A loud bang, but not a gunshot.
A table was on the floor. A lamp had fallen and the lightbulb inside had shattered. Just like Leon's heart.
In his anger, he picked up a wooden chair and threw it onto the ground. Another bang. He was cussing and crying and how dare he. How dare he think of love, how dare he how dare he, how dare he take off into the night and how dare he never say a word to him again! Who did he think he was?
"A fool," Leon sobbed, staring at the mess he had made and the broken chair leg. "I'm a fool."
The month had been terrible. Cold winds, cold rain, cold snow, and cold hearts, too, it seemed. Leon bent over and picked up his journal, his thumb running over the edges of the pages, but not daring to flick through them. He didn't want to see the memories in print, not right now. Already, his shaken handwriting and tear drops had stained the pages, but now they were just wet on his face. What a gross mess he was, what a fool. What a fool he was, to think that somebody might have liked him, somebody other than Nicholas. A fucking fool, a fucking idiot. Elliot had always told him that he wasn't interested in the long term. "What would we do? Get married?" he had asked.
"We could pretend," Leon had suggested. He had been so hopeful, so giddy with his new found crush. Well, Elliot hadn't exactly been new. Leon had stared and watched and admired him from his usual booth at the diner, but his heart had soared when Elliot expressed affections in return. Oh, how his journal had been filled with small, happy thoughts and long ramblings. Those pages were torn out, shredded and burned in the fireplace. Fuck memories, fuck feeling. He was an idiot to believe he could have changed Elliot into something more stable. That's what he got with wishing for a rock, he got the wind.
A false sense of hope that the cook would return before his birthday, before he turned thirty-three. It didn't happen. Instead, Elliot had been replaced, and Leon no longer found it in himself to sit at the booth and hope and wait. The day before, the day of, the day after his birthday, Leon had soaked his bones and guts with alcohol. Oh, he had thrown it up with his emotions. He had hated every fiber in his body that allowed him to be so child-like, so enamored. Leon had tried to flush the sadness away, but it wasn't until he had depleted his stock of wine and vodka and Smokey's best-selling liquor that he had laid on the couch and sobbed and forced the angst out.
Now, now he was just angry. Calmer, but still angry. Calm enough to upright the table and place the lamp into its proper position. The chair was moved to the door, and the lightbulb was thrown into the garbage. He just hadn't imagined that the emotion he did show would have driven a man out of town. It was his fault, of course, what else could it have been? It was his fault, too, for projecting the love he had given to Nicholas onto Elliot. Maybe, he thought, all this has been for Nick, too.
