“Fuck! Fuck! What are you doing? What are you fucking doing?”

And he was crying. Conner never cries. He’s never had a reason to.

He was scared, breathing hard.

I could feel his mouth on the side of my neck as he gasped and grunted. With one arm wrapped beneath my armpit, he squeezed me so tightly against his chest, and tried to hold me up off the floor so he could make enough slack to unknot the noose.

Leave me alone, Conner.

When the knots began to come off, the pain spread up and down from where the noose had been tied. It felt like my head was filled with needles, and now they were all rushing down through my neck. I tried to push him away from me, but my arms flopped heavily like soggy mop yarn. Once Conner pulled the noose over my head, he had to catch me as I collapsed, unbound, into him.

Then I was aware of the wetness on his face. Crying, struggling to pull me out of the closet, Conner carried me across the room, and I began to black out again.

Leave me alone.

“What are you thinking, man? What did you do this for? Why? Why?”

Conner shook me with every word, as though his punctuation would snap the life awake inside me.

Then I was down. He laid me on my bed and drunkenly tumbled on top of me. He was heavy and out of breath, dripping from the shower, and he pushed himself up. I felt him lift my feet, pulling the sheets out from the side of the bed so he could cover me. I knew my eyes were open, but everything looked purple and dark, out of focus, like Conner was just a big shadow hovering over me.

“You fucking asshole. Why are you doing this to me?”

He grasped my jaw and shook my face.

It started coming back then. The room began to grow lighter, as though the eye of some great pale sun were opening up above us.

Why couldn’t he just leave me alone?

Five seconds.

Conner had one of his hands on top of my head; his fingers rubbed my hair, and he pressed the side of his face against my chest, listening. And I could feel how his breaths came short and spastic from the crying.

“You better fucking breathe, asshole.”

I inhaled.

“I don’t want to go back.”

My voice was a dry croak.

“I’m sorry, Conner.”

He straightened up, kneeling beside the bed where I lay naked like an unclaimed mortuary cadaver, drained and numb, twisted in the sheets and covers. Conner grabbed my face in his hands and wiped the wetness from my eyes with his thumbs.

I wasn’t even aware that I’d been crying.

Maybe it was something else, because like Conner, Jack doesn’t do that, either.

Then he kissed my forehead.

“You dumb fuck, Jack.”

Conner stood, grunting. He didn’t need to say anything else; I could feel how he seethed with anger, spinning around, looking for something that might give him a clue as to how we’d get out of this now.

This is it, after all.

We are home.

At that moment, I was so sorry for hurting him. I knew it was the worst thing I’d ever done, and I kept thinking about those five goddamned seconds.

It had to have been Seth.

He made Conner find me.

“I’m calling the fucking cops.”

It was like an electric shock. Freddie’s stun gun again. I felt every disconnected muscle in my body contract when he said it.

I tried to sit up. “No. Please don’t do that, Con!”

He paced the floor like an animal in a cage. He stopped at his bed, looked down at the note I’d left. Of course he knew what was inside the two small bundles.

“Is that what it’s about?” he said. He picked up the socks and underwear I’d used to hide the Marbury lenses from everyone. He cocked his arm back like he was going to throw them against the wall.

“Don’t!”

He stopped himself.

Conner knew what would happen if he did it.

He dropped my little gifts to him on the bed.

And then I said it.

“I’d rather die than go back again, Con.”

“I’m calling a fucking ambulance, Jack. I can’t take this shit.”

He went to the desk and picked up the handset for our room’s phone.

“Conner, please don’t do that.”

I swung my feet around onto the floor. I thought I could stand up, try to stop him, but my head pounded so hard it felt like I was going to explode.

Conner inhaled deeply, closed his eyes, and hung up the phone. Then he wheeled a desk chair across the floor and sat down in front of me with his hands clasped between his knees, just watching me, waiting for me to fix things.

“What am I going to do with you?” he said.

“I don’t know.”

He smeared his forearm across his eyes.

“I would die without you, Jack.”

“No, you wouldn’t.”

“You’re full of shit!” Conner’s voice shook. “You’re not the only one who gets hurt in this world! You’re not the only one who fucks things up and then has to fix them! Stop being so goddamned selfish for once!”

He was right.

“I … Shit, Conner.”

He exhaled and loosened his shoulders, slumped back in the chair. “Dude, if you want to stay, I’ll stay with you.”

I lay on my back, shivering and staring up at the creamy blankness of the hotel room’s ceiling.

“I’m afraid if one of us goes back to Marbury, we’ll all end up getting sucked into it again, Con. And I…”

Conner rubbed his hands together and shook his head. He sniffled loudly. I could hear all the wet snot that bubbled in his nose.

“What about Ben and Griff?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know what to do anymore, Con.”

And so he just sat there and watched me for several long and silent minutes until I rolled onto my side and pulled the sheets up around my shoulders.

It was so cold.

Conner got up and put the wadded-up lenses back inside my bag. He zipped it shut and placed it on top of his bed.

He turned out the lights, and then Conner lay down beside me.

He was still crying.

I felt so bad.

Conner got under the covers and slid his arm around me. He put his hand flat on the coldness of my naked belly, so his face was pressed tightly against the back of my neck.

He whispered, “I’m not ever going to let you leave, Jack.”

*   *   *

I could lie and say that sleeping next to Conner wasn’t sexual at all, even though we didn’t actually do anything. But feeling him beside me was good, genuinely safe, and neither of us was ashamed of it.

For the first time in my life, it was like nothing could ever make me afraid again.

And I’m not scared to admit that it felt safer and closer than lying naked in bed with Nickie.

In the morning, we were awakened by an embarrassed housekeeper who walked into our room and quickly offered pleading apologies as she backed into the hallway.

I groaned. “That is totally fucked up.”

Conner still had his arms around me. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah. I’ll be all right. I’m sorry, Con.”

“For what?”

“Nothing.”

Conner pressed closer into me, like he was covering me against something poisonous. “Let’s just stay here for, like, ten more minutes, okay?”

“Okay.”

And more than an hour later, it was nearly noon when we got out of bed and put our clothes on, silent and awkward, nervously avoiding each other’s eyes.

*   *   *

Outside, the air was so cold and heavy.

Feeling it was an amazing thing to me.

To feel.

I walked in a fog as thick and stubborn as the cover of leaden clouds that pressed down on us from above. I couldn’t stop myself from wondering about everything.

Everything.

And how every day begins the same way.

This is it.

Maybe we were still drunk, I reasoned.

Maybe this was just another not-world.

I kept my eyes down and studied the backs of Conner’s sneakers, the faded upturn of the slight cuff on his Levi’s as he walked in front of me. He led me along the slate-gray sidewalk on Marylebone Road in the direction of the Great Portland Street Underground.