The Last Handful of Clover - Book 2: Gifts Both Light and Dark

2.07 The Note

September, 2003

"I never loved you. I never cared for you. You were just a hot piece of teenage ass, and I'm glad to be rid of you. Now get out."

It wasn't two minutes after Justin stormed out in tears, that Richard realized just how cruel, how sick, and how desperately untrue his words were. And how badly he must have hurt the boy. He was grateful that he'd turned his back on Justin as he spoke. If he'd seen the look on the boy's face, it might have burned him to the ground.

He wanted to rush out and stop Justin before he could race away in his car, but he was sure the boy was long gone by now. And he loathed himself so badly in that moment that he couldn't face anything or anyone. It was almost as if he was too ashamed to even show his face to the sun. So he went upstairs, where the sheets were still rumpled from their lovemaking that morning. He lay face down in them, trying to find Justin's scent. They were still moist from sweat and semen, but there was no way to differentiate Justin's musk from his own. So he just buried his face in the sheets and cried.

He spent most of the rest of that day alternating between depression and nausea. The intensity of his emotions had left Richard shocked and drained. But more than anything, it had left him confused.

He never expected that he had it in him to respond to Justin with such visceral hate, or that he could strike out at the boy the way he did. It was like he had been harboring some monster inside of him he had never even suspected. Justin was brilliant, but he was also young and emotionally immature. Richard had cut him absolutely no slack for that. How could he have treated the boy so viciously? What kind of human garbage was he?

Already he was trying to find a way to repair the damage. But he knew that right now would be the wrong time to apologize, or even to talk to the boy. The things he had said would likely poison any possibility of reconciliation for a very long time. Most likely, forever.

When he told me he was leaving, something inside of me broke. Why didn't I see it coming? And why couldn't I stop it?

Justin said he wasn't sure that he was gay.

The rumpled, semen-spotted sheets on which he lay, and the memory of Justin crying out in passion with Richard's hard cock deep inside him, made Richard want to laugh at that idea. But what if it were true? Orientation was different from behavior. People did things that were counter their orientation all the time—because they had to, because they were afraid, or to get something they wanted...

Or to try to please someone they cared for.

Maybe he had never really known Justin at all. Did the boy ever love him, or was it some kind of misplaced hero worship?

Richard pulled the sheets off the bed and stuffed them into the hamper. The bed looked barren, cold, and naked without them. The room felt as if someone had died there.

Richard might never know what had gone through Justin's mind. But he had to face the reality of what had happened in his own. He'd denied his own rancid possessiveness, pushing it down into the weeds at the bottom of his consciousness. But he really couldn't deny it now. He had fallen in love with Justin—not just casually, and certainly not in the way he'd slept with and dumped (or been dumped by) a score of men over the past fifteen years. Something in this lost, hungry, yearning, passionate boy had moved him. What right did an aging college professor have with someone so young, so innocent? He felt like he had defiled something sacred, to satisfy needs he didn't even understand.

A dozen times that evening Richard walked to the phone, picked it up, and tried to dial Justin's cell phone number. Sometimes he even made it to the third or fourth digit before slamming the phone back down.