Page 123 of The Story of You

Was … was this how Aleksander felt? With the lines of what was right and wrong so tangled in my head, it seemed a logical possibility.

Oliver laughed when Darius ran around the room with him, distracting him so I could leave. “You’re an airplane, Oli. Airplane! Airplane!”

“Brixy too. Brixy too,” he said.

Darius snatched up Brix. “Welcome to Randall Airlines. Make sure you’re ready to have a good time. The pilots are drunk.”

Aside from his questionable methods—he had many of those—I eventually learned the difference. Darius and I were doing this together. There were still occasions when he had little choice, but we weighed the options between us. Often, I was the one to make the final decision, but he was always considered, and I valued his input.

He was always a person and never my personal slave.

* * *

Silas

Ididn’t know who I was. I woke up some nights clawing the sheets for Aleksander, my safe place, my place of serenity, which made for awkward mornings when I’d find myself clutching Darius’s t-shirt.

“Wake me up, Darius,” I told him. Sometimes he had bruises.

“No. Fuck that, Silas. You should hear … you sound like … Silas, you couldn’t fucking breathe. You need the comfort, and you fucking get it. End of story.”

We didn’t have many sleeping options at the time, so we got used to it. It was worse when I’d dream of him; vivid dreams that stuck with me all day left my heart hollow and made breathing during the daytime too hard.

I knew I wasn’tsupposedto miss him. I wassupposedto be grateful that we were away from him. What the fuck was wrong with me? My brain refused to think of the bad things, flooding me with all the softer moments.

Eventually, the ice came. I was hit in the face with what I’d done with my father. I had Father inside me. It wasn’t just that. I wanted it all. His kisses, his touches, his words.

“Call me butterfly.”

“Butterfly.”

“Again.”

“Butterfly, butterfly, butterfly.”

I adored him and loved him in a way a son is notsupposedto love his father. Especially one who was most likely a psychopath—in the least a high-functioning sociopath. I was disgusted with what I’d done. I tried to tell myself I’d been groomed and that it was a toxic situation that had led me to need relief far and above anything else. But at the end of the day, I’d wantonly begged for his dick in my mouth, and I remembered how much I craved it. Nineteen-year-old me concluded that I must be as immoral and as damaged as he was.

And then an even darker shadow would swallow me. What if none of it was real? We began in the worst of ways, but the love that surrounded us was nothing short of resplendent. I could make it through another day—if barely—having loved and lost. The thought that none of the things I found so beautiful ever existed was too painful to contemplate.

The conflict and the what ifs tore me apart. Sometimes I was paralyzed in a panic, thinking about his hands all over me, begging an invisible Aleksander to stop.

And other times?

I couldn’t think because I needed his hands on me. I needed a hit of his scent. I needed to hear him whisper that I was just his and that he was never letting me go.

ChapterThirty-Seven

Darius ~ Fall 1988

“Fucksakes, Oliver. Please take a nap.” I was tired and losing my patience. If I could go back in time, I’d tell younger me not to sweat the small stuff. Then, younger me would punch future me in the throat because that’s a fucking insensitive thing to say to someone who’s running on fumes.

“No. I want to wait for, Baba.”

It was three in the morning. I had begun a job at the supermarket. Red Bull wasn’t invented yet. I was sleeping less than usual. I wanted to kill myself. For anyone who wants to know, humans weren’t made to stay up all night even if you sleep all day. One of us always had a cold. And before anyone gets their noses out of joint about us trotting off to work sick, remember that getting to stay home sick is a fucking luxury.

No one—absolutely no one—wantsto go to work sick. You only go because you have no other choice and, yes, feeding my fucking brother takes priority over anyone else. Shitty supermarket jobs don’t give you paid sick days. Same for even shittier custodial jobs.

Silas made better money than I did, and his job allowed for more overtime, but it was also the literal worst. His boss was never satisfied. There were only a few people on shift and so he was mostly alone. They didn’t allow phone usage, so Silas had to call on his breaks and waste quarters.