Spent the morning with my father, running errands for his business.

Drove the road that runs by the freeway, past the recovery center where his mother died a couple years ago.

Followed the freeway up, past the swing club that GV8 took me to earlier this year, provoking memories of laughter and tumbling across mattresses, of love and control, of meeting my sexual match, my mentor, my lover.

Drove past the neighborhood where my father's parents designed and built their dream house, something that my father now refers to as "the rental property".

Kept up the freeway, through the desert, past the exit that leads to the cemetary where my father's aunt was buried, a cemetary set against rough dry mountains, stark and clean.

Took the exit that led us past the hospital where my father's father died when I was in my early teens, and I asked him to drop me at the diner where we would eat between shifts of sitting with him, waiting for him to come to, bouts of consciousness.

I ate at the diner, a booth by the window that faced the hospital, and read.

Read one of the books that GV8 gave me the last weekend we were together. When I was so convinced we were it. This was it.

And then he pulled away. I felt it over dinner, that last dinner. And I was too tired to realize what had happened, the same feeling when he split with me the time before.

But this time, this time he isn't coming back to me.

I finished the book as my father called, letting me know he was done with his meeting and would be picking me up shortly. I stood outside by two white mailboxes and stared at the mountains.

I miss him.

My body misses him.

I ache.

Last night, C and I threw a small Christmas party at her place. I went out and got a tree, decorations, drinks, and she cooked. The group of us went out to let me finish my Christmas shopping and to look at the holiday decorations.

One of the boys, he kept touching me. My lower back, my arm, trying to hold my hand. Hugging me.

I'm normally very physically affectionate with all of my male friends. It's just how I am. And this one, he knew that I had no interest in him. He asked me and I flat out told him no.

He was just being affectionate.

But... it hurt me. It hurt me that it wasn't GV8 who was touching me, walking with me, trying to hold my hand. It made me squirm, made me feel horrible, trapped, molested, assaulted, hunted. I kept.. pulling away. Limiting contact. Hoping he would see that I was not returning his touches, that my body language was denying him.

But he didn't.

Until I took him aside and told him he needed to stop. Told him I could not handle it. That he wasn't GV8 and it was making me incredibly uncomfortable.

So he stopped touching me. And started holding doors open for me. Acting "chivalrous". My skin crawled, writhed, winced. When I tried to ask him to stop, he spent the rest of the night being avoidant, not participating. Sulking.

I left early.

It is Christmas week, and I am lost. It is Christmas week, and I wish it wasn't. I've been wishing so much lately. Wishing the different realities, the things that could have been, wishing last night I was in the reality where GV8 and I were still together, and instead of driving home for the evening, I would drive to his apartment, let myself in, crawl into bed, and have him wake me when he got home from the family function he was attending last night.

I let my brain carry me, the scents, the lighting, the temperature. Finding parking, dodging potholes, fiddling with the key, the slam of the white metal gate behind me. The color of his sheets, the look of the apartment when only the bathroom light is spilling into the room. My cellphone resting on the arm of the couch next to his. The sink of his weight into the mattress waking me, his arms pulling me to him, wrapping around me, his skin damp from the shower he always takes before getting into bed. The strong squeeze of his arms around my shoulders as he rolls me back and forth in his embrace. The weight of the comforter on my skin, tangled up behind me. The hardwood floor under my feet.

And waking up in the morning next to him, a whole new day in front of us, a day with no plans but to wandering and love.

Instead I wake up to a knock on my bedroom door. I wake up in a cold room. I wake up with no GV8, with a schedule set, places to be, and with him will never be one of them.

My period started today. I felt the cramps, knew it would be a matter of time before the blood. Hoping a sign from some sort of deity would have spoken, would have given me a piece of him, would have confirmed what I feel so deeply.

But I'm an atheist. There are no signs. Only luck. Only the things that happen and how we interpret them in hindsight.

Explanations in a reality that knows no options, as it has already happened.

And wishing for something to have been different... pointless.

I do it anyhow.

I sit here, on the edge of my bed, typing. Wishing. Daydreaming for another lost life. Knowing, knowing so strongly that I should not have lost this one. This should have belonged to me. This was my future.

It was.

He was so good.

I hate it, when things feel so wrong, so gut-level wrong, and there's nothing you can do about it. There's no more I can fight. No doorstep for me to show up on. Nothing I can say, nothing to forgive, nothing to forget.

Nothing to do but let things slide further and further away from you. Sucked away as time passes.


"Are we going to spend the rest of our lives together, V?"