The captain paused for a moment, and I tried to wrap my brain around the foreign concept.
“Thinking only about yourself,” he went on, “and what you want, and how you feel; and thinking about me as an individual, based on your personal experiences with me, completely independent of your spouse or your marriage: Do you want me in your life?”
Quicker than conscious thought, a slideshow of my entire history with Graham played on the projector screen of my memory.
I saw him as an adolescent, proud and sure, horsing around with friends or stubbornly standing up to teachers. Him at our formal officers dinners, smart and handsome in his uniform, conversing easily with commanders and politicians. Him marching Bravo Company into Louisiana, recognizing my voice even when I couldn’t place his.
I recalled the smolder in his gaze when he agreed to join us for sex. The first time his lips struck mine, and how intensely I’d desired him ever since. The night of my anniversary, when I lay beside him and shared secrets in the dark. How much I’d missed him when he left us for Jade. The way he hugged me when we got back together.
The last scenes were the most recent: Letting him into my body without being afraid. Kissing him every evening, and waking up with him every morning. The things I’d just allowed him to subject me to, which no one else ever had.
Do you want me in your life?
When I took Avery out of the equation, certainty rose in a dimension that was truer than thought, unmistakable as the noonday sun.
“Yes,” I told Graham, tightening my grip on his arms. Of course I wanted him in my life. He meant as much to me as one person could mean to another. I knew it was my fault he had to ask, but like a minor wildfire passing through a forest, consuming excess vegetation without harming living trees, the trial he’d just put me through had cleansed the dead weight I’d been carrying since LSDF’s invasion. In the clarity left behind, separating from him seemed unthinkable.
“I’m glad to hear that,” he replied, emotion adding a subtle husky quality to his voice. “Answer one more for me. There are many ways to be in a person’s life. So again, without regard to Avery, and thinking only of yourself and me: Is committed intimacy — physical, emotional, and sexual — what you want to share with me? Do you want your bed to be my bed too?”
report That took a lot less time to consider. “Yes,” I told him quietly. “I do.”
“Then that’s where I’m going to be.” He held me for another few moments, and black visions from last week rose into the unguarded silence. Before I decided whether I could bear to verbalize any of them, Graham spoke again, low and poignant.
“You know Avery told me what you were planning to do if he hadn’t survived. That you didn’t think you could care for me anymore, and you were going to leave me behind. As devastating as it is, I understand you truly might have felt that way. It’s normal for grief to cause numbness when you’ve lost a partner.” My heart contracted painfully until he went on, his tone weighty as the possibilities we were discussing.
“But let me tell you what would have happened, if you’d chosen that route. Or if we lost Avery at any point, and you made that decision. I would respect your right to grieve the way you needed to, even if it meant ending our relationship. But if you traveled as far away as you intended, it would be like you had died too. I’d have no way to find you, or contact you, or even know whether you made it there alive. And that’s more than I could bear.”
There was another pause before his voice resumed, brave despite the emotion cracking it. “So I wouldn’t try to stop you from leaving. But I would beg you — on my knees if necessary, on Avery’s sacred memory if that’s what it took — to let me go with you.” He swallowed some obstruction from his throat; I tried to do the same, but mine only solidified. “We wouldn’t have to be together. You wouldn’t have to speak to me or interact with me or acknowledge me in any way. But I believe that, in time, your heart would recover. Maybe it would take a year, or two years, or five. It wouldn’t matter. I would be waiting.”
I had to free one hand to keep the tears from spilling down my cheeks, and it sounded like Graham’s eyes were wet too. His spoke the final words just above a whisper.
“I would go anywhere to be with you, Julian. I would never stop loving you. No matter how long it took, or who else I was with, I would choose you first. That’s what you’re worth to me.” After a second he added, “The scene is over.”
The strength and depth of his love overtook me like floodwaters rushing down a mighty river course. They swept away the fortifications I’d built over the past three decades, my instinctive defense against parents who failed to care for me, classmates who envied and assaulted me, and social institutions that didn’t value human life. I’d thought I understood Graham’s devotion to me, but I hadn’t. I’d been trying to survive on affection and validation comparable in proportion to the trickling upland creeks bordering our settlement. This, what he had just explained to me, was the Mississippi: Passion with the power to cross mountains and span continents. Acceptance broad enough to contain my most shameful wounds and insecurities. Forgiveness so abundant it covered every mistake.
The flood broke open the barriers I’d set for myself about what I was allowed to feel, and which parts of me were safe to reveal. I’d loved Avery for five years, yet now I saw clearly how much I’d been holding back. I’d given him as much of me as he needed, but not nearly everything. Very little of my fear or pain or frailty. I’d been sanitizing — permitting both my partners only what I thought they could handle, or what I thought I could handle. Keeping them out of these cavernous, shadowy, turbulent places I didn’t want to explore, let alone expose to anyone.
But Graham wanted all of me. He was capable of loving all of me. And after this, I could no longer deny that I desperately, desperately needed him to.
I turned in his embrace, awkward given our positions, but enough that I could get my arms around him too. I clung to him, burying my teary face between his neck and shoulder, and he held me just as tightly. I was immensely grateful for his presence, yet an equally strong sense of unworthiness rose alongside. I suddenly wondered if it was a burden I’d borne for much longer than I’d been aware.
For once, I wasn’t going to bury my dark anxieties. If I brought my fear into the light, I could trust him to tell me if it was true, and to help me deal with it if it wasn’t.
“I don’t deserve you,” I managed to choke out.
He didn’t dismiss me or scoff at me or, worst of all, agree. “Yes you do, Julian,” he told me, both gentle and firm. “You deserve me, and you deserve Avery. It’s about time you stopped holding yourself to this standard of perfection that no one can achieve, and pretending you don’t feel the full spectrum of human emotions like we do.”
More tears gathered, the ones I hadn’t been able to shed during that awful week with Avery in the hospital. I wanted to tell Graham how sorry I was for pushing him away, how terrified and lonely I’d been, but the words lodged behind the dam in my throat.