Page 21 of Doors & Windows (Liam & Jonah’s Story)

Jonah

Fridays had a new routine these days.

Jonah rose before the sun, but it wasn’t to pull on his work clothes, as he had become so accustomed to doing since the beginning of last summer.

In the dead of an ice-cold March, the construction gigs had slowed down.

There were less open spots on the crew for the projects they got, and Jonah had been the first to volunteer to take a step back.

His life was changing, and for once, that transitionary period felt less like stepping off a cliff into darkness and more like taking hold of the reins for the very first time.

He crossed paths with Ellis in the kitchen, who had saved a cup of coffee for Jonah and blearily sipped his own against the counter. They exchanged a murmured “morning” as Jonah went about making his toast.

“Can I drop you at the train?” Ellis asked.

“I’m okay to walk. Thanks.” There was something cleansing about the cold in New York City. On Friday mornings, Jonah craved that grounding force more than usual.

He looked over at the sudden schlick of paper across the countertop and found an envelope beneath Ellis’s fingertips, presented to him without commentary.

The formal university logo on the return address made Jonah’s heart skip.

He met Ellis’s eyes, carefully blank and unassuming, then pulled the letter toward himself.

A month from now, Jonah would hit his one-year mark as a New York resident. By the fall semester, he would be eligible for free tuition at the CUNY colleges—a scholarship opportunity he hadn’t known about until Ellis introduced him.

“I’ll open it later,” Jonah said.

Ellis waited until Jonah’s back was to him, rinsing his plate at the sink. “Whatever that letter says,” he said in a low voice, “and whatever you decide to do with it, I’m proud of you.”

Jonah’s hands faltered a moment. He let the words sink into him.

Ellis was not his father. With their dubious history, he would never quite hit the mark of a father figure .

But in the absence of Jonah’s parents in his life, it was nice to hear someone—not just anyone , but someone who had witnessed more of his suffering and his treacherous climb up from the bottom than anyone else alive—say it out loud.

His therapist’s office was located in a high-rise building in Long Island City.

Jonathan had a welcoming space with a retro-futuristic sofa in the shape of a bean, a pride flag posted on the door, and a well-groomed shih tzu named Carl's Jr. He had a terrible underbite and an affinity for ramming his head into Jonah’s ankles when he wasn’t getting enough attention. (Carl’s Jr., not Jonathan) .

Jonah had cried more within those walls in the last four months than he had in his entire life. However difficult he had anticipated it would be to air out his past, to lay everything out in the open where he could no longer look away from it, the reality was even harsher.

He had chosen Jonathan, after weeks of consideration, partly because of his openness about his own past: he was a transgender man from the bible belt of the American South.

His website said he specialized in PTSD from abuse and sexual assault.

Jonah was coming to terms with applying those labels to the things he had survived.

It was too easy sometimes to look back and only see the string of his own mistakes that had run his life off course.

Jonathan liked to remind him that laying blame did not make for an easy road forward, especially when it was all piled onto himself.

When he broke it down, these were the facts: Jonah was a kid when his parents turned their backs on him.

He was barely legal when Dominic took an interest. He was powerless by the time Ross Shepard had him in his grip.

He had never been asking for it. What happened to Jonah, as Liam had begged him to believe, was never his fault.

But that didn’t mean he wouldn’t be the one to carry it for the rest of his life.

“It isn’t fair,” Jonathan had told him. “And it isn’t kind. But the hurt that sticks with us doesn’t have to be the thing that defines us. It doesn't get to control your life anymore, Jonah.”

Most days, Jonah actually believed him .

“I let Liam touch me,” he announced on this particular Friday.

Jonathan’s brows lifted behind the wall of steam rising from his cup—something herbal and minty he always kept on hand for his sessions.

The phrasing was an oversimplification. It wasn’t as if Jonah was shy about the terminology.

He didn’t have that in him anymore. But it was a criminal mischaracterization to call what Liam had done for him by the same name as his own lived experience.

Blowjob was too crass a word to describe the way Liam had come to him slowly, bringing Jonah’s fingers to his mouth to show his intent.

Waiting until Jonah’s eyes were heavy-lidded, his breathing labored, before moving elsewhere.

Placing a grounding hand flat on Jonah’s abdomen and a kiss to his hip bone.

Liam had approached the act with a singular focus that implied a level of preparative research, which was so quintessentially Liam that Jonah couldn’t help but find comfort in it.

It wasn’t the first time they’d attempted reciprocation after the night of Liam’s birthday, but it was the first time they’d gotten through the encounter without Jonah having to end things prematurely.

In all the times Jonah had to tell him to stop, Liam never got angry.

Slowly, Jonah was learning to stop bracing for it.

Even more slowly, he was learning not to be so angry at himself .

Both Jonathan and Liam liked to remind him that “real sex” wasn’t defined by any one act, and that what they had done so far could be all there was to it, if that was what they wanted.

Jonah didn’t know if that was what he wanted or not—or if he could even handle more —but having the space to decide for himself made all the difference.

It was more than Jonah ever thought he would get to have again.

For a year of his life, Jonah’s world had been isolated to a series of small, dark spaces.

Basements and backseats and hotel rooms where the sun couldn’t reach him.

Those places would always exist somewhere in his memory, and there would be bad days when he stumbled into them, getting caught up in the feeling of walls closing in around him.

But those walls couldn’t hold him anymore.

Now, Jonah was free to kick open the doors, throw open the windows, and let the light in.

There was a lot more light in Jonah’s life these days.

One particularly bright beam waited for him on the park bench outside the office when his session ended, nose and cheeks pink from the chill.

It was a routine he had come to rely on: a warm cup of coffee from the corner store waiting for him, a brush of fingers against his own on the days he could handle the contact, or a quiet presence at his side on the days he couldn’t.

It never mattered where they went or what they did.

Jonah had fallen in love with Liam in the darkest of waters, clinging to the last beam of light on the horizon.

Now his feet were planted on the shore, and possibility sprawled before him.

Liam looked up as Jonah approached, his smile coming to life.

The darkness didn’t stand a chance.