It’s a matter of discreetly passing the cigarette in a small balcony, which can barely fit two. His dark eyes close when he inhales and then open with the smoke. I let out a small laugh, which holds no meaning. There’s a bunch of words, a bunch of mumbo jumbo which anyone would say with the legs intertwined and semen sticking like glue between two men. It’s funny how sex starts whenever I think of him. We’ve been doing it a while now, he’s always on my mind.

“What are you laughing at?” He asks me, grinning, showcasing his teeth and I wish I was as hot as he is. But it’s not that he’s unaware, he plays it to his advantage and somehow I was a card that he had chosen to play. I was falling, falling, falling.

I shake my head, motioning with my hand that it’s nothing and we both grin. It feels like an outtake of Weekend, but then that’s because the movie was too painfully realistic for it’s own good. It was sweet to see it with my husband, holding hands in a theatrical cinema. I scattered the ash down, wondering if it would reach the sweat of the bears which were frankly going to bareback someone tonight, something not far from what we’ve been doing.

Speaking of my husband Ian, I looked behind me, as if expecting the phone to vibrate or light up. Wes, just looked away, a topic he didn’t enjoy. He wasn’t one to sleep alone every night, but there was an aura of loneliness around him. He would’ve been a Murakami character if he wanted to, lonely and desperate for love. But then Murakami only wrote about the Japanese.

Someone whistled from the other balcony, after all both me and him were smoking outside naked and the potted plants weren’t ones to shield our modern modesty. Was there even such a thing among modesty?

I finally heard the phone vibrate, but it was some Grindr notification for Wes. One small vibration.

I couldn’t heal his loneliness or his desire to be loved, he was insatiable and there was some bonds which couldn’t be broken and we just stared at each other in the eyes, knowing that we’ve been trapped in a waltz which we’ve been dancing and the music had stopped far too long ago for us to stop being ridiculous.

But what does love change, when it can’t cure loneliness?

Eventually Wes lit another cigarette, now in the room, looking at the ceiling with it’s posters of gigs and men he’s jerked off to, growing up. It had it’s benefits to inherit something like his apartment and he swore that if he were to put said posters on the wall they would have semen traces. I wasn’t convinced that jizz hadn’t reached the short ceilings, but I kept that to myself.

I called Ian. He was in a bar. Probably picking up some girls, maybe being childhood sweethearts wasn’t the best thing and I had been the only man he ever was and ever will be, he had told me. Yet, there he was, cruising, only for girls. Something he just began to taste and stir, like an old whiskey, gently letting the taste indulge itself in his mouth. I heard the music and we both hang up, as if knowing what we were doing and somehow judging the other.

It wasn’t that we had grown apart, we had unglued ourselves. It was like ripping off a band-aid, painful, sudden and fucking bloody. We discussed to not mention our endeavours and I would come back to him, but either of us would fall asleep on the sofa as if to avoid the mammoth in the room, that’s how old our elephant had become.

It wasn’t even that we got cold feet after we got married, it was something lurking in the back of our heads. Maybe there was something to marrying at twenty, which we had missed as a memo. There felt sudden responsibility that we couldn’t even take care of a dog and we had drifted. That was what fears were made of.

But I shook my head, as if to shake off the thoughts and the weight of my separated marriage. But then were we really separated, when we would still talk and there seemed to be some sort of light at the end of the tunnel?

I looked at Wes again. It felt like looking at an open book, I could see all of his insecurities, how he had held his posture as if he were an artist’s muse to draw, that there was too much hurt and pain holding him back. We held hands for a while and lit a third cigarette eventually.

“What’s holding you back, Ewan?” He asked me softly, now laying on the bed and looking at me through hooded eyes. Somehow it felt like a question addressing me and Ian. But it could’ve been taken either way, as he sat up and took the cigarette from me gently. He blew the smoke out of his mouth and kissed me.

Maybe it was about how enamoured I was with Wes. I wasn’t sure. He didn’t want to define anything and the more time went on, the more we slept the more it ached, the more my heart felt heavy for cheating and falling in love with another man.

“You know I love you.” And Wes rolls away, cigarette in hand still. I didn’t understand how someone who knew that would run away from something so obvious, yet there it was, in front of me in the shape of a beautiful man who I had met on Grindr, heartbroken by my husband that things weren’t working out for either of us.

Maybe it was time for me to leave, because I had no idea how to juggle two men, who had grown distant to me and who made my heart sink like an anchor.

I had loved them both. I loved them both.

I couldn’t even differ anymore who I missed, who I loved and who did my heart ache so much for so. Why couldn’t I say the words to either of them, to one it would be please come back, while to the other, who stayed would be that I did indeed love him, like he had suspected and feared. But his actions contradicted himself and he seemed to be arching away, as if I were thrusting deep in him, clutching the covers.

I knew it was more sex when we held each other, but there was so much fear in him.

Maybe our love was our poison in the end, nothing tender, burning us away like oxygen. Didn’t matter if it was with a lover or with a husband. It was a waltz where we would switch partners far too often and I would always end up with the same men, maybe in a different shell, but I still fell for the same type of two, as if we were always destined to be broken in fragments. As if we were always meant to be in love, holding hands separately and looking around, wondering how long would it take for the clouds to clear, exposing an icy sun in the winter.

“I love you.” Was easier to be written than said, Wes closed his eyes and I ran a hand through his short hair, feeling the small amounts of gel and he just opened his eyes again, nodding, fixing at a point next to the balcony, smoking silently.

It wasn’t the first time he had expected this and it was leading to this. We had started making love, so it was no surprise that I would’ve confessed sooner or later. But my heart was heavy, just like Wes’. I kept running my fingers through his hair and he cried, barely voicing his pain or tears, just silently letting the tears drip and soon enough the cigarette was gone and I held him in my arms. Maybe a confession was the hardest cross to bear when you couldn’t reciprocate?

I thought of my husband.

I couldn’t think of my husband.

I called him again, while holding Wes tight to me, as if my lover would disappear. Wes would hear everything and he stopped crying, looking at me staring at the screen while Ian picked up the phone.

And I spoke of it all.

How love is not eternal.

But I want to see it to the end, regardless-

No matter how many days we had left, even if it meant-

To inhale and exhale.