Coda 01 - Promises

barely brushing my lips against his. “Please, Matt? Trust me. Please don’t turn away from this.”
    There were tears on his cheeks. “But it’s wrong.”
    “You know I don’t believe that. I don’t see how it can be wrong.” His eyes were closed, and when I kissed the corner of his mouth, I heard his breath catch in his throat. “Does this feel wrong to you?” I kissed the tears from one cheek. “Because it doesn’t feel wrong to me.” The other cheek. “Nothing in my life has ever felt so right.” I pulled back and waited until he opened his eyes and looked into mine. “I love you, Matt. How can that be wrong? How can love be wrong?”
    But it was too much. When I said that word, the doors slammed shut. He reached up and took my wrists, carefully pulled my hands from his face, shaking his head. He stood up, gently pushing me back away from him as he did.
    “I have to go.”
“Matt. Please don’t. Please don’t walk away from this.” But he didn’t even look back.
    I WAS sitting in the shop, contemplating a crack in the countertop. To be honest, I had been contemplating that crack for over an hour. A couple of people had come in, but I let Ringo deal with them. I did make sure I kept my hand over the marks on my neck while they were in the store. No need to give the town gossips something else to talk about. I couldn’t remember ever being so depressed over hickeys before.
    I heard Lizzy come in the back door and walk up to me. Then she laughed. “Oh my God, look at your neck! Looks like somebody had one hell of a birthday.”
    But when I looked up at her, she must have seen the pain in my eyes right away. Her face fell and she dropped onto the stool next to me. “What happened?”
    “I don’t want to talk about it.”

    “Oh Jared. After yesterday, the way he was watching you and touching you, I was just sure….”
    “Still don’t want to talk about it.”
“Did the two of you have a fight?”
“Not exactly.”
“Did you break up?”
    “Lizzy, we would have had to be together in order for us to break up.”

    “Then what?”

    So I told her. And the sympathy in her blue eyes was almost the worst part of it.
    She hugged me despite her bulging belly. “I’m sure he’ll come around. He’s obviously as crazy about you as you are about him. Just give him some time.”
    But I couldn’t believe her.

    I CALLED him a few times over the next week or two, but he never answered. I left messages.
    The first time, three days after my birthday, I tried to sound casual. “Matt, it’s okay. We both had a lot to drink.” I didn’t think that had anything to do with what had happened, but I was willing to give him that as an excuse if it would help. “It doesn’t matter. Call me.”
    Three days after that, I was starting to feel desperately lost. “Matt, you don’t have to avoid me. Nothing happened. Let’s just forget it. See you on Sunday, okay?”
    And when he didn’t show up to watch football on Sunday, I called again. I had carefully thought out what I was going to say after the beep—something glib about his Chiefs losing to the Raiders. But for some reason, the words died on my tongue. All I managed to say was, “Matt, I miss you.”
    I didn’t call again after that.
    The next few weeks were miserable. Matt continued to avoid me. And worst of all, he started dating Cherie. Not just sleeping with her, like he had over the summer, but actually dating.
    I knew what he was doing. He was trying to convince himself that he could be happy with a woman. He was telling himself that his feelings for me were nothing more than the result of having spent too much time together and that if he just spent more time with Cherie, he could transfer those feelings to her. I didn’t think it would work, and yet I was terrified that it would.
    I couldn’t believe how lonely I was. I tried to comfort myself with the thought that my life was now just as it had been for years before he arrived. It hadn’t seemed that bad back then. But now I felt crushed. My house felt like a graveyard. Every time the door opened in the shop, I hoped it was him, but it never was. Every evening, I hoped he would knock on the door. Even football wasn’t as much fun. The few Sundays we had spent together watching it, our perfect companionship, taunted me as I sat by myself, watching the games. Lizzy and Brian invited me over, of course, and I went once or twice, but instead of cheering me up, it only served to