Page 57 of Unexpected Boyfriends

Then I’ll leave you alone. Promise.

Justin

Justin? He’s here! My heart begins to race. But… what is he saying? What does he mean ‘one last time’? And why would he promise to leave me alone? Does he think I won’t want to see him? Why would he think that?

Icy fingers of dread run down my spine. Something is very wrong.

Quickly but silently, I make my way through the house to the backdoor and slip outside. I look around. In the light of the moon, the garden is silent and still, the leaves on the bushes silvery, the shadows dark. It’s not that dark because of the moonlight, but I can’t see him, so if he’s here, he must be hidden behind the bushes somewhere. None of this makes any sense. But nothing has made sense since he left here in April and never contacted me, so…

Slowly I make my way towards the back of the garden, stooping under the trees and bushes that conceal the back fence. And there I find him, a pale shadow slumped up against the palings, hidden from the house by the drooping branches of the weeping apple tree and some large camellia bushes.

“Justin?” I whisper.

He startles, and his eyes shoot open.

“Axel,” he says my name on a half-sob, and when I draw close I’m shocked to see the fatigue and distress on his face. He looks thinner too and paler, and he’s shaking all over. What is wrong?

I move towards him, meaning to take him in my arms but he lets out another sob as he hunches in on himself, and hides his face. Before I can make any sense of this incomprehensible behaviour, words begin to tumble from him.

“I know you must think I’m disgusting,” he blurts out, “and I promise I’ll go away, but I just wanted to see you one more time… I can’t help it, I missed you. I’m sorry…” his voice trails off into soft sobs. Tears glint as they trickle down his cheeks in the moonlight. The anguish in his voice is heartbreaking and unbearable.

“What? Why would I think that? I don’t understand what’s going on,” I protest.

Justin is sobbing so hard, I’m not sure he’s heard anything I’ve said. It’s alarming, and an icy finger of fear wraps itself around my heart. I reach for him and pull his trembling body close to me, wrapping myself around him. This time he doesn’t pull away. I have a feeling that as much as he thinks I’m going to reject him, he desperately needs comfort from me.

But I would never reject him. No matter what. Doesn’t he know that?

“What’s going on, Justin?” I drop kisses on his head. “What’s happened? Please tell me. I missed you. I love you. No matter what’s happened to you. But please, please, tell me what’s going on. I hate seeing you like this.”

“How can you love me?” he asks between sobs. “I’m disgusting, a deviant. How can anyone love that?”

What kind of bullshit is this? It’s like he’s regurgitating words someone has fed him. Where has this come from?

“You’re none of these things! Who’s been telling you this stuff?” I demand, angrily. “They’re not true. None of them.”

Justin quietens a little. The sobs are smaller but the shudders still shake his thin frame. He’s so much thinner than Iremember. All bones, where he used to be slender but firm. I kiss his forehead, and rub his back, even as I hold him close.

“They’re not true,” I say again. “These are terrible things. Why are you saying them?”

Justin sniffs. “That’s what they said at the ReEducation Centre. And if they’re not true, why didn’t you write back? I thought you didn’t want anything to do with me… that you must have thought so too.”

“Oh my God, Justin,no! I would never think those things about you! I’ve been so worried. I’ve been looking for you.”

“Then why didn’t you answer my letters?” he asks again, finally looking at me. His eyes are tragic. The hurt and despair and disbelief I see there cuts me like a knife. Then he drops his head again.

“I never saw them,” I whisper.

“I wrote to you,” insists Justin. “They took my phone away, and there was no internet or email, so I wrote letters and when people left the Centre, I got them to take them and post them on the outside.”

“I didn’t get them,” I tell him. “Any of them. I hadn't heard from you in months. I thought you were ghosting me.”

But the things he’s saying make me wonder…where was he that he couldn’t even post a letter himself? And why was his phone and internet taken away?

And if he had other people send letters for him, either they didn’t do it, or something or someone has stopped them from getting to me.

I have a suspicion about that and it makes me very, very angry, but I tamp down that emotion for now, because Justin needs me to stay in control. I put my fingers under his chin and tilt his head to look at me again.

“Where were you, Justin? What sort of place was it?” I query him gently, because I have a nasty feeling I already know the answer.

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