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Love.
I shuddered. Things were triggering me, left right and centre today.
Love.
I loved him. I had for a very long time. I knew what love looked like now, and it was sitting right here in front of me, still giving all the reassurances that I would be safe.
“Mark will look after you. And Mabel will be there. And Imran and whatever that guy from reception is called—Joe?”
“I’ve never been to a concert. At least, not one as big as this. Kind of…scary to be honest. But I’ll be fine.”
The thought of going to one freaked me out a little, but I’d see him after.
He kissed my wrists. Wiped another stray drip of ketchup from my cheek.
“You still want chocolate?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said with that newfound, strange conviction. I hadn’t eaten chocolate in years, and I had a weird craving for toast too. White, cheap, nasty toast with butter and jam. I’d always loved jam. Strawberry. Or Apricot. I couldn’t remember.
“Go work, Hugo.” He grinned and placed my hands down on the table. “Let me get changed and I’ll get you chocolate.”
“I can go to the shop myself.” After all, I was a grown-up. An adult with staff discount in the hotel gift shop and the coffee shop, which also sold nice-looking chocolate muffins.
Fuck. I needed a chocolate muffin. Like yesterday.
“Go work,” Ben said again. “I’ll drop you off a snack later. I feel like I need a cigarette now, after the day we’ve had.”
“No smoking,” I warned, smiling through the sternness in my voice.
“I’ll just have to make you a snack then.” He grinned. “With chocolate.”
Love.
Damn it.
I loved. I did. And it scared the shit out of me.
***
I survived. Of course I did. I worked and wrote reports and sorted out invoicing and finally caught up with the tasks I’d neglected all morning. Then, on the way to the concert, Mark took me to some small backstreet place and made me eat…well, it wasn’t what I would have called dinner, but we shared a bowl of steaming-hot noodles and something sweet calledbubble tea. I had no idea what it was, but I drank it or ate it or whatever it was you did with it.
Mark was actually good company and the nerves in my stomach were slowly starting to ease until the concert started. It was too loud and bright and sensory overload to the point that I had to go out in the back so I could breathe for a bit. I was never alone, though, and had the feeling everyone had been told to hold my hand. I even had to stop Mabel from following me into the toilets.
I was fine. I was. Truly. Shattered and still a bit highly strung, not quite sure who I was supposed to be, but I made it home in one piece.
It was astounding how closing the door behind me made me feel. My knees buckled beneath me, and I almost sat on the bag of shopping I’d picked up from the corner store. I’d barely made it over the threshold and sat there with my back against the door, finally allowing myself to fall apart.
There were no tears. Just my body reacting and strange noises coming out of my mouth as my chest spasmed. The dull pain was almost comforting. I hurt, but it was good hurt. Safe hurt. I hurt because of all the time I’d lost. All those years when I should have been alive and had been anything but. I’d been so scared for so long.
I had a man who loved me. I knew because I felt it everywhere. And I understood now why it scared me. Love came with expectations. I knew how normal people lived, and that I’d never been normal, but that was okay. I liked our kind of normal, and I was safe here. I needed to just grasp life by the horns and deal with it.
With life.
With being an adult.
With being…me.
It took a while, but I managed to make my legs work again, put my shopping in the kitchen and dropped all my clothes in the hallway. Had a shower, the fear running off me like droplets of water.
