Promises [coda series]

THE PROMISE
    A tiny little short I wrote about Matt and Jared. This takes place a few months after the end of A to Z, at about the same time as The Letter Z. It’s short and, as Angelo will tell you, “so fuckin’ sweet it’ll make your teeth hurt.”

    *****

    The whole thing started because I wasn’t paying attention.

    It was a Sunday afternoon in March. I was sitting on the couch, reading. Jared was grading homework while he watched TV. That was when, seemingly out of the blue, he hit me with the question.

    “Do you think you ever want to get married?”
    In my defense, I was completely engrossed in my book. I was down to the last hundred pages...the murderer was about to be revealed, justice was about to be served, and the hero was about to get the girl. I definitely was not paying attention to the TV.
    Did I ever want to get married?

    I didn’t even pause to think about it. The word “marriage” still held strictly heterosexual connotations for me. I immediately pictured a tux. An enormous cake. Bridesmaids.

    A bride.

    I said the first thing that came to me...the worst thing I could possibly have said. I opened my big mouth and said, “Of course not.”

    The only response was a stunned silence, and when I looked over at him, the pain and disappointment in his blue eyes made me drop my book. “What?”
    “Nothing.” He turned away from me, and I could see him trying to get his emotions back under control, trying not to show me how upset he was by my words. He gathered up the stack of papers he was grading and took them into the dining room.
    I finally looked at the TV, and that was when I realized what an idiot I was. Another state had finally legalized gay marriage. Not our state, of course. But the announcement had obviously spurred the question, which had resulted in my unfortunate knee jerk response. It wasn’t as if the idea of marrying him had never occurred to me. It just hadn’t occurred to me at that one critical moment when it mattered most. And now the man I loved more than anything in the world was hurt and angry and hiding in the other room, trying to distance himself from me.
    I could just let it go. I knew Jared. He would give me a wide berth for the rest of the evening, only speaking if I spoke to him first, and not making eye contact. When we went to bed, he would start out on his own side. At some point in the night, he would move closer. By morning he would be in my arms. And we would pretend like nothing had happened.
    But that wasn’t what I wanted.
    I followed him into the dining room. He hunched a little closer over the papers he was grading, not looking up at me. I pulled a chair over and sat down facing him, so that his chair was between my knees. I put my arms around him and buried my face in his mess of curls. I loved him so much. I loved the way his hair always smelled like the Colorado wind, and the stubborn way he would cock his head toward me when he was mad, so that I couldn’t quite get my lips onto his neck. He was doing it now.
    “Jared, I didn’t mean it that way.”

    “It’s okay,” he said, even though it obviously wasn’t. “If that’s how you feel...”

    “It’s not.”

    “...you don’t need to explain yourself.”

    “I thought…” What was I supposed to say? “I thought you meant something else.”

    If I had left him alone, he would have let it blow over. But now that I was pushing him, he would push back. He snorted and pulled away from me. “I can see how a simple yes or no question might confuse you, Matt.”

    And even though I felt like an ass, I knew I had to tell him the truth. “I thought you meant to somebody else.”

    He turned and looked at me with so much rage in his eyes that I backed up a little. “Somebody else? What the hell would make you think...”

    “I thought you meant to a girl!”
    He froze, and I could see him processing that. Jared had been aware of his homosexuality since high school. I had only accepted my own attraction to him a year and a half earlier. A year and a half wasn’t enough to completely erase thirty-three years of straight thinking. He knew that.
    He sighed, and some of the anger left his face. He let me put my arms around him again. This time, when I pulled him close and pushed my face into his hair, he angled his head away from me so I could get to his neck.

    “You caught me off guard, Jared. That’s all.” He didn’t answer, but he finally relaxed against me. “Please