A love story told in answering machine messages. Saying “I love you” to someone who says it first, isn’t supposed to lead to a break-up, but that’s what happens to Sully and Lou. Sully is out and proud while Lou is in the closet, so when their relationship deepens, Lou runs. But then Lou starts leaving emotional messages of remorse on Sully’s answering machine. Sully is torn between his love for Lou and his attempts to get over him. With each message, Lou’s regrets deepen. With each message, it becomes more difficult for Sully to forget him. With each message, Sully finds it harder to want to move on. Can old love poems and heartbreaking honesty help Sully and Lou find their way back to each other?

Late Night Poetry

I sleep on Rose’s couch for a few nights after my unsettling dream. She took one look at me when I got to the restaurant on Monday, poured me a big mug of coffee, and steered me to the mismatched but comfortable chairs in the tiny break room.


“We have fifteen minutes before our shift,” she said. “Talk.”


So I told her about the late-night phone calls from Lou, how his deep voice reciting poetry to me broke my heart again and again and how his bleeding regret made me to both want to yell at him—this is your own damned fault!!—and sweep him up in my arms and shower him with love and comforting kisses.


I don’ttell her about how listening to him recite Walt Whitman makes my insides squirm or how I torture myself by replaying his messages over and over again, or how I bought more cassettes for the answering machine the other day so I wouldn’t have to delete his voice from the old tapes.


I don’t tell her because I don’t want her to realize how truly pathetic I am. How not over him I am.


Chapter 6