Page 152 of Twisted Needs

CHAPTER 43

TWISTED NEEDS

ANDERS

Anders has been moving around the kitchen for the last fifteen minutes pretending he isn’t nervous while I sit on the couch with his manuscript resting untouched in my lap. He keeps finding invisible things to clean. The counter already shines under the pendant lights, but he wipes it down again anyway, movements quick and distracted. Then he reorganizes the stack of mail near the fridge. Then the dishwasher opens and closes, as if dirty dishes will magically appear. Every few seconds I hear another fucking cabinet open and close.

“You know,” Anders says finally, not looking at me, “you actually don’t have to read it tonight.”

“I want to,” I tell him gently. He’s been weird about this for the past week now, so I honestly think ripping off the bandaid is the best decision.

His shoulders lift slightly with a breath before falling again. “Okay.” But he still doesn’t sit down.

I settle back against the couch and finally turn to the first page.

Twisted Needs.

By Anderson de Sousa.

The title means nothing to me at first. Neither does the opening paragraph.

The story begins quietly. Just a younger narrator describing the first time he meets an older man through a university mentorship program—who turns out to be his new neighbor. The man teaches political theory at a small liberal arts college somewhere in New England. Divorced. Mid-thirties. Smart in an understated way. But he’s written to be…painfully ordinary. There isn’t anything special about him. He’s familiar…a normal guy.

I recognize him immediately.

The older man listens more than he talks. He cooks for the narrator without making a big deal out of it. Lets him stay too late after meetings and offers him a ride home. The details are wrong, but the emotional shape of him isn’t.

I shift slightly deeper into the couch and keep reading. Behind me, another cabinet opens then closes. Then immediately opens again. “You’re making me nervous,” I mutter absently. “Come sit with me.”

“I’m fine.”

Somewhere around page twelve, something inside me starts feeling off. Not because the story becomes inappropriate like I was afraid it would. It becomes lonely. The narrator never describes the older man as cruel, even though there’s no clear manipulation in the story. If anything, the older man spends most of the narrative trying very carefully not to cross lines he clearly feels himself approaching anyway. But the narrator…he’s drowning. And apparently I didn’t understand until now how visible that drowning actually was.

I stop briefly on a paragraph describing what it feels like to build your entire emotional stability around tiny scraps of affection another person doesn’t even realize they’re giving you. A hand against the back of his neck after a panic attack…I think of pulling Anders to my chest when he’s upset. A late-night phone call…I call Anders after my games.

Things so small they probably felt meaningless at the time. But Anders writes them with this devastating level of emotional precision that suddenly makes me aware of how differently we were living through the exact same moments. To me, those years felt restrained and entirely dangerous in ways I kept trying to control. To him, apparently, they felt life-altering.

My eyes drift lower down the page. The narrator talks about insomnia casually, like he’s just mentioning the weather. Talks about panic attacks in detached, clinical language that somehow makes them worse to read. There’s an entire section where he describes sitting through dinner while the older man discusses trying to reconnect with his ex-wife, and halfway through the scene the narration slips into this spiraling internal monologue about feeling himself disappear in real time. Like he’s been erased as if he were the tiniest, most insignificant pencil smudge…

My chest tightens abruptly. I lower the papers slightly into my lap and stare out toward the kitchen. Anders immediately stops moving. “You okay?” His voice sounds careful now.

I look at him standing there near the counter, shoulders tense beneath my shirt, and suddenly all I can think about is the fact that he wrote this when he was nineteen.

“You wrote this after the blizzard that year?” I ask quietly, guessing.

“Yeah,” he says after a second. “Around then.”

I nod once then look back down at the manuscript. Something ugly starts revealing itself slowly inside my chest the longer I sit there with it. That night was one of the first times I realized I was in trouble with Anders. I remember how easy it felt being around him there.

I keep reading, and the story keeps getting worse in clarity. There’s one scene where the narrator admits he’s started measuring his self-worth based entirely on how much attention the older man gives him on any particular day. Another where he describes feeling physically humiliated by how badly he wants someone who keeps loving him carefully enough to avoid any accountability.

I physically stop breathing for a second, because I know exactly what version of me Anders is writing about. The man who held him through panic attacks, kissed his forehead and called him sweetheart in private while still pretending there were emotional boundaries between us sturdy enough to protect either of us.

I drag a hand slowly over my mouth. The house has gone completely silent now. Anders isn’t moving around anymore. I can feel him watching me from across the room even without looking up.

Then I hit the line that finally destroys me.

Sometimes I think the cruelest thing a person can do is teach you what safety feels like right before becoming the reason you lose it.