Staring across the room at his lover, Brian hated himself. He held a suitcase in one hand and a duffle in the other. This was the right thing to do, he had to tell himself. It was the right thing. But, oh God, it ward hard. The words he was flinging at AJ were cold and hard, and born of fear.
“Look, when are you going to get the picture?” Brian said firmly. He stared at his boyfriend, his lover, his partner in everything in life, and hated himself for what he was doing. But it was for the best. “I want to go home. I don’t want to be here anymore.”
The anger and hurt in AJ’s eyes was almost his undoing. It took everything Brian had to stay firm in this decision. He had to do this. He had to!
“I don’t understand. Where did this come from?” AJ was asking him. In a gesture that had become habitual over the past six months, AJ ran a hand over his still bald head. He’d kept it that way, claiming that he liked it. It didn’t fool anyone. Everyone knew that AJ was keeping it shaved until Brian’s hair grew back. “One minute we’re fine, and I go see Ma for two days, come home and find out you’re leaving me? Where the fuck did this come from?”
Oh God. He had known that AJ was going to make this hard. Please, God, give me strength he prayed.
“I did a lot of thinking while you were gone, Age. I just want to take a break, that’s all. I’m not really leaving you. I just need time to figure out if this is real, or…” Brian trailed off, unable to find the words that he wanted to use. Unable to bring the lie to his lips past the lump in his throat.
“Or what?”
AJ was going to make him go all the way with this. He was going to make him say the words that would destroy him. But it was all for the greater good. “Or if it’s all just something we thought we felt because of what I went through. I want to make sure that it’s really love, and not just that I needed someone, and you were the one there.” Brian barely managed to get the words out without breaking.
He watched the shock on AJ’s face, and the way he flinched as if he’d been slapped. Part of Brian’s heart broke and cried out, wanting to stop this. To fix it. But he had to do this. He had to! Before he lost his will, Brian adjusted his bags and moved toward the door.
“When will I hear from you?” AJ’s voice was soft. Brian could hear the pain in it and forced himself not to turn. Not to even look at him. If he did, he would never make it out the door.
“I don’t know, Age. I’ll get a hold of you.”
With that comment, he was out the door. There was no sound of footsteps to indicate that AJ was following. No sound echoed in the house; their house.
Brian managed to stay strong all the way to the car, and even as he drove down the driveway. But ten minutes down the road he had to pull off at a truck stop and park in the back corner of the parking lot. There he bowed his head, pressing his forehead against the steering wheel, and let the tears come.
His world felt as if it had shattered into thousands of pieces. He had just taken the heart of the one person he loved more than anything and just trampled all over it. But he knew this was what he had to do. It was for both their sakes. Because Brian knew that the pain of what he’d done would hurt AJ, but it would be nothing in comparison to what AJ would feel if he found out the truth.
The truth of the doctor appointment that Brian had been to the day before; the one he hadn’t told AJ that he had. About the test the doctor had done, and the results that had come of it. Nothing Brian did would devastate AJ as much as the truth would. But Brian wouldn’t put the one he loved through this again. He wasn’t going to put anyone else through this hell with him. Because he knew, he’d been warned, that the second time around, his chances weren’t as strong.
Unwillingly, Brian pulled the papers out of his duffel and looked at them again. He had read them so many times already that he practically had them memorized. They translated down to one thing. One simple sentence that had started this catalyst that was destroying him, and had caused him to destroy his love.
“We have concluded that the patient is no longer in remission; the cancer has become recurrent.”
One simple sentence was destroying his life the same as the cancer was destroying his body. Brian knew that he couldn’t make AJ watch him go through all this again. He couldn’t make anyone go through this with him again. So he had made up the lies in the effort to save the one he loved. One day, he hoped he would be able to explain it to him. One day, he hoped to make it right.
Wiping the tears off his face, Brian pulled the car back out of the parking lot and headed down the road towards the hospital. He left a broken part of himself behind.