“About…Harlow?”
“Yes… When I said yes…I felt…relieved. But now…I don’t know…”
Having a sneaking suspicion that the words Foxx was about to say were things better said to the psycho human he’d decided to date, without giving away what he was doing, Alastair started recording on his phone.
* * *
Foxx had felt relief,right before the panic had buried him. “I-I…think… No…I mean… I’m pretty sure I l-love him.” Foxx took a deep breath. “I know he isn’t perfect, and he has issues, but the me right now doesn’t care… But…what if… What if I get so unbelievably happy with him…” He shook his head. “No, I am happy with him, Alastair. It’s the only reason I said no in the first place! The only reason I listened to you!”
“And…being happy…scares you?”
“Yes!” Foxx cried, his voice breaking. “It terrifies me! Because it never lasts!”
Alastair winced. “Foxx…”
“Happiness is scary.” He clenched his hands together tightly when they started to tremble. “You don’t get it, Alastair… You were right about everyone else. No one I dated ever seemed to think I was worth giving their all to. No one ever gave anything back. But you’re wrong about Harlow. It’s not about knowing that he has nothing to give, it’s about knowing how much he already gives. Knowing what he has done for me, what he does for me without asking… Just simple things, that to others may seem like no big deal…but they are to me, and I think they are to him too…”
“What things?”
“When I cry…the things he says…all clumsy, sometimes even baffling, but it helps. And with what happened…with the priests.” Foxx’s voice wavered as more tears broke free. “He made me feel wanted, even when scars covered my body. And when I wake up terrified…he doesn’t shame me, or get embarrassed when I cry. He holds me tight, and makes sure I know he’s there. He holds me for hours, just patiently waiting for me to calm down. And…and he just listens!”
“He…made you feel safe.”
“YES! And each and every time it happens, I know it makes him uncomfortable. Yet…he still tells me that it’s fine. That I should cry for as long as I need to. To not worry about him. To just feel what I need to feel.
“And I want all of that. I want how he makes me feel. I want to be held, and to be comforted. I don’t want to lose any of it! So, I said no…and then I said yes…because all that he does give me right now…is enough, and I need him with me.”
It was enough. It felt like enough…but…
Alastair slipped his phone in his pocket, stood up and came to him, his hands wrapping around his. “Foxx, I pushed because I was worried you’d get hurt. But it sounds like he isn’t as awful as I thought he was…”
“But what if that changes?! What if I change?!” Foxx sobbed. “I love him, and I know he may never, or possibly can’t ever, love me back. But…what if I need him to?! What if what he does for me, the words he gives me, stops being enough?! And what if by then, I’m in so deep that the realization crushes me?!”
The words caused this deep ache inside him that sent him spiraling. Hard wracking sobs broke from his chest, and he didn’t fight it as Alastair pulled him into his arms.
“Oh, Foxx, I got you. It’s okay.” Alastair ran a soothing hand up and down his back.
Foxx just sobbed harder. “W-why d-does he have to be so different?! I-I j-just wanted to make a difference and have sex!”
“You wouldn’t give him a second glance if he was like everyone else,” Alastair murmured with a sad chuckle.
“He doesn’t treat me like—” His words cut off on another hard sob, and then he just couldn’t manage to force himself to say the last word out loud.
Trash… Harlow didn’t treat him like trash. The way he treated him, it made him think… It made him deluded enough to think that Harlow may actually care… Which made everything just that much more terrifying.
“Foxx…all the things you just said to me… They are things you should be saying to him.”
Foxx jerked back, staring blurrily through his tears. “I-I c-can’t.”
“Foxx…you can, and you should. Because the only one who can answer the questions about the doubts you are having is him.”
Foxx took a step back and out of Alastair’s hold, shaking his head as he did. “I can’t…” He gasped breathlessly. “I can’t. It will end then!”
“Foxx…”
Wrapping his arms around his waist, he closed his eyes and shook his head, taking another step back. And then his fear just grabbed hold of him as thoughts of all the ways things could and likely would go wrong ran through his head.
“I’m scared,” he wailed. “I’m scared.”
