Watching the sunset from his saleroom window Jack sighed. He never watched the sunset if he could help it, it was too painful, stirred too many memories. But some nights, like tonight, he found he couldn't help himself, it held some sort of draw to him. Sunset would forever remind him of Ennis, of that summer. Standing there, he could once more feel the sickness that came with the anticipation of seeing Ennis ride down the mountainside, a sickness that was part excitement, part anxiety and part dread, dread of what would happen to them when summer ended. It was a feeling that grew all through their time together, time they spent dancing around the subject and each other, too afraid of humiliation and rejection to ever talk about anything real, meaningful.
To Jack the sunset seemed a fitting metaphor for his time with Ennis - so beautiful, warm and aglow, occasionally hot, burning and consuming the sky, but always fleeting, too soon the light fading to dark. Their time together was always too short, there was never enough time. There never would be, not for Jack, not to sate his hunger and quench his thirst for something real. Not now. For a long time Jack had kept a little spark alive in his heart, a glimmering hope that one day he and Ennis could be as he envisaged it, the two of them, alone but together. They would need nothing else, nothing but each other and the fire that flared between them. That would be enough to sustain them and keep them warm. But over the years the spark had burned itself down to nothing more than an ember, until it was put out almost completely by Ennis' staunch refusal to even contemplate it, even after all these years and his divorce from Alma.
Jack sighed again. It was such a mess, and all such a waste. He knew that loving Ennis did him no good, that this thing between them hurt so many and that he should give it up and try to be a good husband to Lurleen. But he didn't know how, the draw was so strong, had such power over him that it was almost an addiction. It was so central to him that to give it up would surely kill him. Sometimes he almost hated Ennis Del Mar.
Almost.
As the last rays of light faded and began to cloak the flat, lifeless landscape in black, Jack sighed once more and drew the blinds, shutting the sunset from view, if not from his heart.