BEFORE I DIE, I PRAY TO BE BORN | ✓

▬▬ 31

THURSDAY
14.11.1996
DORIAN

               We face each other on the bed. I didn't turn the lights on and the puffy redness in his eyes doesn't look as harsh as I know it to be. I wrapped the shabby throw blanket over him (knowing the duvet will still feel too heavy) but when his shivers don't ease, I take both his hands in mine and try to warm them up: rub them between my palms and massage each joint in turn.

Isaiah wrestles his gaze to mine only to flee and I ache. You're never the one to break eye contact.

'Is it okay if we don't have sex tonight?'

I exhale a laugh that morphs into a frosty gust when I understand he's sincere. 'Of course, it's okay.'

His hands are carved from basalt unrelenting to my hold. 'You don't... have to touch me.' He gives me the same look he uses to demand his pain isn't that bad when he's clearly in agony.

I screw my eyes shut to keep tears from welling into them. Can't I just comfort him without being so weak he ends up having to comfort me? One day I won't break down every time he does. (Or maybe not, maybe I don't want to learn not to, maybe this is what love is: breaking down every time he does.)

Unable to get a word through my strangled throat, I pull his hands, cupped in mine, to my lips, kiss the skin where the webbing of his thumb meets the knuckle of his index, and try to breathe warmth into his bones.

All I can think is: I did this to him.

I might have had good intentions in leaving but I could have done it some other way — any other way. I know Isaiah inside and out just as he does me and I knew exactly where the cut would bleed most. Couldn't I have shoved the knife somewhere else? I could have said anything and I chose 'this isn't real'.

Like a stuck cassette, my mind locks onto what he said in the stairwell before the call about his mother: you don't respect me.

You don't respect me and I can't trust you. You don't respect me.

'I don't think about you like that.'

Isaiah's eyes shift back into focus behind his tears. He watches me, silent and with a crease in his brow, wanting clarification but too tired to ask.

'When I—' I swallow but the pressure in my throat eases only a fraction. I caress his hands at a steady rhythm to keep myself tethered to the moment (you've always been my tether). 'When I left, I said it was because you were a fling to me and I didn't mean it. And I definitely didn't mean it like any of the other men who've said that to you.'

His gaze hardens only to melt before it sets. 'I know.' His voice is shrill and his eyes leave mine, but he repeats himself, 'I know.'

A sigh rattles in his throat. It turns into a sob and in a blink, he's crying again.

'I'm—'

Isaiah shakes his head before I can apologise. With his hands still in mine, he tries to dry his tears with his arm to look at me without filter. 'Being with you... that's what it's supposed to feel like.'

We've been back for nine days and his accent is already regaining its texture; every th-sound getting closer to a d by the hour, letters dropped or transformed so naturally it's as if there's no other way to pronounce them. As inappropriate as it is, I smile.

The tenderness in his gaze claws at my chest (I love you. I love you, please let me) but it's nothing compared to the clash of agony and joy when he shifts forward and presses into me ('I think I'm going insane, please hold me'). I let his hands go to wrap my arms around him.