Chance Of A Lifetime

The end of August brought the true depth of autumn as well as Michael’s birthday. I had hoped for intimacy, just the two of us as we had every week but my lover was a socialite and so I found myself leaning on his living room windowsill while people two thirds my age with twice the energy drunk and sung and enjoyed themselves. A wallflower, a fly on the wall, an outcast. No matter what I did, no matter how much he loved me it still hurt to see him with others, enjoying their time and even though I enjoyed his enjoyment.

I recognised a few faces from the exhibition, apparently thinking someone was pedestrian didn’t mean you wouldn’t turn up to their house and drink their alcohol.

“You don’t have to stay if you’re going to hate it.” The birthday boy blesses me with his lovely smile and pulls me close.

“It’s your birthday, I’ll suffer.” I shrug and lean into him, over his shoulder I see a few faces looking our way, we aren’t the only couple but we are the most affectionate, I turn my head into his neck, his hair a blind, the music a little too loud for comfort stifling stray conversation.

“It’s my birthday, I don't want you to suffer.” He squeezes me slightly before pulling away and tips the contents of his glass into mine, “I can push you into the conversation, introduce you and all that, or I can hide you in my bedroom, up to you.”

“I’ll be social.” I shrug and sip my drink; rum and coke and vodka and lemonade (bad).

“Yay.” Michael grins and pushes me towards the sofa, sitting me on the arm of it, “Try your best. You can always just ask people about me if you run out of conversation.”

I’m drunk enough to be chatty, several feet behind myself, watching someone more socially ept talk about things, stuff, anything and everything. What's your job? What do you study? So how do you know Michael? The same back and forth until it becomes a joke, something to laugh with them about.

In the swing of things with my vision blurred and everything warm and numb I catch him out the corner of my eye, a glow, emphasised by familiarity and just his way of being, he checks his phone and sighs, lovely, saddened, anxious, a thousand faces in half as many seconds. I want to ask him what's wrong but I think if I stand I’ll trip over. But I force myself to go over there anyway, I startle him, cup him by the chin and kiss him, my glass still in one hand, condensation running down my fingers and down onto his neck.

“Alex…”

He sounds so sad, I can’t make him cry on his birthday, another kiss on the cheek, “Tell me…when everyone’s gone, ok?”

The rest of the party is a slowly increasing blur, vignette at the peripheral, conversations merging into one. By the time I collapse into bed I am a collection of bones in a shirt and jeans; no thoughts, memories, just calcium. It isn’t until he crawls in next to me, facing away, I hold him against my chest, hands resting at his hip.

“You okay?”

He shakes his head. It sobers me up immediately.

“What happened? Bad news?”

Another shake. A thousand things fly through my head but I let them flow down and out of me.

“Good news. Awful news.”

“Those are very different things,” I murmur against his hair, “Can I help?”

“You already have.”

I blink, trying to remember what I could have done but I can barely remember who I am, “What did I do?”

Michael winces in my arms, “No…It’s…not like that. It’s good news. I got a scholarship.”

“That’s great news you-”

“It’s the one in Italy.”

“Oh.”

We lay in silence for a few moments, the cool air blowing through his window a salve on my burning hot skin. I’m on a mattress but I feel it slip from under me, a void. It hurts but the answer is obvious.

“Well you have to go for it.” I say, gently stroking his hair with one hand.

“Do I?”

“Well…yeah. You’ve loved art so much longer than me, it’s the obvious choice. I wouldn’t want to get in the way of that.”

He groans and rolls over, hiding in my chest, "Stop being such an adult about it."

"What do you want me to say? I think it would be a great opportunity."

"I don't know! Say you'll miss me, tell me not to go. I don't even know Italian." Another groan, his hands are around me, balling up the fabric of my shirt, pretty, so sweet and lovely.

"Of course I'll miss you. But it's not like it's forever, right?"

"its 2 years."

"Do you really think I'll find anyone else in those two years? It took me this long to find you." I kiss him on the top of the head.

"How could you not!" He stills for a few moments before emerging and looking up at me, "You really think I should do it."

I nod and stroke his cheek, he looks so lost, a naïve youth, innocence in pretty grey eyes and lovely features, searching for answers from me of all people.

"What about long distance? Italy isn't that far."

I think back to the weeks we were apart, the absolute desolation and loneliness, the grey fog that engulfed me choked me and how seeing him again was radiant, a hand to the drowned. I think back to the Wednesdays we spent together, how it made every other day feel like being on pause, endless, yearning a 6:1 ratio of pain to joy. Could I do that to us both? Leave us both waiting every week for it to be the one good week? Could I make him lay alone at night and cry? On his birthday? Any day? The answer was obvious.

“I don’t want to promise you something I can’t give but I promise you we will be together until you get on that flight. However long that will be.”

He can’t meet my eye, he’s more intelligent than me, socially aware, he can tell I’m avoiding the answer, “I go in January.”

I kiss him on his downturned forehead, “Then you will have me until January.”