Page 23 of Loverboy

It felt like I’d already disappointed him before the night began.

Things were fine for about half an hour after he left for his shift. I dissociated on the couch until the silence made my ears ring, snapping me back to reality. I paced the apartment, checking every window and twisting the doorknob just to make sure everything was locked. I was on the third floor, and you couldn’t get into the building without a key, but if I didn’t do it, I’d never know peace. I needed to complete the ritual to eliminate all doubt.

My solitude rolled into its second hour. I only knew because I kept checking my phone, on the verge of tearing my hair out as I tried to keep the intrusive thoughts at bay. It had been a long time since I’d had the intense urge to grab a kitchen knife and hide in the bedroom under my sheets in wait of an imaginary intruder.

Growing up with my birth mother had left me with issues. She was a magnet for nasty men, and she was usually too out of it to remember to lock the doors. I’d been the vigilant one, even as a child. Now I was tired of being responsible, and all I wanted was for someone else to make me feel safe. Sofia told me I needed to grow up and be more of a man, but was it really so bad to want to be taken care of after spending my entire childhood looking after someone else?

In the kitchen, I took a bowl, dumped an entire ice tray from the freezer into it, and then filled it with cold water. One time, a therapist I saw swore up and down that the bullshit trick would reset my nervous system. So I tried.

I held my breath and plunged my face in.

For a few seconds, everything stopped.

Then my brain kicked into gear again.

I threw the bowl into the sink in frustration, water sloshing up over the edges. I wanted so badly for something to work. I wiped the water from my face with my sleeves and headed to my bedroom, feeling the sting of defeat. I didn’t want to bother Jasper, but my self-control was nonexistent. I’d already sent a text or two after he left, even though I was scared that any one of the texts I sent could be the end of it all. One too many, and I’d be more trouble than I was worth.

Milo: Just letting you know that I’m alive.

I sent a selfie from my bed for good measure.

No response to the first message. Or the second. Or the third.

He was working. I knew that.

Smoking helped, or at least that’s what I liked to tell myself. I pressed my lips to the mesh screen of my open window, blowing out a lungful of smoke. There was a no-smoking policy, sure, but in this dumpster of a neighbourhood, I’d never seen management once. As long as I wasn’t cooking up meth or causing a disturbance, I was a model tenant.

I needed a distraction. I grabbed a half-empty bottle of rum, sat at my computer, and started deleting photos of Sofia from my hard drive and camera cards. There were a lot. She’d enjoyed modelling for my photography, and I’d liked capturing every intimate moment because I was scared of forgetting them.

I forgot a lot, with my trauma-addled brain.

On the plus side, I wasn’t crying when I looked at them anymore, which felt like progress. With every photo I deleted, sadness gave way to resentment. It was a better, easier-to-manage feeling.

I mass-deleted entire folders, hardly blinking, pausing only to linger on a few particularly intimate images that tugged at my heartstrings. Jasper was right. She didn’t deserve me—not after I’d loved her so deeply, obsessively, and gotten betrayal in return.

How could it be that I was too much, but not enough at the same time? It didn’t feel fair. With every relationship, I tried to change everything about myself to be what I thought they needed, to the point where I’d forget what I looked like underneath all of the overcompensating.

The harder I tried to anticipate others’ moods and avoid conflict, the more I seemed to find it. I read into every word, every text, every facial expression. Every effort I made to be someone worth loving ended up being another nail in my coffin.

After a while, the computer screen got blurry. I’d been so caught up in trying to purge Sofia out of my memory that I’d unconsciously moved on to looking through old folders stuffed to the brim with pictures of family.

There were three constant faces as I scrolled—mine, Jasper’s, and Blane’s. I’d bet that growing up as an only child, Jasper never imagined he’d end up with two siblings, but lucky for him, Blane and I were apparently both allergic to parents. Or they were allergic to us.

Joking about it made it easier.

I picked up my phone, considering messaging Blane to tell him about what I’d done. But it was late, and since both of us had moved out, we hadn’t talked nearly as much as I would’ve liked. The gap between my brothers and me felt wider every day.

My phone buzzed in my hands.

A thumbs-up emoji.

I pressed the screen to my forehead, jaw clenched. After making me wait so long, that was all Jasper had to say, the fucking asshole. He was already doing so much for me, and I knew complaining would have been wrong. But I needed more. Always more.

Milo: I deleted pictures of Sofia.

Milo: Are you proud of me?

I groaned and tossed my phone onto the bed, polishing off the last of the rum and lighting another cigarette. I’d lost count of how many I’d smoked, but if my hands weren’t busy, they’d find something else. Something sharp.