Page 28 of The Embrace of Evergreen
One sentence, and it already feels like I know where his story is going. Yet another kid cast aside like they're nothing because they didn't grow up to match the precise image their parents envision.
“I’m from this tiny Alaskan town where there isn’t much to do outside of school and work, and as far as I knew at the time, I was the only queer person in town. Jordyn and I were inseparable. We used to spend our free time hiking and messing around doing stupid things like competing to see who could throw sticks the farthest in forests not much different from this. We never had set plans, never went out with the intention of catching fish or running twenty miles or anything; we just hung outand enjoyed each other’s company. We met when we were little kids, and it’s how we spent all our time as far back as I can remember. When I finally got up the nerve to tell him my feelings for him had changed, I was prepared to lose him. I'd never been so terrified in my life, but he smiled and slipped his fingers through mine and kissed me right there in the middle of the woods. I'll never forget the warmth of his lips against mine in the cold spring air as the sound of crickets and the scent of pine surrounded us when he told me he felt the same way. We spent the next seven months stealing away whenever we could to spend time together.”
Ethan’s laugh is soft and distant, his heart lost in memories.
“We wereus, just like we’d been since we were little, and yet we were so unbelievably different. We were two young, stupid, fumbling kids learning what it was like to fall in love together.”
The sigh that slips from him is filled with pain, and I desperately want to lift it from him even though I know that I can’t. All I can do is sit here at his side and listen to his heart break over old wounds not yet scarred over.
“Three weeks before I turned eighteen, my mom died.I was drowning in grief, and for months, Jordyn held me while I cried. I clung to him, and the way he loved me helped me remember that I still had life left to live. It helped me hold onto the thought that one day, thememory of her love would overpower the ache and loss. He’d remind me every day that I wasn’t alone. He’d remind me what it meant to feel human even when I was certain that I’d never be the same again. I still think that’s true to some extent - I won’t ever be the same again. I’ve learned to live with my losses, but they’ve changed me. I won’t ever be the person I was before she died.”
I don’t know how to help him. His pain is old, yet somehow, it feels like he’s still drowning in it. His body is tense at my side, and his fingers are curled tightly around my own. It’s so intense that it’s radiating off him in waves, and all I have to offer are my own pathetic thoughts, the ideas that kept me moving forward during the moments of darkness and pain that I once thought would swallow me up completely.
“I don’t think any of us are ever the same once we’ve known pain like that, sweetheart, but in some ways, I think maybe that’s a good thing. Hurt and grief and loss, they change us, but they remind us of what’s important. They remind us to love and to laugh and to live because there has to be more to life than heartbreak and sorrow.”
Ethan’s hand is trembling, and his voice breaks as he continues.
“Four months later, I told Jordyn I loved him and that I wanted to tell my dad about us. I told him I wanted us to be together.”
Ethan
God, how can it still hurt this much? How can it still feel like I just lost my entire family yesterday, even though I’m sitting here a decade later, in my safe place surrounded by nature, tightly clutching Blue’s strong, callused fingers? I’ve never told anyone what happened or why I left. I’ve never had anyone to tell. Now that I’ve started, I want Blue to know everything. I don’t want to be so alone anymore. He’s here, sitting by my side and listening and letting me cling to him the way Jordyn let me after Mom died, and for the first time since I lost Jordyn, I want to trust that at least one person in this whole wide universe might actually want to listen to me. That there is just one person who doesn’t make me feel like I’m a burden when I’m not hiding behind my mask of thoughtful professionalism.
“Jordyn didn't mean to hurt me. I know that. I know he meant it when he told me that he loved me, too, and intellectually, I understand why he didn’t want to come out. Our town was small and behind the times, and I'd never even heard the word gay used in person unless it was flung as an insult. When I told Jordyn that I wantedmore, we weren't kids anymore. We were adults, and we were strong. I’d thought that we could be even stronger together. I really believed that as long as we had each other, it would be okay. But he held my hands and smiled sadly and told me that while he loved me and he'd always have a place for me in his heart, he wasn't ready to take that step. That he didn't think he'd ever be. That he wasn’t gay, he was bi, and that he'd decided being with a man forever wasn't his future. He planned to build a life with a woman one day. He was sure he'd fall in love with one at some point. I don’t know if it works like that, but everyone’s journey is their own. I know that. I knew that even then. If he wasn’t ready or didn’t feel strong enough, it wasn’t my place to press him, but it just felt like I wasn’t enough.I was so angry at him at the time, so heartbroken that even after seeing what losing Mom did to me, he took his love from me as well.”
I can’t stop the way my breath seems to catch in my lungs or the tears that have found their way down my cheeks. I don’t even try. I know that Blue isn’t judging me. His thumb is sliding gently along the side of my hand, and his stormy eyes are soft and glistening as if he’s holding back tears as well. As if he cares enough about me to share my hurt.
Blue doesn’t look at me like he knows I'm lonely and confused and just a little bit desperate to belong.He doesn't make me feel like I need to smile more and ramble less and hide everything that makes me,me,behind thick steel walls because who I really am is too dull or introverted or anxious.He doesn't look like he'strying to find a way to extricate himself from my company.He listens when I talk and he laughs like I'm funny and he smiles like he's happy I'm around.I feel seen and heard and wanted, actually truly wanted. I feel like I might actually be worth keeping around.
“Ethan…I don’t…I can’t imagine what that must have been like for you. I wish there was something I could do to help. I wish there was a way to go back and tell that kid that he’d make it through. That one day, you’d be a kind, handsome businessman who travels the country helping people everywhere you go. That one day, you’d learn how to blow a glass vase and spend your Friday nights at drag karaoke surrounded by friends who love you and your weekends wandering the woods and enjoying the peace they offer.”
The sob that tears its way from my throat is harsh and loud and it seems to hover in the dense, humid air surrounding us for a moment before it’s swallowed up by the forest.
“I can’t…I don’t…”
My eyes fall closed, and I focus on the warmth of Blue’s thigh against mine, the texture of his fingertips, the scent of pine and ferns and redwoods, and somehow, it all hurts just a little bit less. I’ve spent my life alone, hiding and pretending that I don’t want more, that I don’t want connection. Most of the time, I’ve hidden my longing to belong even from myself. I’ve taken Jordyn and my parents and my past and boxed them up tightly,refusing to look back, refusing to recognize just how devastatingly empty my life has been. Blue knows who I am now. He knows my past and my secrets and my desires. He knows that I’m shy and awkward and just a little bit strange, and yet he’s here. He’s holding my hand and he’s listening and he’s saying the kind of sweet, heartachingly supportive things that no one ever says to someone like me. And somehow, with Blue at my side, fourteen years of loss and loneliness isn’t quite so heavy a burden as it was a moment ago.
“Thank you.” It comes out as a strangled whisper, but it’s the best I can manage as I try to weather the chaotic emotional storm that’s still rolling through me like a hurricane.
The smile he offers me is a soft, tender thing that warms my soul and makes me wonder why in the world I thought I’d been okay without friendships for so long when clearly this is more important than almost anything in the world.
His smile falters for a moment, and I can tell he’s trying to find the words to say something he’s afraid might hurt me while I’m so vulnerable.
“You said earlier that your dad is alive but that you don’t talk?”
That is how our conversation started, isn’t it, with me telling him that I don’t talk to my dad very often. As emotionally strung out as I am after letting my entirepainful history fall out all at once, now that I’ve started, I need to finish. I want him to know everything, to know all of me. I think that he’ll stay. He didn’t see me as broken even when I told him how I struggle with sex and romance, and I don’t think he’ll see me as broken for this either. He might, and I know that I’m taking a risk by opening up to him, but even though I spend my entire life anxious and worrying that other people are judging me and viewing me as awkward or less than, I don’t feel that way with Blue.
“Ya, he’s still alive, but I don't really know him after all this time, and he doesn't know me. In hindsight, I think it’s largely my fault we’ve grown so far apart, or we at least share equal blame. When my mom died, in a way, it felt like I'd lost my dad too. We'd never been overly close, but he was kind and loving and supportive, and I don't think anything would ever have changed that. We probably could have clung to one another and weathered the storm of her loss together, but then I lost Jordyn, too, and it was just too much. Everywhere I looked, every single inch of my home and town and the forests that had always been my haven reminded me of someone I'd lost. My parents had been so happy together, so in love. They ran the business together and cooked and laughed and loved, and then it was gone, and seeing him without her was like seeing a soul torn in half.”
Blue’s hand has turned over at some point, and his fingers are clutching mine tightly as I spill my soul to him and the trees and the universe, and it feels…okay somehow. For the first time in a very long time, I’m allowing myself to feel whatever messy emotions arise instead of locking them away and covering them with work and schedules and routines, and it’s actually tolerable.
“I wasn't going to survive there. His grief was swallowing him up, and it felt like we were clinging to one another so tightly that we were going to drag each other down and drown together. So I left. I ran as fast and as far as I could and tried to save us both with distance and silence. I suppose, in some ways, it worked; I'm still alive. Though I'm not really sure I've been living, and I find myself wondering a lot these days how different things might have been if I’d have stayed.”
“You were a kid, Ethan. A scared, hurt, lonely kid.” Even though Blue’s voice is harsh and thick with emotion, it’s still kind, still supportive.
“I know that, and I know he’d have done everything he could to help me through. I know he’d have put my well-being over his own, but I just…I needed something more, something new and untainted by death and loss and hurt. I’m not sure that really makes sense, I guess.”
“It does.” Blue glances away. “I know what it’s like to need to run, to escape.”
