Real Life(73)

“The same shit everyone is afraid of, Wallace. Being left. Being tossed aside. Not being good enough. Being a fucking monster. Do you know how I felt when you left?”

“No, tell me,” Wallace says.

“I felt like the wolf in that story. I felt like I’d just killed someone. When I woke up and you were gone, I thought, Shit, Miller, you’re really something, man, you’re really fucking something, aren’t you?”

“I didn’t mean for you to feel that way,” Wallace says.

“No, you never mean it, do you? Like with Cole and Vincent, or that girl in your lab. You never mean it, but here you always are, somehow. Your feelings, your feelings. No one else’s. Not mine, anyway.” Miller sucks air through his teeth and shrugs. “Not my feelings.”

“That’s not true,” Wallace says, though now he wonders if it might be. Miller folds his arms across his chest, gives Wallace a look somewhere between amused and annoyed.

“So I go to a bar tonight,” Miller says. “I go to a bar and I’m drinking with Yngve and Lukas, and we get to talking. But I can’t pay attention to what they’re saying. I’m still thinking about this morning. I’m still thinking about what happened when I woke up and you were gone, and I’m thinking about how this guy I like, a fucking guy, no shit, how I like him and now all of a sudden I’m not good enough. I’m trash. He just used me and left. This guy I thought I knew. I told him things about myself that I don’t tell anyone, and he tells me things he doesn’t tell anyone, and I thought, stupidly, I thought it means something, but, well, you know the rest, don’t you?”

Wallace does not say anything. He’s looking down into the space between them. He can’t make himself acknowledge Miller. When they parted earlier, things were tense but fine, certainly. He did not imagine, it’s true, that Miller might be harboring such frustration or anger toward him. He took their pleasant good-bye as a sign that things were fine, all right, between them. But as Miller said, he has been thinking of only himself, of his own feelings of inadequacy, of being damaged goods. He has not stopped to consider that Miller, having just revealed his history of violence, might be feeling vulnerable himself. He did not stop to think about how Miller might feel when he awoke in the morning and found himself alone, for the second time. It is true, Wallace thinks, that he is guilty of myopia, and the knowledge of that fact weighs him down.

“But how did you get into this fight?” he asks. “Why did you get into a fight, Miller? That’s not my fault.”

“You’re right,” Miller says, nodding. “You’re right, Wallace, it’s not. Some guy bumped into me, and I said, Watch it, and he called me a faggot. Can you believe that?” Another laugh, short and dark. “He called me a faggot, so I had to set him straight. Because I’m not a faggot, Wallace. I’m not.” Each time he says the word faggot, it’s like he’s spitting it, throwing a punch to Wallace’s gut. The word pushes down through him.

“You’re not,” Wallace says, nodding. “You’ve made that clear.”

“Good,” he says. “I’m glad.”

“Why did you come here, then? Just to yell at me? Did you just come here to call me a selfish faggot? Do you want to hit me too?” Wallace looks up then, widens his eyes, his mouth parting just slightly, in the way he practiced back in Alabama, seeking the attention and the violence of men in the woods. He opens up his shoulders, steps forward. “Do you want to hit me too? Did you come here to fuck me up? Is that it?”

A thick vein in Miller’s neck throbs, writhing like a little worm beneath the skin. Wallace can see it in the plane of light illuminating his shoulder and throat, the collar of his sweater wrenched open. He sets his teeth on edge, Miller does, and takes a long, ragged inhale. His nostrils flare.

“Don’t tempt me,” he says. “Don’t tempt me, Wallace.”

“Do it, then,” Wallace says. “Do it if you want.”

Miller’s hand lashes out so quickly that Wallace can barely follow its motion. He grips Wallace’s throat, the roughness of his palm hot on his skin. His fingers dig in, not drawing blood, but squeezing, pressing. Miller’s face is an impassive mask, distant.

“You don’t want this,” he chews out. “You don’t want it, Wallace.”

Wallace reaches out and presses his palm to Miller’s cock through his jeans, squeezes it, feels it filling with blood.

“Seems like you do,” Wallace says, and Miller squeezes harder, lifts Wallace’s chin up.

“Fuck you, Wallace,” he says. “Fuck you.” But then he crushes his mouth down onto Wallace’s, hauls him up close and bites his lip so hard it draws blood. Wallace drowns in the immediacy of it, feels himself let go and sink down through the sensation of weightlessness, dizzy with it. Miller whirls him around and whips down Wallace’s shorts, jabs his fingers into him, and it hurts so much that Wallace wants to cry, but he doesn’t. He just breathes through the awful heat of it, the invasive, rough exploration of Miller’s fingers. Miller pushes the back of Wallace’s head down, shoving his face against the slick, cool countertop. The initial impact is hard and intense, and the world slides briefly into black and then back out, turns gray at its edges.

Miller’s fingers in him are thick, coarse, and hard, their blunted ends pushing, threatening to split him open. There is an intense heat radiating down the side of his face and neck, a scent like sweat and skin and soap and beer. His eyes sting. Miller slides his fingers out of Wallace, and Wallace takes a shuddering breath, suddenly cold. The scrape of shoes backward across the floor. Wallace pulls his shorts up, but he doesn’t turn; he’s still lying against the counter, his body heavy, too heavy for him to move.