What if he wasn't?

As soon as the door had closed behind Eddie, he knew he had made a mistake. He pressed his back against the door and leant his head back. He let out a soft groan and wiped his face.

He knew that his relationship with Buck was not the same he had ever had with anyone, never mind a man. He doesn’t have this kind of friendship with Bobby, and certainly not with Chimney. It wasn’t the first time he’d thought about it, but it was the first time he felt he probably should. He should figure out the feelings he had about his best friend, but he knew there was definitely something he should figure out before.

So, he allowed himself to think about Buck until he left his building. He was going to make a list of questions he needed to ask himself about Buck once he was sure about the other thing.

-Why is he happiest when the taller man is within arms reach of him?
-Why does he have this dull pain in his chest when thinking about their lives not being intertwined?
-Why does he find himself thinking about blue eyes and birthmarks as he tries to fall asleep each night?
-Why did the 17 seconds matter so much to him when everyone else only cared about the 3 minutes?

He pulled the glass door to exit Buck’s building, and keeping true to himself, he did not think about Buck (explicitly) for his walk home.

The fresh air hits him, and Eddie feels like he has forgotten how to use his lungs. A sharp pain hits his abdomen, and he thinks about maybe just forgetting this realisation he needs to have. There is a bar across the road. He could go and get drunk and forget that his brain is practically screaming at him.

You know why you can’t have sex with Marisol - it’s not because she’s a nun.

He’s put this off for too long.

Fuck, if his Catholic guilt re-emerged for the nun thing, it’s not going to back down for this.

His first pang of guilt comes when he thinks about Shannon. He shouldn’t feel guilty - his revelation would not affect her at all; she was dead. But still, part of him wanted to pretend there was something there other than friendship and the love he had for her being the mother of his child. But there wasn’t. He had already admitted to Bobby that if it weren’t for Chris, they probably wouldn’t have gotten married. He knows that even if she were still alive, they would be divorced. Shannon should not come into this. She had been his best friend for years. He thought about the conversations they had had when it was too late. She knew. She had to have known. So, why didn’t she tell him?

He crosses the road, a quarter of the way home, still not saying the words he thinks he wants to.

He goes to think about his parents, his childhood, and the religion which has made him so ashamed of everything he is, but the prick of tears in his eyes tells him that even with everything he will go through, this is too much too soon.

So he moves on. His next guilt comes from the next girl whose heart he broke with no real explanation. Ana. He should have focused his energy on the realisation when he had a panic attack at the idea of marrying this woman. On paper, she was perfect. Eddie knew what he was trying to admit to himself, but anyone could see that Ana was a beautiful woman. She was smart and funny and was so good with Chris. But it wasn’t enough. He had told her when they broke up that he should have told her earlier. She agreed. In some ways, he thought she had understood, but if she did, she never confirmed it. Eddie had the least guilt with Ana. Though he knew he had wasted months of her life, they had never taken that next step. Except for Christopher.

When thinking about Christopher, the stab in his chest was enough to make him stop in his tracks. Shit. Christopher. He couldn’t put Christopher through this. This was too selfish of a path to go down. He kept introducing people into Chris’s life only for them to leave. He grew to love them, rely on them, then suddenly it was him and his Dad again, and Eddie never had answers for him. It was going to happen again.

Marisol.

He didn’t know how his conversation with Marisol was going to go.

--

Eddie entered his house and walked around to see if Marisol was there. She wasn’t. A breath of relief stuck in his throat as the key turned in the door behind him.

“Marisol”

“Hi, I saw you weren’t here earlier, so I went for dinner with my brother.” She explained.

“Ah, how was that?”

“Good! How was Buck?” She asked, not daring to ask about Eddie.

“He was on a date”

“Oh?”

“Not tonight. The other day. When we saw him with Tommy”

“Ah”

“And I don’t know. It got me thinking”

Suddenly, he knew how this conversation would go.

“Do you want a drink?” He asked, walking to the kitchen to grab himself a beer.

Marisol was still standing by the front door, hand on her purse.

“I don’t know,” she admitted. “Am I staying?”

Eddie didn't answer. He simply leaned on top of the refrigerator door, looking through into the room Marisol was standing in.

“No, then, I won’t”, she replied, sitting softly on the couch.

Eddie cautiously joined her.

“I’m sorry. About the nun thing”, she said, adding the second part quickly.

“What?”

“I should have told you sooner. Just some people get really freaked out by it, and some people get too into it, you know? I get it if you’re freaked out.” She rambled.

“I am. I was freaked out. But I’m not anymore,” He said.

She smiled, a spark of hope in her eyes.

“But…”

“No”, she whispered, almost as if it was to herself.

“I’m so sorry. I know I’ve asked you to move in, but sometimes I get caught up in the moment and then think later on. And there’s something I need to think about.”

“What’s that?” She asked, but he seemed not to hear her.

“It’s something I’ve actually been avoiding for a while, and it’s not fair to keep going with this relationship while I figure that out.” He finished.

“What’s that?” She repeated.

“I-I… I can’t say it quite yet.”

“So why are you thinking it? Why now? What’s changed? Is it that I was a nun?” She shouted, standing up to show her frustration.

“No”

“Is it that we’ve moved in together? Is-is it me?” She asked, pacing.

“No, not at all!” He said honestly. He wished he could give Marisol everything she deserved.

“Then what is it? What could possibly have changed in the last 24 ho-...?”

It clicked.

“Buck was on a date with a man.” She said quietly, slumping back onto the couch.

Eddie looked at her with his eyes glazed with tears, a look that nobody could resist.

“Oh. oh”

Eddie started chewing his bottom lip so that he wouldn’t cry. Marisol leant forward and hugged him softly. Attempt failed. Suddenly, Eddie was sobbing on the shoulder of the woman he had just broken up with.

“I am so sorry, Marisol. I wish I could...”

“It’s okay.” She shushed him, hand on the back of Eddie's head.

After a few minutes of this, Eddie pulled away.

“I’ll come and get my stuff tomorrow while you’re at work,” Marisol said, sniffling. “I’ll leave my key when I go.”

Eddie nodded. Marisol stood.

“If there’s anything I can do”, Eddie croaked out.

“There is, actually” she replied cautiously, sitting on the edge of the coffee table across from Eddie, putting her hands in his.

“Anything”

“Say it.”

“Sorry?”

“Just admit it. Just to me.” She said, looking into his eyes.

“Nobody else ever has to know if you decide not to go through with this revelation. But I think it would be good for me, for both of us actually, if you said it out loud.”

“I-I-I…” he goes to say that he can’t. He isn’t ready yet, he doesn’t even know if that’s exactly true yet. But she’s right. At the very least, she’ll get some piece from it.

He’s still crying, he has snot running down his face, and his mouth is both wet from tears and extremely dry from the prospect of possibly getting to say it. Eddie doesn’t believe in the Universe. Obviously, he believes in the universe, but not the Universe- the entity that controls the things that we can’t. But still, the idea of putting those words out there fills him with dread. Fucking Catholic guilt. His eyes gloss over again, and in the smallest voice that a grown man has ever used, he manages to squeak out a tiny…

“I think I might be gay”

Marisol smiled slightly, stood and kissed him on the top of the head. She walked to the door, picked up her purse and said.

“Buena suerte, Edmundo”

And then she was gone, leaving him with the conversation, the words he had said, lingering in the air.

He sobbed in a way he hadn’t in years. He cried until no tears came, screamed until no sound came out. He punched the pillows and threw his beer across the room. He knew there was no rational reaction to this, so he didn’t feel bad that his reaction was this horrific. He knew he would need to clean this up, but this was something he would have to do tomorrow. He was angry with himself. He knew so much but couldn’t admit that he knew this other thing about himself. It had made so much sense - had been staring him in the face, and now he was allowing himself to feel it, he didn’t want to. This was going to be a long process of hatred and denial, and he knew that at 32 years of age, he was decades behind (another thing that angered him). But the truth was out there, even if it was an almost silent whisper into a room where only the woman whose heart he had just shattered had the opportunity to hear it. It was out there.