No, I would not sleep in this bed of lies Don't think that I can take another empty moment Just like me, you got needs Don't wanna be the one who turns the whole thing over Don't you know I feel the darkness closing in I am all that I'll ever be You're functioning on raw adrenaline at this point, and you know it. Undiluted and sweet, it blasts through your veins along with the hot and rushing blood you can hear throbbing in your ears. Pure, anxious energy fortifying your desperation, driving you onward, pushing you closer with each turn of the SUV's tires to the destination you've just flown over half-way around the globe to get to. To what you long for and need. To him. You smile when you try to imagine (yet again) just how giddy with total surprise he'll be when you finally arrive and melt yourself into him. How his deep-blue eyes will leap and dance in their sockets and then narrow and crinkle at the outer edges as he gives you that sincere grin which is always full of summertime and warmth and silent I-love-you's. How his lean, hard body will tremble with excitement and electricity as you wrap your thicker, meatier one around it as tightly as you can and realize in that breathless moment that your over-used memories you'd relied so heavily on over the past four weeks didn't do this physical/emotional embrace justice at all. Your heart rate jacks up a few more gears in vivid anticipation, and you grasp the Pathfinder's steering wheel with both fists just as a precaution. He'll be so damn shocked to see you, you know. Almost as shocked as you were yourself when you realized the blessed three-day break in the rigorous IMBP testing schedule - a "good-behavior parole," as you and Lori had jokingly called it, which you and everyone else had understood could potentially turn into a much longer hiatus than three days if the messy financial matters weren't resolved with the Russians soon. You aren't focused on that chaotic sponsorship crap at the moment, however. And you're not thinking about how tender and sore your whole body is presently from all the poking, prodding, and processing those medical examiners had inflicted on it day after day. "Like an old-fashioned blood-letting," Lori had chimed and laughed, getting you to laugh along with her because even the silliest cheer felt so good when you'd been so lonely. No, you've put all of that far out of your mind - at least for this "escape" weekend - the monotonous vestibular procedures that really weren't so stressful as long as you stayed calm and did as you were told, that scary-as-hell centrifuge contraption that looked exactly like your idea of an electric chair and made you realize just how claustrophobic you truly are, and the pressurized chamber test that seriously wore you out as much as any strenuous stage show had, zero gravity or not. You'd happily left all that and more behind you now, on the other side of the world, when you'd hopped a plane in Moscow before dawn this morning to come home for a brief, unexpected, top-secret rendezvous. With him. A necessary "docking to refuel," you'd come up with in the darkness of the plane's cabin and laughed to yourself soundlessly. You'd had to pay out the ass, but you'd been able to find a flight that connected only once (at JFK), and, even though total travel time hovered around 15 hours, only one entire day had actually passed in real time due to the rotation of the earth and flying backwards through the time zones. So your truck's stereo panel glares 4:27 p.m. at you on Saturday late afternoon, and you just know he's home, and that he's probably forgotten to eat anything all day. He'd bragged to you on the phone yesterday how he'd dreamed a new tune in his sleep and wanted to spend the weekend alone jotting it down and coming up with some fitting lyrics for it. "Since I can't be with you
.making music of a different, better sort," he'd added with his sleek, sexy voice (even across thousands of miles) and a sultry, suggestive chuckle that had given you aches and shivers in your solitary Savoy Hotel room. You'd found out shortly after that conversation that you'd been given the clearance to leave for a couple of days while the money negotiations heated up. And leave you did. As quickly as you could arrange. And you'd vowed to throttle to death any of the select few you'd trusted with your plans if word leaked that you'd be temporarily back in the states. Surprising JC with your presence is your short-range goal right now, your single-most important objective. Surprising him, thrilling him, soaking him in like the spiritual and bodily nourishment you've been denied while you've been away at "space camp" for so long. And you certainly don't want any flaws or glitches in your master plan. Especially not now. Not when you've gotten this far so successfully. Thankfully, no one had noticed you on the plane or at any of the airports you'd slipped through. You'd dressed for exactly that non-recognition and achieved it. And you'd hurried into your house from the taxi like an expert thief under cloak of mystery - only long enough to shower and change into decent clothes before jumping in the Pathfinder and heading east to the beach district. Where he is. You're almost there, his house, and your stomach tightens with crazy suspense and expectancy. Your mouth and throat are bone-dry and cottony, but you barely notice as you swab the corners of your lips with a not-slick-enough tongue tip and press the lever to roll down your window so you can jab numbers into the small, concealed security console's keypad. He's home. You can see his Acura as you drive slowly past the parting metal gate. He's here, within a few feet of you now, and you're bursting to see him again. You're craving the homecoming and its added element of surprise. Even if it's short-lived. This is the grandest idea you've had in, well, forever. And you wonder for a second if you should have brought him a gift - like the gourmet basket of chocolates and liqueurs he'd had delivered to your room just after your much-publicized press conference last Friday. A couple of random raindrops, from a sky you hadn't even noticed was full and heavy, splatter your unstyled hair as you drag the sleeve of your shirt across the warm sheen above your upper lip. You shut the SUV's door and try to picture him standing just behind the blinds of the front room's huge window to make sure it's really you before he bounds out the door to greet you. To hold you. To kiss you. To whisper love into your skin, your whole system. Again. Won't be long now, you're positive. * * * * * * * * * Sitting on the bed facing the window and the darkly overcast sky on the other side of it, you're vaguely aware that your security bars have been opened and closed. And you don't even need to wonder who's done the penetrating. It's him. You know that instinctively. Because, yes, he's the only person in the universe with your passcode. You wanted it that way. And because you can sense him, feel him. And you're not sure of the hows or whys that got him here, but, obviously, he is here. In your space, so to speak. It's your house, but it's one of the two residences you occupy together when you're both in Orlando. And you know you should be leaping up and running to him since he's, obviously, made a big-ass sacrifice to be with you now. It's not as if you don't want to see him or that you're not glad he's home. You are. You really are. You simply can't force yourself up off the bed you've got your back to now. Something like a staggering dead weight inside holds you down. Smothers you brutally. And you question off-hand in your head whether the gray, sullen afternoon outside has become bruised-looking and overloaded enough to finally begin spilling its depressive, dampening contents out onto everyone else, freely sharing its morose mood. He's inside now, you hear. Downstairs where you should be. And, very soon, he'll be up here - where he most definitely should NOT be. Way too late to wish for a bit more forewarning, your mind screams at you. And you know you must shut that annoying, endless yapping inside you up. Because, if you don't, it's about to swell up a quazillion times worse. So you plow your fingers through your messy hair and pull your heavy eyes off the impending storm just past the window, glancing over the disarrayed contents of the nightstand beside you. And you reach for the ashtray as you hear the low thunder of his voice call your name from the bottom of the staircase. * * * * * * * * * He's not anywhere to be found downstairs, and, at first, you think maybe something's wrong. Nothing really appears out of place in any of the rooms, only a slight touch of apprehension nagging at soft, vulnerable spots under your flesh. So you go on, undaunted. There's always the chance he's napping, you remind yourself. And he had no hint whatsoever you were coming. But then, as your hand folds around the grooves of the wooden staircase banister, a sweet, smoky aroma that you can't see but can smell floats into your head. A sign of conscious life upstairs. And you don't even attempt to identify the scent - although, later, you'll wonder why you didn't recognize it immediately, and then you'll angrily refuse to blame what happens next on the smell's source. "Josh
." Busting the "surprise," you rasp out his name as you start your ascent. He's in his bedroom, you gather, and your zealous heartbeat rivals the booming sounds from the brewing storm outside. "I'm home, baby," you want to shout, just to bring him out of the shadowy hallway at the top of the stairs and into your waiting arms. However, "Josh," is all you can repeat in hushes as you cross the threshold of his room and gulp the sight of him into your starved psyche. His tall, thin frame is perched on the edge of the bed as if he'd just crawled out of it, which instantly strikes you as odd since you KNOW he's heard you speak. He's shirtless and shoeless, wearing only some faded jeans, and you guess he'd pulled them on quickly just before you entered. His left leg rests nonchalantly propped up on the half-opened bottom drawer of his nightstand. Your pulse skips a thud or two, and you're frozen where you stand. The echo of when you last hissed his name hangs in the atmosphere, and, when he turns his perfectly-structured profile to face you, you suck in some air and realize that the thin haze of smoke wafting around the room is being swooshed from between his plump lips and how it's almost as if the whole surreal scene is playing out in black and white except for those ruby lips and the piercing cobalt eyes. It occurs to you to remind him protectively of the damage that damn smoke can do to his oh-so-valuable vocal chords - even if it is ganja and not tobacco. But you don't say that aloud, and you don't ask when did he start smoking in the first damn place. You're prevented from doing so. "Lance. You're home, man
.How'd you manage that?" is what he intones, or rather what comes out of the mouth that hardly opens, barely expresses. And it's all wrong. It's not falling in place the way you had planned it at all. He's not reacting as you'd envisioned he would. He's too calm, too impersonal. He's
.he's
.somefuckingbodyelse. He should be up and moving toward you, not plopped there on that bed like a lifeless rag doll. And you should be moving toward him too, not standing glued in your steps like stupid green moss on a dead log. But something unseen and strong is keeping both of you exactly where you are. Away from each other. There's a smile from him, yes. But it's cold and forced. Not smile, the one that for two years now has been exclusively and warmly all for you. And the deep eyes aren't dancing about with excitement like you'd dreamed, only staring right through you, void of animation and light. "I wanted to give you the shock of a lifetime," forms coherently and honestly on your tongue. And you would have choked it out somehow had you not been upstaged by the brilliant crackle and flash from Mother Nature herself outside the window which illuminated the entire darkened room for one brief, world-altering moment. In the few seconds of brightness, your attention is riveted to the elongated mass, covered by sheets and a spread, lying just behind JC on the large bed. The wrapped lump that takes on a distinctly human form - male, you're sure, as if that matters now - and seems to wake from its oblivious slumber at the noise filling the room. You glare in unreal horror as it sluggishly groans and slithers over in JC's direction, and a large hand sneaks out from the covers to find only a pillow to grab onto. Then you feel a brittle freezing up inside and small, tender things snapping to their eternal death. The ice-blue of his eyes is all you see in front of you now as a huge pit opens up at your feet and your existence is sucked into black, bottomless nothing. "Baby
.I'm sorry," he starts, jerking away from the groping appendage that still seeks him and standing up. But your jaw is set as you swallow hard, and you think that you can probably survive without a heartbeat from now on. You hope you can. "You bastard," you spit out at him, and you're suddenly so, so cold. In your mind, you're already running back down the staircase and away from him, although your legs are still refusing to move from where you stand. "Lance, please don't. Here." And he offers you the half joint. "Take a hit, and we'll talk. It's not what it looks like." "Fuck you. It's exactly what it looks like," comes billowing out of you, and you wish you could be more rational, think of more intelligent, high-brow comebacks. But you feel the shutting down happening inside, and you want nothing more than to be away from here, and you need your warm jacket so desperately. "Baby," and he turns to snuff out the nub in the ashtray before confronting you again. "I'm glad you're here. You look fantastic." The fire in your eyes isn't enough to fight off the frigidity waving over you, and you seethe and glower at him and can't believe he's talking to you so matter-of-factly with another damn person in the bed you share with him. You're dying, and he's just fucking standing there. Lying to you. Killing you. "Don't call me that ever again," you snarl, although the snarl isn't a conscious decision on your part. You're probably well past conscious decisions at this point, you guess. "In fact, don't fucking speak to me ever again. Got it?" "Lance, wait." "'Wait'? Why wait? YOU didn't." He sighs while you watch as if he's just exhausted, and your sympathy - like everything else inside you - is in OFF mode. Completely evaporated. "Lance, it was -" "Don't tell me what it was or wasn't, asshole. I don't wanna hear it. I came here to surprise you this weekend. And who the fuck knew be the one getting the ol' shock treatment? I'm such a damn fool." "No, you're not
.and I'm sorry." "I fucking loved you." "I still love you." "Go to hell." You're not sure what's coming out of your mouth, only that you can't stay in the same place he's in any longer. You must, must leave. The pelting rain bounces off your face as you struggle to catch your breath, and you realize you've somehow made it downstairs and out the front door. Away from him. Away from that murmuring bundle of humanity on the bed whose identity you now recognize and can't bring yourself to acknowledge. Not yet. Can't force yourself to admit who
.had replaced you. You slam the Pathfinder's door shut and fail to even notice that 1) you're dripping wet from the pounding storm, 2) the tell-tale Beamer is parked just to the side of the house where you missed it before, and 3) JC never bothered to follow you out of the house to at least try and make you stay. Honestly, you fail to notice everything besides essential stuff such as concentrating on the road long enough to get you back to your house where you can allow this giant hole to swallow you up and absorb your suffocating hurt. Somehow, you'll get through the night, you know. Somehow. Maybe you'll flee. Back to Russia. Or to L.A. Or to your mom's house in Mississippi. Or to London. Anywhere but here. Where he is. Bastard. And you thought you'd be doing a good thing. For both of you. But doing good things isn't supposed to make you feel shredded and beaten like this, is it? And how is it that you translocated yourself willingly from the chilly clime of Moscow to sunny and humid Florida, and yet the aching cold here is far, far worse than it had been way over there? * * * * * * * * * The front door shuts quietly down there, and you almost don't even hear it over the crashing thunder. And that stabs at you like everything else because you know he's too upset to even put much energy into his actions. He's just turned it all off inside. You've seen him do this in your history together, but never, never has its finality been directed at you. Yes, it stabs. Like you knew it would. You would have explained to him if he'd stayed, you tell yourself. And you know you should have gone after him. You should have begged him not to leave you. You should have grabbed him and held him like you'd never let go - like you'd been wanting to do since he went to Russia the first time back in March. But he's gone now, and you check to see if you can still draw in a deep breath, because you haven't done so since those cloudy golden-green eyes screeched hatred out at you as he turned and bolted, taking with him what was left of the beautiful heart you'd just shattered in the blink of an eye. Something inside you is broken into millions of sharp, stinging pieces too, and you wonder how you'll ever be able to live without him now. And how in the hell you'll ever be able to live with yourself. But that stabs too, and the stabbing is all you can feel. He may have stayed and listened to you, you try to convince yourself. If you'd only pleaded with him to. But then you know that's not true. You betrayed him and destroyed everything you'd both been building on for two years. There's no simpler way of looking at. No way to sugarcoat it. And now you've lost him. His inexhaustible capacity for kindness and forgiveness won't cover this tragic mistake. Your disastrous, irreversible error. And now you've carelessly thrown away the one great love of your whole, sad life. You know he won't come back. Not tonight. Not ever. He'll crawl away bleeding to hide in the dark loneliness. But when the wounds are healed and he recovers, he'll have extracted in the process any feelings he ever had for you as well. You'll be meaningless to him. Nothing. This realization hits you like a boulder, and you know insanely that you'd prefer that he hate you to feeling nothing for you. But you don't have a choice now when it comes to how he feels. You gave up that right when you gave him away. Because you were lonely. That's what you would have told him if you'd made him stop, made him hear you out. While he was still here. While he was still yours. You would have explained how you weren't as strong as you made everyone believe you were, that while he was gone for so long you missed him with such an intensity that it overpowered you no matter how bravely and boldly you'd fought it off, and you were forced to find something to fill the gaping emptiness or else it would drown you. Even if it was all a moot point now, you'd still go on to say that you were ashamed of your appalling need and that you never dreamed the separation would be so hard on you and that you tried and tried to distract yourself and to cope with it and get it to a manageable level. But then how your choking loneliness began to change consistency and reshape itself into a weird accusation of sorts - almost like blame aimed at him for going away and creating this stunning, world-wide gap between the two of you and causing you to suffer and face your own dark weakness. It was the wrong attitude entirely, you understand. Selfish and repulsive. Sad and twisted. And you didn't want it to be part of your psyche. You didn't want to analyze yourself over and over and keep finding this ugliness in your soul. So you went to L.A. to see Justin and possibly concentrate on your house. Anything to occupy your addled mind. Justin was doing most of his recording in a couple of L.A. studios, and you began to spend more and more time together. He listened to you pour out your desperation over Lance's absence, and you lent your ear to his post-Britney picking-up-and-moving-on angst. It was a symbiotic deal that worked and thrived. Worked and thrived too much, too well, too far. You both told each other and yourselves that the physical line you crossed one night after one too many beers was nothing more than a natural progression in the mutual comfort you'd been supplying each other with - that there was nothing to it other than raw need to feel another warm body which everyone experiences. You'd been surprised to discover that he occasionally took little forays over to the playground on your side of the fence, and the other-worldly sex with him and his aggressive, long, muscled body had been unlike anything you'd ever known before. The symbiosis had taught both of you new tricks of the trade and made you forget all your deep, secret anxieties over and over and over. Your conscience had eventually ripped you up inside, however, and you'd gone back to Orlando, feeling worse in a different way than when you'd left. You talked to Lance daily and hung on his every gentle and hopeful word, sometimes crying sadly in the dark of your room after the phone call had ended. Not sure what force was gutting you more - your guilt or your aloneness. Then, five days ago, Justin had shown up at your gate, and you'd let him in, knowing he'd drag you upstairs wickedly to your bedroom and ravage you without speaking an intelligible word. There hadn't been any need for words. And words were something you could do without sharing with Justin at this point. Words were all you had with Lance at this point, from so far around the world. So now you don't even have that anymore with Lance. And you grimace when Justin reaches out from under the covers for you again. "C
.Did you know he was dropping in like that?
.Shit. He's gonna be hatin' on us both now, dawg." His voice is muffled and innocent. But it disgusts you now. "Get out, Ju. I need to be alone." "But that's why I was hanging with ya, bro. So ya wouldn't be alone." "Go, Justin. Please." You don't want to get hostile with him. It's more your fault than his. Hell, everything's your fault right now. Justin sits up and stares at you, his oversized cross tattoo writhes on his taunt shoulder flesh. "Wanna get some grub later?" You glare at him and realize oddly that he must think you're "dating" now. You also can't feel any effects of the marijuana you'd smoked. "Lance is gone, man. For good." Maybe adjusting the tone of his voice so as to not sound cavalier for your sake, he answers. "I know, Jace. I'm sorry. I know how much you love 'im." His pale-blue eyes are sincere. He never meant for this to happen. And you can't even guess at this point what you meant to happen. You wonder briefly if you'd feel a little less monstrous if he stood up and wrapped you up in a strong embrace. But then you remember that's exactly what got you to this level of hell in the first place. "I do love him," you repeat silently over and over in your head as you sit down and let it fall to your hands. It's the only string of words floating around up there. Justin touches your back gently as he pulls on his clothes and slips out quietly. It's a soundless assurance that he'll be around if you need him. You know that. And now if he could only reverse time for you and bring you back to life.
So toss me out and turn in
And there'll be no rest for these tired eyes
I'm marking it down to learning
I am
Don't think that I can fake another hollow smile
It's not enough just to be sorry
Don't think that I could take another talk about it
And they're only a whisper away
And we softly surrender
To these lives that we've tendered away
Don't wanna be somewhere where I just don't belong
Where it's not enough just to be sorry
Tried to be more than me
And I gave 'til it all went away
And we've only surrendered
To the worst part of these winters we've made
When you lay your hands over me
But don't go weak on me now
I know that it's weak
But, God help me, I need this
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