Drew was helpless and being consumed by burning, amber flames.
My skin felt hot. I didn't know if I could live with this guilt but what choice did I really have? To live with a lie or to lose the love of my life? Drew sighed in his sleep, it was more than I could bear.
The words were on the tip of my tongue -- I desperately wanted to wake him and tell him, to confess, to cleanse the guilt .
"Drew, it wasn't Greg that sent the photos to the magazine. It was me. I saw him taking those pictures, I couldn't think straight, it felt like a knife stabbing me in the heart -- I have no other excuse than pure white-hot jealousy. An all consuming jealousy! I love you so much!"
It's so funny. We hurt those people we love most on this earth. It would have been so simple to just tell him but I couldn't. I had no feeling for Greg Shamus. I didn't care if he took the blame.
I do hate him. And he was the reason I sent the pictures. If those photos didn't exist-- this would have never happened. The only thing to do now was to try to keep Drew and Greg away from each other.
I gently pulled my beautiful, sleeping man into my arms. So simple, so sweet, so childlike. I didn't deserve what I had.
"I don't deserve him." I told Mark Fitzgerald.
I was standing in the alcove of his house in Malibu. It was dawn, I'd left Drew asleep at home by the fire and driven up the coast. It wasn't my intention to go here, I just drove and drove, needing to hear the ocean. I found myself at his place-- and the sun was just coming up.
I went in and he made coffee.
We were sitting out on his terrace, the ocean beneath us. He looked at me, making me feel strange that I'd wound up here.
Then Mark startled me with "Nobody deserves anything. You take -- what you want."
I'd never heard anyone sound so defiant. So damaged. Suddenly, I wanted out. I wanted away from this man.
I got up to go. He said "what are you doing here, Eric? What is it about me that you can't keep away from?"
"I have no idea," I snapped back. His personality seemed to have changed instantly -- he was cocky, cold, and almost mean. "Thanks for the coffee."
"Any time. You'll come again, won't you, Eric?"
I gave him a look of "oh, yeah sure" and left.
In my car back to West Hollywood, I realized how bizarre it was that I'd driven to Mark's house at the crack of dawn. What would Drew have thought if he'd seen me-- but more than that, what did this mean? What did I want from Mark Fitzgerald?
I made a promise not to see him again. A promise that deep inside, I wondered if I would be able to keep.
