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He sends messages he rarely gets answers to. He’s insistent but not overbearing, which is the key to communicating with Colin, he’s learnt. For all the force of nature and charisma he is in interviews and on stage and before the camera, Colin’s chest is still too small to hold all of his innumerable insecurities. Bradley isn’t overbearing because that would mean overstepping one of Colin’s many invisible barriers, and he’s insistent because if he weren’t, Colin would reach the conclusion Bradley doesn’t want to have anything to do with him anymore.
Yes, sometimes Colin is surprisingly daft like that.
So Bradley writes—message upon message with healthy intervals inbetween, and on ten messages, he gets two texts back, three if he’s lucky. Enough to still be friends or acquaintances at worst, but too little for what Bradley seeks. Wants. Needs.
He doesn’t hold it against Colin. Colin had told him the odds, straight-forward and excruciatingly honest, at the beginning of this thing. Five years ago. And Bradley had thrown himself into it against all reasoning—had seen the sea’s tempest, roaring and terrifying, and had disembarked still, because the sea was the colour of Colin’s eyes, and instead of observing it lie still and pale and distanced Bradley wanted it all, wanted to be in the thick of it, wanted to have it the way it was. Still does. Because it’s Colin Cols.
The night he receives his first unprompted text message—after seven months and eighteen days of one-sided silence—he is unsurprised when the bell rings three minutes later and he sees Colin standing there. They don’t speak—they’ve spoken too much already—but their bodies do, twining together like the flower and the stem, one for growth, one for blossoming, growing, together only, into the sun’s direction. They meld together back into one like they were once, made from the same lump of clay as they have been.
It’s the sea of Colin coming alive again in Bradley’s veins, the ebb receding, the tide prevailing, and Bradley’s never felt more alive than this, the want of Colin’s lips on his as natural as the want to breathe.
It subsides, eventually, as it always does: and the forever-heartache slides back into the mould Bradley’s made for it, bitter and lonely and angry, but never resentful. Never resentful because it’s Bradley himself who shoves it aside, again, again, again, and sinks to his knees on the shore, bare, prostrating himself before the calm sea (so still and pale and distanced) and waiting for it to wash over him, pulling him under.
I am not over you, can I get back under?