I figured that not only had he learned a valuable lesson, but he needed to divulge it in his own time. And so I’ve kept my silence.

Now I’m wondering if I should have. It’s not that I don’t think Justin has forgotten about it or healed from it completely. It’s that Brian and Justin have too many secrets that could be used to destroy them. Hell, I have a few of my own that I have yet to tell Drewsie. I guess on some bone-deep level, I’m almost afraid of what he’ll think of me. Maybe he’ll think of me as a fake or a coward, and that’s something I couldn’t take. Oh, I know he loves me but… well, it’s just that he may not like me afterward. It’s not something that I have told anyone, including Teddy. Of all people, I probably should have told Ted since it stems back to his Meth days, but… well I know that part of the reason for this therapy is to fix us. But the most important part of it is also to fix me, but what if I can’t? How can I ask Drew to take care of me when there are days my mental health just needs to be left alone to think and process? I know he tries, and that things from my past are keeping me emotionally stunted and separated from him. I’m almost afraid that he’ll never want to touch me again, but it’s been eating at me for awhile now and it’s showing in everything I do.

Well if Drew and I are going to survive, I know I can’t keep it from him any longer. Hell, even if we don’t, I can no longer keep whipping myself for doing what I had to do at that moment. I just hope he understands...