But I didn’t ask. I wouldn’t be that vulnerable. I wouldn’t let him know I needed him that much. Two years ago, Simon told me he loved me. He said it often. But I’d never said it back to him. I couldn’t. If I told him I loved him, I’d have to give him more. And I didn’t have more to give.
I couldn’t be open with him. Not the way he wanted. Simon wanted to walk down the street holding my hand; he wanted to let the world know we were together. That we were committed to each other.
That I was committed to him.
But I couldn’t be open like him. We weren’t the same. Simon’s family, his town—they accepted him for who he was. My family never did. My brothers wouldn’t either.
I heard Fury’s voice in my head talking about Sypher and Pippen, but it wasn’t the same thing. They were young. They grew up in a time when men and women were free to be who they were.
They didn’t grow up seeing men on the street beaten to death for expressing themselves in a way that was different from the norm.
New York City might be a place where you could wave your freak flag high and unashamed, but it wasn’t always that way. New York City was different when I was a kid. If you weren’t rich, you didn’t belong in Manhattan.
“Julia had a boyfriend—Mark.” I leaned forward and braced my forearms on my thighs as I stared at the floor.
“He was an okay guy; my parents liked him. Julia loved him. At least she thought she did. She didn’t know him. Not really. I tried to tell her she deserved better. That Mark was an asshole. But she wouldn’t listen. She knew I was gay. Aside from Fury, Julia was the only person I’d ever told. She thought I was jealous. She thought I wanted Mark for myself.”
“Did you?”
I glared at Simon. “No. Mark was a fucking rapist.”
“What happened?”
I stood up. It was my turn to pace. I walked over to the window and stared through it for a few minutes before I told him everything.
“I’d just passed the bar exam. Julia was so proud of me; it made up for my parents’ neglect. I’d never told them I was gay, but I think they knew. They’d tried for years to set me up with women, and it never took. Eventually, they gave up, and that was when they gave up on me. But Julia didn’t. She encouraged me to be who I was.”
I closed my eyes and thought about that day. About thebetrayal, and the pain. The grief of losing someone who had only ever been there for me.
“Julia swore she’d never tell anyone. But she told Mark. He was older than her by five years. Making him eight years older than me. I was twenty-seven years old and spent most of my time studying, so I didn’t hit the gym like I do now.”
I didn’t look at Simon. I didn’t want to see his face when he figured out where I was headed.
“Mark was thirty-five, and he was a gym rat. More muscle than brains. He showed up at my apartment with the excuse that Julia had asked him to meet her there. It seemed suspicious, but it wasn’t the first time, so I let him in. That was my first mistake.”
I put my hands in my pockets, hiding the force with which I squeezed my fingers into a fist. It was like being back there.
“Julia never showed. Mark had lied. He started to berate me. Telling me I needed to sink my dick into a pussy and then I wouldn’t think I was gay anymore.
“When I asked him to leave, he got worse. He started coming on to me. Calling me a fag and a sissy. He cornered me in the kitchen and pushed me to my knees. Told me that if I really were gay, then I wouldn’t have a problem sucking his dick.”
I stared out the window again. Simon had been so quiet when I started talking, I wondered if he’d left the room.
“He overpowered me, but it wasn’t the first time I’d been attacked by some bigot who thought he had a right to something that wasn’t his.”
“What did you do?” Simon asked, his voice barely a whisper.
I turned to look at the man I loved. The man I was baring my soul to. I expected pity or anger for what I’d gone through. What I found was Simon sitting in the chair, staring up at me as tears spilled down his cheeks.
“I punched him in the dick.”
Simon snorted and barked out a laugh before covering his mouth with his hand. “I’m sorry.”
“You can laugh. I do. I didn’t then, but I do now.”
“What happened to him?”
“He fell to the floor, and I scrambled up and kicked him in the head. When he fell to the side, he hit his head on something, and died instantly.”