Every Man I Fall For

It’s funny how when someone enters your life, it’s not always smooth like you think it will be. Doesn’t run the way your river always has, becomes a waterfall that you never saw coming. I like to think that Thom fell sort of sideways in to my life and landed flat on his face. He’s been in it for a few months now, and I can’t say that that doesn’t make me anything but overjoyed.

School was hard at first: neither of us wanted to be secretive and the staring got pretty intense. We fought a little, and my insecurities made me say some things I didn’t mean about doing some things I didn’t want to do. But we made it through, and it’s all OK now. It’s all going to be OK.

And now it’s a Saturday, facing the sky in his back garden, and it’s moments like these I’ll always keep close to my heart. His head is on my stomach and his eyes are closed but mine are open and watching the clouds. The neighbours packed up their hand-operated lawn mower only minutes ago, and the smell of fresh-cut grass is still heavy in the air while Thom plays me some song called Atlas Hands that is very quiet and calming and reminds me of him a lot. Somewhere inside, his mother is squeezing oranges for his father’s afternoon tea, as he sits in the lounge room reading the paper and lazily filling out the Sudoku. Charlie is pacing the study with her eyes squeezed shut, muttering study notes to herself under her breath. Somewhere across the world it’s raining, snowing. People are sleeping and having sex and watching films and eating and playing in the dirt.

Right here in the backyard of this house in the suburbs, a very beautiful boy’s head is on my tummy and rising in time with my breaths. The clouds are slow today, and so is my heartbeat. I think I could die here and not want for another minute.

“Olive?” his eyes are still closed but his brow is furrowed and his tone is quietly anxious.

“What’s wrong, Thommie?” I say, real concern lacing my voice.

“Something very serious and important has just hit me quite suddenly and I think I need to tell you.”

I sit up then because he’s talking like me and it’s really scary. He sits up too, on his knees, across from me. Is he sick? I hold the back of my hand to his forehead and, finding no temperature, wait patiently for his explanation.

“I think-“ I can hear that his mouth has gone very dry, and he licks his lips. “I think I might love you.”

Thom’s eyes soften and water and my breathing becomes very shallow, but he’s smiling this tiny beautiful smile at me that slowly breaks in to a grin as I grin right back at him.

“Well I know I do.” I say, and he starts to smile before I continue with love myself, that is and he smacks me on the back of the head, laughing and wiping the tears off my face that I hadn’t even realised were collecting.

“I’m kidding, Thom. I love you too.”

And we’re both just watching each other for a minute before he pulls me in to the softest but most simultaneously bone-crushing hug I’ve ever received. I breathe him in as much as I can, and I’m home again, home again, hip hooray. I’ve come to know his veins and his bones, the backs of his eyelids and his feet in the morning light. The pattern of the hair on his legs, the way his spine arches up when you touch that one spot on the back of his neck. The annoying way he can jump to conclusions. The beautiful words he can create when it’s just us two alone in the world. His moods, his bruises.

I know him. I love him. I wouldn’t change him for the world. He’s mine and I’m his and even if we’re not forever we’re something, something special, and I know that after this exact moment or maybe after all the moments that led up to this, I’m never going to be the same again.

Sometimes all it takes is a surfer, a drop-in, to change everything. And once it’s changed, the other side is so beautiful.