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I thought he was going to keep walking. I thought he was about to walk around me and head back to the parking lot, and I don’t know what I would have done if that happened.
Probably walk straight into the ocean and never stop.
And then Jonah opened his mouth, and his words sliced through me. “I’m… sorry. I can’t do this, Fox.”
Behind me, the ocean seductively sang out my name.
31 Jonah Brightly
“I just can’t do this, Fox.” I was shaking my head, emotions cascading over me like a monstrous tsunami, a majority of the emotions completely brand-new to me. It was a hot rage mixed with a blue sorrow, swirling around and creating a swamp of chaos inside me. My confidence, the pathetic amount I had built up over the past weeks, disappeared as fast as a sandcastle during high tide. Fox looked hurt, his face contorting as though he were recovering from a surprise slap. He had stopped me from reaching my car.
Thank God.
I didn’t want to leave, I really didn’t. I just had no idea what the hell to do. I’d expected Fox to say yes and for us to be naked by now, but instead, I was facing the end of the most beautiful thing to have ever happened to me. The beginning had barely even gotten underway and the end was already here. How fucking unfair was that?
“You’re right,” I continued, words tumbling out of me. “I have been through some shit in my life, and I can realize when a good thing falls into my lap. You’re the best thing, the absolute fucking best thing that’s ever happened to me… but…” I took a step back, my ankles feeling like they were chained, weighed down by two gigantic boulders buried under feet of sand. Fox’s initial hesitation brought all of my deepest fears rocketing up to the surface.
Another step back. Fox’s eyes narrowed, his eyebrows bending down, following the shape of his lips. “No, Jonah, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have froze.”
What the hell was I doing? I should have been walking toward him, but my fear was pushing me away from him. “I thought we could take over the world together, Fox, I really did… but…”
“No buts, Jonah.”
A ghost of a smile played on my lips as I recalled a moment Fox and I had shared. It felt so long ago now. “Maybe one butt.”
Fox caught on immediately. “One very sexy butt…” His lips twitched into a weak grin.
I tried not to focus on those lips, a pair of lips I had expected to have all over me as we relaxed together in our cabana all night under the stars. I had expected to give so much of myself to Fox tonight, and now, I was pulling it all back. I felt myself retreating back into a shell I had thought was shattered.
Fox took a step forward, toward me. I dropped my head. His toes were buried in the sand, inches from mine.
“I’m scared, Fox.”
“I am, too. Terrified.”
I picked my head back up. His hazel eyes caught some of the orange glow from the campfire.
“But you know what, Jonah? Fear is a prerequisite to greatness. I’ve learned that, too. You taught me that. I’d never been more scared of anyone in my life, and that’s only because you’ve got my heart in your hands. The last time I gave even a sliver of myself to someone, they turned around and shanked me with it. So opening up to you? Being real with you? That was one of the hardest things I've ever done, and I don’t regret it, Jonah. I don’t.”
I took a breath, the ocean air filling my lungs. “I don’t regret it either… I’m…” It was beginning to hit me. This night was going to change the course of my life forever. I could turn away, walk back to my car, and stuff all of these feelings deep down into the darkest pit of my soul, guaranteeing a painful and empty existence on this earth.
But if I did that, I’d go back to the way things were. I’d be comfortable again, as deeply sad as that word made me now… I wouldn’t have to worry about all the pain that was possible in a world that still held on to its homophobic history. I’d be empty, I’d be broken, but I’d be safe. Wearing a thin, bland paper mask, camouflaging myself in society. I’d wake up every day, knowing my life was a depressing lie, the what-if consuming my insides inch by fucking inch, day by fucking day.
And then I thought of Olly. My little brother and his well of courage, his spring of hope.
He’d be so disappointed in me. Devastated. And what example would I be setting as the older brother? That he should have stuffed his true self down this entire time? Suffocated it? No. No, that wasn’t what I wanted.
