Chapter 25
NOEL
I heal differently these days.
In the past it was such a noisy and messy process, getting over anything at all, when every day was the worst day of my life.
And in some ways it still is. There are times when I’m all seized up with a panic that is still halfway unremembered and altogether surreal, glimpsed only through a fog that never lifts, my breath coming fast and shallow.
That moment in an alleyway is still so much like a scene from a movie that I wasn’t paying enough attention to, but still there’s that feeling, visceral and inescapable.
The feeling of being helpless, trapped, betrayed.
A tiny bird in a tinier cage, and those times are worse when I’m alone.
Sometimes I get weepy and scared and I can’t quite soothe myself, no amount of mindfulness can dispel, and those are the times I call Luca up.
In the middle of the day or the night or whenever it is that they strike because there’s no real rhyme or reason to it, and he almost always answers.
The only time he doesn’t is if he’s in the middle of something at work, but usually not five minutes later he gets back to me to see if I’m okay.
He talks me through it as long as it takes—which isn’t too long anymore—to calm the hyperventilating and my speeding heart, his voice warm and encouraging in my ear, and he never ever makes me feel like I’m a burden for needing him.
You are safe. You are okay.
Which I am.
And he’s here a lot too, even more often than before.
Weekends nearly always, whether he’s working or not, and he brings Amelia too, which is a delight and a comfort both.
He comes around every day off to keep me company, too.
It’s almost like he’s living here again sometimes or at least I can pretend that it’s so, and I keep busy enough when he’s not.
I don’t have days off really. The grind stops for no one.
But other than the anxiety and panic attacks—which are becoming fewer and farther between—I am a lot quieter than before where the whole healing process is concerned.
Less unhinged and hysterical and feeling like the world will end at any moment.
I feel like, for the first time in years, I can stand still and close my eyes and breathe.
Part of that can be attributed to my therapist, in whom I actually decided to confide my assault in.
And she didn’t pressure me to do anything about it one way or the other, like I expected her to.
She said it was okay if I took time to process it for myself and learned how to feel safe again.
Told me it was not my responsibility to do anything about Jordan, one way or the other.
Said it was very admirable of me for thinking that was so, and all this other bullshit that I don’t believe, but I know what she’s doing.
She’s planting seeds that will ideally take root eventually, things that I may one day come to believe about myself. She just loves positive affirmations.
So I’m not crying on the phone to anyone except Luca, occasionally, and only when I’m panicking, and he said that I could, encouraged me to, so that doesn’t count.
I’m still not biting myself or doing myself any other kind of injury.
I’m not drinking or anything at all anymore, and most of all I’m not bothering my friends.
It’s the other way around, actually. They’re bothering me, asking if I’m okay, when I’m good to talk and hash everything out, but I sort of don’t have the energy for them right now.
Maybe that’s unfair but it’s also true, and for once I’m going to protect my peace instead of grovel for their acceptance, even if I miss them.
So I put them off and they’re agreeable and that’s all well and good, at least for now.
And if I’m totally honest, the temptation to stay inside and lick my wounds is so, so strong.
Not that my wounds need very much licking.
But I’ve got this desire to sorta withdraw from it all and just…
percolate, which is probably not very good for me, not really seeing anyone or going anywhere or doing anything. It is so very unlike me.
So that’s probably why Luca invites me out to Provincetown that first blistering weekend in August, the tail end of Family Week, along with Killian and Max, and he’s acting like he doesn’t know that I don’t go to the beach.
I don’t swim, I don’t do anything outdoorsy of the sort beyond walking to and from various destinations.
I know he knows these things because I’ve told him before—it’s more that he wants me to get out of the house and so I do, because I can do things that are good for me.
I’m easy to lure out when he’s the carrot on the stick.
As it happens, I do own one lonely pair of swim trunks, and I throw them on along with a black t-shirt and sunglasses that obscure the majority of my face. Luca tells me I look like a baby bat when he picks me up, which I preen over like it’s a compliment because it is.
He’s been sort of different over the last week or two.
Some fundamental reset of his brain, I think, after realizing that this was it with his family, that he was well and truly on his own and there was no going back now.
Festering bandage off, ancient wound exposed to air at last, and now it’s amassing much-needed scar tissue.
But it’s a good thing, because now it’s actually going to heal and that’s what he really needs right now.
What we both need, actually. And, well, we’re working on it.
We meet up with Killian and Max for the long ferry ride out of Boston, and a couple hours later we’re searching for an elusive clear space in the sand on West End Beach to spread our towels.
As Max spears a giant umbrella into the sand Luca beckons me to strip my shirt and lie on the towel before him.
He spreads sun screen across my shoulders and down my back, right above the waistband of my shorts, and he’s all nestled against my ass.
It’s a sensation I enjoy altogether too much and ends far too soon. It’s too bad the beach is so public.
He leans down and his laugh rumbles in my ear as I wriggle between his legs. “Brat.” He smacks my ass once, quick and playful, but it does not help the situation. The situation being that I have a half-chub now.
“Don’t turn me on if you’re not going to follow through,” I complain.
“Why not? Edging you is one of my favorite things to do ever.”
“Are you guys gonna fuck?” Killian asks us with interest. “Do you need us to hold some towels up for you, or something? Give you some privacy?”
“No!” Luca exclaims. “I’m not having sex on the beach during Family Week, Killian. There’s children literally everywhere.”
I roll over and sit up, adjusting myself. “Now I get to do you.”
Which, again, I enjoy too much. Following the lines of his muscular, tan back, a clean canvas for whatever tattoos he plans on putting there, though he’s never mentioned one way or another if he wanted more.
He’s got so many already, maybe he wants to leave these spots blank.
With or without the ink, he’s gorgeous. Michelangelo could’ve sculpted him and have him put in a museum somewhere for the rest of eternity for the whole world to ogle—except I suppose I wouldn’t like that very much.
After all, we fought so damn hard to get here. Didn’t we? Fought a million battles big and small so yeah, I’m going jealously guard my prize. I’ve earned him. Or maybe it’s the other way around; it’s me he’s earned. Maybe I’m the prize—and that’s a funny thought.
Abruptly he scoops me up in his arms and takes me down to the while I alternate between yelping and laughter, smacking at his chest with a playful sort of half-heartedness and making silly threats that fall on deaf ears.
We draw the attention of nearby beach-goers who watch us bemused as Luca steps into the churning surf and my cries ratchet up an octave because I just know it’s going to be too cold.
“Don’t you dare throw me in,” I warn him. “Don’t you even think about it.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it,” he agrees. “Wouldn’t want you to get hurt.”
“And you couldn’t, anyway.” Because I can’t resist, I am a little shit. “You couldn’t throw me.”
“Is that so?”
“Yes.” There’s a shit-eating grin splitting my face. “Your muscles are just for show. They’re glamor muscles.”
“Can you even swim?”
“Of course I can swim. Are you serious?”
“You’re the same guy who’s never eaten crab, or lobster—”
I reach up and tweak a lock of his hair. “I’ve now eaten both, dickhead.”
So he makes like he is going to throw me in, heaving back and everything, counting, one…
two…while I shriek with laughter and tell him no don’t when he sets me down, quite gently, in the waist-deep water.
The waves are small today, lapping at my hips as he takes my face in his and sets his forehead against mine.
“I love you so much,” he tells me, voice barely audible above the surf and the gulls. “You know that?”
My hands wrap around his forearms. “I think so.”
He kisses me. There are a million people on this beach it seems and maybe they’re watching us after the racket we caused, or maybe not, or maybe it doesn’t matter either way.
What does matter is that he’s kissing me in front of all of them like he’s never been ashamed of me or us or who he is a day in his life.
I smile against his lips and squeeze his wrists.
I want to tell him how brave I think he is—that he’s done this, that he broke free from that cycle he’d nearly doomed himself to repeat.
I am so proud of him. Living your truth can be a fucking bitch, after all.
He’s been punished every single time he’s tried, and yet he’s trying it again.
He might’ve lost what was left of his family, but he’s got me, and he’s got his friends, and soon he’ll have his kid, too.
He’s not as alone as he thought after all.