Charlie
The door slams behind Hunter hard enough that the cheap frame rattles.
For a second, the whole room feels too quiet.
Someone coughs. Elena crosses the room and takes my hand again.
She’s been doing that the last few sessions.
I think I remind her of her son, who she lost to suicide.
Her thumb strokes the back of my knuckles as though she is trying to remind me I’m safe.
I’m safe.
But my pulse is fluttering anyway. And it isn’t from fear.
Tim clears his throat gently. “Okay…let’s take a breath, everyone. That was a lot of energy. We’ll process it next time if anyone needs to.”
I nod like I’m fine. I even manage a small smile for the group as people start gathering their things. But inside my head it’s loud.
Hunter.
Six feet of rage wrapped in burnt edges of self-hatred so thick I could almost taste it.
Dark messy hair, hazel eyes that looked more dead than alive when he first walked in.
Fresh gauze peeking out from under his collar as if he was daring anyone to ask about it.
How his voice dropped when he called me a twink like it was some sort of insult.
And still…God help me, he was beautiful in the worst way. Ruined and stubborn and somehow still magnetic.
I hate that he’s my type.
I thought I was past this. Thought the city and the pole and the quiet mornings with Sofia had sanded down those sharp edges in me; the ones that still reach for damaged men like they’re the oxygen I need to survive. The ones that whisper maybe I can help even when I know better.
Apparently not.
Because when he leaned in close, towering over me with that mean glare and those broad shoulders tense as though he was one breath away from exploding, something in my stomach flipped.
A curiosity and heat burned through me in equal measures.
The same stupid flutter I used to get right before I let someone too broken get too close.
The whole reason I ended up in conversion therapy in the first place.
Broken boys still in the closet trying to break me, too. Being labeled gay in my small hometown had been an embarrassment for my preacher father. And he and my mother looked up the best conversion therapy in the country and drove me fifteen hours before dropping me off in Texas.
I can still feel the dust on that long dirt road. The way the car smelled like my mother’s perfume and my father’s aftershave. How they didn’t even hug me goodbye, just handed me my duffel bag and told me this was God’s plan to make me whole again.
Whole.
They tried so hard to carve the softness out of me.
Prayer. Ice baths. Hours on my knees while they had me shout scripture until my voice gave out. Hands on my shoulders, on my thighs, “guiding” me back to righteousness. Every touch felt like ownership.
They made me have fake conversations with my mother, my father, other people in my life, while they tried to make me hate them for what they let me become.
But the worst nights—the ones that still make me wake up crying—were when the “counselors” decided words and cold water weren’t enough. They wanted proof I didn’t like dick.
So they brought in boys from the program.
Older ones who’d already “graduated.” Made me watch while they touched themselves.
Made me touch them too, under their supervision, while they prayed over me and told me to feel the disgust. Told me if I got hard it was the demon, and if I didn’t it was proof the program was working.
They’d stroke me themselves sometimes, clinical and cold, checking for any reaction like I was a broken machine they could fix with the right amount of shame and embarrassment.
“See?” they’d whisper while my stomach heaved. “This is what you want? This is sin. Feel how wrong it is.”
Every night I cried myself to sleep, tasting shame so thick it coated my throat like communion wine gone sour. I learned to go somewhere else in my head. No matter what they did to me. I learned that my body could be used as a weapon against itself and still not break completely.
I survived it.
Barely.
I press the heels of my hands against my eyes for a second, breathing in the cool night air until the memory loosens its grip.
I’m not that scared boy anymore. I’m not.
I have the city. I have Sofia waiting at home, demanding pets and belly rubs like the tiny tyrant she is. And I have Lucy and her ridiculous texts and bright personality. I’m healing, inch by inch.
But some part of me, the part that is still a little damaged, soft, and stupid, wants to know what Hunter’s hands feel like and what his voice sounds like when he isn’t trying to keep people away.
It just proves I need more therapy.
My phone buzzes in my pocket. Lucy, probably, because she’s the only one that I really talk to. I don’t check it yet. Instead, I start walking toward the subway, fishnets rubbing against my jeans, my sweater slipping off of one shoulder again.
The city wraps around me like it always does. I love it here. I really do. But tonight, the lights feel a little too bright and the noise a little too loud, as though everything is pressing in on the quiet ache Hunter left behind with his careless words.
I pull my sweater back up over my shoulder and keep walking.
He called me a twink like that was supposed to hurt my feelings. And maybe my softness is the problem.
But the way he looked at me and how his eyes stayed on me the whole time, there wasn’t just anger. There was something else in those hazel eyes. It was raw and desperate and almost…hungry. Like he hated that he couldn’t look away.
I really shouldn’t have liked that attention. Because I know men like him can go dark and obsessive. And that combination is bad for my healing. No matter how much I love how it makes me feel.
I descend the subway stairs anyway, the rumble of the train vibrating up through my soles. The car is half-empty this late, so I find a seat in the corner and finally pull out my phone.
Lucy: Marcus texted me. Spill. How bad was the new haunted boy? On a scale of sad puppy to I need to stage an intervention and hide your glitter?
I stare at the screen for a long moment, thumb hovering. Part of me wants to downplay it. Tell her he was basically another guy who only knows how to throw barbs because he’s hurting.
Me: Closer to, I should not find that hot. He’s…really hot. A firefighter. And he called me a twink twice.
Her reply is almost instant; three fire emojis, a skull, and a string of question marks.
Lucy: CHARLIE. NO. You are not adopting the smoke monster. I repeat: DO NOT. We talked about this.
I huff a quiet laugh and sink further into my seat, only glancing up when an old man shifts on the other end of the car.
Me: I know. I’m not going to adopt anyone. Promise.
I don’t wait for another text before adding.
Me: He is hurting, though. And I’m a good listener.
Lucy: That’s the problem, princess. You listen with your whole heart and then wonder why it gets stepped on. Are you headed home?
Me: Yes. And I’ll lock the door, Mom, and text you the second I get there.
Lucy: You better. Xoxo
She follows her text with a heart emoji.
I smile at the screen, the little heart emoji making something warm settle in my chest despite everything.
Lucy has been my safe place since the day I met her at pole class—loud, bright, and zero tolerance for me falling back into old patterns.
She’s gone to a few of the therapy circles with me, as a support person, so she knows the whole story.
The train rattles on. I lean my head back on the cool glass and close my eyes for a second. It’s bad that I can picture his gruff face in my head. I’ll probably paint him when I get home. In fact, my fingers itch to get a hold of my brush and some paint.
The image is already forming — those hazel eyes, flat and burning at the same time, the dark messy hair falling across his forehead, the tense line of his jaw like he’s one wrong word away from shattering.
I’d paint him in heavy oils, maybe with smoke curling around the edges, the fresh gauze on his shoulder barely visible under the collar of a worn FDNY hoodie.
Something raw and ruined and still somehow magnetic.
God, I really am a mess.
The train slows at my stop. I step off onto the platform, the cool night air hitting my face as I climb the stairs toward home. My apartment building is only two blocks away, the familiar yellow light in the lobby already glowing like a beacon.
Sofia is going to be dramatic about me being late. She always is. I smile at the thought, but it doesn’t quite chase away the quiet ache in my chest.
By the time I push open my apartment door, Sofia is waiting like a small black missile. She launches herself at my legs with an indignant meow, clawing her way up my ripped jeans until I scoop her up.
I carry her around the tiny kitchenette as she complains to me the whole time about how rough her life is. I get out her cat food and make her a plate, setting it on the floor. She hops down and starts lapping it up as if she’s been starving for days instead of just since this morning.
She makes little grumbling complaints through every single bite, and I move over to the corner of my room that holds my painting supplies. I pull out a blank canvas and prop it on the stand, then select the paints for him. Orange, burnt red, gray, dark blue, green, and brown.
Then I pick up my charcoal to draw the fine lines. The second it touches the canvas, Hunter pours out of me. His form taking shape.
Broad shoulders hunched forward. Dark messy hair falling across his forehead and slightly over his left eye.
The tense line of his jaw and angry twist of his lips.
I shade in the shape of the gauze that hides beneath his shirt and the fine dusting of facial hair that is patchy in places and darker on his chin.
My hand moves faster than my brain can keep up.
I layer in the hazel eyes—not quite dead anymore, but burning with that raw, desperate hunger I avoided staring at.
I add the faint scar on his lower lip and imagine he must bite it when the nightmares get bad.
The slight crook in his nose that says it’s been broken at least once.
The charcoal smears under my fingers, turning my hands gray and black.
I don’t care. I switch to the oils, thick and heavy, because nothing else feels violent enough for him.
Burnt sienna for the shadows under his eyes.
Alizarin crimson bleeding into the edges like fire still licking at his skin.
A slash of titanium white where the gauze catches the light, making the fresh bandage look almost alive.
Every stroke feels like touching him.
I paint the tension in his neck, the way his shoulders curve inward as though he’s carrying something too heavy to name. I paint the barely-contained rage in the set of his mouth, the kind that says he wants to burn the whole world down just so no one else has to feel what he feels.
Sofia jumps onto the table halfway through and headbutts the edge of the canvas, leaving a tiny black smudge right over his left shoulder. I don’t wipe it off. It feels right. Like she’s claiming him too.
When I finally step back, the painting stares out at me.
Hunter.
All smoke and ash and barely-leashed violence. Beautiful in the way only broken things can be.
My chest is tight. My hands are trembling.
I should cover it. Put it away. Pretend I never started.
Instead, I leave it on the easel under the single lamp, the wet paint still gleaming. I wash my hands in the sink, watching the gray swirl down the drain, but I can’t wash the image out of my head.
I might have lied to Lucy. Because if he looks at me with hunger again…I know that some damaged, stupid part of me already wants to feed it.
I collapse onto the couch next to Sofia. She crawls into my lap, purring loudly and making biscuits in a circle until my lap is comfortable enough for her. The painting watches me from across the room as though it knows exactly what I’m thinking.
Tomorrow is another day.
And two days from now is another session.
And I already know I’ll walk into that room wearing my eyeliner a little darker, heart beating a little faster, and wondering if those hazel eyes will watch me with the same intensity as before.
I’m so fucked.
I can’t wait.