Dangerously Happy (22 page)

“
Love,” I said, “you’re kind of killing the romance of your proposal.”

For once—and God, it was heartbreaking, so unbearably charming—he blushed. “I really am, aren’t I?”

“
Kiss me.” He kissed me, shy, nervous, as if we’d never kissed before, as if we’d gone back months in time and he was afraid all over again of scaring me off. Then we sank into a real, deep kiss full of all the love, all the nights, all the firsts and fears and tenderness we’d shared. After I said, “Ask me again.”

His shyest, happiest smile. “Aidan, love. I want you to live with me. I want us to share our lives with each other.”

“
Me too.”

Another night of endless lovemaking.

When I came back to the loft after work, Dario wanted to go upstairs and talk about the space in more detail. “I have a friend who does interior design, and I talked to him today. He knows a contractor who can put up walls, run electricity, water if we want a second upstairs bathroom. It just depends on what kind of space you want.” He seemed strangely keyed up.

“
Are you afraid I’m going to change my mind?” I asked.

“
No. I’m not,” he said, and in that moment he sounded, looked like his usual, assured self.

“
Good. You just seem nervous.” I gave him a kiss, then searched his eyes for a moment. There was still a shadow of something there. “I think building out the space is a good idea. But I think it should be both of ours. I know you don’t feel like the rest of the loft is really yours, because it’s turned into such a public space. So this, upstairs, should be our home. Don’t you think?”

“
Maybe so.” Something was definitely bothering him.

“
Dario, I’m not minimizing my investment here by giving up the idea of a recording studio. I mean what I just said about wanting a space for us.”

“
I know.”

“
Okay, then what’s going on?”

He sighed. “Let’s go downstairs and talk. I don’t want to associate what I have to say with our little nest, or our new retreat.” That moment, the beautiful cloud of joy, of hope for a future filled with music and Dario turned black and threatening. Queasy, I followed him downstairs.

“
I’ve been wondering for a while now whether to tell you something,” he said when he’d seated us on the sofa that had become our place for our heavier conversations. “Don’t be nervous, love. It’s not about us. It’s something from my past.” He gave me a warm, reassuring little kiss. “I’ve never told anyone. Not even Jared. But while we were together, while he was alive I always regretted not telling him, because him not knowing meant there was a certain distance between us that would never close, no matter how good things were between us. And I don’t want to feel that way with you.”

I took both his hands in mine, tried to give him that comforting, assured gaze he was so good at giving me. “I don’t want you to feel that way with me, either. Tell me. It’ll be okay.”

“
You’ve asked me a few times about why I don’t want you to tie me up. Why I freaked out so badly that one night. And I haven’t been honest with you. I’m sorry.”

“
You don’t have anything to be sorry for,” I said, trying to make my voice calm. Gentle. I knew. I knew someone had done something bad to him, as suddenly, as certainly, as horribly as if I’d come across a photograph of it. I tried to keep the sorrow and anger flooding my body from showing in my face. Tried my hardest to keep my expression open. To make him feel safe enough to say the thing I desperately wanted not to hear. “You can tell me. You’re safe.”

For the first time, after all the times I’d felt embraced and comforted in his gaze, he was looking at me like I was a tether, that if I let go of him, he’d be lost. “I was raped. When I was eighteen.”

I’d known he was going to say it, but those words fell on me like a sledgehammer. I felt crushed. It hurt. I couldn’t breathe. I tried to nod, to let him know I’d heard him, that I was there with him. It was strange: only when I couldn’t stop it and I felt the tears rising in my eyes, his eyes started to go pink, to well up, and his tears only spilled once mine had. I put my arms around him. Held him close. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I love you.”

He pulled out of my embrace and looked at me with a wounded smile. “I swear, I already feel better. Just telling you.” He let out a heavy sigh. Dried his face. “Should I tell you what happened? I don’t have to if it’s too much.”

I thought he needed to, so I said, “Tell me.” I braced myself.

I’d never seen him fidgety before. Like he didn’t know what to do with his hands. His whole body. “I wasn’t out yet. I was still playing my shell game with my old crowd from high school. But that summer after graduation I went to Austin for a young writers’ retreat. I met a boy. He wasn’t out, either, but I guess we just gravitated together, the way that can happen. Every afternoon the camp gave us three hours of free time, and David and I would always go off together, usually just the two of us. I think we both kind of knew that we were attracted to each other, but we never fooled around or kissed. We just hung out like friends. Rode the camp’s bicycles to the woods, went to town to try to get older guys to buy us beers, went to the movies. Normal teenager stuff, I guess. But the last week of camp, I think we both felt like our chance was about to slip away, and one day we were in the woods, talking about the things we were writing, making fun of this one teacher we had who quoted Hemingway every five minutes. And then we kissed. I don’t even know how it happened, really—whether I started it or he started it. It was one of those innocent first kisses that doesn’t quite go beyond a little press of lips. Just, it lasted longer, it was ever so slightly more open, like we were both thinking about using our tongues, but were afraid to go that far. Then we romped around the woods some more, and I knew if we stayed much later we were going to be late getting back to the center and we’d miss the evening reading where people shared what they'd been working on, but I didn’t care because I knew we were both just working up the courage to kiss again, to take it a little further.

“
At some point we smelled something, and saw smoke. Just a little wisp rising up from an outcropping of rock, and we went to check it out. Someone had set a squirrel on fire. It took us a while to realize that’s what it was. What it had been. Now it was just a smoldering cinder. We should have taken it as the bad omen it was and gone back to the camp. But in a weird way, that ugly cruelty made us feel closer to each other, like two bright clean souls in an ugly world, or at least that’s how it felt to me, and a while later we kissed again. This time we took our time. This time we were brave. We put our arms around each other. We opened our mouths, used our tongues. I can’t tell you how amazing that felt after years of watching the kids at school hooking up, making out for hours at parties, and not knowing how it felt or when I’d ever get to experience that. We couldn’t get enough. We kept at it while the sun was dipping below the tree line and the whole forest went into shadow, both of us with erections that we pretended not to notice for a while, then that we teased each other about, but neither of us was ready to do anything about, so we just kept kissing, just rubbing up against each other a little now and then. We went on like that for . . . I don't know, half an hour or more before I worked up the courage to touch him. Not even a proper grope. Just, I put my hand there. Just pressed my palm against that wonderful hardness—you know—so familiar, but so new.” A nostalgic, sad laugh.

“
A sound, a twig breaking or something snapped us out of it. Three guys were standing not ten feet away, staring at us. I have no idea how long they’d been there, watching us, but it was obvious the way they were kind of fanned out that they weren’t just walking past. They were confronting us. They were in their thirties, I guess. Hanging out like that in the middle of the day, I don’t know, maybe they were all unemployed. They were dirty, like they’d been doing heavy gardening, or like they lived in tents there in those woods and hadn’t showered in a while. One of them had a rifle, which I realized later was just a BB gun. Another had a can of lighter fluid in his hand. They’d been the one’s who’d burned the squirrel.

“
David said, come on, let’s go, but then the three men flanked us for real, and it was obvious that if we ran, they were going to come after us. We froze. Two of them started saying shit to us, you can imagine, crap about us being faggots, homos, did we like getting up the ass. David was already crying. God, you should have seen him. He was so . . . pretty. Short. Fine boned. Delicate. I was scared to fucking death. I swear, I had the thought that they might set us on fire, like they’d done to the squirrel. They kept moving in, closer and closer. I looked around, hoping I’d see two long, heavy branches we could hit them with, but there was nothing but twigs and pine cones. There was no way we could fight them. So finally I said, “David.” And then I said, “Run.” He was a fast runner. I knew from our horsing around all those weeks, he could run about twice as fast as me. I was sure he could outrun those derelicts. When he broke into a dash, the man closest to him started to bound after him, but I caught his jacket and hard as I could I jerked him back, and took him off his feet. David turned and stopped and I yelled at him to run, not to stop, to run and get the police. I can see his face like a photograph, streaked with tears, eyes full of doubt, of shame. I yelled it again. Run. And he ran. I was so, so glad. Whatever they were going to do, it would have been ten times worse if I’d had to go through them doing it to him, too.

“
They beat me up. I was barely conscious. Then they dragged me off, not that far, to a dirt road where their truck was parked, and they drove me to another part of the woods. I guess so the police wouldn’t find us, if David brought them. I swear to God I thought they were going to kill me. But they tied me up. They gagged me. They raped me. The irony of them doing that while they kept telling me what a homo I was seemed lost on them.”

I didn’t know what to say. I put my arms around him, held him for a long time, but the way he was holding me, I could tell the hug was helping me more than him, so I let go. “Love, I’m sorry,” I said, feeling utterly useless. “I hope they’re still in prison. I hope they’re getting raped every day,” I said, giving vent to a tiny part of my rage.

“
I didn’t report it.”

“
Oh. God.”

“
The cops had gone to the woods, but there was no way they could find me, the place is too big. When I got back to the center, I told the director that I’d gotten in a fight, and then I’d gotten lost, and that was why it had taken me so long to get back. They obviously knew I wasn’t telling them the whole story, and they pushed me a little bit. But not much. I talked them out of making me see a doctor. In retrospect, it makes me furious, how irresponsible that director was. What a coward he was.

“
I lied to David, too. But I know he didn’t believe me. I’m sure I didn’t do a very good acting job. He could barely look at me the rest of the week. I think he felt ashamed of running, even though I tried to convince him it had been the smartest thing, the best chance of preventing something worse, if they’d planned on really hurting me. Anyway, after our time at camp ended, we never saw each other again. We never wrote. But when I got home, I came out. Less than two weeks later. I think I did it out of spite.”

He gave me a sheepish look. “I should have told you about this a long time ago. I'm sorry.”

I wanted to put my arms around him. Stroke his cheek. Caress his arm. But I was afraid he didn't want to be touched. “Please don't be sorry. I'm glad you felt ready to tell me today.”

“
I'm so ashamed I let you suffer all those weeks after that night you were drugged. That I let you think it was all your fault that I was so upset.”

I took the chance. Put my arms around him and hugged him tight. This time he went soft and pliant in my embrace, resting his head on my shoulder, and hugged me back. “That doesn't matter, love,” I said. “The only thing that matters is, we're together.”

“
I don't know why I was so afraid to tell you. Why I've always been too afraid to tell anyone.”

He let go of me and drew back from my embrace. Then he got up and, for the first time since that night with Vera, he got out the pipe and we smoked. Then we went upstairs, undressed, and got in bed, listening to music, talking about small things. Easy things. What to do with the space. Whether it should be more of a loungey sitting space, or more of a work space where he could write and I could compose. Then, out of the blue, he said, “Make love to me.”