~ Chapter 9: When One Door Closes ~

I've talked a lot about everything that happened before you came into my life but that was just so you'd know how much of a mess I was because almost right away, you started to change me. I told you really early in our relationship that being with you was the first time I'd felt genuinely happy, and I meant it.

I hope you understand what I meant because I thought I was so broken… I think I was and I still am, but I realize I'm not broken in an irreparable way. It's like I can see who I want to be, and I can see how I can become that person from the pieces I have if that makes sense.

Before you moved here, I thought the life I was living was the most it could be. Then, within a few days of meeting you, I started to unlearn that. I started to realize how much more free and happy and exciting and ordinary life could be. By the time you told Derek that I was too good of a guy to walk away from, you had turned me into someone willing to do the hard thing and choose something real over something easy.

You used to tell me that I was amazing and perfect and the best, and it always made me feel like maybe I was, but it also made me feel guilty because I knew that you didn't have the full picture. You didn't know why you were probably wrong. Now you do. Or, you at least know most of it. The stuff you don't know is just my side of everything that happened after we met.

I know I've been kind of doom and gloom up to this point but that's because that's how I saw my life. When I met you, I feel like the really important stuff started to happen… well, the really important good stuff. The stuff before is so important, don't get me wrong, but it was the bad kind of important. The kind of important that I would love to write out of my life.

Until I started dating you, I just kind of coasted through life. I settled. Then you made me feel like I was worth more than that. But we'll get to that. I can't talk about you without talking about our early days.

You know the ones I'm talking about. The days we spent at Brasstown getting to know each other, making fun of my latte art, flirting (even though I was firmly in denial about that), and laughing together were some of the best of my life, and it all started your first day at Creekwood.

Do you remember the first day we met? I do.

You were talking to Felix and looked like you'd zoned out a bit. I always felt a lot of anxiety around new people, and I figured it would be better to get our intros out of the way. I knew Felix would tell you I was gay because that's what everyone knew about me. I was the gay kid, and I'd finally gotten to a point where I'd accepted that I was always going to be gay before I was Benji. It wasn't until I started to date you that I realized that just because other people saw me that way, didn't mean I needed to see myself that way. I'd learned a very specific way to be proud when I was with Derek. After Derek and I broke up, I started to think about what made sense for me. I learned that I got to be proud in my own way and not in the way everyone else expected.

I learned that lesson right alongside you, and I learned how to truly be proud of myself and not just proud because other people told me I should be. I think that's one of the greatest gifts you ever gave me. As much as you being new to all this stuff caused some problems between us, it also helped me to reexamine what I wanted it to mean for me to be gay, and I don't think I would have done that without you.

When I came up to you your first day of school, I told you that your shoes were cool because 1 – they were and 2 – because I wanted you to have an actual conversation to think back on and not just what Felix was going to tell you about me. I kind of thought it would be like talking to most people where you'd say thanks and I'd get to walk away but that's not what happened. You told me that your mom got them at a yard sale, and then you got flustered because you called your own shoes cool.

When I was walking to class, I waited for my anxiety to kick in, but it didn't. Maybe that in itself was a sign that we were never going to make it as just friends, but it confused the hell out of me. I wasn't used to that. When I met someone knew, I was used to frantically going through and picking apart every word I'd said to figure out how much of an ass I made of myself, but I never had to do that with you. I honestly don't know why. I think it's probably because you're you, and there really isn't anyone else quite like you, Vic.

I told Lucy about you during lunch. That in itself was kind of weird for me. You weren't the first new kid, and you definitely weren't the last, but you were the first to make an impression. I remember telling Lucy that you seemed cool, and she pretended to check my forehead to see if I was sick.

It didn't mean anything to me at the time. I knew I wouldn't mind being your friend, but I really didn't think anything else was going to come out of getting to know you. I mean, you were instantly known as Mia's boyfriend… once the anger management rumors wore off, so I never let myself think about it, but I think part of me maybe always knew that there was something about you. I definitely subconsciously made decisions that brought us together.

Like the decision to hire you at Brasstown. I shouldn't have. I'm not saying I regret it (even after everything that's happened, I'm glad I hired you), but you shouldn't have gotten that job. When I called you, I hadn't lied… not exactly. You really were our only applicant from Shady Creek, but Atlanta is a big city, and you were far from our only applicant. I had a few people to choose from, so why did I choose you?

And why did I lie to Sarah about how your interview went? I can answer that one because I knew if I told Sarah the truth of how disastrous it was, she'd never have given me the go-ahead to hire you. It had happened before and she always said, "no employee would be better than that employee".

As for why I chose you… I can only speculate.

For a long time afterward, I said it was because I was tired of working by myself but that wasn't it. I'd been working by myself since I got promoted to Assistant Manager a month after I got hired, and I honestly preferred it to working with people most of the time.

Oh, I forgot to mention Sarah before. She knows about my accident and AA because when I got my promotion, my parents talked to her to make sure she knew that work couldn't come before my sobriety. Yeah. I don't think I've really forgiven them for that either. I thought Sarah knowing was going to be the worst thing ever, but she was surprisingly great about it. Her brother has been clean for over twenty years, so she got a little of what I was going through and has never made even the smallest fuss about working the schedule around my meetings.

Anyway, I was talking about why I hired you. I think it's because I liked you right away. I'm not going to lie and say it was love at first sight because you know I don't believe in that. I believe in people who are destined to be in each other's lives and I think we were always supposed to meet and eventually fall in love, but did I have even a tiny understanding of that when we met? Not a chance.

I did feel connected to you right away though. It wasn't necessarily in a romantic way in the beginning; that would happen so slowly that I'll never be able to pinpoint the exact moment I started to develop feelings for you, but I knew the moment you walked out of Brasstown that I wanted you to walk back in. I thought it was funny and cute that you had your mishap. I should've been annoyed. I spent the rest of my shift smelling like milk, but every time I thought about your interview, I smiled.

And, I mean, your interview was genuinely one of the worst interviews I'd ever done. I'd been promoted to Assistant Manager almost four months earlier because Randall and Kiara got fired for smoking pot in the back room; I don't even care that they did it, but it was stupid to do it while they were working. Sarah had forgotten to post the schedule and Kiara, the old Assistant Manager, was otherwise occupied when Sarah tried to call her, so she'd gone in to Brasstown and caught them. We'd been desperate for employees for months.

Not so desperate that we would hire anyone. A lot of the interviews happened on my shift since Sarah worked mornings and our primary applicant pool was students. There were a lot of bad ones, and you definitely made that list because you were the first person to literally run out of my interview.

You weren't the absolute worst. No, you'd be surprised by the people who applied.

There was Jamie – he couldn't go more than 30 seconds without checking his phone; Nancy – she dropped a cup (ONE cup) and dropped every cuss word in existence; Yasmine – she knocked over everything that could be knocked over; Laura – she glared at me when I showed her how to steam the milk and asked if she could refuse to make orders that had cream in them because… something about animal cruelty; Franco – he made everyone black coffee no matter what they ordered and when I told him the interview was over, he asked if he got the job; Frannie – she kept mixing up the caramel and the mocha and would always say "whoopsie doo" when I pointed that out; Jordan – he kept humming the theme song to Rugrats under his breath… that in itself wasn't so bad, but it got really, really, really annoying after a few minutes; Billy – he took a sip of a coffee before he handed it to a customer… the damage control I had to do; Rachel – she flirted with me the whole time and asked me if I was over "the gay thing" at the end of the interview. She was the absolute worst interview I've ever given. She was the only interview that instantly made me want to drink; I hadn't even waited to get home to get started. Before she left, I told her she didn't get the job and it was the first time I'd done that. Usually, I let them go and let Sarah follow up with them. You weren't as bad as some of them, obviously, but you should have made that list of people that I passed over.

I should have texted Sarah the truth that you spilled milk all over me and ran away. Instead, I told her it went well and that I saw a lot of potential in you. It was the most optimistic I'd been after an interview, and she told me to hire you.

This is all to say that your door opened long before my door with Derek closed.

Work was… fun with you (and not nearly as messy as your interview). I feel like you were the first person, other than Lucy, that I loved just talking to. Maybe I liked talking to Derek once upon a time but that had been a long, long time ago. It probably sounds cheesy to say I looked forward to coming to work because of you, but it was true. Even the ordinary days were special because you were there.

The special days were even more special, and we had so many of them to choose from.

Do you remember that time that we had that tip jar competition? I think you'd been working at Brasstown three weeks at that point. We'd gotten into the most ridiculous argument about peanut butter. Your mom asked you to stop at the grocery store before you went into work to pick some up because Adrian decided he wanted the crunchy stuff, and she didn't want to make a trip just for that. You bought it because you're a good big brother, but you felt like you had a responsibility to convert him to creamy… don't even get me started on the innuendos going through my head. I was with Adrian; I liked a little crunch in my peanut butter. We ended up asking our customers to vote on their preference by putting a tip in one of the coffee cups.

Hypothetically, you were supposed to get all the tips in the creamy peanut butter cup, and I was going to get all the ones in the crunchy one. Except, we had a really weird night because only one person put a tip in my cup; I'm still choosing to believe it was an anomaly because who doesn't want pieces of peanut in their peanut butter? It was the only right choice.

You would've been within your rights to take everything in your cup; I'd agreed to it after all. Instead, you pooled everything together and split it evenly. Even splitting it, we'd made more in tips than I'd ever made in a single shift, much less on a random weekday. You got really excited because we made enough that night to put you over where you needed to be for basketball, so you could finally finish paying Coach Ford.

You said the real reward was "creaming" me (seriously, do you hear yourself before you say stuff like that?), and you looked so pleased with yourself. It was such an easy moment with you, and I felt like I took up the correct amount of space.

It was the first of many with you. I'd accepted a long time before that those moments were rare, and I'd convinced myself they had to do with my drinking because they hadn't happened since I quit, but then they started happening with you when I was fully sober, and I was so confused.

It happened again that day that we sat on opposite ends of Brasstown and threw Sarah's stress ball back and forth because the power had gone down for the whole street, and we were sending all of our customers away while we waited for it to come back up. I threw the ball so badly once that it only made it about halfway to you, but you were crazy competitive, so you tripped over a table trying to catch it. We laughed for like an hour after that. Every time we looked at each other, we started back up again. It wasn't even that funny, but something about that moment made it so easy to laugh. Even when the power came back on and we had to get to work, we couldn't stop. None of our customers knew what was going on, which somehow only made it funnier.

I felt that way the day that Brasstown was just completely empty. I mean, it was an actual ghost town. We served two people the whole night. I loved that we asked each other a thousand questions that I never would have thought to ask someone.

I mean, who asks someone what jellybean flavor they would be? You did. You found it on a list of random questions that you were reading off your phone. I remember you said you thought you would be "one of the good" flavors. What other answer is there after that?

I asked you… I'm not sure what exactly, but you told me about Adrian and how you found out you were getting a little brother. You told me you conspired with your aunt to put together that "Little Brother Survival Guide" that was filled with advice for him and told him that no matter what, his big brother would always have his back. It was honestly the sweetest thing, and how does someone not find that endearing? That's what I told myself afterward.

With every memory we made, I hated that I felt anything other than friendship, but I liked being around you too much to do anything about that. I kept saying it was just because you were kind and you cared and, inexplicably, you were one of the few people who I didn't feel anxious around. It wasn't anything more than that.

It took one random day in March for me to realize that I'd been lying to myself… I probably need to be more specific because there were a lot of days in March, and a lot of them were good days. It was a little over a week before your birthday and had essentially been dark all day because it was overcast and rainy. Right as we finished closing, it started to pour. We could barely see out the door.

I told you that I thought we were going to be stuck together a bit longer. You asked me if a little rain was going to make me melt. As if you had ticked off the god of storms or something, it started to rain even harder. We watched it for a few minutes, and I told you that there was something about the rain that always made me want to go outside and dance. You said that's what we should do.

I asked you if you were crazy. You opened the door anyway and offered me your hand. "Come on," you said. "What's the worst that could happen?"

I let you pull me outside. You propped open the door; raised the volume on the speakers as loud as it could go, so we could still hear the music inside; and changed the song to Umbrella, another one of your highly listened-to songs on Spotify. The rain was so cold, but I didn't notice it. Not while we were dancing together. We both sang as loudly as we could. I can't speak for you, but for me? That is still one of my favorite memories of you. It was as easy and fun as our Call Me Maybe dance–off. I started to feel as good as alcohol used to make me feel.

I didn't think I could naturally feel that way. It wasn't like that peaceful feeling I got all the time with you. I felt happier than I knew it was possible to feel.

I didn't have to try to laugh; it came freely. I didn't have to force a smile; it was permanently stuck on my face when we were together. I didn't have to pretend to feel happy; it just happened.

When we got back inside, we were both shivering. We ended up trying to dry off with absolutely no success. At one point, you just squatted under the hand dryer in the bathroom because you thought it would help.

I shook out my hair and you threw a paper towel at me and told me to keep the rain to myself. I told you that I didn't think the hand dryer was helping, so we went to look in the lost and found. Everything in there was hideous; we spent nearly an hour trying on that lime green and orange thing that we couldn't agree on whether it was a pair of sweatpants or a sweater because it had six holes in it and no matter how we tried it on, it didn't look right.

We wouldn't be caught dead in anything we found in that lost and found, so I went into Sarah's desk and grabbed two new t-shirts.

You took off your shirt, and… wow. I swear, my brain just disconnected, and I didn't come back down to Earth until you put on the new shirt. I mean, I've seen shirtless guys, Vic. It shouldn't have been a big deal, but it was different when it was you. Probably because the moment I saw you shirtless, it kind of felt like I'd wanted to see you like that even if I'd never let myself think about it.

I didn't even try to not stare because I'd been so unprepared to feel anything, and you noticed when you had one sleeve in your shirt. You didn't say anything. I always wondered if it was because maybe you were staring back. We were kind of frozen like that until your dad called to ask where you were.

Neither of us had realized how late it was. It was past your curfew, and it was a school night. You told him that you had been trying to wait out the rain and you laughed about some joke he made about whether you needed to canoe home. I offered up a ride that I wasn't sure I could give you simply because I wanted to spend more time with you. I wanted to keep riding the euphoria of that night.

I didn't want to call Derek, so I called my dad. I walked away from you so you wouldn't hear me lie to him. I told him Derek was busy even though I knew perfectly well he had no plans. I told myself that I didn't call Derek because it was late, and I didn't want him driving in that weather but that wasn't it. For an hour, you and I had constructed a world where I could forget that Derek was my boyfriend and… I liked that. It wasn't actually not being with Derek that I liked; it was that I didn't have to think about all of our fights and all of the doubts I felt when I was with him.

I would feel guilty when I got home that night. Just like my highs with Derek had been followed by my lowest nights, the same thing happened with you. Except, I somehow experienced higher highs with you which meant my lows were so much lower. I think it was because we were friends first. I was friends with Derek too, but not in the same way. Derek and I had always been about doing stuff together… mind out of the gutters, will you? That's not what I meant. I just meant Derek and I enjoyed spending time together more than we enjoyed talking. You and I talked. Obviously, that's all we did.

I told myself it wasn't that I liked you as more than a friend; it was just that all the problems between Derek and I hadn't existed in that moment. I would spend a lot of time talking to Lucy about it too. Until you and I started dating, Lucy never accused me of liking you, but she knew; she knew before I knew that I liked you. When I stopped by her house the night of the Spring Fling, she just said "finally"! I think she was more excited than we were. She told me she was glad I was finally out of the denial stage.

Though, by the time we danced in the rain, my denial had shifted. I realized that night that I liked you, and because I couldn't deny that, I just decided to deny that it could mean anything. I guess part of me kind of suspected you might be gay or bi or something, but I didn't know for sure, and you seemed happy with Mia. I told myself I was happy with Derek; I wanted to be happy with him. He'd accepted the worst thing I ever did and, sure, it caused the occasional fights and the frequent passive aggressive comments, but I figured that was the way it was going to be no matter who I was with, you know?

I still think I'm right about that; I mean, it did immediately cause a big fight between me and you. I know that part of that came from how blindsided you were, but you can't tell me that it wasn't also because this is a huge, scary thing, and how were you supposed to know what to do about this? I think no matter what, it's going to be a thing that causes fights. That's a lot for me to deal with; it's why it's easier to pretend it never happened.

When I was with you, it was easier to pretend because you made me so happy. There wasn't room for the bad stuff. There was only room for you and me, and I loved that feeling. I didn't want it to go anywhere.

Do you know how I eventually realized I liked you? You would've thought it was dancing in the rain, but it wasn't. I don't think I was thinking clearly enough to have any kind of realization about you in that moment. No… I had a dream about you that night. I almost never remember my dreams. I remembered nightmares all the time but never my dreams, so I can't say that it was the first time, but this one stuck with me. I remember how strongly I wanted it to be real until I was awake enough to tell myself that I couldn't want it to be real.

Nothing really happened in the dream. In fact, I dreamed about us at Brasstown – pretty sexy, right? We were cleaning up after we closed, and you came up behind me when I was wiping down the counters. You wrapped your arms around me before you kissed my cheek, and we just stood like that for a while.

I know we talked in the dream, but I have no idea what we talked about. That part didn't stay with me. It's what we did together that stayed with me. It was you holding me like that. It was the way that, when you pulled back, we danced together to the crappy music that constantly plays in Brasstown. It was the way that you leaned in and kissed me. It was how normal and easy and natural everything was in the dream. When we finished cleaning, you hugged me and kissed me. Then… you told me you loved me. In the dream, it felt so normal as if you'd said it a hundred times, and I said it back without having to think about it. I woke up when you walked out of Brasstown.

It didn't occur to me that it wasn't real until I woke up and felt disappointed. I tried to tell myself that the point of the dream had been the ease in which I said, "I love you" and not the fact that I said it to you, but I couldn't lie to myself. Not while I was struggling to repress how much I wanted it to be real. I wasn't in love with you at the point, but I knew I was falling for you, and I knew that there was a very real possibility that I could fall in love with you… I really didn't think I wanted that, and I thought it I kept pretending, it would just go away.

When I realized I was falling for you, it wasn't news, if that makes sense. It was kind of like an "oh" moment. Like, that's what I'd been feeling, and I just hadn't put words to it until that exact moment.

So, when I say I don't know when I started to fall for you, I mean it. But that night? I knew, and I made the decision that you were more important. I should have shut things down and just been your Brasstown coworker. That would have been safer, but I liked being around you and spending time with you to the point where just the thought of not being able to talk to you and flirt with you kind of made me feel like my world was turning upside down.

The moment I decided to keep you in my life, Derek didn't stand a chance; his door officially closed.