Page 60 of False Start

I’ve already washed her and tucked her into my bed before taking a shower of my own. I get off thinking about the way she melted over my boot, and it’s all the dopamine I need to function with a clear head until tomorrow.

My phone buzzes on the nightstand. The text from Mo pops up on my notifications.

SCOTT HAS A PROPOSAL FOR YOU

I tossmy phone to the side and pretend like it didn’t come through.

She’s wearing one of my oldMy Chemical Romanceshirts that somehow manifested out of its coffin in my dresser. She’s not asleep, though. She’s restless because she’s coming down, and soon, she’ll be sick and then intolerable.

I crawl into bed with her anyway.

“Can I talk yet?” The question shocks me, because at no point had I thought I’d made her feel like she couldn’t.

“What would ever make you think you couldn’t?”

She’s on her back, staring at the ceiling, hands nervously fidgeting.

“Well, it’s not that. It justfeelslike I can’t. I don’t know how to really explain it. My head is a mess of thoughts all day long, most of them self punitive and destructive. When we’re together, it’s like all the thinking stops.” She’s trying to put into words what I’m doing to her.

“Good. That’s the point,” I reassure.

“It’s peaceful.” she admits. “I’m not used to that.”

“I know. I see you putting your mask on daily, performing for people you’ve called friends your entire life, people who should know and accept all the parts of you.” She’s turning to face away from me now. “Hey. Don’t ever feel like you can’t talk around me.”

“It’s not you. It’s—it’s all me. If I don’t talk, I don’t have room to regret what I say. I always regret what I say.”

I don’t know how to respond to that, don’t have a way to convince her that nothing she could say would turn me away now.

We’ve gone too far to turn back.

“Are you sure you want me here?” her voice is so shaky, I know it’s taking everything for her to ask me.

“No,” I tell her, feeling her trying to move away, but I wrap my arms around her waist and keep her in place. She feels hard, rigid, like she’s dying to escape. She’s still not facing me, not looking my way. “Ineedyou here.”

She softens, but a few moments go by before either of us speak again.

“You don’t want to be touched?” she asks, and I pullher closer into my chest, inhaling the sweet scent of my shampoo on her.

“We’re touching now, aren’t we?” I answer her sarcastically.

“You know what I mean, Cat.” She’s asking the question that takes most girls weeks to figure out. By then, I’m so burnt out of tolerating their touch that any romantic feelings are long forgotten.

She noticed immediately.

“No, I don’t like to be touched. Not like that.”

This is usually the point where they walk away or say it won’t work. When they realize they can’t make me into something they want. When the thrill of trying to convert me into a switch becomes sexual assault.

She doesn’t turn around to look at me, but I can feel her chest expand with the nervous inhale. “Okay.”

“Okay?” I’m a little stunned by her response. It’s normally a long battle of me trying to advocate for autonomy over my own body to someone who takes it as a personal insult that I don’t want a sexual favor returned.

“It has nothing to do with me?” she asks, slightly turning her cheek as if to look my way. “Like, you wouldn’t be going to someone else to get it?”

I can’t hold back the chuckle. “No, princess. I wouldn’t be going to anyone else for it.”

It’s cute that this is the first place her mind goes, but even better is the feeling that she gets it, that she’s not going to try to force it from me, as if I might change my mind about itwith her.