Page 50 of Edge of Control

It was the antidepressants. They always made my dreams feel more real. But I’d never had a nightmare like this. At least not in a long while. Normally, my dreams werepretty tame, unless, of course, they were about Theo. Then they were the opposite of tame, but at least those weren’t nightmares.

Theo… I rolled over. I wanted to find some solace in his warmth. I hadn’t had a man sleep over in what felt like years, so it was nice to have someone there to?—

He wasn’t there.

Huh. The bathroom fan was on, but there was also a glow coming from the living room, sneaking around the half wall that separated my bedroom. Was he watching TV? Was Theo a night owl and just hadn’t mentioned anything?

I got out of bed, deciding I needed a glass of water anyway. My body felt like I’d run a marathon. Which, I guess, maybe I had with the three times Theo and I had fucked before going to sleep. Should have drank some water then.

Theo wasn’t in the bathroom or on the couch. I was surprised to see him sitting at my desk, on my laptop.

What the fuck?

“Theo?”

He jerked upright, as if I’d caught him looking at porn or something. He turned around, smiled, scratching at the back of his neck. The snake tattooed on his forearm flexed as though it were slithering up toward his skull.

“Hey, sorry, did I wake you?”

“No, no. I had a nightmare. Um, what are you doing?”

He looked to the laptop, as if it’d just randomly appeared there and he wasn’t actively on it seconds earlier. “Shit, sorry. I should have asked permission. But you were sleeping, and fuck. I’m sorry.” He rubbed the bridge of hisnose. The sides of his neck were getting red. He looked more anxious than I’d ever seen him. Scared, almost.

“I’m in charge of approving payroll for my department,” he began to explain, leaning forward, arms resting on his knees. It’s like he was coming clean with the confession of a lifetime. I wanted to tell him to relax, it was fine, but he continued. “I got so caught up in our impromptu date yesterday I forgot to push it through. I realized in the middle of the night. I can’t do it on my phone, so I figured I could jump on your laptop real quick, then get back in bed. Shit. I’m sorry.”

He was clearly stressed about this. I shook my head and flicked on the lights. Theo winced, looked up at me. Was he about to cry? Fuck.

“Hey, it’s fine, it’s fine. I get it.”

“I just should have asked. And Jace, I’ve got bad anxiety. It’s really bad. Sometimes I can get it under control—the occasional Xanax helps—but other times, it just spirals. I start making all these wild scenarios in my head that I’m sure are going to happen. I’ve seen therapists about it. Learned to challenge my thoughts and try to ground myself, but it doesn’t always work. Tonight was one of those times. It didn’t work. I spiraled. Spiraling. Fuck.”

“Here, let me get you some water.” I walked over to the kitchen. I hated seeing him like this. It was so different from the cool and confident Theo I was coming to know. This Theo appeared two strong gusts away from crumbling, from falling apart like a dandelion.

I brought the water back to him. We moved to the couch. He was wearing just his briefs. Only his left thigh was tattooed,with a black-and-white underwater scene. All of his tattoos were impressive, but I thought that one was the most eye-catching. Something about the shading made the clown fish swimming through the anemone seem real. I placed a hand on that same thigh, squeezed. I wanted to reassure him it was fine. I understood.

“I wasn’t always like this,” Theo said after taking a few gulps. He set the glass on the coffee table. There was a soft shake in his hand. “I used to be super carefree. I wouldn’t let myself get bothered by anything.”

“What happened?”

“My father,” Theo said. He looked out the window, the curtains pulled open so that we had a stellar view of the empty office building next door. I at least appreciated it was an office with regular nine-to-five hours and not an apartment building with residents that could constantly look inside my place. It allowed me to keep the windows open most of the day, which I liked. Helped this shoebox feel a little less claustrophobic.

“He started becoming abusive around the time I turned thirteen. Before then, he was pretty decent. A little hands-off and would sometimes spank us, but nothing terrible. Then, something switched. I think he found himself working a new job. I never knew what he did, and my mother never wanted to say. As a kid, I liked to imagine him as a secret agent or something, but growing older made me realize he was likely something worse. Drug dealer, maybe. I don’t know. Whatever it was, it stressed him beyond belief.

“He took that stress out on me. He’d hit me for thesmallest thing, even if there was a mistake that he’d make. I took the brunt of it. Then came the punishments for bad grades and acting out, which, of course, was happening because of the abuse in the first place. Those punishments included locking me in the bathroom for days at a time, forcing me to drink out of the toilet if I wanted any water. I wasn’t allowed to shower—he’d stopped the water from flowing to either the sink or the shower. He knew I hated gore, that I hated scary movies, so there’d be nights he’d make me sit and watch the most fucked-up shit on repeat. Real-life videos of people dying in car accidents and being tortured by terrorists. He said it’d give me a backbone.

“But I think he just wanted to fuck me up. And he got what he wanted.”

My jaw dropped. I’d heard of some messed-up shit throughout my life, but what Theo went through had to have taken the cake. “That’s… that’s just inhumane. Holy shit. Theo.”

“Yeah. Thankfully, I got the brunt of it. He left my sister alone, for the most part. She remained whole. She had high hopes. Wanted to be president one day. And I believed she could do it. Me, though? Nah. I lost a lot of my hope growing up. It wasn’t until he was gone that I started regaining it again. And even now, I’m still scarred. Mentally. Just fucked-up.” He reached for the glass but nearly toppled it over with how much his hand shook.

My heart cracked in half. “I have no words. I’m so sorry. Fuck.” Even the idea of a child going through any of that made me want to cry. Made me want to grab Theo’sfather by the neck and wring it out. How dare he? What kind of man would ever do that to a child? To their own son? Their own flesh and blood?

“It’s bad. No sugarcoating it. But, well, it also explains who I am. So if I do freak out, have a random panic attack, you can understand why.”

I rubbed his knee, leaned into him. He was laying himself out raw for me in a way no one ever had. I felt more connected to him now than at any point before. Even when we were physically made one, I hadn’t felt as close to Theo as I did now. “I understand, I do. And don’t ever feel like you have to apologize to me again. You’re a good guy, Theo. A great guy. What you went through doesn’t define you. Weren’t you the one who told me the past is a story we tell ourselves? That’s all it is.”

“I don’t think I said it quite like that, but I do agree. It’s just a story.”

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