“That is,” Tommy went on before Everett could continue, “if you want to hear about it. I’d understand if you needed to leave. It’s getting late.”
“No,” Everett said promptly, with a weak attempt at a smile, and watched the tension leach from Tommy’s shoulders. He hated that new tension, hated everything that had happened to put it there. “Wine would be lovely.”
He watched as Tommy dug through a crate, eventually coming up with two goblets that he polished on the hem of his shirt. Also in the crate was a bottle of wine. “That’s Pat. She’s a planner. As a matter of fact—” he rifled through the crate some more, and came up with a packet of cigarettes, which he tossed to Everett. “I knew there had to be some in the house.”
“I don’t really smoke,” Everett said, catching the packet.
“You had a cigarette in your mouth when I saw you on Visiting Sunday.”
“Nerves,” Everett admitted, and Tommy gave him a long and inscrutable look. Maybe he hadn’t expected Everett to admit to a weakness.
Tommy took the sheet off what turned out to be a serviceable looking sofa and sat at one end, an ankle balanced on the opposite knee. Everett duly sat at the other end, grateful that the glass of wine at least gave him something to do with his hands.
“So,” Tommy started, dry as dust. “You may have noticed during our time at Greenfield that I like messing around with other men.”
Everett knew his face was beet red. He ran two fingers under a collar that now seemed uncomfortably tight, then downed half his glass of wine. “That did not escape my attention,” he said to his glass.
“I may have overstated the fact—it was only you. But the principle holds.” Tommy gave a shaky laugh. “You may also have noticed that I was never terribly interested in girls. Amazingly, that is not something that changes even when you marry a beautiful and brilliant woman.”
“How did they find out? Your family, I mean.” Blackmail, Everett figured. That was always the nightmare scenario: a night with the wrong person, a too-observant neighbor, a bitter ex-lover. He had spent half his life worried about that himself.
“I told them.”
Everett stared. “Why on earth would you have done that?”
Tommy’s jaw was set again. “Funnily enough, that’s exactly what my mother and Frank wanted to know. In any event, it doesn’t matter. It’s water under the bridge.” Everett had the sense that if he had responded differently, Tommy wouldn’t look so strained now. He finished his glass of wine, and before he could search for a place to set it down, Tommy leaned over and filled it up again.
“Won’t you tell me the truth?” Tommy asked, his voice barely audible. “Unless telling me will only make it worse.”
“Tell you what?” Everett asked, his mouth dry.
“What I did that was so unforgivable. I know you said I didn’t do anything, but I don’t believe that you would do that to a friend—that you would walk away without a word—if they hadn’t done something awful.”
Everett wanted one of those cigarettes but knew his hands would shake too hard to light it. He looked hard at Tommy, at the tension around his eyes and the tight line of his mouth.
Surely Everett could give him an answer. It was one sentence. He could say one sentence. “I couldn’t let myself…” No that was the wrong sentence, damn it. “Every time I saw you, I broke my heart.”
He almost spelled it out further, almost said it plain as day: I loved you, I couldn’t have you, and I had to stop torturing myself. I deserved more. I deserved a life. But he couldn’t make his mouth shape the words, and it shouldn’t matter anyway—their shadow was right there in the words he had spoken.
* * *
Tommy looked at the man sitting on the other end of the sofa. Everett’s gaze was fixed directly ahead of him, and at no point in his matter-of-fact statement had he even flicked a glance in Tommy’s direction. Every time I saw you, I broke my heart. There were only so many ways Tommy could interpret that. He supposed it was possible that Everett had been heartbroken by Tommy’s inadequacy or some other failure on Tommy’s part and couldn’t bear to look upon such a flawed and fallen creature—but those were Tommy’s present-day fears. The Tommy of 1945 had been clean and golden. He drew his knees up to his chest, not caring that he was getting plaster dust and God knew what else all over the sofa.
No, Everett had to be referring to the regular kind of heartbreak. And, God, it shouldn’t be such a relief to know he hadn’t been the only one. “I didn’t know,” Tommy said, which at least made Everett look at him.
“You weren’t meant to,” Everett answered.
Tommy downed the rest of his wine and hugged his knees closer to his body. “Here’s a funny story,” he said, looking at the wall in front of him. “I didn’t figure it out until, what, last year? My sister Agnes’s husband had an affair, and when Agnes sat in our living room crying her heart out, I thought to myself: that’s how it was when Ev left. That’s how it is when you’re in love with someone, only to discover they don’t love you back.”
Everett said nothing. His eyes were wide, and it looked like he might have fallen over if he didn’t have supernatural powers of self-control and about a pound of starch ironed into his shirt. He cleared his throat, he fiddled with his watch stem. “I didn’t know,” he said finally. “You said things, but you were like that with everyone.”
Tommy gave a slightly hysterical laugh, but he knew what Everett meant. Smith, you damned magician, pour me another one of those drinks. Calloway, I’ll adore you forever if you score a touchdown against St. Paul’s. He had been young and unguarded, and he had learned that he could say exactly what was on his mind if he paired it with a charming smile. Nobody would take him seriously if they didn’t want to; they would remember the warmth, not the content. And perhaps he hadn’t taken himself quite seriously either.
“My point is that I didn’t know either. I knew I loved you, but I loved a lot of people back then, so I told myself it didn’t matter, that what I felt about you wasn’t any different. And I knew I didn’t ever want to stop touching you. But I didn’t let myself figure out what that meant. You were my best friend and I loved you,” Tommy said, mostly because he needed to say it out loud in order to remind himself it was true. “And I also liked fooling around—oh, to hell with euphemisms. I liked having sex with you. It’s just that I didn’t add all of that up in my mind and come up with Tommy Cabot is Gay until long after you were done with me.”
“Done with you,” Everett echoed faintly, shaking his head.
“I’m being an asshole, I apologize. You were protecting yourself, I know.”
“I just wanted a chance—”
“Stop.” He held up his hand. He didn’t want to hear Everett say all the things that Pat had told him—I just want a chance to love someone and be loved back. He couldn’t stand that two people he cared about had needed to run away from him in order to be happy. “You deserved that. You deserved a chance at whatever you wanted. Did you get it?”