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“Gay. Always knew. Never even looked at a girl. Well, apart from Olivia Hopkins when we were in year three. She walked out of the toilets with her skirt around her ankles, and everyone laughed at her. Except me. I hugged her. That was my one and only relationship with a girl.”
“Oh.” He grinned. One of those grins where his whole face crinkled and his red swollen cheeks actually…
“Do you want to kiss a man now? See what it’s like?” Fuck you, Hugo. Fuck you to kingdom come. And back.
He stared at me.
“Or I could kiss you. See if you like it?”
“You want to kiss me?”
And the Awkward Conversation of the Year Award goes to…Hugo Burrows!
I should just make impulsiveness my middle name and be done with it, as rather than try to dig myself out of the conversation, I straddled his lap, fiddled around with the blanket so it covered us both and put my arms around his shoulders. I was too close, far too close, and his face was simply…
Terrifying.
He looked terrified.
“Is this okay?” I whispered.
“I don’t know,” he whispered back.
“You can say no.”
“I’m not going to say no.”
His hands were slowly moving, coming to a gentle rest on my hips, as his breath hitched. Slow puffs of air. A heavy swallow.
“It’s just a kiss,” I assured him.
“Yeah.”
“You okay?”
He nodded, but he didn’t feel okay to me. His skin against my fingertips was hot and clammy, and he was breathing way too fast. I didn’t like that he felt like this. He didn’t deserve to be this scared. There were wonderful things in the world, truly. Beautiful things, like laughter and love, and I wanted those for him. I wanted those for me.
His arms moved over my back until he was hugging me, full on, with my face in his neck. I could feel his sobs, his chest convulsing as he tried and failed to hold back the tears.
We sat like that for a while, his sobs slowly subsiding, though he was still holding me tightly. I let myself relax in his arms.
“We’ve not done very well on the hugs lately, have we?” I spoke quietly. “You said we’d always hug hello and hug goodbye, but we’re hardly ever home at the same time, and when we are, we just sit on the sofa. We need to hug more.”
Fuck knew what I was on about, but he seemed to calm down with hands kneading his back and my chin resting on his shoulder. I loved the way he smelled. Clean. Warm.
My Ben.
I wasn’t supposed to do this. I wasn’t supposed to throw myself into any kind of relationship, apart from to form a close bond with my recoveryplan. Fall in love with my meal schedule. Learn to love myself. Accept my body for what it was. Care for it. Nurture it.
Well. I would love myself. Because I loved this. I really did. I deserved something good, and Ben…
Ben was something good. Maybe even something great.
Still, I needed to learn to control my impulses, rein in my obsessions. Normalise everything on one calm baseline.
I had to smile at my own stupidity. There were no rules here. There was just him. And me.
So I pushed up, put my hands around his face, and I looked into his eyes. I could see fear there, and hurt, but there was something else. Something that I’d started to recognise.
