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“Jack in the box.”
My shoulders shake with laughter. “Like, the fast-food chain?”
“Oh my god, no, like the old toy from like the fifties where you turn the crank and the thing pops out and scares you. I swear, I don’t understand why you would even get children that creepy thing.”
"Okay, I admit those things are weird. I think my grandma had one when she was younger and she kept it as like an heirloom or some shit, except none of us would ever touch it when we came over.”
“See!” she exclaims, laughing. “At least I’m not the only one. I feel better now.”
I rub my thumb along her hand in soft, gentle circles. We both peer out into the distance, comfortable just being… being together, in each other’s presence, not in any rush to let the moment pass us by. I can say it’s the first time in my life I’ve ever felt so connected with a woman, so effortlessly.
“What scares you the most?”
I mull over my answer before responding. My fears weren’t all stereotypical, like heights or spiders, most of them were internal fears that I continued to battle going forward each day. A direct result of the past few years of my life.
“Failure. Loving someone with everything I have only for them to betray me,” I whisper.
I wasn’t sure I would ever be able to love anyone and give them all of me again. Not after everything I’ve endured. I don’t know if I have it in me to ever fully trust another person.
I hate it. I hate that they did this to me, made me so unwilling to trust anyone because I’d been hurt so badly.
“Trust is hard. Been there, done that,” she says, “Remember that problem I didn’t want to talk about?”
I nod.
“My best friend and I got into a fight over something that turned into something much bigger, and things were said that can’t be taken back, and it hurts. All of it hurts, even though it was only said in anger. You can’t unsay things, even if they were only said because you were hurt,” she says quietly, her eyes taking on sadness.
“Doesn’t make it hurt any less, the reasoning behind it. I get it. I’ve… hurt a lot of people in my life recently, and even though I had a legitimate reason for acting the way that I did, it didn’t make it hurt them any less. And now I live with the guilt of it. Of all the shit I fucked up in the process of dealing with my own pain.”
Maddison reaches out and places her hand on mine, her thumb rubbing a light circle on my hand. There’s something real and raw about this moment. It feels like the first real, genuine conversation I’ve had in years.
Her gaze holds mine and something electric passes between us. Something tangible. A burst of energy tethering us together in this moment.
“Life isn’t black or white, Briggs, sometimes the edges aren’t rounded, and sometimes you have to let those sharp edges pierce you in order to heal and be better than you were before,” she says quietly.
