Take me home

James is left alone when Elton goes on vacation with his parents, his best friend, and that best friend's family. Going to Italy is going away to limited wifi-connection.

“I’m going to miss you so bad”, I had said. “I’ll miss you too, babe”, he said. That was eight days ago. He was going to Italy for a week with his parents and some friends of his family.

            There were promises of calls to be made. Hugs and kisses were shared in front of his parents waiting impatiently for them to enter security control at the airport. My dad standing behind me, ready to drive me back to our house.

            “It’s one week, sweetheart”, he said. A week. 7 days. 168 hours. 10080 minutes. But there would be more. It would take time before the airport shuttle drove them home. His parents would think it suitable for them to share a quiet family dinner once they were settled at home again. It would be a hectic week abroad.

            Hectic for them. Not for me.

            “You’ll be fine, you know”, my dad said in the car on the way home. “A week is nothing in the life that you’re going to share with each other.

            I know.

            I knew.

 

Wow. It’s so awesome. We’ve been to the Pantheon, then we saw the line to the Vatican, so we decided to walk to the Coliseum instead.

            And the food. It’s amazing. You can buy pan pizza from small holes in the walls, and you pay per pound. He was laughing. I’ll take you here. He said all this on the first night that he called back home.

            “I’m sorry, babe, but my mother is waiting for me to end this conversation. She has some calls to make. I’ll talk to you soon”, he said too.

 

“Aren’t you going to eat”, my mother asked.

            I had eaten. But I wasn’t in the mood. Mom and dad talked about whatever were going on in their work places. I was listening to the radio in the background, Corbyn chanted screamingly about how imperialism belonged in last century. Britain needs to break with its troubling past. We can no longer support a Turkish government which considers the hunt for ISIS as a means to strike the Kurds. We need to leave NATO as well as the European Union. There has to be an end to the close ties with the hypocrisy, which we so famously know as the United States.

            I didn’t care about no NATO, Kurds, or EU. I wanted my boyfriend to come home soon. I didn’t care about no United State-ties. I was troubled by the tension that I had felt between Elton and me for a couple of weeks. There was some reason why he hadn’t kissed me passionately for too long, why I hadn’t been allowed to touch his body the way I used to.

            “Give me your plate, dear”, my dad said. And I gave him my plate. And I shut off the radio. And I went up to my room to pack my sports trunk.

 

I had a text from Gabriel. I’ll pick you up in 30. That was from 18 minutes earlier.

            I ran by my mother and picked up a towel from the laundry. She asked me where I was going, and I mumbled a response about being in a hurry, about Gabriel waiting with the engine running, and about me going to the gym.

            The door slammed behind me.

            It was cold and wet outside, but yet no Gabriel. So I texted him and waited under the street lamps. Seeing the kids playing inside the house next doors, parents setting dinner tables, and teenage guys smoking in their backyards, hoping not to be caught.

            “What’s up?” Gabriel said, as he opened the door from the inside for me.

            “Nothing. I just need to clear my mind”, I said.

            “Tell me about it. Jessica is furious we don’t hang out enough.”

            “Really”, I said.

            “Well. Not you and me, James. Jessica and I.”

            I understood what he’d meant, but I appreciated his on-going talk. Gabriel had been my friend since me and Elton got together. Originally Elton’s friend, but it was him and me that went to the gym, whereas Elton preferred running or swimming on his own. Tonight I especially appreciated his taking my mind off missing Elton too bad. I appreciated knowing that we were not the only ones who weren’t always happily in love without problems. Though I hadn’t been able to identify the exact nature of Elton’s and mine.

 

As I got into bed that evening, my pulse still intense after the workout, I flickered through the apps on my phone. Elton had put up pictures of him and his childhood friend Josh in front of the Fontana di Trevi. He must’ve had WI-FI, but still had not called me.

            I browsed my phone’s history to make sure I hadn’t missed any of his calls while I was in the gym. I got too anxious to sleep as well. I felt the warm room around me, and maybe I hadn’t cooled off from the workout yet.

            I got out from under the duvet and opened my window a little bit. A cold stream of air struck my legs, and flowed over my body. I could see people passing by in the street, on a late night walk. Could they see the shape of my naked torso if they would look my way?

            Not that I cared.

            The lampposts in the street made the plastic stars in my roof reflect the lights, and I realized how taking them down was long overdue. I had to do it soon, but I wouldn’t get out of bed again at that moment. Instead I took another look at my phone, but Elton still hadn’t texted me. Somewhere after this, and browsing the apps again, I fell asleep.

 

During the week he had texted me a few times. Time flies, babe, or Sorry for not calling, phone died. My replies had been I miss you, or Come home!

            If I was out walking I could hear the airplanes flying by high in the air. I wondered if it was his coming home, and if he could identify my house, or even the right neighbourhood from up there. If he was looking.

 

*

 

“I need to see you”, he said. “Can we meet tonight?”

            “I thought your parents wanted a family dinner on your own”, I said. It was stupid.

            “I need to see you.”

            YES! Oh my God, why was I hesitating? He needed to see me. He had missed me.

            I said I needed half an hour, then I jumped into the shower and soaped all my body thoroughly before getting out; water dripping off me, and the carpet getting soaked.

 

When I got out from the house he was already waiting in his parents’ Volvo. As I got into it he handed me a wrapped gift. I could tell it was a CD, and started to open it.

            “I got you some Italian music”, he said.

            “You’re so sweet.”

            He hummed for a response, and drove me past my old school; the golden grown brick building. He wanted to go somewhere quiet where we could be alone.

            I didn’t mind.

            “Do you want coffee,” he said, “or a milkshake?”

            “Strawberry milkshake”, I said, and waited for him to smile. He did so.

            When we reached McDonalds, I had already put my new CD into the car stereo, and he ordered one coffee and a strawberry milkshake. He was more of an adult than me that way. I looked at him with a smile.

            The car kept driving, and he put his hand on my thigh, only to instantly remove it again. When we stopped we sat facing a lake where we’d go swimming in the summers, where he got drunk the first time, and where I’d go with my school on excursions long ago.

            As he shut the engine, I climbed from my seat onto him. I started kissing his neck, rubbing my hand down his stomach, further down. There was no denying he enjoyed it.

            I kissed him.

            It was back.

            He was back.

            “Can this hold for a second”, he said.

            I stopped and got back into my seat. “Sure”, I said.

            “James”, he said. And I replied something, or made a sound. I did something.         “I had sex with Josh in Rome”, he said. “I’m not sure how it happened, but it did.”

            I wanted to say it was impossible; they were there with their parents. Josh and him were old childhood friends.

            “Where does that leave us”, I managed to ask.

            “I still love you.”

            He did. Or he didn’t. I don’t know what I answered to him but I think I tried to kiss him, and he wanted to stop me again. I just know for sure that the Italian music wasn’t there anymore.

            “Stop”, he said. I must’ve been trying to kiss him really bad. And I was crying at the same time. I knew because I could see my tears falling onto his face as I pulled away from kissing him.

            “I’m sorry I hurt you”, he said. But he had hurt me real bad. He said something about not knowing how he and I would continue, but I knew. We wouldn’t continue at all. It was impossible. My feelings were too hurt. It’s not really a big thing, having sex with another person. Not that I had had it with someone else before him, I was too young, but I had looked at other boys, and I might have touched some when I was younger.

            Something in me got broken. He hadn’t been away from me for more than a week, and I just simply hadn’t been enough for him. That hurt real bad. I wanted to kiss him again, and I wanted to hit him real hard.

            It was dark outside.

            “Can you say something”, he said.

            But I couldn’t say anything. I only wanted him to drive me home. I didn’t want my mom and dad to see me this way, only wanted to shower off all traces of his body from mine. Wanted to run five miles, go to the gym, eat lots of food, and turn into another person. Someone else.

            “I think I love him too”, he said.

            I didn’t want to hear any more. I was hurt. And I was so broken. And I needed to build something new; a new me, someone who hadn’t been hurt or broken -someone who was complete, someone who could be everything to somebody else.

            “Can you take me home”, was all I said.