The Goodbye Man (15 page)

His rhythm is gentle, calculated, and full of so much. His tongue flicks over my clit and my hands find his dark, messy locks. I grasp onto them like I have so long wanted, and buck my hips towards his mouth. He takes his fingers to open me up, inserting his tongue to find me dripping wet and ready for him. His tongue continues to fuck me and I fall.

Falling
. Down a tunnel of happiness for the first time in my life because this just seems right. Two puzzle pieces have finally found each other. My orgasm seeps through every pore in my body and I shake, scream, and pull on his hair, begging for his mercy.

He releases his head and I want to provide the same kind of pleasure for him as I reach down for his hard cock. His wrist stops me.

“I need you. Now.”

It was not a command. It was a plea. I nod my head yes, his tightened grasp releasing me and I take his hard cock into my hand, guiding it inside of me. He hisses through his teeth all while his eyes never leave mine. Years of emptiness are gone as he fills me completely, stilling himself for a moment as we both get lost in time.

“If death finds me tomorrow, I am fine by that. I love you, amorcito. I’m sorry I never showed you.”

Tears fill my eyes. Love. He is making love to me. He rocks his hips back and forth inside of me, hitting the same spot over and over again. I feel myself ready to come apart again, but I want to hold onto this memory for as long as it will last. I hold onto his back as my fingers settle into the perfect contours of his muscles, tensing as he moves gently inside of me. I let my tears fall, and for the first time, I am crying from joy.

But the darkness always consumes the ones it is used to. I see it hiding behind his eyes. I want it to stay gone forever. For when it returns, mine will return too. When bleakness finds him, I am nothing to him. Then I am back to the girl who I used to be. I can’t let it happen. No. No.

He bends his head down as his lips kiss away my tears. I hold onto him tighter, digging my fingernails into his back. Each thrust becomes harder than the last.

“Let go, love. Let go with me,” he pants.

Then, lovely chaos bathes us both as we let our orgasms consume us. Shaking, sobbing, and emotionally spent, he pulls his cock out of me. I expect him to leave me like I deserve.

“What are you doing, Caesar?”

“Shh, no talking, love. I want to hold you for a little while until you fall asleep.”

I turn onto my side as he spoons my naked back, wrapping his arm across my breasts. His warmth screams safety. I am happy. I am loved. I am worthy.

“Will you still love me tomorrow, Caesar?”

I want the truth, even if it means death.

“I have always loved you, amorcito. Nothing will change that. Nothing
can
change that. Sweet dreams, little one.” I let my eyes close as dreams follow me. I am greeted with a face that I know well.

Whispers of lies and moaning truths, love is a language in which I am not versed.

When she falls asleep
in my arms and her voice stops fucking with my head, I realize what I have done. The voice is drowned in shame; disgrace and the humiliation of my weakness makes me ill. I feel it pushing up my throat as I let her go and I slither out of the bed. I swallow back the contents of my stomach as they threaten to explode out of me. While I fasten my belt, I turn around to see Mateo watching through the bars, and my guilt intensifies as I step out of her space. I feel as if I have severed a limb as I leave her there. I gaze one last time at her naked body laid out peacefully on her bed. Relief courses through me. Silence at last. She has stopped fucking talking and whispering to me. I kissed her, swallow the rising bile. I touched her, gag and step to the door. I fucked her, I feel the puke flow out as I collapse onto the floor outside her room. I love her. I am sick, it’s wrong. On my hands and knees like the dog I am, I’m looking at the boots of my sick nephew. I feel the last sliver of my humanity leave me.

I take Mateo’s offered hand and shakily get to my feet. The shake of his head adds to my repulsive self-thoughts. I know he has realized the ugly truth of my love for her, and just how long I have loved her. My nerves fray as he orders to me, “Come, old man.” I can’t answer why I followed him. I shuffle behind him as he opens the double locks and holds the door open for me. Like a zombie, I move through the door and flinch as he screams for Juan to clean up my vomit. I stand stoically as he brushes past me. His movements are quiet and my nerves are tingling. I’m on a knife’s edge as he closes the distance between us, holding out a bottle of brandy. “Sit, Caesar,” he whispers and I can’t stop my body from responding. My fingers clench into my palm as I lower myself into the wingback chair opposite him. Even his slow actions coupled with those sounds have my senses frayed; the crinkle of the bottle top’s paper, the seal popping as it twists in his hands. I watch as his tattooed fingers wrap around the bottle as he fills the glasses and places them between us. I have never taken the time to notice how many tattoos the boy has. He slides a glass closer to me, the golden liquid burns my raw throat as I swallow the first sip.

“You love her.” He speaks in a hard tone, not because he is angry but because he knows that I can bear that more than a whisper. I nod. “You shouldn’t love her like that.” He shakes his head. And looks at the floor between his legs. “She looks like Ophelia.” He breathes out a little softer, making me twitch a little.

“Don’t talk about her, Mat. I can’t right now,” I answer him truthfully.

“So drink. Caesar, tonight we drink and tomorrow we forget again.” I am confused at his understanding and caring, to be honest. The boy is closed off from everything all the time. It’s hot up here; the heat is trapped from below as it rises. My naked chest beads with sweat, and I run my hands through my hair and it slicks to my scalp.

Somewhere between halfway and three-quarter through the bottle, I look around the room to take it in. Mateo is almost clinically clean. His space is all neat straight lines. There is nothing out of place, the opposite of what I would expect of him. I see the way his cups are lined up on the kitchen counter, all facing the exact same way. I see the row of neat picture frames on the top shelf, all filled with the same picture of Ophelia. They are not what catch my eye. It’s the lines of glass sample jars on the next shelf, rows of neat little jars, and I narrow my drunken eyes to see more. They are filled with hair and I prefer to ignore them than ask him. I sit, and we drink, and smoke and ignore the elephants growing so big that there is no air left in the room. Mateo peels his sweaty shirt off and we sit there, half naked staring at the absolute destruction of ourselves. “I wish I could fix you, Mateo. I am sorry I have failed for so long.” I slur my words as they spill slowly out of me, drunken honesty stripping me bare.

“I don’t want to be fixed, old man. I like who I am.” He answers me with a genuine, honest smile on his face. “You don’t need to be fixed either, you know that. We need to be happy with who we are.” How is this little shit so fucking wise? He speaks loudly so that I am alright, a habit he learned quickly working with me.

“I cannot be fixed. I know who I am, and until now I never struggled with it.” It is true, until tonight I never once struggled with my actions.

“Why do you struggle against love?” He is drunk now, drunk but so very wise. Sometime during the haze of this conversation, we fall asleep. A wreckage of humanity, hot sweaty and drowned in the sweet swirl of booze. We are wrong, but we are not the worst.

I wake in a puddle
of sweat, stuck to the chair where I passed out, hunched over. Mateo is gone from the sofa and I slip out of the door before the uncomfortable truth of last night can be revisited. I take the stairs to avoid passing her room; my sober waking has allowed the guilt and shame to creep back into me. I am a very sick man, but the truth is, no matter how much I lie to myself, I love her. I have loved her for many years now. I cannot be near her anymore, it is too much for me to hear her voice.

I hear her screams throb through the silence as I am closing the doors to leave. I don’t turn around and go to her. Even her glass shattering screams are whispers to me and I will be driven to insanity again. I know Mateo will go to her, maybe he is what she needs.
Maybe she could fix him too.

I drive home to my decaying building as the dawn of the new day breaks. I am taking a day off. A sick day if you want to label it, I am sick.

I take a hot shower to try and clear my mind of the humming insanity and my painful guilt.

The hot water streaming down my body does nothing to wash away the self-disgust. As if representing my burning in hell, the steam rises and swirls around me. Memories of my actions force my stomach to roll and I double over while the bile drains away. My hands shake as I right myself and hold onto the cold tiles to stay upright. I’m of two extremes, the water is hotter than I can stand, yet inside, I’m stone cold. The echo of the bathroom does nothing to mask her whispers.

“I love you, Caesar.”

“Undo me.”

“Please.”

The looped statements won’t stop and the repeated torture makes my cock ache with desire that sickens me. I cannot even touch myself. I would rather die than replace her touch with mine. My mind swims in the images and sounds of the disgraceful act of lust that I allowed to consume me. I cannot pull myself from the depths of my despair and I lie curled in a ball of self-loathing. Nothing can undo this. I cannot go back. I cannot fix it. I want to say goodbye. She asked me for a goodbye and I should grant it to her. Her marred body is just the surface of the horror she has lived, I should set her free. I am so selfish. I give the gift to strangers, but I keep it from her.
The one I love more than anything.

“Please,” more whispers, more torture, her voice is killing me. I deserve to die.

Sweet reminders of softness were all that he kept locked up in glass,

until the beauty with a beating heart would come in reminding him of his past.

I watch. I look as
Lettie pleads, sweat misting her forehead. Her nipples are so bright. I count the times her chest moves up and down with lust as she begs Caesar to break her heart.

One, two, three, four, five.

Her dark hair reminds me so much of Ophelia’s, and my cock instantly strains. I am confused, so confused as I watch this unfold before me. This is not a road I normally follow. Her lips are pink with life as they move with moans for more.

I find myself wanting her in this moment. I want to replace Caesar while he leads her to the bed, spreading her lively pink pussy apart, dripping wet from desire as he licks her. Her mouth opens in the perfect O as my eyes zero in on her hands.

They move. Dead and unconscious people don’t move. They can’t because they won’t leave me. Why do I want her? Why do I like this? I want to look away, but I am stuck as I watch her tiny hands clutch onto his hair as he eats her pussy. Her knuckles turn white.

White, grey, dead and gone.

A ferocious cacophony plays about in my mind as I pull between life and death. How can I want both? I can’t. I just can’t. I am a different breed of man. I know that and I have always known that but even this conflicts me. I swallow hard, knowing that I am stuck and unwilling to walk away from the dysfunction before me. Caesar climbs up her body, letting his rough hands dance on her bronze skin. She’s breathing and moving below him, responding to him, wanting him.

No one has wanted me before. They all leave. That is why I have to kill them. Fuck them and take little reminders to remember the moments of love I had, placing them in glass jars to capture them for eternity.

I push my hand to the bars, wanting to bust through and take his place, but I manage to stop myself. My hand releases the cold bar and drops to my hard cock pressing against my jeans. Its heat warms my hand before I slide it down to my hard cock outside of my pants. I slide it beneath my pants and touch myself. My eyes refuse to blink while I continue to take in the scene before me as the very much alive girl begs to be pleasured. Pleasured by a man that is sure to break her apart into a million pieces that will never be repaired again.

But I am no better. If I love, I kill.

Death. Simple, black loveliness.

The thought of life being sucked away from Lettie is too much as I watch Caesar pound his cock inside of her. I fist myself as a tornado of emotions rushes through me. My lungs constrict and my vision gets hazy. I refuse to part with it. It is who I am. Death is the only kind of assurance that I have. But Lettie seems different. I can’t allow myself to love her too. If I do, I will kill her and she will take up residence on a shelf like the rest, strands of her hair shining brightly with life. The only evidence of life that would remain.

I hear her cry out and my heart bursts. I fist myself harder as I let myself go. This isn’t supposed to happen to me. I don’t get attached to beating hearts. I hate life. I hate the emotions that come with life. At least with death there’s a disconnect. I am the one in charge. I love death because there is never a chance of fleeing.

I feel a lump forming in my throat knowing that what is unfolding before me is the perfect recipe for disaster. We are a distorted empire facing a fall full of lust-filled heartbreak and shattered hearts. Lies, mistrust, and betrayal are thick. Secrets. So many secrets and Lettie is at the root of it. I know her face. I can see it in my mind as I look back to Ophelia.

The jagged pieces fit together, but make no mistake. They will crumble apart soon enough and madness will be the result.