Old Vows

1

We're meeting in a bar. That's what's supposed to happen, anyways.

I know I said that last time would be the last. I know that this is bad, that I shouldn't be doing this, but I can't stop. That smile, the dark eyes. He's impossible to stay away from. I blame the heroin. He got me off it, but I wasn't clean. I just had a new addiction. Danger and that smile. And now I'm here again, resisting the call of the tequila just behind the counter, hands shaking around the offer he wouldn't resist.

He wouldn't. He'll be here. I know it. He can't turn it down. He can't turn me down. He won't. I know I'm lying to myself and I don't care. I order the tequila. He'll be here.

It's an hour past the time we were set to meet. I must look hopeless. The bartender knows I've been stood up. I poured it all out to her, made it seem like he was an old boyfriend. She slid me an extra shot, on the house. I should arrange meetings like this more often. I don't feel well. It might be the tequila. It might be because he's not coming. It might be because I'm a damned fool, pining after someone I can't have. Or maybe I'm just after the danger, the shot of adrenaline. Maybe I'm not in love with him. Maybe it's just a connection formed, the shot of adrenaline and that smile, mixing into one. A positive connotation, that's it. I chase the thrill, the boost, and I've been around him and that smile so often when I get it that they are one and the same now. That's why I'm sitting here now, drunk in a dive bar. Waiting for someone who isn't coming.

"Conley," he says and something stabs sharp into my heart.

"Michael," I say, and I mean "I love you." I don't turn around. I can't. All this tequila and I might do something stupid when I see that smile on his face. Like kiss him. Or stab him.

"I thought we weren't on speaking terms anymore," he says and I know we're both thinking of last time. Last time, when I screwed it up. Last time, when he left me in a bar just like this one. Last time, when I cried into 4 consecutive whiskey neats and wished he hadn't saved me.

I finally look at him, turning on my barstool. He's beautiful. He's always been beautiful but he takes my breath away like this, in the low, golden light. Micheal. It means "he who is of god" and he might not be an angel but he is straight from heaven. A brilliant, torturous heaven, because I can't have him, because I've sunk so low as begging him to meet me for one last job.

"You know I've given this life up," he says and I know that, I know that, and I also know that I will never believe it.

"One last job, Michael. This one is something." He'll say no and I'll beg, on my knees if I have to, and he'll say no again and leave me here.

"I don't care. I'm done. Or do you not remember how we ended last time?" His voice is cold and commanding and I know that he knows I remember, better even then him.

"Just hear me out. Just once more. You can say no, you can walk away, but just listen." I think I might go jump in the Hudson if he says no.

"Fine," he says and I think I might kiss him but I can't because it's him. It's Michael and he's not mine. He'll never be mine.

I hold the thing up, the thing I nearly died for, just so I can nearly die for it again with him at my side. So we can just manage to save each other once more. Once more before I let it end like it should have, so long ago when he pulled me out of the heroin den.

"A thumb drive?" he says, one eyebrow raised and I think Just let me die because it's the exact face he had when I was in withdrawal, in one of the lucid periods, when I screamed at him to kill me. Just let me die. But he didn't. And he won't now.

"We should go somewhere more private," I say. What's on that drive is dangerous and I won't put civilians at risk. Not again. "There's a safehouse not far off."

He leans back in that way I could never manage on a barstool, cool and confident and deadly. "Convince me," he says. "Why should I want to know what's on that drive?"

I don't know how to answer without losing him. I don't know how to tell him what it means to me.

"There's a gala and a planned terrorist attack. That's all I can say here." And even that is too much. Michael sighs and he's going to say no, I can feel it.

"I'm listening," he says.

~❦~