Page 21 of Getting It Twisted

I feel like I’ve told him a hundred things already. “Yeah, sure.”

“Did you ever think about me, out there, on the road?”

That’swhat he wants to know? God, where do I even start?

With the grim nights where I’d stare up at the ceiling of yet another shabby motel room, freshly fucked from yet another random hookup, coming down from yet another mediocre high? My mind would drift to my most precious moments then. I’d go back to when things were easier. To when I had Daniel.

I’d remember the most random stuff, like how he gave me piggyback rides on the way home from parties. Drunkenly swaying this way and that, we’d collapse on the ground, laughing our asses off.

Or how we’d sit on the roof of his parents’ house and smoke cigarettes in the middle of the night, conspiring about how we’d get the fuck out of this town, away from all those people who didn’t give a crap about us.

Or how once in ninth grade, a group of older kids from my previous school were following us home, calling me gay slurs. I talked back and provoked them, but Daniel . . . Shit, I don’t even know what happened. Out of nowhere, the kids were all on the ground, coughing and whining. He’d even knocked one of their teeth out. He looked at me with a half-surprised, half-pleased smile on his face, knuckles bloodied and bruised.

Daniel wasn’t a fighter, but he fought for me, and when we hugged, he was always so warm. I’d close my eyes and inhale his scent, and for a split second, I’d feel safe. He was the antidote to my fucked-up, anxiety-riddled brain.

Was.

Because I didn’t have him any longer. I was a thousand miles away, in an unfamiliar city with an unfamiliar man in my bed, and every time I foolishly let my mind walk those paths, I rolled over, snorted another line of coke, and got the man in question to fuck me again.

You have no idea, Daniel. No fucking idea.But when I try to tell him all this, the words get stuck in my throat. It’s no good. He got under my skin in the past, burrowed inside me too deep and too easily. I have to make sure he stays surface-level from now on.

So all I say is, “I came back here, didn’t I?”

“You said you came back for the house.”

“Well, let’s just put it like this: If you weren’t here, they would’ve had to pull me kicking and screaming to come back. But you are. So . . . it wasn’t as much of a stretch.” The truth hangs heavy at the tip of my tongue, but I reel it in. Swallow it back.

His jaw clenches and unclenches, arm muscles bulging with his grip on the windowsill. “I wish you wouldn’t have come.”

I huff out a breath and shift my feet. That’s bullshit. At least, I hope it is.

“You’re a shitty liar.”

“And you’re a good one,” he counters.

We glower at each other for a few seconds. It’s better this way; if he gives up on trying to understand me, I won’t be tempted to tell him anything. Like clockwork, I feel my walls closing back up, the doors to my heart creaking shut like two ancient stone blocks.

I shrug and wave a dismissive hand. “Whatever. Go ahead and leave, then.”

“See you tomorrow.” A scratch of glass on wood, a flicker of his flashlight, and he’s gone.

Curled up on what used to be my bed, in what used to be my bedroom, I toss and turn long into the night. Cold, hard darkness presses in on me, and if I sharpen my senses enough and listen to the memories, I start hearing voices bounce off the walls.

My mom used to lock me in here for all kinds of reasons. For being too loud, for bothering her, or just for being plain “bad.”

I pinch my eyes closed.Come on, come on, fall asleep . . .

The pleasant, heavy-headed buzz from the whiskey is all but gone, and now I’m strung tight like a bowstring, heartbeatgearing up to an uncomfortable rhythm. When I’m like this, there’s only one thing that helps, only one way to calm down what’s clawing at me like a thousand buzzing gnats eating away at my insides.

Ideally, I need another person to push me to the precipice. It could have been Daniel, but since that option went out the window—literally—I have to make do with myself.

I slide my hand down between my legs and press down on my crotch. I imagine big hands grabbing at me. Holding me down. Choking me. Slapping my face. My cock fills up, and I wrap my hand around it tight as I wet the fingers of my other hand with spit and work one into my dry hole. It hurts at first, but I need the hurt. I need to get hurt so bad that nothing hurts anymore.

I end up on all fours, jerking off with two fingers buried knuckle-deep in my ass, imagining I’m getting fucked from behind. As I get closer to the edge, my fantasies grow wilder and more vivid.

It’s Daniel fucking me now. He’s pressing me up against a wall, kissing me and fucking me without mercy. He’s grabbing onto my hair, forcing my head back until I feel like my neck is gonna snap . . .

“You deserve this,” he growls into my ear. “No—you deserve way worse than this.”

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