Before - During - After
5 mos 2 wks 4 days 11 min
Fifty eight seconds After Gabriel, Max stared as the door closed, the lock clicking mutely into place. Gabriel didn’t even slam it.
What had he been thinking?
-
Three minutes After Gabriel, Max forced himself to sit on the couch and dwell on just how much he screwed up. He probably catapulted himself to the top of the Jackass of the Year list. Jackass of the Century, of the Millennium. He was worse than a politician. Gabriel had practically given him a free pass to his pants, and better yet, his heart, and he just ripped it up into confetti. Human beings weren’t programmed to be so stupid; he thought to himself, throwing a beer can at the TV and watching it bounce off the screen. It took a special kind of skill to be the kind of idiot that he was.
He growled as it replayed in his mind, trapped in a cruel cinema where he was the only one in the audience and all the emergency exits were bolted up. Gabriel hadn’t wasted time tearing up when Max shoved the confession right into his face, and he seemed the farthest from a smile that he had ever been. He’d clambered onto shaky legs, doing his best to gather his composure and all the other parts of him still lying around the place. He wasn’t going to be coming back after all.
Gabriel had glanced at Max before he left, his eyes hurting and pleading, but he hadn’t said anything more. Neither did Max.
Max wanted to take it back now, to say ‘I think I’m in love with you too,’ to apologize about how he answered before he knew what he was doing, to make up some excuse that how he was worried about what Maxwell would think; but Gabriel was gone. They were both just a couple of clock spins too late.
-
Four hours After Gabriel, Max trudged into the garage in an attempt to be functional. He hadn’t slept. He also attempted, several times, not to cry on Tony’s shoulder, even if he knew Tony would just pat his head and think nothing of it. He spent the day twisting a solitary wrench over and over in his hand, turning over a solitary thought in his head.
He splurged on a bottle of whiskey and didn’t wear a helmet on his way home.
-
Two days After Gabriel, Max received a call from Maxwell about the toothbrush he’d forgotten in Max’s sink, and if Max could maybe drive over and give it to him. Max would later feel guilty about telling him to go fuck himself and buy a new toothbrush when he was done, but he couldn’t stand the thought of running into Gabriel. Not in Maxwell’s apartment, knowing how he felt about Max now, but unable to do a thing about it.
-
One week After Gabriel, Max came down with a slight case of the flu. He made himself chicken soup with perfectly soft carrots and just the right amount of salt. He burnt his tongue at the first taste and thought about how he blew the chance he had.
-
One month and three weeks After Gabriel, Max went to the barbershop for a $12 haircut, put a coat on, and entered a club he’d never been to before. He bought a drink without the intention of drowning his sorrows into it, and bought another one for a girl with blonde curls and a tattoo that said ‘Born to Ride’ on her left shoulder blade. They talked until they stopped talking. They were only half-naked when they did it on the kitchen counter, impatient. He was fairly certain he wouldn’t hear her moans from another room.
They woke up, dressed up. His entire body throbbed like a bruise. She didn’t make him coffee, but she did write down her number on a post-it before she had to go. Max even smirked when he bid her goodbye, and he considered calling her. But he didn’t.
-
Two months and five days After Gabriel, Max had a good day at work. The good mood lasted until he got home, and it stayed even when he found a fountain pen under the couch while reaching for the fallen remote. Max knew only one person who wrote with that pen; he used to mark down his university planner with it, get annoyed when it shat ink.
-
Three months After Gabriel, Max opened the door and saw Maxwell standing there with rumpled clothes, a case of beer in both hands.
“We broke up,” Maxwell slurred, having already emptied out most of the bottles before he got there. “Weren’t even dating. Hate sex was hot, though.”
Max let him stumble in and caught him before he hit the floor, eyes rolling into his head. His lips were still moving as Max dragged him into the spare, taking off his shoes and taking off his tie before he strangled himself on it.
“Don’t worry, bro,” Maxwell mumbled, fluctuating into consciousness. “’s not your fault.”
“What’d you say?” Max said, insides tangled up enough as they were.
“Nothin’,” Maxwell uttered, loose-limbed and sloppy-smiled. He paused, clear-headed, but only for a moment. “He really does have a nice ass, doesn’t he?”
Max had to compel himself not to stop breathing. Maxwell was drunk and sad and an asshole, he had no idea what he was talking about. “Go to sleep, man.” That’s all there was to it. There was no other option. Not even the truth.
Especially the truth.
-
Four months and a day After Gabriel, Max was in bed with a guy who he’d admit was cute, even if he didn’t speak much English. What Max wouldn’t admit was that he only chatted up the guy in the first place because he reminded him of Gabriel, with a fringe of dark hair and a smile like the Eighth Wonder of the World. Even seeing the remnants of such a smile made him ache like someone on life support.
-
Five months After Gabriel, Max drove up to Gabriel’s dormitory and was told that it was empty. It was the end of the semester, but not of his missing.
-
Five months, two weeks, four days, and thirteen hours After Gabriel, Max found his new address. He’d already graduated, but he hadn’t left the city. Max downed some courage and Red Bull, then pulled up outside a house that shouldn’t have just one person living in it. There was an old-fashioned mailbox on the lawn and a doorbell that Max rang. He didn’t need to do it more than once.
Gabriel answered the door less than ten seconds later, and he looked less than pleased. “Oh, you again.”
Max gulped, quite ungracefully, his beam and bravado wavering. “Not even a ‘hi’ for me?”
“What do you want.” It wasn’t even a question as much as an announcement to go away, but it was going to take more than that to send him packing.
“Can I come in?”
It must have taken more than seconds this time, or forever, but the door was opened and he went inside.
-
Five months, two weeks, four days, thirteen hours, and one minute After Gabriel, Max stepped into Gabriel’s living room and had no idea how to begin. Everything he’d been planning to say, the speech he so carefully pieced together just disappeared, a stack of papers blown away by the wind.
Gabriel’s unimpressed glare didn’t help. Another minute went by, then two, then three. Max swallowed, trying to quench his desert-dry tongue.
“How are you?” he asked feebly, finding their positions reversed. Neither of them had sat down.
“Fine,” Gabriel replied coolly, his arms crossed like a fortress, though his mouth was no drawbridge. “Just fine.”
“School okay?” Max forged on, even if he felt like his feet had been cut off at the ankles.
Gabriel hesitated for a second, but he was ruthless. “You didn’t come here to ask about what books I’m reading...”
“You’re right,” Max said, giving up, evident in the sudden slump of his shoulders. “Gabriel...”
“...and I’m not about to ask you how you’re doing.” Gabriel’s eyes were glassy and narrowed, the sharpest poisoned arrows in his arsenal. “I don’t want to hear about how happy you are. Because I’m not, and I have no intention of being diplomatic by saying you’re not to blame.”
Max’s heart sunk, his lungs squeezing it in a painful embrace. He tried to speak, but Gabriel wasn’t finished.
“I don’t even know why I let you in. I shouldn’t have. Just...” The venom in Gabriel’s gaze was gone, but the glass remained. It was wet, and it reflected the light. “...get out.”
Max didn’t know how much those words could sting until they were spoken to him. But they awakened him, shook him by the shoulders, threw cold water in his face. He couldn’t let it end here.
“Gabriel, please.” There was nothing else he could lose, so he offered the few words he had. “I love you.”
He meant them, and they were supposed to make things better, but they only made Gabriel angrier.
“No. No.” Gabriel was rarely so ineloquent. “You don’t get to say that, not now, not anymore. Fuck you, Maximilian.”
Max had never heard Gabriel curse at anyone so blatantly, nor had Gabriel ever used his full name apart from the initial teasing when Max told him what it was. He just about collapsed where he stood.
“Do you... do you hate me?” If this is what he’d made Gabriel feel, then maybe he deserved it.
“Hate you?” Gabriel laughed, but it was hollow, brittle as a tin man’s bones. “If only I hated you.”
Max didn’t know what he could say to that.
“I suppose Maxwell told you about our split,” Gabriel went on, his smile twisted, only half-formed. “Did he mention why?”
Max shook his head, thinking nothing could shock him at that point. He was wrong.
“He finally asked me.”
“Asked you?”
“If I was in love with you.”
Gabriel casually busied himself with tidying the living room, perching up the immaculate sofa cushions, fixing the already neatly stacked magazines on the coffee table. His voice was detached, and deceptive.
“He always brought it up when we were fighting. That perhaps I preferred your company over his, and perhaps that was when I realized that I did. Then one day, I told him. Can you guess what he said?”
Max was almost afraid to even try.
“He said, ‘I knew it.’ But he never held it against you.” Gabriel’s smile cracked in two, and Max couldn’t bear to see it. “You make it so very hard to hate you.”
Neither of them said anything more. He heard Gabriel choke when he turned around, and he didn’t notice how wet his own cheeks were until he was out the door.
He was about to put on his helmet when Gabriel spoke again, standing on the porch. “So is this where I’m supposed tell myself, ‘he didn’t care enough to stay?’”
Max stopped in his tracks, fists clenched at his sides, a lump clogged in his throat. He faced Gabriel and raised his voice. “Don’t bother.” It sounded rough despite his best effort. “It doesn’t work.”
-
Five months, two weeks, four days, thirteen hours, and eleven minutes After Gabriel, Max saw that smile again, or the beginnings of it. It wasn’t without tears, but that was okay.
“You suck,” Gabriel said half-heartedly when Max wiped a thumb over his cheek, mixing the salt from their eyes.
“Very well, in fact.” Max grinned at him like a crazy person. They don’t kiss, not yet, but that was okay too.
What had he been thinking?
-
Three minutes After Gabriel, Max forced himself to sit on the couch and dwell on just how much he screwed up. He probably catapulted himself to the top of the Jackass of the Year list. Jackass of the Century, of the Millennium. He was worse than a politician. Gabriel had practically given him a free pass to his pants, and better yet, his heart, and he just ripped it up into confetti. Human beings weren’t programmed to be so stupid; he thought to himself, throwing a beer can at the TV and watching it bounce off the screen. It took a special kind of skill to be the kind of idiot that he was.
He growled as it replayed in his mind, trapped in a cruel cinema where he was the only one in the audience and all the emergency exits were bolted up. Gabriel hadn’t wasted time tearing up when Max shoved the confession right into his face, and he seemed the farthest from a smile that he had ever been. He’d clambered onto shaky legs, doing his best to gather his composure and all the other parts of him still lying around the place. He wasn’t going to be coming back after all.
Gabriel had glanced at Max before he left, his eyes hurting and pleading, but he hadn’t said anything more. Neither did Max.
Max wanted to take it back now, to say ‘I think I’m in love with you too,’ to apologize about how he answered before he knew what he was doing, to make up some excuse that how he was worried about what Maxwell would think; but Gabriel was gone. They were both just a couple of clock spins too late.
-
Four hours After Gabriel, Max trudged into the garage in an attempt to be functional. He hadn’t slept. He also attempted, several times, not to cry on Tony’s shoulder, even if he knew Tony would just pat his head and think nothing of it. He spent the day twisting a solitary wrench over and over in his hand, turning over a solitary thought in his head.
He splurged on a bottle of whiskey and didn’t wear a helmet on his way home.
-
Two days After Gabriel, Max received a call from Maxwell about the toothbrush he’d forgotten in Max’s sink, and if Max could maybe drive over and give it to him. Max would later feel guilty about telling him to go fuck himself and buy a new toothbrush when he was done, but he couldn’t stand the thought of running into Gabriel. Not in Maxwell’s apartment, knowing how he felt about Max now, but unable to do a thing about it.
-
One week After Gabriel, Max came down with a slight case of the flu. He made himself chicken soup with perfectly soft carrots and just the right amount of salt. He burnt his tongue at the first taste and thought about how he blew the chance he had.
-
One month and three weeks After Gabriel, Max went to the barbershop for a $12 haircut, put a coat on, and entered a club he’d never been to before. He bought a drink without the intention of drowning his sorrows into it, and bought another one for a girl with blonde curls and a tattoo that said ‘Born to Ride’ on her left shoulder blade. They talked until they stopped talking. They were only half-naked when they did it on the kitchen counter, impatient. He was fairly certain he wouldn’t hear her moans from another room.
They woke up, dressed up. His entire body throbbed like a bruise. She didn’t make him coffee, but she did write down her number on a post-it before she had to go. Max even smirked when he bid her goodbye, and he considered calling her. But he didn’t.
-
Two months and five days After Gabriel, Max had a good day at work. The good mood lasted until he got home, and it stayed even when he found a fountain pen under the couch while reaching for the fallen remote. Max knew only one person who wrote with that pen; he used to mark down his university planner with it, get annoyed when it shat ink.
-
Three months After Gabriel, Max opened the door and saw Maxwell standing there with rumpled clothes, a case of beer in both hands.
“We broke up,” Maxwell slurred, having already emptied out most of the bottles before he got there. “Weren’t even dating. Hate sex was hot, though.”
Max let him stumble in and caught him before he hit the floor, eyes rolling into his head. His lips were still moving as Max dragged him into the spare, taking off his shoes and taking off his tie before he strangled himself on it.
“Don’t worry, bro,” Maxwell mumbled, fluctuating into consciousness. “’s not your fault.”
“What’d you say?” Max said, insides tangled up enough as they were.
“Nothin’,” Maxwell uttered, loose-limbed and sloppy-smiled. He paused, clear-headed, but only for a moment. “He really does have a nice ass, doesn’t he?”
Max had to compel himself not to stop breathing. Maxwell was drunk and sad and an asshole, he had no idea what he was talking about. “Go to sleep, man.” That’s all there was to it. There was no other option. Not even the truth.
Especially the truth.
-
Four months and a day After Gabriel, Max was in bed with a guy who he’d admit was cute, even if he didn’t speak much English. What Max wouldn’t admit was that he only chatted up the guy in the first place because he reminded him of Gabriel, with a fringe of dark hair and a smile like the Eighth Wonder of the World. Even seeing the remnants of such a smile made him ache like someone on life support.
-
Five months After Gabriel, Max drove up to Gabriel’s dormitory and was told that it was empty. It was the end of the semester, but not of his missing.
-
Five months, two weeks, four days, and thirteen hours After Gabriel, Max found his new address. He’d already graduated, but he hadn’t left the city. Max downed some courage and Red Bull, then pulled up outside a house that shouldn’t have just one person living in it. There was an old-fashioned mailbox on the lawn and a doorbell that Max rang. He didn’t need to do it more than once.
Gabriel answered the door less than ten seconds later, and he looked less than pleased. “Oh, you again.”
Max gulped, quite ungracefully, his beam and bravado wavering. “Not even a ‘hi’ for me?”
“What do you want.” It wasn’t even a question as much as an announcement to go away, but it was going to take more than that to send him packing.
“Can I come in?”
It must have taken more than seconds this time, or forever, but the door was opened and he went inside.
-
Five months, two weeks, four days, thirteen hours, and one minute After Gabriel, Max stepped into Gabriel’s living room and had no idea how to begin. Everything he’d been planning to say, the speech he so carefully pieced together just disappeared, a stack of papers blown away by the wind.
Gabriel’s unimpressed glare didn’t help. Another minute went by, then two, then three. Max swallowed, trying to quench his desert-dry tongue.
“How are you?” he asked feebly, finding their positions reversed. Neither of them had sat down.
“Fine,” Gabriel replied coolly, his arms crossed like a fortress, though his mouth was no drawbridge. “Just fine.”
“School okay?” Max forged on, even if he felt like his feet had been cut off at the ankles.
Gabriel hesitated for a second, but he was ruthless. “You didn’t come here to ask about what books I’m reading...”
“You’re right,” Max said, giving up, evident in the sudden slump of his shoulders. “Gabriel...”
“...and I’m not about to ask you how you’re doing.” Gabriel’s eyes were glassy and narrowed, the sharpest poisoned arrows in his arsenal. “I don’t want to hear about how happy you are. Because I’m not, and I have no intention of being diplomatic by saying you’re not to blame.”
Max’s heart sunk, his lungs squeezing it in a painful embrace. He tried to speak, but Gabriel wasn’t finished.
“I don’t even know why I let you in. I shouldn’t have. Just...” The venom in Gabriel’s gaze was gone, but the glass remained. It was wet, and it reflected the light. “...get out.”
Max didn’t know how much those words could sting until they were spoken to him. But they awakened him, shook him by the shoulders, threw cold water in his face. He couldn’t let it end here.
“Gabriel, please.” There was nothing else he could lose, so he offered the few words he had. “I love you.”
He meant them, and they were supposed to make things better, but they only made Gabriel angrier.
“No. No.” Gabriel was rarely so ineloquent. “You don’t get to say that, not now, not anymore. Fuck you, Maximilian.”
Max had never heard Gabriel curse at anyone so blatantly, nor had Gabriel ever used his full name apart from the initial teasing when Max told him what it was. He just about collapsed where he stood.
“Do you... do you hate me?” If this is what he’d made Gabriel feel, then maybe he deserved it.
“Hate you?” Gabriel laughed, but it was hollow, brittle as a tin man’s bones. “If only I hated you.”
Max didn’t know what he could say to that.
“I suppose Maxwell told you about our split,” Gabriel went on, his smile twisted, only half-formed. “Did he mention why?”
Max shook his head, thinking nothing could shock him at that point. He was wrong.
“He finally asked me.”
“Asked you?”
“If I was in love with you.”
Gabriel casually busied himself with tidying the living room, perching up the immaculate sofa cushions, fixing the already neatly stacked magazines on the coffee table. His voice was detached, and deceptive.
“He always brought it up when we were fighting. That perhaps I preferred your company over his, and perhaps that was when I realized that I did. Then one day, I told him. Can you guess what he said?”
Max was almost afraid to even try.
“He said, ‘I knew it.’ But he never held it against you.” Gabriel’s smile cracked in two, and Max couldn’t bear to see it. “You make it so very hard to hate you.”
Neither of them said anything more. He heard Gabriel choke when he turned around, and he didn’t notice how wet his own cheeks were until he was out the door.
He was about to put on his helmet when Gabriel spoke again, standing on the porch. “So is this where I’m supposed tell myself, ‘he didn’t care enough to stay?’”
Max stopped in his tracks, fists clenched at his sides, a lump clogged in his throat. He faced Gabriel and raised his voice. “Don’t bother.” It sounded rough despite his best effort. “It doesn’t work.”
-
Five months, two weeks, four days, thirteen hours, and eleven minutes After Gabriel, Max saw that smile again, or the beginnings of it. It wasn’t without tears, but that was okay.
“You suck,” Gabriel said half-heartedly when Max wiped a thumb over his cheek, mixing the salt from their eyes.
“Very well, in fact.” Max grinned at him like a crazy person. They don’t kiss, not yet, but that was okay too.