I want a life with him.

Why can’t he let me go

To live a miserable existence alone?

I want to love him forever

And he wants me to get him off tonight

From a thousand miles away.

Another tragic fairytale.

22

I don’t love him anymore.

I can’t explain why,

There is no reason.

One day I’m in the blazing light of love,

The next I’m groping in the dark,

Wondering what happened.

Apathy.

It is the worst state one can reside in.

He hates me now, of course.

That’s the worst part.

I want to explain that it’s really not him.

It’s me. It’s always me.

But trite remarks get me nowhere.

Well intended and the truth.

But in the state of apathy they

Count for nothing.

So here I am again.

Groping around in the dark.

Xander & Hephaestion

“I CAN feel myself dying,” Xander moaned as he squeezed one of the Persian pillows closer into his chest on the double king bed. The richly decorated Italian style bedroom had once belonged to Gianni Versace and was where the famous fashion designer had spent his last days and nights, in the Versace Mansion, before a spurned lover shot him on the front steps of his own home on Ocean Drive.

“You’re not dying,” Xander’s assistant assured him as she pushed her raven hair back over the shoulder of her white silk blouse and stooped over to pour coffee. “But you may wish to get up and join the living. It’s nearly three in the afternoon. At least join me by the pool for something to eat.”

“I can’t eat, Catharine. And I am dying. I can feel it. More cells are dying every day—they’re taking over.”

“So fight it. Don’t let them win,” Catharine encouraged him as she lay back on the blue velvet chaise lounge adorned with gold lion heads across the room from the massive bed. She pushed off her heels and let them drop loudly on the mosaic marble floor. There was empathy in her words but also a hint of something else: exasperation. “Xander, I know this has been difficult, we all know that, but we’re waiting for you. We need direction.”

“It doesn’t matter now. None of that matters.” Xander turned his face away from the white light of the Miami sun streaming into the opulent bedroom and burrowed deeper into the bed that could comfortably sleep twenty grown men. “You know the company as well as I do, tell everyone what they need to hear.”

Catharine tapped her fingernails against her coffee cup and sighed. “We’ve been in Miami for two weeks, and you haven’t left this room. How long are we staying here?”

“I don’t know.”