The Gallery of Broken Things

The silence that followed James’s retreat was a living thing. It coiled through the apartment, thick and accusatory, pressing in on Adamson from all sides. He stood frozen in the dark living room for what felt like an eternity, the images of wolves and caribou still playing out their silent drama on the screen. The thrill of the speakeasy, the warmth of Liam’s attention, had evaporated, leaving behind only the cold, metallic taste of shame.

He didn’t go to the bedroom. He couldn’t face the turned back, the rigid line of James’s body under the covers. Instead, he spent a second night on the sofa, the afghan offering no real comfort. He drifted in and out of a fitful sleep, haunted by dreams of James’s hurt eyes and the sound of Liam’s easy laugh.

When he woke, the apartment was filled with the clear, unforgiving light of Sunday morning. He was alone. The door to the bedroom was open, the bed neatly made with military precision. There was no note on the fridge. No smell of bacon.

The emptiness was a verdict.

He moved through the rooms like a ghost, the events of the previous night replaying in a relentless loop. He knows. He knows something. The certainty of it was a cold knot in his stomach. The fragile détente they’d maintained for months had shattered, and he was the one who had swung the hammer.

His phone, the catalyst of it all, buzzed on the coffee table. He flinched.

Liam (Work): Thinking about last night. A lot. Hope I didn’t overstep.

Adamson stared at the message. Overstep. It was such a gentle, careful word for what was happening. It implied there was a line, and that perhaps they were just toeing it, not that Adamson had already vaulted over it and was sprinting away from his marriage.

He didn’t reply. He couldn’t. Deleting the message felt like a confession, and answering it felt like a commitment to a path he was suddenly terrified to walk.

The day stretched before him, an endless, arid landscape of guilt and anticipation. He tried to work, opening his laptop on the kitchen island, but the spreadsheets and emails blurred into meaningless symbols. Every sound from the hallway—the ding of the elevator, the footsteps of a neighbor—made his heart leap into his throat. Was it James? What would he say? What would he say?

But James didn’t come home.

As the afternoon light began to fade, casting long, melancholy shadows across the polished concrete, the anxiety curdled into a strange, desperate resolve. He had to fix this. He couldn’t live in this silent warzone. He had to talk to James, to explain… though he had no idea what he could possibly say.

He picked up his phone, his thumb hovering over James’s name. He typed out a message, deleted it, typed another.

Adamson: Are you coming home? We should talk.

He held his breath after hitting send. The seconds ticked by. One minute. Two. Then, the three dots appeared, blinking like a heartbeat. Relief, sharp and painful, flooded through him.

James: I’m at the AGO. The new photography exhibit. Meet me here.

The Art Gallery of Ontario. It was their place. Or, it had been. It was where they’d had their first real date, wandering through the halls, arguing playfully about modernism versus post-modernism, their hands brushing against each other in the dimly lit rooms. James had kissed him for the first time in the shadow of a Henry Moore sculpture, his lips soft and sure.

It was a peace offering. More than that—it was a memory, a callback to who they were before the silence, before the distance, before Liam. It was James trying to find a way back.

Adamson’s hands trembled as he grabbed his jacket. This was it. This was the chance to end this before it truly began. He would go to the gallery, he would look James in the eye, and he would… he would…

He didn’t know what he would do. But he would try.

The drive was a blur. He walked into the grand, echoing space of the gallery, the hushed reverence of the patrons feeling both familiar and alien. He found him in the photography exhibit, standing before a large, black-and-white print of a dilapidated farmhouse, its windows like empty eye sockets.

James looked… softer. The sharp edges of his anger from the night before seemed to have been sanded down by the quiet beauty of the art. He turned as Adamson approached, and for a fleeting second, Adamson saw a glimpse of the young man he’d fallen in love with—vulnerable, hopeful.

“You came,” James said, his voice quiet, meant for the sacred space.

“You asked me to,” Adamson replied, stopping beside him. They stood shoulder to shoulder, not touching, both staring at the image of decay and loss.

“I needed to get out of the apartment,” James admitted. “I needed to remember that there are still beautiful, complicated things in the world.”

They began to walk slowly through the exhibit, a silent, shared pilgrimage. They didn’t speak for a long time, simply absorbing the images: a child’s laughter caught in mid-air, the profound wrinkles on an old woman’s face, a storm brewing over a vast, empty plain.

“I’m sorry,” James said finally, his voice so low Adamson almost didn’t hear it. They were standing before a photo of two hands, clasped tightly together, the knuckles white with intensity.

Adamson’s breath caught. “For what?”

“For the quiet,” James said, turning to look at him. His eyes were glistening. “For getting lost in my work. For assuming you’d always just be there. I… I felt you pulling away, and instead of pulling you back, I just built my walls higher. I’m sorry.”

The apology was so unexpected, so utterly generous, that it shattered Adamson completely. Here was James, the wounded party, offering an olive branch for crimes he didn’t even know Adamson had committed. The guilt was a physical pain, a knife twisting in his gut. This was his moment. This was the opening to come clean, to beg for forgiveness, to grab this lifeline his husband was throwing him.

He opened his mouth, the words of confession on his tongue.

His phone buzzed in his pocket.

Once. Twice. A third time. Someone was calling.

James’s eyes flickered down to Adamson’s jacket pocket, and the fragile, hopeful light in them dimmed, replaced by a weary resignation. He knew. He didn’t know the details, but he knew the significance of a call on a Sunday afternoon that Adamson felt the need to ignore.

“You should get that,” James said, his voice flat again, the moment of connection broken. “It might be important.”

“It’s not,” Adamson said quickly, desperately.

“It might be.” James turned away from him, back to the photograph of the clasped hands. His own hands were shoved deep into the pockets of his coat. “You should take it. I’ll be here.”

It was a dismissal. A test.

Feeling like he was moving through a nightmare, Adamson fumbled for his phone. He didn’t even look at the screen. He just answered, turning and walking quickly around the corner into an empty, connecting gallery.

“Hello?” he whispered, his voice strained.

“Ads? Hey.” It was Liam. He sounded bright, cheerful, utterly oblivious to the tectonic plates he was shifting. “Sorry to bug you on a weekend. I was just going over the Henderson figures and had a quick question. You free to talk?”

Adamson stood in the white, silent space, surrounded by more images of human emotion—joy, grief, love. He could see James, just around the corner, a solitary figure contemplating a love that was fierce and gripping.

And he was hiding around a corner, talking to the man he was cheating with.

The absurdity, the sheer, devastating wrongness of it, crashed down on him.

“Adamson? You there?”

He closed his eyes. “Yeah,” he heard himself say, the word a betrayal. “Yeah, I’m here. What’s your question?”

As he listened to Liam talk about quarterly projections, he leaned his forehead against the cool, white wall. He was in a gallery of profound human connection, and he had never felt more alone. He had chosen the lie. The moment to choose truth had passed, and he had let it slip through his fingers, answering the siren call of the easier, more thrilling fiction.

He had his chance in the gallery of beautiful things, and he had chosen to walk into the wing of broken ones.

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