“I didn’t grow up in a time or place where it was okay to be gay,” he starts, sitting on one of the stools by the front window. “I didn’t even know the word for it then—I just knew that if there was a word, I could never, ever use it, because people got killed for being what I was. So every time I felt something for another guy, I ripped it out and buried it. One chunk at a time, I created this huge void inside of me, and it hurt, and I hated myself.

“And then one day … Jude showed up.” He gives his lucky necklace an instinctive tug. “It was the first time another guy had looked at me the way I looked at other guys. It was like … I’d been living in a house with a locked door, and then one day I found the key and discovered my house was twice as big as I’d thought it was.” Gunnar shakes his head. “That doesn’t even begin to describe it. All the parts I’d torn out of myself? The first time Jude touched me, they slammed back into place and I felt complete for the first time in my life.”

“Very romantic,” I offer around a mouthful of food, because I can’t tell what this has to do with all the lying and dying stuff yet.

“It wasn’t romantic,” Gunnar returns somberly. “It was … scary. I’d only been living half a life for sixteen years, suppressing something that I couldn’t deal with. And when I couldn’t do that anymore, I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t even know who I was. Do you understand what I mean?”

“I think so. Maybe.” I put the pasta down. The truth is, I’m not sure I do understand. I know what it’s like to be lonely, but that’s not the same as being lonely and having to pretend to be something I’m not at the same time. When I figured out I was gay, I didn’t stay in the closet for long, because I knew my parents would accept me.

“Suddenly I had all these feelings, and no practice for how to handle them. And then Jude told me he had to leave, and I just … I broke down, because him leaving meant ripping everything back out again, going back to the way it had been, and I just, I couldn’t.” He looks up at me, twisting his necklace like he intends to strangle himself. “Once I knew what it felt like to feel, how could I stop? How could I go back into hiding and just … waiting to die? So I begged him to Turn me, to let me go with him.”

Much of this story is still caught in my memory as well. “And he said yes.”