"You what?" For a moment I tried to convince myself that I hadn't heard him correctly. This was not the time for temptations, a solitary summer when I would have gladly chopped off a finger for a week's vacation. "Please tell me you're kidding."
"What? Of course not! You think I would drive ten hours to ask you how your day was? Don't flatter yourself." He laughed, "I thought that now that a couple of years had passed we could get a new perspective on things, you know? With age comes wisdom kind of thing. I didn't realize that without my strict mentorship you would go out in the world and start spawning children. I should have kept an eye on you."
"Ha! As long as it's your fault and not mine," I replied, "But in all seriousness, really? Now? I had practically convinced myself you were a figment of my imagination, or the delusion an alcohol riddled mind on a pathetic desert bound vacation. You could have been a mirage as far as I was concerned."
Trevor scoffed, holding back laughter, "A mirage? After we fucked I don't see how you could've convinced yourself of that."
I felt oddly humiliated as though my sleeping son who had yet to learn how to speak were somehow judging me. "Really, mother? You and this man? He hardly looks like a model citizen." He would say to me if he could. I had never felt more thankful for Elliot's inability to comprehend the English language.
"Okay Trevor give me my son back before you corrupt him like you did me." I smirked, plucking Elliot from Trevor's toxic embrace. I quickly returned him to his cradle, where he could slumber without being forced to endure anymore distasteful conversation, he was quite the tiny gentleman after all.
When I returned Trevor was once again examining the photograph on the wall; I took a seat beside him so that I could examine it as well. The same stillness that usually permeated throughout my apartment returned and for a few minutes we sat side by side listening to silence and the odd spark of conversation from the street outside.
I wanted more than anything to return to Sandy Shores with Trevor, but this was now an impossibility. "What made you come back for me?" I inquired, hesitantly, quietly.
He shrugged. "I don't know. I guess I just felt like it."
"So until ten hours ago when you decided to come see me you hadn't felt like it?"
"Well, no, but you know what I mean." He replied bitterly.
"I don't know if I do." I stated. Silence. Then, "I do know that for a while all I really wanted was to hop on the next bus to Los Santos and get trashed and eat cheeseburgers with you. For a while I felt like that every day until one day I decided that if I was going to be such a pathetic mess I should at least find a nice complacent lifestyle to be a pathetic mess in so that I wouldn't appear like a pathetic mess to everyone else." I had said too much, a horrible habit of someone lacking social interaction.
"Do you want me to apologize to you or something?"
"No. I guess I was just curious if you missed me at all." I inquired, my face felt hot again, I looked at the ground so that he couldn't notice me blushing.
Suddenly he laughed, inappropriately loudly, "What kind of a dumb fucking question is that? Why would I take the time out of my busy days to come all the way to this miserable town if I didn't miss you? I mean, you should feel honoured that I'm here at all."
Still unsure whether I wanted to laugh or cry I stated, "I was sure you had forgotten about me."
It happened without warning, his embrace enveloping my being. I jumped at first, no longer accustomed to human contact, but quickly sunk into the snug security of familiar arms. Having been deprived of such a warmth for what seemed to me like eternities, I felt myself melting like the heated wax of dusty candles. Tears began to well in my eyes.
"You're still a big fucking baby." He told me; I could feel the soft reverberations of his voice through his chest and shirt. I had no reply for him, it was true and a term of endearment if anything else. I sunk deeper and deeper until there was only him, the thing I had abandoned hope for, the thing that had left me with a gaping wound that maybe now could be healed.
For a couple of minutes I sobbed into his dirty t-shirt, mourning the death of myself I suppose. Maybe the past four years were what I had dreamt up instead of those few days with Trevor. Maybe it had all been a dream and I was still asleep in my dorm before midterm exams. I had spend far too much of my life pitying myself, and yet I couldn't stop the tears from coming.
Slowly the same sense of awkwardness of four years having passed returned to me; his arms felt foreign once again and I pulled away, "I'm really sorry about that." I began wiping my face with my sleeves.
"It's alright." He stated, lips curved into a grin. "Believe it of not I kind of missed your episodes of hysteria."
"That's reassuring considering I still have little to no control over myself." I smiled. "I can hardly remember the last time I cried in front of someone else though." I wanted to tell him everything; all the lost thoughts that wandered my mind at three in the morning and made me feel suffocated in my bed-sheets.
"Can I ask you something?"
"Of course." I replied.
"What made you decided to have a kid? I'd never thought of you as the motherly type." His eyes were bright with what I could only guess was genuine curiosity.
I paused, trying to remember that time in my relationship where I felt as though it were a good idea to have a baby. It was difficult to remember. "Now that I think about it, selfishness." I told him, staring at the photo of my son within a silver frame. "It was a point in time were I felt comfortable enough to start a family, and where not doing so would create all kinds of anxieties about becoming old and progressively more isolated from everyone and everything around me. When I think about it it makes me cringe. I'm pretty awful." I laughed abruptly with some nervousness.
Trevor nodded unsympathetically, "Well I can't say I blame you. Drugs, sex, kids, pick your poison." And then, "Any other men in your life I should know about?"
"What do you mean, like, employers, relatives, the guy who brings my mail?" I chuckled.
"Not unless you're fucking them."
"No." I scoffed, nudging him, "I don't sleep with just anyone; consider yourself one of the lucky ones."
Suddenly our mouths met; to be honest I had been expecting it, and secretly wishing for it, the cracked lips and taste of cheap beer. I probably tasted like coffee and desperation.