reach out and put my hand on his knee, Joshua, the idiot he may well be, doesn’t flinch. Instead he reaches out and puts his hand on my wet knee.
I make myself look at him, and dare myself to hope. ‘I know it sounds mental considering everything, but I really don’t lie,’ I tell him. ‘I didn’t before this name thing, and I certainly won’t any more. You are the first person I’ve ever not been honest with, ironically, considering you hate it so much.’
‘Lying really scares me,’ he says. ‘Like, after last time, I can’t handle it. After my ex, I need to know someone. Really know them.’
We look down at one another’s hands on one another’s knees and I colour in the bits of him I just learnt, about his ex, about how he’s been hurt, and he colours in the bits of me. Both of us hiding the broken bits and making up stories in our heads of how the other will respond to them, assuming the worst. And our heads push together, until they’re almost touching, and I can’t stop weeping, and he looks pretty close to crying too.
I open my mouth and words spill, unfiltered, from it, into the side of his face. ‘I’m sorry I’ve put up so many walls but, as I said, something … really bad happened to me,’ I tell him, terrified of how he’ll take it but forcing myself to tell it anyway. ‘It wasn’t my fault, but it’s left me a mess. And men haven’t been very good at dealing with it in the past.’ He opens his mouth, but I won’t let him interrupt me. ‘I … don’t trust men,’ I tell him. ‘That may feel terribly unfair if you believe you’re a good man who has never done anything bad. But please don’t judge me for that. It makes sense if you know what I’ve been through. I’m … complicated, you see. I’ve had some things happen to me that shouldn’t have happened.’ Tears run more freely now, and I wipe my face with the back of my hand. He sits up, watches me cry. He doesn’t comfort me, just lets me continue. ‘I don’t want to tell you all the horrible things that have happened to me, not right now. But, if this had continued, I’d have had to let it out eventually and you’d have ended it then. And that’s why I’m cagey and tried to be someone different, because I don’t trust you to still be here when I’m myself.’
There it is. All out there. I wait for him to drop his hand. I wait for the judgement to cave in on his face. I wait for him to look uncomfortable. I wait for him to be Simon. And the countless others before him, who see my trauma like a contaminant. As a shame they have to decide whether or not they can be arsed to deal with. I’m almost too scared to look at him, because I will not be able to stand it to see one more face fall at the revelation of the complicated reality that is April. But I decide to take one last leap of faith and force eye contact.
We look at one another. We hold one another’s knees.
And Joshua’s face … it doesn’t fall. In fact, it looks like things are clicking into place for him.
‘I’m really sorry you’ve been through something like that,’ he says eventually. ‘Thank you for telling me.’ He lets out a long breath and really looks at me. ‘But you can’t lie, not any more. I need to be with someone who is themself.’ Then, his hand, it squeezes me in reassurance. A reassuring squeeze. My very first. A squeeze to say it’s OK. It takes everything I have not to burst into tears or run away because I simply cannot trust it. ‘It makes me sad that you don’t trust people enough to be yourself,’ Joshua says.
‘It sounds like you don’t trust people much either.’ I think of what he’s been through and how it must’ve hurt. How hard it must be for him to take any of this in right now, after I’ve so hugely pushed his buttons. I give him a reassuring squeeze back.
‘I’m trying to. I’ve got good reasons not to.’
‘I’m trying to too. And I’ve got good reasons too.’
‘Is it a stupid thing to try to do?’ Joshua asks.
‘Trust people?’ I ask. ‘Well, my therapist claims it’s worth