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“I’d like to see him.”
For the first time in 24 minutes, Ray felt himself move. Unfolding his fingers from out of the fist he’d been holding them inside, he took a moment to interrupt the excellent eye contact he’d been making with his therapist for most of the session.
“You’d like to see him?”
He shuffled in his chair, the seat beneath him suddenly feeling as if it had been stuffed with rocks instead of foam.
“Once. I’d like to see him from across the room, just once, and I’d like to know that he was being taken care of.”
The therapist unclicked the top of her pen to make a small note of what Ray had said. He knew it was her job, and he also knew that it was a service he was paying for, but he couldn’t help but bristle at the thought that a small part of his inner-most troubles were available for her to read at any time, and not simply set on fire or shut into an inaccessible lock box.
“And how do you think that he’d react? To seeing you, I mean.” The therapist clicked her pen again, placing it flat against her lap and considering her client with a furrowed brow. Ray couldn’t tell if she was actively masking her expression or if she just happened to share her features with a sheet of thinly stretched cling film.
Colin’s 39th birthday would have been on Monday. He marked it in every new diary, worried that he might forget one day and leave his memories behind in tandem with such a slip of the mind.
“Like seeing a ghost.” Leaving without a trace usually meant death. Ray had assumed that Colin would live with such a thing, the understanding that Ray had died. He’d died a few times over, various gay communities in the Northern Hemisphere aware of his legend and sure that he’d been long dead. He was getting older, that was the thing. Older in his hands and his legs, the crackle of his back after a long ride.
The fucker had spent so much time trying to reach back, to close the gap that Ray had hastily wedged between them before it was too late. It was always too late for Ray, though. Everything was simply too late.
“A ghost?” Fuck, he hated when she repeated his words back to him. It was a ploy to prompt him into communicating like an adult, and not the neanderthal that he was keen on hiding behind. Looking up at her, he was fraught with an obvious insecurity, a fragile break in his psyche.
“Like a ghost. He’d…he’d see me from across the room at some sort of…I dunno, some sort of party, and he would just freeze up. Wouldn’t know what to do with himself.” Ray shifted his bum against a throw cushion, uncomfortable and stuck in a situation he’d rather not be in. Vulnerable, exposed, all of the things he tried to protect himself from, therapy was the one spot where he could be absolutely pelted by feeling. It was probably good for him, to be humbled by practice and technique.
“You seem to think that he still thinks about you. Why is that?” The therapist turned a page in her notebook and blinked at Ray as if she knew what the fuck she was talking about. A big part of him was horrified that she did. He sighed against his knuckles, composure dissolving entirely as he considered what it meant for Colin to still be thinking about him after so much time had passed.
“I have that effect on people. I leave a strong impression, and then I…retreat.”
“Sounds like your father.” Ray’s old man had received plenty of rinsing in prior therapy sessions. It was almost unfair, how often he was cited as the instigator for Ray’s issues with commitment, communication and honesty. It was also strikingly correct.
“Sounds just like my old man.” He reached to the mug of black coffee he’d been given by a nervous assistant back in the lobby. She’d eyed him as a curiosity, leathers creaking from down the hallway whenever he arrived in his therapist’s office complex. “I hope he’s dead. I wouldn’t be surprised if Colin thought I was dead.” Sipping the coffee, measured and careful as he drank. Wishful thinking, really.
“You’ve said that before, that you want him to think you’re dead. Is that because you hope to have the last word between the two of you?” She gave him a pointed look before continuing. “We always make it back to control, don’t we?”
Ray’s eyes flit away from his therapist and towards the sand timer she kept on her desk. The top chamber was empty, and the bottom was full. He brought a hand to his mouth, coughed into his closed fist.
“Can we be done?” Ray didn’t plead, and he certainly didn’t fucking beg, but he never outstayed the timer. It was a question his therapist had heard from him after almost every session that they had shared. In spite of such a steely exterior, a vision of composure, he couldn’t stand to linger when he was as uncomfortable as he was.
“We can be done.” Closing her notebook, the therapist nodded at him. “Same time next week okay for you, Ray?” He needed monitoring. He needed someone to talk to. He always paid more than her fee asked for, maybe because he was guilty for being such a lousy patient. A curt nod from Ray and the sound of his zipper meant that their meeting was truly over, boots hitting the carpet with purpose as they stomped out of the room and down the hallway.
In a sea of Ford Fiestas and Vauxhall Corsas, his bike looked unwelcome. He’d even managed to park wonkily, which wasn’t helping him to evade the shithead allegations. Boots on the concrete, he climbed atop of his bike with an ache that was new and a jolt of pain in his right hip that struck fear. Externally, he remained unchanged by the sands of time, unless you were to get a good look at the crinkles around his eyes, the slight loss of definition beneath his chest tattoos. Internally, he was starting to feel like a man who’d spent too much time thinking that he would never run out of time.
The engine sputtered, revved to action after a firm kick from the heel of Ray’s boot. Divine punishment, he thought. It would be divine punishment were he to catapult off of the M25 into water or a collection of overgrown bushes. It would be divine punishment if someone grabbed him by the dick and begged him for control. It would even be divine punishment for Colin to appear in his life again, all deep trust and misguided heart.
It wasn't long before the bike shot down the road again, vanishing behind a blind turn.