Cigarette Daydreams

2021 pt.3

The realization that the end is coming is painful in the cruelest possible way, it's not overwhelming and shocking, it's silent and treacherous, making the pain visceral and uncontrollable. Lewis begins to realize the beginning of the end when he's alone and thinks about how remaining alone will no longer be a choice, but inevitable.

Max's strong roots are still in him, and he knows they will never be torn out, but he feels everything else rotting away, like a plantation taken over by a plague he feels his relationship being destroyed. The beauty of the green fields turning into something ugly and lifeless, no happiness, just nothingness.

Max took over his life with joy and love, brightened up his darker side and made him happier, he can clearly separate his life without and with Max, sadness overtakes him when he thinks that the story of the two of them is likely to become before, during and after.

He remembers the moments when he was alone sunk in his routine depreciation at the beginning of last year, until Max saved him, with all his grace and funny phone calls, reminding him of the feeling of being alive, of feeling something other than pain. Now he looks at his cell phone and sees that the last message he sent was before the Hungarian race, so long ago for him.

Lewis:

Everything will be fine, you'll do fine.

I love you.

Max:

I love you :).

That's it, that's all he has, and he feels he can't even complain, he doesn't even feel entitled to feel sad about the situation they're in now, it's as if Max has had enough and decided to give back everything he did before. While he's alone, Lewis realizes that the desired loneliness is welcome, that the unwanted loneliness of before was bad, but that the loneliness now imposed by Max's absence is the worst thing he's ever felt.

So far.

He imagines Max in his place all those times he's gone, even the times when he's only been gone a few hours, he tries to imagine what his kind and sweet boyfriend did during that time alone, he has no idea and it hurts, it hurts because the thought of Max having felt the way he's feeling now makes him want to throw up, makes him feel like the worst person in the world.

He's ashamed to talk to his father, or Angela, or any of his friends, and appear weak, or to look like a monster in the eyes of the people he loves. Even though he knows that the two of them are hurting each other with everything that's going on, he feels that most of it is his fault, he's older, more experienced, he's won and lost before, but he still continues to contribute to the destruction of their relationship.

Confused feelings, confused thoughts, he knows it's all falling apart, ironically his job is the only stable thing he has, and he knows that this stability won't last when the summer break is over, it will all come back, and now closer to the end, Lewis feels the dread inside him growing like never before.

But it's not just work that's coming back, Max is coming back too, or at least he hopes so.

On a random afternoon, lying on the living room floor, near the window and enjoying the soft light of the sunset, he remembers all the moments when he could be entirely and solely Max's, and Max could be entirely and solely his, without complications or pain, just simplicity surrounding them.

He remembers how vivid the cold apartment he's in once was, filled with two hearts full of love, with happiness overflowing and flooding every room. He looks at the couch and can visualize old memories of him and Max wrapped around each other, not speaking a word, just their bodies communicating.