The words still feel unreal, but they don’t scare me anymore. “I love you too,” I answer, and mean it with everything I have left. He lingers another minute, then finally leaves, shutting the door so quietly it barely clicks.
The house settles after him, the low hum of conversation in the kitchen, the sound of someone’s shower running down the hall, a faint thump of music from somewhere upstairs. All the signs of life that I’m not quite ready to participate in.
I lie back, the sheets soft under me, the faintest scent of Damien’s shampoo clinging to the pillowcase. My arms settle over my stomach, and I stare at the ceiling, watching the patterns the sunlight makes through the window blinds.
I should rest, but my mind is a snake pit. The aftermath is always like this—the raw, scraped-bare feeling isn’t new. It’s not even surprising. I’ve been bent into shapes that don’t fit my body for as long as I can remember. It’s just another scar in a long list I’ve been collecting since I was old enough to notice I wasn’t built like everyone else.
Even as a kid, I could sense it. The way my parents would go stiff when I started talking too much about the things I loved.How my father would sigh and look away, how my mother would purse her lips and try to find the polite way to ask if I couldn’t just “act normal for once.”
I don’t know if I’ll ever be the kind of person who can take those words and let them roll off my back. I don’t know how anyone does. I’m so tired of it all—of being told I’m not enough, of being measured and found lacking, of being broken by the people who are supposed to put me back together.
I think about my mother in Milan. The cold floors, the long, echoing corridors of my mother’s penthouse. I remember how every visit was a minefield of expectations. Clothes, manners, posture. How many calories I ate at breakfast, how quickly I smiled, how quietly I sat through her charity dinners, how much weight I’d lost since the last time she saw me. Every word was a trap, every look a critique dressed up as concern.
Smile smaller. Shoulders straighter. Don’t speak unless spoken to. You look too soft. You walk like you’re sorry. Eat something. Not that. Never that. You’ll ruin your shape. Be good. Be beautiful. Be better.
Be nothing.
The sound of her voice is the soundtrack to my childhood, every syllable whittling away at whatever self-worth I managed to scrape together. Everything was always almost enough. Never enough to be loved out loud, not the way she loved herself or the way she loved her causes. I was something to be presented, not held.
It’s always the people who are supposed to love you who teach you shame. They’ve done nothing but break me open, then resent me for bleeding.
It makes me sick how, even now, I hear their voices in my head louder than my own. How quickly I shrink when someone raises their voice, how I flinch from praise because it feels like bait fordisappointment. How I learned to punish myself before anyone else could.
It’s not my fault that my mind doesn’t work like everyone else’s. It’s not my fault that noise overwhelms me, that routines calm me, that my body reacts before logic can catch up. It’s not my fault that food feels like a battlefield some days, or that love feels dangerous even when it’s gentle.
I know I’m beautiful, that’s the strangest part. I know it the way you know a fact from repetition—enough people tell you something, and it becomes the truth. The mirror says I am, and sometimes, when I’m standing under the right light, in the right clothes, with the right mask in place, I can almost feel it.
But there’s a gap between knowing and believing. There’s a canyon between seeing beauty in your reflection and feeling it in your bones. My parents never let me close that gap. They handed me a list of everything that was wrong and called it love.
Damien never made me feel wrong. Not once. He never looked at my stims or my silences like they needed fixing, never got angry when I needed routine, or space, or just the quiet of a closed door. He learned my moods faster than my own mother. He made it okay for me to be “too much,” because he never saw it as too much at all. He said it was just me.
That’s what love should be, I think. Not flawless, but gentle. Not something that asks or takes, but something that waits and welcomes. It isn’t measured out or earned, just given, patient and real. And I want that—god, I want it—with a need that sits deep in my chest and doesn’t let go. I want it with Damien more than I’ve ever wanted anything.
But I still wonder sometimes if I’m even capable of being loved in the way I need. If the damage can be undone, or if I’ll always be this… haunted thing, living in the shadow of everyone else’s expectations. My parents carved me up so well that I sometimes forget I was ever whole in the first place.
A sniff escapes before I can swallow it, and I press the heels of my palms to my eyes, angry at myself for being so damn soft all the time.
I hear a light knock at the door, a hesitant tap that makes me tense. For a heartbeat, I hope it’s Damien, hope he’s forgotten something and come back, hope he’ll crawl into bed with me and wrap me up until the shaking stops.
“Noah?” Adrian’s voice is muffled through the door. “Can I… can I come in?”
I sit up slowly and brush my hand through my hair, fingers catching on the tangles. I’m in one of Damien’s old hoodies—too big, sleeves past my hands—and I wrap it tighter around me. I manage a hoarse, “Yeah. It’s open.”
Adrian pokes his head around the door. He looks even more anxious than usual, hands stuffed in the pockets of his hoodie, hair a mess, the green in his eyes almost too bright. He closes the door quietly behind him, lingering just inside the threshold like he’s not sure he should even be here.
“Hey,” I say, forcing a tired smile. “You don’t have to hover, you know. I’m not gonna, like, turn into smoke and float away.”
He huffs out a laugh, but it’s thin. “Sorry. Just wanted to check in. Make sure you’re okay.”
I gesture at the bed. “I’m upright, aren’t I? Damien would have a meltdown if I tried anything stupid while he’s not here. I think I’m on round-the-clock surveillance or something.”
Adrian attempts a smile, but it slips. He sits down on the edge of the mattress, keeping a careful distance. His fingers twitch restlessly on his knees. For a few minutes, he just sits there, eyes fixed on the pattern of the comforter, not saying anything. The silence stretches until I can’t take it anymore.
“You look like you’re about to confess to murder,” I say, nudging him gently with my foot. “Did you break something? Did Liam finally snap and go full captain psycho on the field?”
He shakes his head, not meeting my eyes. “No, it’s nothing like that. I just… I don’t know. I wanted to see if you were alright. You scared us.”
I study him for a second. Adrian is never this nervous about anything. He’s quiet and controlled, but I don’t know him as anxious at all. “Adrian. You know you can talk to me, right?”
