With that, Skyler turns and walks out the door, closing it behind him before Trevor can react.
Trevor’s still frozen in place, processing, when the door suddenly reopens and Skyler’s standing there again. “One more thing,” he says. “The next time you’re uncomfortable in a situation, you can tell me, okay? You don’t have to rely on alcohol.”
He opens his mouth, but Skyler rushes on.
“I’m not saying you can’t drink if you want to. But you know how turning to alcohol to drown my problems worked out for me, so.” Skyler shrugs. Then he leaves, and this time he doesn’t come back.
Trevor exhales hard like he’s been punched in the gut.
He respects Skyler for being direct. One of them needed to be. But hearing everything laid out like that—the way he’s been acting—he feels like a piece of shit.
Waiting until he’s sure Skyler will be in the kitchen, he heads into the bathroom. He turns on the shower and barely makes it inside before he loses it, crying loud, gut-wrenching sobs, his forehead against the cool tile wall as hot water scalds his back. Hopefully the sound of the shower is enough to drown him out, because he can’t stop.
Why does he always fuck everything up?
He should be better than this. Skyler deserves more from him.
Trevor thought he got himself sorted years ago. Come to terms with who he is, what he is and isn’t capable of, and the kind of life he was going to lead. Then Skyler came back into his life, and everything became a question again.
He keeps replaying Skyler’s words in his head as he stands directly under the water now, letting it run down into his eyes. Keeps hearing Skyler’s voice, the steady tone, the slow cadence, when he said,The next time you kiss me, you better mean it.
There are so many things Trevor’s still unsure of. Like is Skyler really willing to give him a second chance, and if he is, could they ever find a way to make it work? Would the fame get in the way again, and would Trevor crumble under the pressure? Is there any possible scenario that doesn’t end with him losing Skyler again?
But there’s one thing he knows now. It comes to him with a startling clarity as he swipes water off his face.
He wants to kiss Skyler again. And he wants to mean it.
In fact, he does mean it. Even if he didn’t mean todoit the last two times, he still meant it. But he never made that clear. Let Skyler believe the opposite, probably. Because he’s a coward and an idiot.
He wasn’t always like this though. At nineteen years old, Trevor felt far surer of himself than he does now. But that was when he was naïve. Before he knew what the world could do to a person. Before he knew that loving someone with everything you have doesn’t always mean you’ll get to keep them.
And that if you love someone with everything you have, then when you lose them, you’ll have nothing left.
When he’s with Skyler now, when it’s not all drama, when it’s simply the two of them sitting comfortably in each other’s presence, Trevor feels more like the person he was back then. Occasionally, he lets himself be hopeful even. And hope is something he went a long time without. But it’s been growing, day by day, while he wasn’t even noticing.
And it’s possible he hasn’t fucked things up as badly as he thinks. Because Skyler’s words, although they sounded like an accusation, also leave him an opening, don’t they? They leave him a choice. Maybe he’s not going to make the right choice, but he needs to choose. They can’t stay in this limbo forever. Not if it’s hurting Skyler. And truthfully, it’s hurting Trevor too—he’s just used to hurting.
So he’ll choose.
He wants to kiss Skyler. He wants more. There’s no way of knowing where this will lead them, if it’ll wind up hurting them both even more. If it does, they’ll survive it. Trevor’s survived everything the world’s thrown at him so far.
But maybe it’s time to do more than survive. Maybe it’s time to let himself live again. It feels like that might be possible.
There was a time when being with Skyler made everything good feel more than possible. Everything good felt like it wastheirs.
As he steps out of the shower and gets dressed, he tries to figure out how to tell Skyler all this. How to explain the chaos going on in his head. Everything that was going on in his head toward the end of their relationship and the band too. It seems like too big of a task, and he wishes he could skip it. That Skylercould justknow, the way he used to know everything without Trevor having to say it.
He finds Skyler in the kitchen, catches him blowing on a slice of bacon before feeding it to Stella, and his heart starts jackrabbiting again. The smell of the bacon makes him nauseous, but he knows he’ll feel better once he eats it. Moving closer, he sees fried eggs cooking with the bacon, and hashbrowns cooking in another pan.
Stella wags her tail, and Skyler startles when he realizes Trevor is standing behind him, bumping his hip into the oven handle as he turns. He smiles, unembarrassed. “You’re looking more alive.”
Trevor smiles back at him. But he’s still a little terrified. Because they’re on the precipice of something. And maybe he’s the only one who knows this. Maybe Skyler assumes he’s going to make a different choice. Go on pretending and ignoring and hurting. Because that’s what he knows how to do, and the other choice—the unknown—is scarier.
He doesn’t care if it’s scarier.
He just needs to find the right words to tip them over the edge.
“Your plants look happy there,” he says, turning to the far side of the room where Skyler has lined them up on a shelf adjacent to the windows. “Did you name them?”
