High And Dry

True Love Waits

last official chapter here we go. epilogue coming up next.

Ian frowned, “What do you want?”

            “We can’t talk?”

            “What do we have to say to each other?” Ian was not expecting himself to be so mad.

            “Well you could start by asking me to have a seat.”

            “Be my guest.” Ian muttered, “Have a seat, would you, David? I should’ve cleared a spot already.”

            David frowned, “You know what, if you’re going to be pissy with me, I’m not even going to try to explain myself. You obviously don’t want me here right now.”

            Ian sighed, “Just have a god damn seat.”

            He sat down and held his beer in both hands in his lap, suddenly becoming very interested in it, not looking anywhere else.

            “Look, did you come here to talk to me or stare at your beer?”

            David frowned and looked over at Ian, “I came here to talk to you.”

            “Then start talking.” Ian sighed, dropping his empty bottle down into the garbage just below the roof.

            He watched it go in the plastic bin and shatter against the bottom.

            “I’m sorry.”

            Ian shook his head and watched the cars drive by. He knew if he looked at David he’d have some kind of break down. He didn’t want to.

            “You’d better be sorry.”

            “I am.”

            “You scared me to death. Anthony too.”

            “I’m not here to talk about Anthony, as much as I care about him. I’m here to talk about you. About me. About us.”

            “Well, ‘us’ is failing.” Ian hated being this hard on David, but he knew if he said what he really felt he would be an emotional babbling mess.

            “I know. What I did was wrong, and I’m here to apologize. I’m not expecting anything. I’m not expecting you to take me back. I’m not expecting everything to be fine. I just want to let you know why.”

            “Then why?”

            “Because I was scared.”

            “Scared?” Ian looked at David from the corner of his eye.

            “I didn’t know what to think of anything.” He put his head in his hands, beer bottle between his legs, “I didn’t know what to do. Anthony looked at me like his father, but we hadn’t been dating for very long at all and I had only known you like a week and I just feel like shit for leaving you guys and seeing my brother really happy with his family made me realize that maybe you and Anthony still cared about me and wanted me there but I thought that was selfish and that you’d never think that because you hated me now but I had to come back to explain.”

            Ian wanted-more than anything-to pull a cliché move and kiss him in the middle of his explanation, making all the bad things go away, but he just couldn’t. He wanted to know. This wouldn’t ever go away. Part of Ian would always hate David for leaving him, even if the rest of him loved him for coming back.

            Ian closed his eyes for a few seconds and thought. He opened them and looked over at David, and he could tell that David felt extremely guilty for ruining whatever it was that they had.

            “Is that really all you came for?” Ian frowned, “Just to explain.”

            He shrugged and turned a light red, “I was sort of hoping that you’d take me back, but I wasn’t expecting you to. I didn’t think you would.”

“It wears me out.” Ian mumbled, “It wears me out.”

David frowned.

“It wears me out. It wears me out.”

“Ian?”

“If I could be who you wanted, if I could be who you wanted….”

“You are.”

“All the time?” Ian looked over at him.

“All the time.”

            “I’m not going to take you back.” Ian shook his head, looking away.

            David nodded and grabbed his bottle. He put his hand behind him like he was about to leave.

            “But-”

            “But?” David looked at him hopefully, letting his bottle roll down into the gutter.

            “I am willing to restart.” Ian glanced at him, “If you are.”

            David nodded, “I am.”

            Ian smiled, “Good.”

            After a few minutes of silence, David piped up, “Okay I’ll bite. What’s the difference?”

            “The difference is that we don’t just pick up where we left off. We start from the beginning.”

            “In that case,” David turned to face him, “want to go back downstairs and grab a bite too eat? As a date, maybe?”

            “A sort of date?” Ian smiled, raising an eyebrow.

            “Yeah.” David got up and crawled through the window back inside, “Come on.”

            Ian took his hand and went through the window. Instead of just dropping his hand like he normally would have, he held onto it for the rest of the night, and when he woke up in the morning still holding it, he was pretty sure that he hadn’t let go all night.