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He’s freshly showered and looks every inch of the delicious man who has shattered my understanding of what men are supposed to be like.
Ken? He’s an example of the expectations I’ve had in the past.
Boyd is the future.
The good. The kind. The honorable.
At just the sight of him, my shoulders fall and my lip begins to tremble, the armor I wear falling away.
Boyd is up and in front of me in no time, wrapping me in that safe space I’ve begun to cherish.
“I’m here for you,” he whispers.
And then he says something that makes me burst into tears, drawing me back to the first time he comforted me on the plane.
“I can’t fix it, but I can be here with you so you know you’re not alone.”
Snuggling me in tight, he presses a kiss against my head then leads me inside.
* * *
“I could hear what you were saying, but I couldn’t hear him,” Boyd says later, once we’re both curled up on the couch and nibbling on a fruit and cheese tray he brought over from his house.
“That’s because he wasn’t saying anything,” I reply drily. “He said a few things before I launched into him, but that was it.”
He nods, watching me as he pops a little cube of pepper jack into his mouth.
“Does it feel better, getting that stuff off your chest?”
I stare at a grape I’m holding between my fingers, not entirely wanting to answer his question.
“Yes and no,” I finally say. “There’s a weight off my shoulders knowing I was finally able to say what I wanted to say, knowing I was able to say exactly how I felt in exactly the right moment. But at the same time, I worry I was too hard on him.”
“Why do you care if you were too hard on him?”
My brow furrows. “Why wouldn’t I care?”
“Well, it sounds like you’re planning to wash your hands of him, so it shouldn’t matter whether or not you were too hard on him…unless you’re afraid he won’t try to contact you again.”
I don’t like all this internal reflection, not right now when my insides feel so raw and vulnerable.
But I guess that’s the best time to see the true damage, right? When the wound has been flushed and is held wide open for examination.
Knowing it doesn’t make it any less painful.
“I just don’t know how I feel,” I answer honestly. “Writing him off completely feels too harsh, but leaving room to hope things will change feels too weak. I don’t know what the happy medium is, and I’m definitely too tired to figure it out today.”
Boyd gives me a soft grin then leans across the couch and plants a kiss on my forehead.
I let out a long sigh and tilt my head back, closing my eyes and enjoying the warmth of his body next to mine.
“I don’t know. Maybe I should change my flight and just go home. Staying here feels pointless now, especially since I basically called Ken a fucking asshole straight to his face. The last thing I want is to see him or Linda around town.”
I could never have foreseen this outcome, not in a million years. I really thought the interactions between myself and Ken would just be really awkward and boring and I’d go back to Boston feeling like I’d accomplished my purpose—talk to my dad, decide my life is fine without him, move on.
Now that all this emotional drama has occurred, the idea of going home sounds really good. Cedar Point has been a beautiful place for me as long as it has belonged to Boyd and his family. This fight with Ken, however, has shifted that.
The silence between us is long, so I peek my eyes open, finding Boyd staring at me with a strange expression on his face.
