The Layover Read online

  “You are going back for the referendum?” Jamie whispered.

  “No, not for the referendum.” How could I put it in simple sentences? “I read his suicide note online several weeks ago. I was in a hotel on a layover in Beijing when I found it on the Facebook page of a Slovak nonprofit. I started to read without knowing who the author was, and I had a weird sense of déjà vu. It was all about how the man tried so hard to fit the expectations, how exhausted he was, how alone he felt while surrounded by others who were supposed to love him but didn’t even know him. There were even two short sentences about a boy he’d loved back at college, who he’d left because he wanted to be a good person, and good people didn’t lie and didn’t deceive others.” My voice broke a bit, and I had to take a few deep breaths. “I had a horrifying moment when I put the names and dates together. I realized that it was Peter and that he was dead, had been for some time, and that he wrote about loving me in his suicide note.”

  “I’m sorry.” Jamie’s hand found mine under the covers, and he squeezed it.

  “I read the letter over and over again, looking for hidden meanings. There weren’t any. He was just alone, and he thought that if people knew the real him, he’d be unlovable. Boyfriends left him because he was closeted. His family and coworkers would have scorned him, had he come out. Simple as that.

  “I didn’t love him anymore, not like that. It’s been a long time. It felt more like a death of an old friend. But his letter made me think about my choices. He managed to put names to things that had haunted me for all my time abroad. All those years ago I took the easy way out when I left. I ran away from the challenges.

  “That’s why, when I came back to Dubai, Peter’s words repeating in my head, I just handed in my notice. I didn’t think it through. I simply couldn’t go on like I used to.”

  Jamie’s fingers played with mine, and his weight on my chest and side was a welcome anchor.

  “I think I want a do-over,” I said in a stronger voice, finally finding words that sounded close enough to how I felt. “I’m not saying that I should have stayed in Bratislava eight years ago. I just left for the wrong reasons, and I kept leaving as if repeating the same mistake over and over again could ever make things better.

  “I want to go places instead of leaving places all the time. I guess that is why I’m coming back to the first city I’ve ever abandoned. Because next time I leave Slovakia, it is going to be because I have somewhere to go. I want a proper destination.”

  There was a quiet moment, filled with my anxiety and self-doubt. I shouldn’t have told Jamie all of that. I felt raw and…. Jamie turned in my arms and dragged my hand with him, rolling so that I spooned him.

  “You’re the first person I’ve had sex with since last January,” he said. I tensed but silently begged him to keep talking. I wanted to know and wished he’d give me the relief of sharing something equally exposing. Somehow, he knew I needed that, so he started talking.

  “I’d lived with Daniel for two years when we broke things off. I think he was the instant gratification type. Like I was the kid who hoarded all the candy, saving it for later. And he’d eat only the good stuff until the bag would be empty except for the licorice that nobody wants.”

  I understood. “He cheated.”

  Jamie sighed. “I wish. I don’t know. Maybe. He did something worse. He said he was leaving so he wouldn’t be forced to cheat.”

  I winced. “That’s evil.”

  Jamie chuckled. “Well, it took me some time to see it like that. We had friends who did the whole casual thing: sharing, inviting a third. Stuff like that. At first, I felt like I was a prude.” I wanted to argue, but Jamie continued, not letting me interrupt. “He insisted that he hadn’t done anything behind my back, though. He said he didn’t want to hurt me, and that it wouldn’t be fair to coerce me into an open relationship since he knew I didn’t want to fuck around. I think he expected me to persuade him to stay. He thought I’d give him the free card to occasionally fuck someone else because I loved him that much.

  “It turned out I didn’t. Then he told our friends that it was me who broke up with him. He left out the part where I didn’t want to share my boyfriend with half of Edinburgh’s most fabulous crowd. It was ridiculous. I wanted to be mad, badly.”

  “You had the right to be mad. He was manipulating you so he wouldn’t have to feel guilty.”

  “I guess. It doesn’t matter anymore. I kept the apartment, as it was mine to begin with. I was worried I would have to move because of the memories. Then I realized that there weren’t many. I barely think of him nowadays.”

  He spoke with a calm finality. I was inappropriately glad about that. The confession, both mine and his, took weight away from my chest. With Jamie safely in my embrace, I felt as if I’d just awoken from a bad dream into bright sunlight.

  “You’re a candy hoarder, huh?” I asked.

  “A major one.” I heard the smile in his voice. “What about you?”

  “I don’t know. I never got much candy as a kid, so there wasn’t anything to hoard. I love chocolate truffles with chili, though. I always eat them slowly, savor them. Piece, by piece.” I started nipping at his neck when I said that, and he laughed. Foolishly, even knowing that Jamie was still too sick to do anything, I opened my mouth over his skin, tasting him.

  Jamie stopped laughing and groaned. “Stop, please. We can’t. Don’t torture me.”

  “Sorry.”

  He turned his head toward me and kissed me chastely, lingering only a second. “It was amazing, the first night… I wish we could….”

  I interrupted him by kissing him back. It was brief and sweet and too little.

  “I know, me too,” I whispered.

  DAY FIVE

  IN THE morning on the fifth day I’d known Jamie, my logic and pragmatism conspired against me and decided to remind me of everything I’d tried hard not to think about. The result was a violent stream of oh-shits.

  What the fuck was I doing? Cuddling and playing a doting boyfriend with a guy who, after tomorrow, I’d never see again. Swallowing tears ten times a day like a preschooler, staring into space, and reciting old lyrics in my head. As if I could fall through a rabbit hole into a world where people wore purple hats, undying-love-at-first-sight was a real thing, and queer was the new black.

  I lay in bed, eyes open but unseeing, not acknowledging who slept next to me. Knowing that if I looked at him, I’d feel ten kinds of desperate. Instead, I stared at the clinically white paint above me, struggling with what I had to do. I had to distance myself. I knew that. I had one more day. So I made up a plan, a contract with myself, a survival strategy. I’d give myself one last brief look, but I wouldn’t let a ridiculous romantic fantasy ruin me. Not today, not ever, no way.

  Easier said than done, though. I turned on the bed and immediately squeezed my eyes shut. When I opened them again, my heart was beating its way out of my chest.

  He was a mirage. The low winter sun made its way into the room, and a shiny stripe of it rested in Jamie’s tousled hair. He slept facing me, curled up on his side, his lean fingers reaching out toward me on the pillow like a silent plea. So soft and so pale. He looked like something that should be guarded by a troop of agents in black suits, locked up in a vault, behind a bulletproof glass wall. Priceless, fragile, unique, and untouchable.

  His closed eyelids were swollen with deep sleep, and it made him look even younger, vulnerable and innocent. I burned with the need to crush him to my chest, envelop him with my limbs and breathe him in, to feel him again in my arms, warm, trusting, and heavy with fatigue. The feeling had nothing to do with sex, which made it much worse.

  I got up in a daze and retreated to the living room area, picking up my clothes noiselessly. I admit, I chased the feeling a little longer. I thought, One more hour, and then I’ll let it go.

  The sight of Jamie like that, sleeping in the sun, reminded me of something. A shard of memory. I dug out my phone, searched throug
h the database for a while, and put the music on, letting the volume stay very low. Jamie was a heavy sleeper. There was a chance he wouldn’t even stir. I changed clothes, shaved, drank some water, and thought of the long-lost past. About the time when I was very young, when I thought I had it all figured out, long before I realized that life was just an inextricable tangle of a thousand different wrong paths. I thought of the summers in the mountains, about hope.

  There had been a point back then, just before I moved to the city, maybe twelve years ago, when I’d felt exhilaratingly happy. That early evening in June, I’d been barely eighteen. I’d just gotten accepted to the university in Bratislava, and I’d known I would have the summer free. Then I would come to the city and start studying and meeting all those new, beautiful, cool people. That day, I’d thought I could conquer the world. I’d stood in the yard behind our old house. My parents had been out visiting Grandma so I could smoke without getting caught. I’d lit a cigarette and watched the sun set behind the woods. I hadn’t seen the shabby house, the wall paint that was peeling away, the trashed yard dotted with chicken shit, the rotten barn. I’d only seen my bright future, the pink haze on the horizon, the prospect of a secret date later that night. I’d been bubbling with joy. Standing in my parents’ lousy backyard, I’d been so sure: this is it, from this day on, everything is going to be amazing. I’d thought that the evening had been the beginning of my wonderful life.

  The thing is, the younger you are, the thinner is the sliver of the future you can imagine. I hadn’t thought further than the first semester of school. It hadn’t occurred to me to worry about anything beyond that. Many years later the realization came, grim and square like an old Russian calculator. I hadn’t known what real happiness was. I hadn’t known that the minute there in the sunset had been the actual happiest moment of my life. Everything that came later was only a shadow of that feeling.

  Now, in the professionally decorated hotel room in Basel, Switzerland, I thought of Peter and the traces of love I still felt for him in my memories. How vague that feeling had become. More of a conviction, a dream that felt almost real, and not an accurate memory. I thought of the years in between, the blur of empty faces, bars, and clubs, the steel and glass. That was the constant backdrop to my life, steel and glass and concrete.

  I knew that if I allowed it, Jamie could make me feel something more again. I could be so wonderfully, ignorantly happy if I could just…. That hurt. I had to stop right there.

  I had to get out, but my stuff was all over the place. I’d need warm clothes and gloves. I didn’t know how long I’d have to be outside. I was putting a sweatshirt on when I saw Jamie standing in the door to the bathroom. He watched me warily.

  “Hi,” I tried nonchalantly, but my voice betrayed me. It came out as a hoarse whisper.

  “Hi. What’s the music?”

  “That’s just an old Czech thing,” I answered dismissively and went to retrieve my phone. I reached for it, but Jamie intercepted me.

  “The accent is weird, but I like it. What is it?”

  I sighed. “It was a project in the nineties; they called themselves Color Factory. They made a soundtrack to one silly movie, and that was it.”

  “It’s sweet.”

  It was. Sweet, soft, and gentle. The simplest song but full of tenderness, about waking up your lover with a kiss in the morning and thinking about moments that may never end. The trifecta of the music, memories, and Jamie made my hands tremble, so I stuffed my wallet in my back pocket with force to mask my weakness.

  “You’re going out?”

  “Yes. I don’t know when I’ll be back.” I sounded like an asshole again, but I needed my armor of cruelty.

  Jamie knew something was wrong, but he didn’t comment on it. We didn’t know each other that well, did we? Not well enough to be entitled to question each other about feelings. But well enough for me to have feelings for him?

  “When is your flight?” he asked instead.

  “I don’t know, haven’t booked it yet. I’ll do it today. Maybe I’ll stay in Basel one more day or so. I like the town.” Lying liar, lying nasty lies. I couldn’t make myself book the ticket because I didn’t want to leave the bubble yet. But I would do it today. I had to.

  “Oh. Okay.”

  The damned music continued, both wistful and cruel. It clawed at my composure.

  I stretched my arm out and took my phone from Jamie’s hands. He started but didn’t say anything. I turned the sound off and put the phone in my coat pocket.

  “See you later,” I bit out and fled before he could answer.

  TAKING A deep breath, I looked around on the street, noticing the huddled figures, the faint mist in the air, the frostbite on the sidewalk and cars’ windows. The cold air bit me in the face and calmed my burning eyes. I’d forgotten the gloves. I hid my hands in my coat and headed toward the river.

  I WALKED through the picturesque old town until my head spun from hunger. I ended up in a café on Gerbergasse, stuffing myself with eggs and croissants.

  I stared out the window at the foreign street and passing strangers. I wondered how I could have let myself become so closed off, so desensitized, that I couldn’t even make myself cry over Peter dying in the most miserable way ever. And now, after meeting Jamie, I was so vulnerable that even the table, which I rested my forearms on, seemed to rub my palms bloody. How deeply ingrained was the delusion of my self-sufficiency?

  The tiny, crippled, exhausted creature that was kicking and screaming inside me now—he was thrashing so bad he bruised my insides. Was that the hopeful, rom-com-loving idealist? I was certain I’d managed to smother him to death. Now he wanted out and he wanted me to hope.

  But I didn’t believe in love anymore. Love was for teenagers. I believed in compatibility, and I believed I was incompatible with most people.

  How the fuck could I be in love?

  WHEN MY stomach started hurting, I left the café, and after walking the streets aimlessly for half an hour, I called Kristina.

  “Ondro? I’m in a meeting.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry. I’ll call later.”

  She must have heard something in my voice because after a minute of cracking and scrambling noises, her words came out clear: “What’s wrong?”

  “You are busy. I’ll call later,” I repeated, sounding clingy and miserable.

  “I already told them it’s a family emergency. I’m in the hall outside my office. So talk.”

  “I don’t know what to say….” For fuck’s sake. I called her! “I don’t know what to do.” That sounded worse; broken, whispered words of despair.

  “Ondro, honey?”

  “It’s so weird. I’ve known him for what, five days? And he’s leaving tomorrow. I’m supposed to be leaving. And I can’t…. Jesus, I’m a psycho.” Pure luck that I was speaking Slovak, and nobody around me understood a word of my silly freak-out.

  “Jamie? That’s his name?” Kristina sounded confused. Of course, she was. Her cool-headed, cold-hearted bestie was having a nervous breakdown over a guy he’d just met.

  “Yeah. He’s perfect, Kristina. Smart and kind. He’s good to the bone. Do you understand what I mean? I didn’t think there were guys like that anymore. So good, I feel like a roach next to him. He’s smallish and a bit skinny. But, God, he’s beautiful. To me, he’s beautiful. I… I’ve never felt like this about anyone.” A harsh, self-deprecating laugh escaped me. “And I can’t believe I said those exact words.”

  Kristina remained serious.

  “Tell him.”

  “Tell him what? I’m just a one-night stand who got clingy, Kristina. There is no way I can prolong this. And I’m still reeling over Peter, and it’s all a fucking mess…. But I feel like Jamie…. Like he’s the….” The what? The One? I wouldn’t sink so low as to say something naive like that. No way. Not even on my worst day.

  “And if he feels the same?” Kristina said, loud and clear.

  “He doesn’t. And even if he
did, he’s too smart and rational to take a chance on something this crazy.”

  “You are convinced there’s nothing you can do. Why are you calling me, then?” Oh, the lawyer in her. I loved her.

  I took a breath and told the truth. “Because I just admitted to myself that I need someone, and I’m all alone, and no one cares.”

  “I care. I know we haven’t seen each other in a long time. But I care a lot. You’re still my best friend. We are close. You get me. I’ve got you. When you come to Bratislava, I’m going to be there for you when you need a hug, and you’re going to listen to my frustrated rants about work. We’ll party and suffer together. I’m here; nothing’s changed about that. You are not alone, okay?”

  I rubbed my stinging eyes and nodded, feeling silly because she couldn’t see me. “Yeah.”

  “You are not alone, Ondro,” she said again, in that hard, sure tone of voice that made me admire her so much.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “You’re silly. Next time, just say you need me to be your friend. We can skip the problem-solving and go directly to comforting.”

  “I’ve never needed comforting before.”

  “Yeah, you did. We just usually used alcohol instead of hugs. Hugs are better. I’m looking forward to hugging you again.”

  “Me too.” She was a miracle. “Go work.”

  “Hang in there, Ondro. And call again. Anytime. I’ll see you in a few days, okay?”

  “I’ll let you know as soon as I book a flight.”

  “Take care.”

  “You too. Bye.”

  “Bye,” she sighed. There was a load of worry in the simple syllable.

  Seeing an opening between the houses, I almost ran down the stairs. The stone wall above the river stopped me. I stared at the gray-brown waters, trying to let the comfort of Kristina’s words seep into me.