Ethan
Ethan
Absolutely everything has changed.
Blue was right about me, and I’ve never been so grateful to have been mistaken in my life. I’m not broken, I’m demisexual, and that has been a life-changing revelation. I don’t need to spend my nights alone, wondering why I can’t seem to feel anything resembling attraction. I don’t need to force myself to go on dates that I know will end badly. I don’t need to worry that I’m a lost cause and that all the moments I’ve spent clinging to hope have been for nothing. I don’t actually think I even need to try at all anymore. I think I may have accidentally fallen in love already.
It's possible that I’m completely misinterpreting what I'm feeling; after all, it’s not like I have a lot of experience with attraction or love-adjacent emotions, but I don’t think I am. I don't think I’m mistaking the stirring in my belly and my racing heart and the rush of dizziness I feel when my lungs simply forget that I need to take in oxygen to survive when I’m around Blue for something they aren’t. I want to be near him always. I want to touch and kiss and curl up against him with my face buried in the bend of his neck so I can smell the crisp, appley scent of his shampoo. Even though this is the first time I’ve truly had a close friend in more than a decade, I don’t think I’m wrong in remembering that those feelings aren’t usually a part of friendships. I mean, Gabriel is my friend too, and I don't lose control of my body every time he gets close. He's an attractive man objectively, but I don't feel any differently about him than I did the first time we met.
Blue is different. Everything about Blue is different. When I’m around Blue, when I think about him alone at night, when my mind drifts at work to the way his hair falls like water in the sunlight and how he moves with a surety and grace I can’t even begin to understand, I feel everything that I remember feeling with Jordyn. I feel even more than I remember feeling with Jordyn. I loved Jordyn completely, and that will never change, but that was a young, innocent first love. It was the gentle and careful rush of first kisses and stolen touches and smiles and moments. This is the first time I've felt want and need and longing fill my soul so completely that my very bones ache. This is the first time I’ve felt the bright pull of attraction and desire as a man who's known the drabness of a life filled with only loss and memories and disappointment to keep me company at night. This is the all-encompassing urgency of desires that have lain dormant for a lifetime.
I’m a different person than I was when I fell in love with Jordyn. Back then, I was na?ve and innocent and so incredibly sure that love would always be enough. That falling had been the hard part and everything else would always simply drift into place as long as we had love. I’m not that person anymore. I’m a man who's learned that love isn’t automatic or guaranteed. It’s a fragile thing that has to be nurtured and protected and fought for. I’ve spent so much of my life fighting. I’ve fought to find my own way through grief and heartache to build a life and a career, even if it is a dull life and a boring career. I’ve fought through my insecurities and what I mistakenly thought were my failures to find love and romance, even when I felt like giving up. I want to fight for Blue now. I want to discover every tiny fact and quirk and eccentricity and protect them like the gifts they are. I want him to know that he is perfect so that he never feels the need to change. The passion and yearning and heart-stopping joy that I feel when we’re together, when I think about him, it’s already so deeply ingrained in my soul that I couldn’t remove it, even if I tried. It feels as necessary as air, and I want to hold on to him with everything I have. I want him to hold onto me in return. I want to keep him as my own.
I want more than just his company and laughter and presence at my side. When I lie in bed at night, I can’t stop thinking about all of the other ways I want him. I want him to overpower me. I want to trace every line of his tattoos with my mouth and to toy with his lip ring with my tongue the way he so often does.I want to watch him move, all strong and agile and tan skin and sharp black lines. I want to feel his body against mine, to be covered by strength and warmth. I want to blur the lines between us until I can’t tell where I end and he begins.
He doesn’t touch me any more than Gabriel does. He hasn’t made any more jokes about fucking me since the first time we formally met at the hot shop, and I’ve never caught him watching me out of the corner of his eye when he thinks I’m not paying attention. He hasn’t given me any indication that he might be open to more than friendship with me. Why would he? I’m quiet and boring, and he is radiance and freedom and excitement. He is the embodiment of life itself, and I’m someone who has forgotten what it means to actually live.
Blue has been a good friend to me over the past few months. He’s been kind and supportive, and I’ve never once felt like he’s judging me. Not when I explained my sexual hangups, not when I share pieces of my past, not even when I stammer and ramble like an idiot. It feels like I fit with him effortlessly. Hell, we even share the same taste in coffee and whiskey and old movies. He’s everything I’ve always dreamed of in a partner, and all of the small moments I’ve always fantasized about experiencing one day - suddenly, I can so easily imagine them with him. These days, when I find my mind drifting to thoughts about my future, I see late mornings in bed, leisurely brunches, weekends wandering through the woods, and quiet afternoons watching him create beautiful art in the shop.
I haven’t told him that my feelings for him have changed. That they’ve grown into something unexpected and overwhelming in the best of ways. I haven’t gotten to the point where I’m willing to take that risk. What if he’s so repulsed by the idea of a sexual relationship with me that he pulls back from our friendship? What if he’s open to the idea of a sexual relationship but that’s all? Just because I’m a demisexual, who’s always anticipated having a romantic relationship with the people I’ve slept with - even if that’s never worked out before - that doesn’t mean that Blue is. Hell, I know he’s not. Even though he seems to be taking some time away from one-night stands for some reason, his friends have made his history pretty clear. He doesn’t do repeats, and I don’t know that I’d survive getting to experience truly good sex with someone I care for only once before having to let it go.
For the second time in my life, I find myself in the position of having to risk my closest friendship by telling someone that I’ve developed feelings for them, and that’s not an easy thing to do. So I’ve hidden my feelings away, cherishing them for as long as I can before the ache in my chest becomes so overwhelming and impossible to ignore that I can’t hold it in anymore. Before I have to tell Blue how I feel and put my heart in his hands and hope there is a chance. I hope that even if he doesn’t return my feelings, he’ll be gentle with me. But more than that, I hope beyond hope that he just might be open to more.