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Connections
Sorrow and Loss
The summer light through the window had gone flat. Lucy and Ben had been around since morning. Now they were in his room, killing time until dinner.
“Your Tower Rush doesn’t work if my ‘tower’ is only 155.”
“It works fine. She just has to be faster than everyone.”
“She’s twelve.”
“Then she’d better start now.”
Ben snorted. Lucy went back to her notes.
Matt adjusted his right leg, straightening the knee brace.
“Ten more minutes on the standing block,” he said. Not to anyone in particular.
Lucy turned a page. “Good day.”
“Twelve meters.”
“New record,” Ben said.
“Yeah. Twelve meters.”
Matt opened and closed his right hand. Slower than his left. Always slower.
“What if this is it?”
Lucy looked up. Ben lowered his magazine.
“The progress, the PT. I know it’s real. I know twelve is better than eight. I know standing longer is better than standing less.”
The corridor noise filtered in. Trays. Wheels.
“What if I don’t get better than this?”
“Then we keep going,” Lucy said. “Whatever that looks like.”
“And if there’s nowhere to go?”
“You don’t stop just because you hit a wall,” Ben said. “You adapt. You figure it out.”
“And if there’s nothing left to figure out?”
“Then we stand still with you. However long it takes.”
“You were never just the guy who could do things, Matt,” Lucy added.
The meal cart rattled past the door.
He didn’t believe them. Not yet.
But they weren’t asking him to.
The drive back from the rehab center was a blur. Ben sat on his couch, elbows on his knees, hands clasped.
What if this is it?
Matt, just saying it plain.
Sixteen months of watching him fight through this. And tonight he stopped fighting long enough to say he was scared.
If Matt could do that—if Matt, of all people, could sit with that and let it be true—
Then what the hell was Ben still running from?
Ben was drunk. Properly, catastrophically drunk.
He’d dragged Matt out to celebrate the engagement. A few rounds turned into a few more. Matt switched to water at some point. Steered them home before Ben could order another.
Too late, probably. Even the winter air hadn’t helped.
They ended up at Matt’s place. Matt and Lucy’s place now. Ben slouched against the cushions, one arm dangling, fingers curled around a half-empty glass.
He lifted the glass. Matt stood up and took it from his hand.
“That’s enough.”
“Control freak.”
Matt was getting married. Ben was his best man. Everything was as it should be.
So why did it feel like something inside him was breaking?
“I need to tell you something.”
“Yeah?”
“…I’m gay.”
Nothing. No reaction.
“Yeah. Guess I should’ve said that earlier. But, uh. It’s not just that.”
His heart was pounding now, loud in his ears.
“I—”
Say it.
“I have feelings for you, man.”
Matt stilled.
“Had,” he corrected himself quickly, though it didn’t feel true. “I mean—probably still do. But it doesn’t matter. You’re getting married. And I just…”
His voice wavered. He hated that.
“I just needed to say it. Needed to—I don’t know. Get it out. Get it over with.”
Silence stretched between them.
“Sorry, man,” Matt said softly, half-smiling. “I’m already taken.”
That was it. The thing he’d been dreading, needing, carrying around for years. Done.
“Yeah.”
“You good?”
“I mean, I’m wasted, so… ask me again in the morning.”
“You’re gonna regret this tomorrow.”
Ben let his head tip back against the couch.
“Already do.”
Matt tossed a blanket at him. Ben caught it, barely. Pulled it over himself.
He closed his eyes.
Maybe now, finally, he could move on.
The night wind did nothing for the summer heat.
He hadn’t moved on. He knew that now. Told himself he had. That night, that morning. Every day after. But all he did was bury it in a different shape.
Matt was never the destination. It wasn’t Matt he had been afraid of losing. It was the idea of him. The closest thing to belonging Ben had ever let himself have.
And as long as his feelings pointed somewhere impossible, Ben never had to find out what happened when someone actually said yes.
Josh said yes.
Gave him the time, the patience, the trust. Everything.
And Ben walked away.
He picked up his phone. Josh’s name was still there.
Only one way to find out.
His thumb hovered over the keypad.
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