Chapter Fifteen
Alright, the girls are in bed, and Gordy’s downstairs working, so that means I’ve got at least a couple of hours to do some hardcore research.
What the fuck do I do about his latest revelation?
It’s obvious he needs help, but I am nowhere near qualified to give him the help that he needs.
I’m barely able to to have a minor grasp on the English language, for fuck’s sake.
So, how do I go about navigating a mutual sexual attraction, when he’s too guarded to allow it to get any further than begrudgingly acknowledging it?
I rummage around until I find Gordy’s laptop he has hidden away in his coffee table, and plug it in. When I open it up, I snort at the incognito web browser he left open. It’s more porn. Very gay, very interesting looking porn.
My eyes narrow in on the guy down on his knees, specifically.
He’s wearing a collar, by the looks of it.
The other dude standing has a leash wrapped around his fist. Shit, initial thoughts?
That’s—that could be hot. I mean, in a possessive kind of way—not like I want to picture the guy barking and panting like an actual dog.
Curious to find out more, I want to click play, but I stop myself before I do.
Right. Pay no mind to the stiffening in my pants. Maturity. Invasion of privacy. Stay focused. Research.
I open up a new tab and start searching for ways to help someone overcome a lifetime of trauma.
Gordy has endured way more than any one person should ever have to, and I know that I’m way out of my league here, trying to help him, but I still have to try.
It’s not like I can go to Brooks either.
While I have no doubt he’s more than qualified to give me advice, I’m sure he’d put two-and-two together and know that I’m not just asking "for a friend.
" Gordy would absolutely put me in the ground if I went to my social worker brother-in-law.
The more I click around, trying to do a deeper dive into how to help, the more ads I see flashing before me about getting help and connecting with therapists trained to deal with cPTSD—complex post-traumatic stress disorder. So, I deep dive into that rabbit hole next.
Now, I’m no doctor, but Gordy literally ticks off more than enough check-boxes to be fairly certain that’s what he’s dealing with.
I bet he knows it too, since he’s gone to treatment before.
But it makes sense now: his detachment from people, his aggression when he’s provoked, his feeling of worthlessness, even his night terrors—they could actually be flashbacks, which he can suppress during the day.
Fuck, if this doesn’t break my goddamned heart for him.
No wonder he’s always so tense, his body on high alert, waiting for a strike to come out of nowhere.
It’s also no surprise that he shuts everyone out, unwilling to even forge friendships.
He’s afraid that if he gets too attached, he’ll wind up alone and hurt all over again.
It also occurs to me now that me pressuring him into feeling out this physical attraction to one another also didn’t do him any favors.
If anything’s going to happen, it needs to be at his pace.
Which, knowing him, just means that I need to back the fuck off entirely, because it’s never going to happen. He’s too controlled to let it.
I close the laptop and puff out a resigned breath. Well, that’s the end of that, I guess. The best I can do is just be there for him whenever he needs me and guard his secrets with my life. I can do that, be the purely platonic friend he needs me to be. So, let’s start with something simple.
Knowing that he’s usually exhausted by the time he comes upstairs after work, I start picking up around the apartment. As predicted, the girls left this place looking like Hurricane Taterra hit. Before long, the apartment looks put together again.
Then, I move on to something for him to eat.
He doesn’t usually eat anything from the pub, so I look around his fridge.
I wince when I see nothing that I can cook without setting off a half a dozen smoke alarms, thus waking the girls back up, and then me having to read them at least two more bedtime stories.
So, I do the responsible thing and order some takeout.
There, that wasn’t so bad. Wait, was this the kind of thing Sarah had been bitching about all that time?
Shit, I really did fuck things up if taking a little initiative was all that needed to be done.
As much as I hate to admit it… she might have been right.
I was too focused on me, my own selfish needs, and, lastly, the chokehold alcohol had me in, which I had previously thought I had a handle on.
Sigh.
Suddenly, I hear what sounds to be tapping on glass. “Gulligan!” I whisper-shout. “Come on in, my dude! Gah, I’ve been so worried about you. Where have you been?!” I ask, half expecting him to answer me back. Of course, he doesn’t. That’d be weird, right?
I take a chance at cooking another bag of popcorn in the new microwave, and this time stand guard by it to make sure we have no more incidents. When I pop the perfect bag, I mentally pat myself on the back. Tappy taps on the kitchen tile let me know I’ve got a hungry little birdy on my hands.
I offer him a few pieces before settling in on the sofa.
Guillgan hunkers down on the arm next to me.
Smirking at him, I warn him that he can only stay if he doesn’t poop on the carpet this time.
I just cleaned the place, after all. I prop my feet up on the coffee table, and settle in to watch the rest of last week’s Pat’s game until Gordy gets back, because football I can understand.
God, I miss playing football.
That’s the last thing I remember before I am thumped—hard—in the chest. I wake up to find myself in Gordy’s bed, and it’s the man himself who just hit me.
Wait, I don’t remember climbing in here on my own, did he carry me to bed?
Shit, and I was trying to stay awake so I could give him his nightly back massage.
A blatant, yet unmentioned, disregard of the no touching rule, I know.
It just—I don’t know—happened one night, and has become our routine since.
He slides into bed with me, and I work out all his knots.
Now I know why he always stopped me before they turned into more, because, well, I can’t deny that I wanted to massage more than just his back.
I can’t take time to process that now, however, because Gordy is still asleep, in the throes of what looks to be the beginning of another nightmare.
He hasn’t had any this animated since I’ve started sleeping in the same bed as him, so briefly I wonder what could have possibly triggered this tonight.
I’d have expected it the night after his admission, but that never came and that was the day before yesterday.
We haven’t really touched on it again either, since I’ve been so caught up with the girls being here this weekend, so I’m wondering what could have happened today.
Did he open his laptop and find my research? Fuck. I hope not.
I’m perpetually caught in this maelstrom of wanting to help and making things worse, it would seem.
“Please stop,” he whimpers, and my heart cracks. I have to do something, however, before he wakes my girls. I haul him close to me, his clammy body against mine—because, at some point, he must have stripped me down to my boxer-briefs—and pin his arms to his side.
“Shh,” I whisper to him softly, cradling him—his pulse beating rapidly as I press his chest to mine. “No one’s going to hurt you, Gordy. It’s me, Gannett.”
He whimpers some more, a cracked, helpless sounding cry, and then he buries his face in the crook of my neck. He sucks in breaths, choppy and frantic. Then, he aggressively shoves me back. “Get the fuck away from me, asshole!” he hisses.
I hear stirring from the other side of the wall, and I know that Gordy is on the verge of waking Tati and Terra up.
I make a split second decision. “Gordy,” I say more forcefully, rolling my whole body on top of his to keep him from trashing.
“Please, buddy. I am so sorry, but I need you to wake up,” I murmur quietly.
Suddenly, his eyes pop open, and he gasps.
Attempting to take stock of his surroundings, he shifts under my weight, but I stay firmly in place.
“I’m so sorry,” I repeat in a whisper, nodding up at the wall that separates us from my kids, who have curiously not asked why I sleep with Gordy every night, like it’s perfectly normal for two grown men to have sleepovers.
His body starts to lose tension beneath me, and I can feel his sweating start to dissipate.
Almost as if by instinct, I roll over onto my side, reach up and start gently running my fingers through his hair.
The move calms my girls down enough to go to sleep sometimes, so why shouldn’t it work on him, right?
Still half-lucid, he starts to nuzzle into my touch, but then freezes up again, his brow creasing with concern as he fully rouses. “What smells minty?” he asks, confusing the shit out of me.
“Evan put deodorant in my Christmas stocking. I ran out of my other shit today, so I broke into it. Get this, it smells like those Thin Mint cookies. Why anyone would want their pits to smell like dessert, I have no idea. I can deep throat an entire sleeve of those, no problem, but I still don’t know how I feel ab—”
“Get it off,” Gordy snaps, cutting me off and shoving me away from him. “I don’t care what you have to do. Just go. Clean it. Off.”
“But I—”
“Now,” he whisper-hisses. “Please, Gannett.” He scrubs a hand down his face.
“I’m sorry,” he grumbles. “I—mint is a trigger of mine. Marlin’s go to drink was peppermint schnapps.
When he wasn’t shitty from that, he always used to cover up the smell of the alcohol on his breath with gum, mints, mouthwash—anything mint. ”