Page 86 of A Minute More
God, the grief on that mother’s face, I’ll never forget it. At the time, I was tearless, stoic. Part of me couldn’t believe he was gone while the other part had already moved past it. But I was fooling myself then. I’d wept later. For days.
And then suddenly nothing. As if I’d already come to terms with it long ago. I’d lost James already—in almost every sense—but now he was physically gone. Grief is a funny thing though. You never can predict how it’s going to go.
Wesley shifts beneath me. “And that’s why he keeps coming here?”
“Yeah.”
“And that’s who you were visiting the one night I found you in that building…that was John?”
“Yeah. I feel like I need to keep in touch, to keep James’s memory alive. John needs me, and I’m leaving in two months…I don’t know how he’ll cope. I haven’t told him yet….”
Wesley’s hand rubs up and down my back, bumping over the knobs of my spine, my ear resting over his thumping heart.
“And it was really only five months ago?” he asks softly. “That you lost him?”
“Yeah.”
He sighs, and I can almost hear the turning of his mind, the way his brain is trying to piece it together. I know how he feels. I fucking know.
“So you saw me working in the sandwich shop a couple months after your partner died, and got a job there…to be near me.”
“Oh god,” I murmur.
“And now it’s been five months since he’s passed and we’ve been fucking for few weeks and you’re asking me to move in with you.”
Now that he says it out loud I can hear how insane it sounds. I sound insane. I’ve lost my mind.
“I think you need time, baby,” Wesley says, his hands falling away from me. I feel the absence of him vividly, will remember this for months to come.
“I don’t need time,” I say and sit up, swiping at my eyes.
“You just lost a partner of what…five years? And it’s been five months? Jesus. Now I get why you wanted to stay away from me. Fuck, I messed this all up, didn’t I? I pushed you when you clearly didn’t want to be pushed. I’m so sorry, Simon. This is all my fault.”
He sits up and puts his elbows on his knees and runs his fingers through his hair.
“No, it’s not your fault. I kissed you first, and I know it’s soon, but what James and I had…it was over years ago. We didn’t even have sex—”
“I don’t want to know,” Wesley interrupts, shaking his head. “I just…fuck, Simon. I don’t know. I’m scared to upend my life to move in with you, to give this a chance when you just lost someone significant to you. I don’t want to be a placeholder.”
I fall to my knees, grabbing on to his wrists, his eyes meeting mine.
“You’re not a placeholder. You’re not. You’re…you’re mine. You’remine.”
He wets his lips, his eyes dropping to my mouth. “I wish I could believe you. I want to believe you, but I can’t. You just went through something traumatic. You need time, Simon.”
Those words hang heavily between us, and Wesley leans forward and brushes his lips across my forehead. I feel like I’m losing a piece of my heart. First with James and now with him. Although this seems much worse. So much fucking worse.
“Please don’t go,” I say.
“I don’t want to.”
“Then stay. We can make this work.”
He looks conflicted, especially when the tears start to fall. They slide down my cheeks and land on my lips.
“Fuck, how am I gonna make it with you gone?” he whispers.
“You don’t have to. You can come with me.”