Page 78 of My Dead Wife's Ex Will Do
Love is kind.
Is it kind to let Victor wait for me to figure my shit out? Is it kind to myself to keep pretending I don't know what I want?
I miss the rest of Father Gabriel’s homily. I go through the motions of Communion, the taste of wine and wafer familiar on my tongue, but my mind is elsewhere. When Mass ends and the choir leaves after the recessional song, I stay at the organ bench.
I should go to confession. I haven't been since before Christmas, and there's plenty I could confess now. Not just the sex with Victor, but the anger I've been carrying, the unkindness at rehearsal, the lie of omission every time someone asks how I'm doing and I say "fine."
But confession means talking about it. Confession means admitting, out loud, to another person, that I had sex with a man. That I wanted it. That I still want it.
Him. Victor.
That I might want him for the rest of my life.
I gather my coat and leave the church without stopping at the confessional.
That night, I lie in bed, Barnaby’s head on my leg as usual, and stare at my phone.
Victor's name glows on the screen. I've typed and deleted a dozen messages.
Hey.
Too casual.
I've been thinking about you.
Too vulnerable.
When are you coming to New York?
Too demanding. Especially when I’m not even sure what I’d do if he were in New York.
I miss you.
My thumb hovers over the send button.
What happens if I send it? What happens if he doesn't respond, or responds with something polite and distant, or tells me that Costa Rica was fun and all but he can’t be with someone who can’t be out like he is?
What happens if he says he misses me too?
That's the thing I can't quite face. Not Victor's rejection; I could survive that, probably, the way I've survived everything else.
It's his acceptance that terrifies me.
Because I can’t ask him to hide for me. It’s not fair to either of us. Especially not to him.
But if Victor wants me, if this is real, if we actually try to build something together, then everything changes.
My job. My place in the Church. The careful, controlled life I've built around the absence of risk.
I delete the message and put the phone on the nightstand.
Tomorrow, I tell myself. I'll figure it out tomorrow.
But tomorrow comes and goes, and so does the day after that, and the day after that, and the silence stretches on.
Thirty-Nine
Victor
