Brian remembered that summer, the last before that September day when everything had turned upside down. It was the first summer he had spent all alone and away from home. Three months of only breathing and eating music and he remembered how he had almost managed to break something when finally his mother had given him permission to go there. She had been excited for him, as always. 

Only when he found himself surrounded by her memories, in that odious and oh so painful process of deciding what to keep and what to leave, he had discovered that the enthusiastic smile of his mother, that distant day, was hiding something else: that vacation they had never done because she had never mentioned it to him. She had given it up only to let him realize his dream. 

The lights of a solitary New York walked beside him, a comfort that held the same feeling of multiple stabs straight to the soul. Soon, it would be Christmas and it looked like another cruel irony: feeling so happy that it seemed like walking on clouds as the Christmas spirit flowed in your veins side by side the blood. Instead, there he was, walking in the streets wrapped in a cloak cold, as every and single thought broke another piece of his heart. What was the right thing to do? 

Let Nick commit this mistake, this huge and big mistake, and hope that he wouldn’t regret it in the future? Let that secret crept between them, cementing its roots in the years and then explode when none of them would be ready to protect themselves? How could he pretend that nothing had happened, how could he act as he didn’t know that Nick had given up on something so big and important only because he had no one else but him in his life? 

It had always been like that, he was used to being alone and yes, it would be so hard to be, live and keep going on six months without Nick. But he could do it, even if it hurt just thinking about it. No, instead Nick had simply decided that he was so weak that he didn’t even deserve to know about it. Not even discuss it. Even if he knew that maybe his words would have been thrown to the wind because Nick was so stubborn that he would be able to say that it wasn’t his dream going to Europe and that was the reason why he had said no. 

Brian stopped at the traffic light, red as the anger that was burning inside him. He wanted to be selfish, keep what belonged to him and left empty those moral doubts that crowded his mind and soul. At the same time, he wished that Nick would had been selfish because he didn’t want to see him give up on that occasion that, if there hadn’t been for the two of them, he would have jumped at, without hesitation. 

If they had never been a couple.

If he hadn’t been there. 

That was the focal point, he was the pivot around which Nick was now deciding on his life. And maybe it was true, maybe love could be so powerful that it could completely changed you and the person you’ve always been because it required to think about the consequences that your actions could have on the other. But love shouldn’t ever stop you from achieving something, as if it were a sin to have dreams that belonged to a period where two people didn’t even meet. 

In front of the doorway, where a Santa Claus had been hung on the door and smiled at him, Brian blinked back the tears. The decision had already been taken and that night would be the last happy he would ever spend again.

**** 

The ticking of the clock chanted with unrelenting cruelty as the hours passed. 

One a.m., two a.m., three a.m. 

It was not a real ticking since the alarm clock was a digital one but Brian felt the invisible hands take into account that the night was slowly fading. Foolishly, he wanted that it could last forever. He was ready and would accept to live forever without seeing the light of the sun if only it would mean to be able to stay like that, with Nick curled up against him, and the illusion that they were living a dream without end. 

Those were the last hours that he would and could spent with his boyfriend, the last hours when he could touch him and repeat to himself and to fate that Nick belonged to him, as much as he belonged to Nick. Sleep had never lured him, it didn’t even tried seeing how his mind and soul both knew that those were the last moments of happiness they would ever taste, live and be able to touch. 

Nick slept peacefully, unaware of the storm that was waiting for him when he would wake up. Brian wanted to never wake him up again, he wanted to whisper him to stay in that world where no suffering could reach him, surrounded by all those pictures that they had created together. 

He wasn’t allowed to have that privilege. He deserved and earned the remorse, the guilt and the knowledge that, even though it hurt almost as if someone was ripping in half, it was the only possible solution. He earned to pray that the sun should never rise and that time could magically stop, leaving them in a bubble so that he could impress on his soul as much details as possible:  breathing in the scent and make it his own as it became more precious than the oxygen he needed to live;  moving his fingers through Nick’s hair,  that hair that was Nick’s pride and that he cured in a maniac way and remembering how many times he had hidden the face inside, those moments when everything seemed out of control and the only thing that seemed to make sense was him. It was Nick. 

His eyes travelled down, alighting on his lips. He lowered his face just enough to touch them quickly, trying to wrap their flavor in a corner inside his mind. In the morning, they tasted of coffee and toothpaste because although Nick loved the bitter smell he couldn’t bear to have it all morning. Sometimes, they tasted of him. And other times, they tasted of Nick and that was a flavor that he could never be satiated of. 

Brian loved every part of that body, like those arms that had always enveloped him in a hug whenever he had needed one or even when he didn’t need it, as if only through his body Nick could tell and express how much he loved him. 

The tip of the index had cherished all over Nick’s skin, reaching up to the little musical note that Nick had tattooed a few weeks before, there on the left on his chest. 

"Why the note?" He had asked him.

"It's you. Since we're together, when I think of music, I think of you. " It had been Nick's answer. 

Four a.m. Five a.m. Six a.m. 

The dawn began to peep through the window. Brian was still awake, his head resting on Nick's body, fingers intertwined with those of the boy.

For the last time.