Work Text:
Winter of ‘87
He came. He left. He came back. This was perhaps the cruelest of all his tricks, but I was happy, eager even, to see him again. Of course, I was. I knew agony awaited me at the other end. But this will be worth it, I told myself. Everything was worth it. Five more days with him. Five more days with him not as a lover as we once were, but a someone whom you had once shared such passion with that it reminds you of them every time you make love to another and seek that fire. But that was okay. Wanting him in my bed would be selfish. So, I was okay with the arrangements. He was to sleep in my grandfather’s old room this time – the room that I had spent the summer in, straining my ears to make out the sound of his breathing through the door that joined our dwellings. I didn’t know how he could find comfort in that small single bed. I also secretly wished, in the middle of the night, he would crawl under my blankets without asking, mumbling a complaint about the tiny bed, as though it was the most natural and logical thing to do.
He didn’t crawl under my blankets. But I did wake up to him standing at the doorway, by the French windows that opened to the balcony. I stare at him, his silhouette stark against the blueish hue of the night. He must have been cold for he wore only his pajama bottoms. He knew I was taken aback. He was too. It took me a moment to realize that I was out of breath. Had he frightened me that much? He did, but not at this particular moment. From the moment he stepped out of the cab, he hadn’t talked to me. He smiled at me as though I were a stranger, as though I were the son of his teacher, the same indifferent smile he threw at me when we first met that summer. Then he went straight to bed. “Jetlag,” he’d whispered to my father, totally out of energy. “Let him rest,” my mother had told me, not unkindly, as though I were a toddler planning on rousing him, demanding answers, demanding my long gone playmate to play with me and make up for lost time. Perhaps she feared I would. She knew I was capable of such impertinence, she knew I was impatient; she’d witness my suffering firsthand. But no, I’d let him rest, because I was no longer impatient. He was here now. I had him before my eyes and I lacked for nothing. I wanted nothing more from him, nothing more to happen, just for time to stop, him roaming around the villa always before my eyes. Stuck in time, never changing. So the fact that he would not acknowledge my existence much less talk to me like the first days of summer scared me a little but didn’t enrage me or frustrate me. I was happy. He was here.
He stood, unassured. Then he finally spoke to me, softly. “Are you okay?” He sounded worried.
“Yes.”
“You woke me up.”
I was sure I was dreaming. The silent, suppressed desire of having him close again was forcing me to hallucinate. This Oliver seemed out of the world. An apparition birthed into existence by my muted yearnings. The belle from Keats’ ballad. He didn’t move but sounded worried. He feared to come close.
“But I was asleep,” I said.
“You were crying... Whining.”
This stunned me. I had been sleeping alone for as long as I can remember. I wasn’t a sleep talker, or crier. I didn’t grind my teeth in my sleep, I didn’t snore. If I had to turn, I had to wake up for it. Now this Oliver was accusing me of crying in my sleep. No, whining. He said whining. As a baby. This was definitely a specter.
He took a step inside and his eyes caught a light the source of which I wasn’t aware of. They were worried and hesitant; winter Oliver did not have the zeal of its summer equivalent. I wanted him closer so I could see his eyes more clearly and decide for myself if it were a doppelgänger, my creation, or Oliver himself. I knew he could hide the truth, he was good at that, but he could not lie. On the other hand, I did not trust myself when I was awake, let alone my sleeping self. I shrug to make light of it. “Probably the ghost of my great-grandfather.”
“Your namesake.”
He remembered. “Sorry,” I said for waking him up.
“It’s okay.”
I said nothing. I didn’t know how to converse with this specter Oliver, he seemed new, stranger.
“Are you gonna be okay?” Last politeness as leave-taking. He was going back. I didn’t want him to.
“I don’t know,” I said, desperate to make him stay. I let him go once. I didn’t know what I would do if I had to watch him walk out again.
It worked as I wanted it to. He walked towards me, hesitance forgotten in his worry, and sat on the bed. He spread his cool palm over my forehead. Oh, how lovely. I could have moaned, whined. His touches were always so tender. The next second his hand was gone. “Do you want me to get your mom?”
How he could think I would feel better or safer with someone else when he was the other option, I wanted to ask. Or perhaps he wanted to stop me from getting my hopes high, or wanted to get away from here. I wanted to confront him for that too. But I settled on feigning defending my wounded ego; I couldn’t be so cruel to him, not now. He was always so kind to me. “I’m not a child.”
He felt so close. I hadn’t been this close to him in months. How his presence barred the air from flowing, the presence of solid material – it all seemed new to me again. It thrilled me anew. I could also feel the pang of its absence more so now that he was here. I was so used to my apparitions by now, the ones that evaporated as soon as I opened my eyes after muttered declarations as my left hand played his role. It was always air I met. Empty air I would whisper to. I had so many conversations with air Oliver, so many sleepless nights spent with him.
It was going to hurt even more this time, wasn’t it, Oliver? I looked at his bared body. He could tell, and hugged himself. He looked fragile like this, sitting on my bed in the moonlight, cold.
“I’ve been meaning to tell you something,” he said. He wasn’t looking at me. Why wouldn’t he look at me?
I wanted to touch him, anything to stop this pretense between us. But I didn’t dare. And I cared nothing for small talk, big talk, book talk, life talk. “Take my temperature again.”
I would have begged had he refused. But he frowned. At first, I thought he was angry. He looked away. He was tortured, pained. He stood up and uttered softly, “you’ll be okay,” before he left, as quietly as he came.
Where went all the worry? I wondered if he listened for my whimpers for the rest of the night. His eyes the next morning said he had. I greeted him at the breakfast table.
Why didn’t it bother me that he perhaps had a secret that he was on the verge of telling me? I didn’t care if he had killed a man. When he was here, all I cared for was what he felt and did for me. All the rest was nothing. I didn’t care what had happened or what was going to happen. All that mattered to me was that he was here. Now. Him at the breakfast table with my mother and father. Watching me sleep, standing by the French windows. Taking my temperature. On the verge of telling me something but never revealing his life other than this. Listening to my great-grandfather's ghost. And when summer came, swimming with me, naked. Time will stand still for us here, I am sure, Oliver.