It does my head in, thinking about meaning something to someone.
After the fire, there were a few times when I wondered what the point was of surviving. Things had always been strained at home, but it went from bad to worse. I’d like to say those were my lowest lows, but they haven’t been.
I know some of that is bullshit. Maybe a lot of it. I know I’m hard on myself. Many of my problems are self-made. Loneliness is self-imposed. What I’ve been doing isn’t healthy. It’s just taken me until right now to actually give a shit.
The fire might have changed my life, but inside, I was all ice. It hurts thawing out.
It hurts even more to realize that I had thissomedaydream in the back of my mind that I never allowed to drift into the front, because if I did, I thought it would take me apart, dismantle me down to bare bones, and break me.
Someday, I might have what other people have.Someday, there might be a person out there who could look past the mess I am.Someday, I might have what could pass for a normal life.Someday. But unlikely.
Somedaywas a pipedream.
Shit.
I’ve been sitting at my desk like a total loser, thinking about all of this, raw on the inside, and raw on the outside. My cheeks are itchy and when I bring my palms up, I find them soaked.
Again.Jesus.
My phone dings on the desk at the worst possible moment.
Fawnie: I’m here.
I told her to text me and that I’d come unlock the door for her.
I quickly scrub at my face, smearing tears all over the place. What the hell is wrong with me? This is only going to make me look extra pathetic. It’s bad enough that she caught me awake, thinking about darker, shittier, more pathetic things at her house. I cried then too. A lifetime of it is finally pouring out of me and I can’t seem to stop it.
I want to wash my face in the bathroom, but the club hasn’t been cleaned yet, so that’s a hard pass, and there’s no way I’m leaving Fawnie outside at this hour.
I walk straight to the door and flip all the locks. She slips inside, lovely in a high ponytail, her usual signature heavy eye makeup—this time in shades of purple with heavy black wings, and a lowkey outfit. She looks like she could be going jogging, in yoga pants and a pullover sweater.
Not to say that’s not sexy. She’s gorgeous. I’d love to rip those pants straight off of her and feast on her delicious pussy. I’d love to be inside of her even more, making her take my thick cock, craving her struggle and also the rightness of the fit when her body adjusts, hanging onto a thread at every single one of her sexy whimpers.
It’s what I should have done last night at her house.
I hate that I didn’t worship her the way she deserved. I hate it even more that she had to take care of me. I hate that there’s this part of me that wants to make me see sense. It wants to tell me that this isn’t going to work. I need to shield myself against the inevitable disappointment. That voice screams at methatsomedayis never going to be a thing. I need to stop hoping. Stop trusting. I need to bail on this before it hurts so much that it shatters me into tiny little dust particles that blow away on the wind.
Where’s the point where I take a hard stand and tell her we can’t do this anymore? Where I shut it all down, including myself?
Right. There isn’t one.
Fawnie is Fawnie and I can’t. I. Can’t.
Especially because the first thing she does is throw out her hands out to clasp the sides of my face. Her touch as gentle as always.
I never used to like being touched. I’d never been touched with kindness before. I realize for the first time in my life I can bear it, it feels better. And how much of the other stuff—my gut, my head, my chest, my heart—feels so much worse. Heavy. Shaky. Off balance. Like I’m going to trip and tumble and literally shatter. I can only hope that it’s the classicworse before it gets betterbullshit.
That’s possibly the strangest, most painful part of it all.Hope. The fact that it’s there, and that I want to grasp onto it and not let it go.
“Finn…” She breathes, blinking at me with nothing but concern. “Are you- we- I- are you doing okay?”
“Fine,” I respond, going for sarcastic, but it comes out watery. Not watered down. Like, wet sounding, in my throat.
She winces. If she was anyone else, I’d put on my usualfuck itface, but Fawnie isn’t just anyone.
Already, she’s not.
“I don’t like the idea that you’re in here, telling yourself things that aren’t true. Intrusive thoughts are one thing, but they can get too far. They can get mean and ugly. You don’t deserve that.”
