A Romp in the Park

It had started with a look, a look and a suddenly shared understanding that everything was about to change.

The cab driver looked at his watch for the umpteenth time, and sighed.
‘Just a few more minutes,’ I said. ‘I just need time to think.’
‘Whatever,’ said the driver, but the tension in the back of his neck suggested there wasn’t much patience left.
The house was out there, looking just the same as before: overgrown garden, second-hand looking front door, the blue paint flaking. Just a normal, sane family house - four years hadn’t been enough to change anything; maybe forty years wouldn’t be. But in the next forty minutes, or perhaps the next four minutes if my nerves calmed enough, I was going to blow it all into a hundred million pieces.

We’d avoided the whole thing for what felt like an impossibly long time. We both knew what revelation of our feelings meant for the future, that a small Southern town like ours could not practice the tolerance that our relationship craved; that family could never understand, or condone such a thing. But in the last days before I left for college, we both felt the tightness of time, the long stretch of lonely months getting closer and closer, and our commitment to doing nothing failed.

‘A few minutes can change everything,’ I said from the back of that taxi. ‘I should have left as soon as I knew.’
‘Don’t unload your problems on me, Bud,’ he said. ‘I’m just the cab driver. You pay me my money then go do whatever you came for.’
‘I will,’ I said. ‘I have to.’
It was the money, the three hundred dollars on the meter, which was just about all I had left in the world. Even my insanely hammering heart couldn’t argue with mathematics. During the journey here, the time spent waiting outside, that meter had been relentlessly clicking, clicking, clicking until now it was on the verge of clicking me beyond my means. I was a man on a tightrope, one end untying its knot, about to plunge me into something I did not want to contemplate.
‘I’m getting out now.’
‘Good.’
‘Here’s your money.’ My shaking fingers pulled out the notes. ‘Thanks for your time, and I’m sorry.’
The exertion of opening the door and stepping into the dying light of that day left me feeling like an old man. My legs trembled with weakness, my lungs felt oxygen deprived.
The taxi beeped once - either an unexpected gesture of support or a substitute for the middle finger - and was gone.
‘This is it, then.’
I opened the wooden gate and started up the path. Things smelt familiar.

In college, I had tried to forget, but her face was there whenever I closed my eyes, her smallness, her softness a ghost in my empty arms. And then the phone calls from home, and the questions.
‘Is everything okay?’ Pop asked again and again. ‘You never call. Seems like there’s something going on with you, Bud.’
‘Nothing Pop, everything’s fine. Really, everything’s fine.’
‘You know you can tell your Ma and me anything. Whatever it is, we’ll support you.’
Not this.

Now I was back, because if education had taught me anything, it was that you shouldn’t live a lie. Whatever the consequences, better to put everything on the table and then move on. Even if it meant you had to move on alone.
I had never noticed the walk up that path before. Back when life was not so complicated my attention had never dwelt on the journey between the gate and the front door. But now it felt like an impossible distance, and each step took me closer to something so dreadful that every inch of me felt on the verge of breakdown. The pseudo-fever of panic began to rush my face as I reached for the bell and pushed. The nausea of fear gripped my stomach as I heard an approach.
‘Bud! We thought you’d be back someday soon. Come on in.’
‘Pop…’
‘Ah… come on in. Whatever it is we can talk about it.’
‘I…I…’
I looked back, hoping that taxi was somehow still there. In a few moments I would probably need it. And then I could hear her coming, that soft pant, and I knew I couldn’t possibly see that face again with the secret still in my heart.
‘Pop, it’s about me and Lucky…’