She rolled her eyes, before pointing down to her outfit. “I know. Hence, why I came home, had a bath, and put these on.”
“Can we talk? Can you hear me out?” She looked unsure. “I hate that you think I lied or that what I felt for you wasn’t real.”
“Jax, I—”
“You said I could talk to you about anything. That you’d listen.”
Helen muttered something under her breath about using her words against her before stepping back and letting me inside. I walked straight to the dining table and took a seat.
“Can I get you a drink?”
“You got any of that vodka?”
Helen brought over the bottle from the freezer and two glasses, pouring us both a shot once she’d sat across from me.
I took a sip, letting the icy liquid slide down my throat before I tried to find the right words. “I miss you,” I admitted. “When I thought I’d lost you in that building collapse, Helen, it nearly destroyed me.” My voice cracked, the pain still so close to the surface that it hurt to even think about that night.
“Nothing, I mean nothing, I’ve told you about how I feel about you has been a lie. I love you, I’m obsessed with you, I want a future with you. But I didn’t know how to have that when my past haunted me.”
Lowering my gaze to my hands while I swirled my drink around the glass, I continued, “About six weeks before my fifteenth birthday, I was in the shower when I found a lump in my testicle. It was small, about the size of a pea. I told my dad, and he told me it was nothing to worry about and I should just ignore it. Six months later, the lump was the size of a grape. He eventually took me to see the doctor, who told me testicular cancer in people my age was unheard of, so it was probably a cyst, but he sent me for a scan. I had the scan and some tests a few days later and the same afternoon they called my dad and asked him to bring me back in urgently.
“I wasn’t worried because you think you’ll live forever at that age, but I was taken into that god-awful yellow family room at the hospital and told I had testicular cancer. Because it had gone untreated, it was stage two and had spread to my lymph nodes in my stomach.”
Helen gasped and reached for my hands, but I shook my head because I just needed to get this out. “I’ve never talked about this. Never told anyone, not a single soul, until recently.”
Helen’s mouth fell open.
“They told me their plan for my treatment. Chemo, radiation, removing my testicle and the affected lymph nodes. Theyreassured me that it was curable, and I had a good chance of beating it, then they gave me a very long list of things that could go wrong and side effects. I didn’t really pay attention… my brain was still fixated on the fact I was about to have surgery to remove my testicle.
“When we left the hospital, Dad lost his shit. He screamed at me the whole way home and told me I couldn’t tell anyone. Not ever. The doctor had explained how rare my cancer was for someone my age and my dad took this as a sign of it being caused by my sin.
While I was reeling from the fact I had cancer, my dad was talking about my perversion. I mean, I was a teenage boy; I’d looked at porn, I was experimenting with my hand… he caught me once, and now apparently, it was the cause of my illness.”
Helen refilled my glass that I didn’t even remember finishing.
“Dad moved us so no one in town would learn about my diagnosis. In our new place, he barely even admitted he had a son, choosing to surround himself with his new congregation rather than taking care of me.” I let my eyes lock on hers.
“Helen, he abandoned me. He ripped me from my friends and my life and then left me to go through treatment on my own. He’d take me to chemo or surgery because he legally had to, but he didn’t hold my hand, didn’t reassure me, or take care of me while I fell apart. I dealt with two years of treatment while going to school and keeping it all a secret.” Remembering that time sliced through me like a knife. “I’d never felt so alone.”
She pressed her hand over her mouth as I continued.
“When they removed my testicle, they were meant to replace it with a prosthetic, but when I woke up, they’d not done it. I was too scared to ask why and I didn’t have anyone who was looking out for me, so I had no clue what was going on. I only have one testicle. My dad used to say that it was punishment for my sins, written on my body for everyone to see.”
A single tear escaped Helen’s eye, but she wiped it away quickly. “So, never seeing you naked, the underwear, the strategically placed sheets?” she whispered as if everything was piecing together like a giant puzzle.
I shuddered. “Because I look like a freak. It looks weird down there.” I pointed at myself. “Deflated… I didn’t want you to see me like that. You always make me feel like such a man… someone who can take care of you, satisfy you. I didn’t want you to see me as some broken half-man.”
Her eyes widened, her head tilting to the side a little. “I would never… Jax, I would never have thought that about you. And I’m sorry you went through that, but that doesn’t explain—”
I didn’t let her finish because I knew what was coming, so I spat out my words. “Retrograde ejaculation.”
“What?” More confusion danced in her expression.
“After my surgery, it took years before I touched myself. It was only when I’d moved out of my dad’s place and into my own that I tried to make myself come. When I did, I didn’t.”
I downed my drink because I’d not even managed to tell Jasper about this. My therapist only heard about it last week and I cried so hard that she could barely understand a word I said.
“I orgasm, but I can’t come. I have dry orgasms.” I felt weird saying it out loud, and Helen stared at me like I was speaking another language.
