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“I told you.”
There was no irritation in Verge’s voice—only concern. I tried to reply, but all I could manage was to keep my sobbing at bay.
There was a small, privately run general store we often visited together, our last coins clenched tightly in our hands. Lately, we had made a habit of choosing one small thing each and giving it to the other. The owner was an easygoing man, never once showing displeasure even when, after long minutes of murmured indecision, we left with nothing more than a bottle of juice, a piece of candy, or a single glass marble.
Verge usually decided before I did and would wait, passing the time by talking with the owner.
“You two seem very close,” he would say. “Are you a couple?”
“No… it’s not like that.”
Verge always brushed the question aside with an ambiguous smile. I disliked that more than I cared to admit.
“We are a couple. You could just say it.”
“That wouldn’t be wise.”
Verge lifted his shoulders in a faint, practiced shrug, a piece of candy clicking softly between his teeth.
“Anyone who knows what to look for can tell that what you’re wearing is a monastery uniform. And besides, he isn’t really asking because he believes we’re together.”
“Even so. If he’s asking, why not tell him the truth?”
“Because you would be the one who suffers.”
“Still… he’s a good man.”
“Yes,” Verge said, smiling.
I followed the dim line of his gaze and saw heat shimmering above the stone pavement some distance away.
“Even good people have prejudices. He’s only mocking us—for being too close, despite the fact that we’re both men.”
The road sloped gently southward as we left the shop, the glare of reflected sunlight almost painful to the eyes.
Seized by a sudden, reckless feeling, I hurled the toy airplane Verge—the unfailingly pragmatic lover—had given me toward the sea. After a brief moment of squinting into the light, it vanished.
I had rushed out of the shop without thinking, abandoning our purchases, and Verge followed at once. Our hands were empty—no sweets, no toys.
And so, in a narrow alleyway, Vil was able to hold me, and I was able to cling to him with both arms
I could not tell whether what I felt was sorrow or resentment. If I had to name it, it was surprise.
In retrospect, I believe I had already understood the outcome, at least in part. And yet the emotion that surged up within me struck my chest and spilled over as tears that would not stop.
“Hope,” Verge said quietly, “is painful. It’s better not to have too much of it.”
His gentle admonition resonated directly through the body that held me. I could barely breathe, much less speak, and so I only tightened my embrace.
“Even so,” he added, “it isn’t easy not to expect something.”
I knew that my lover—the one who soothed me by stroking my back, the one who sometimes spoke as though keeping his distance—was wounded no less deeply than I was.
He had been hurt so often that he learned to brace himself in advance, and even then he was hurt all the same. Even so, he swallowed his tears, refusing to cry where I might see.
You may cry.
You may be angry.
You have as much right to those things as I do.
I thought something like this, but the words would not come. Instead, I pressed Verge’s head against my shoulder and rubbed it there, roughly, insistently.
I heard something like a muffled laugh. The shoulder I held trembled.
Over that shoulder, I thought I glimpsed the toy airplane—crushed, its frame broken, as though trampled—lying beneath a vending machine stripped nearly bare.
But in the fierce sunlight and wavering heat of the seaside town, the image quickly dissolved.