15 July 1999

The easy laughter evaporated like morning mist, the once-effortless rapport splintering in the wake of Dexter's rash, wine-stained kiss. "God, I'm sorry. So sorry," he stammered, that familiar roguish grin faltering at the edges, a brittle mask for the confusion roiling beneath. A taut, loaded silence descended, the air heavy with unspoken truths and onrushing consequences.

You broke the quiet first, a tenuous note of resolve bracing your voice. "Dexter, there's something I have to tell you. I've... I've met someone." The words hung between you, sharp and irrevocable, cleaving a chasm through the comfortable intimacy of that cramped flat. You watched as he absorbed the blow, grappling to maintain a veneer of cavalier detachment even as anguish bled through the cracks. "You met someone?"

"His name is Jean-Pierre. He's French." Each syllable tasted bitter, acrid with the flavor of betrayal. Of shattered delusions and unacknowledged vows.

Dexter grasped vainly for his signature glibness, but it rang hollow, strained. "Well, that's...that's great. Really smashing." The raw hurt in his eyes belied the forced jauntiness in his tone. "I only wish you'd said something sooner."

"You just arrived today," you parried, an edge creeping into your voice, keen with the cumulative ache of years of careless slights and inattention.

His façade crumbled then, the jaunty mask slipping to reveal something raw and defenseless beneath. "I haven't stopped thinking about that night. Ever since it happened. About you and me." The admission was unvarnished, stripped of pretense.

In the hazy half-light of your Paris garret, the detritus of your shared past looming from every corner, Dexter seemed to come into sudden, sharp focus. The perennial man-child, so cavalier with others' affections, now confronted the aching irony of his plight. Of yearning helplessly for the one thing he'd never let himself reach for. Fear and longing warred across his face, desperation and regret etched in equal measure.