Page 28 of Doors & Windows
Liam had hoped that his days of getting eviscerated by the drive by devastation of Jonah’s words were behind him. It was so easy to get swept up in the progress they’d made, in the newfound light in Jonah’s eyes and the rose-colored glasses of being in love for the first time. This was a sobering reminder of just how steep a mountain Jonah was climbing, even on the days he didn’t let his struggle show.
Liam had taken up that post at his side willingly,happily, but now he felt like he had failed him.
Jonah was the picture of misery, shoulders curled in and fingers pressed to his eyelids, looking like he wanted the world to disappear around him.
“Listen,” Liam said. “I’ve been doing some reading. Online. There are these… They’re not quite support groups, just like, community forums I guess. For the partners of victims of…” The word shriveled in the back of his throat. “People who have a history with sexual trauma.”
The air in the room went stagnant and stale.
“I haven’t said anything about you,” Liam rushed to assure him. “I promise. I’ve just been reading other people’s stories, trying to find some sort of… guidance.”
“‘Victim.’”Worse than Jonah’s silence was the cold non-inflection in his voice as he repeated Liam’s poor word choice back at him. “Is that what you see when you look at me?”
“No. Jonah,no—” Horror cut him short, a knot forming tight in his stomach.
Denial was an easy, knee-jerk reaction, and he was sure he meant it as he said it, but Jonah’s wordsplanted a seed of doubt.Wasthat what Liam saw when he looked at Jonah? Even a little? Even without meaning to? From the very first night they met, Liam had been conscious of the dynamic between them and tried to navigate carefully. Their circumstances were different now, but that didn’t erase the truth of their history, which was that Jonahhadbeen victimized, and Liam had borne witness to his suffering in a way he couldn’t forget.
That didn’t change the love he had for Jonah, not then and not now. But something must have shown in Liam’s expression, twisting Jonah’s thoughts into the worst assumption, because he lurched forward quick enough to make Liam jump, all knees and elbows as he clambered off the mattress, stumbling several feet across the hardwood.
“I need some air,” Jonah said, stuffing his bare feet into his shoes.
Liam followed after him, rising from the bed with palms raised. They’d been here before, too: Jonah and his instinct to run when he felt the walls closing in, and Liam desperate to show him that he was a safe place to stay.
“Jonah,” he said gently, reaching out to steady him.
Jonah flinched.
He flinchedaway from Liam.
If the air had gone stagnant before, it vacated the room entirely now. Liam’s hand dropped to his side, deadweight. Jonah met his eyes for the first time since the start of the doomed conversation. They were bloodshot and exhausted, skin blotched pink at thecorners. He stole his gaze away as quickly as he’d granted it.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
Before Liam could find the words to reply, Jonah bolted from the room.
Liam tried to give him space, at first.
He made it ten minutes before peeking over the side of the fire escape.
He made it twenty minutes before climbing up to the technically-off-limits rooftop they’d made out on once.
Jonah was nowhere to be found.
The last of Liam’s restraint caved ten minutes after that, when he sent Jonah a text only to watch his phone light up from the top of the dresser.
He’d left it behind.
The writhing panic in his gut was probably, mostly irrational. Jonah was a grown man, and plenty of people have existed in this city without a cell phone and lived to tell the tale.
That didn’t stop Liam from reaching for his shoes at two in the morning and stepping out into the October night.
By the time he stepped out of the train station in Forest Hills, it had started to rain. Liam was soaked by the time he stepped onto the porch of the old house, sneakers squashing wetly under each step and hair plastered to his head.
He gave little consideration to the neighbors as he knocked, then pounded, on the door. He paused tolisten for signs of movement on the other side, wrapping his arms around himself to stave off the cold. When he raised his hand to knock again, the door swung open, revealing Antonio Ellis, looking surprisingly un-rumpled by sleep and grasping at something at the back of his waistband the way someone might reach for a service weapon. Liam took a step back, but Ellis pulled his hand away when he took in the young man on his doorstep.
“Liam?”
“Is Jonah here?” he asked, loud enough to be heard over the pounding of rain on the porch roof.
