the imagination, but like I could survive it.
I headed inside, using my discarded shirt to wipe my sweat before tossing it in the laundry pile in my room. My pill bottle caught my eye on the nightstand. I’d have to get a refill of sleeping pills soon. Those little tablets were one of the biggest reasons I attributed to feeling more like a normal person.
The monster within me, created by years of torture and isolation, had been quiet lately. It might never go away completely, but it had been lying dormant over the past several weeks. I slept through the night without issue, the nightmares starting to feel like a distant memory. I craved Mari’s touch and sought it out, rather than retreat into myself. The absence of that dark, oppressive force made everyday life so much less exhausting.
I was no longer terrified of riding out to the hospital to get a refill of the pills, of potentially talking to someone besides Mari, another woman even. If she was there, I might even linger. Talk to her for a few moments, maybe even get a kiss before I left.
A huff of laughter escaped me as I undressed for my shower. I was fucking fantasizing about doing something that used to set me so far back with fear. I had made my own prison, I realized, by feeding into the narrative I’d been told all my life—that I was an evil force upon the earth because I was a man. I deserved to be caged up and cut with blades because men were the reason civilization went into Collapse. Men were the reason so many girls and women were snatched from their homes and rounded up like cattle. I was dangerous and deserved a life of torture simply because I was born.
Even after being taken away and finding my life in the SDMC, I still believed it. No one told me those things anymore, they didn’t need to. I told them to myself, because it never occurred to me I could be anything different.
That I might matter to someone.
I turned on my shower and stared in the bathroom mirror while I waited for the water to heat up. The steam on the glass smoothed out the complexion of my skin, softening the textures of scar tissue. If only I could swap places with my reflection.
My fingers drifted up, rubbing over the fading bruises on my chest where Mari had bit and sucked on me there. A hickey, she called it.
I recalled how it felt, the small bloom of pain under the heat and wetness of her mouth that I’d become addicted to tasting. Pain—a sensation I’d forgotten about and hadn’t felt in years. The way her teeth pulled at my skin and sent the feeling like small shock waves all over my body. I recognized the sensation but never felt it like that, never thought it could be something I’d crave.
Staring at them in the mirror, I contemplated tattooing over those bruises. Just tracing over the small blotches of purple and red, so her mark on me would never fade.
She’d be willing to leave more on you, if you just asked.
My heart sped up at the thought. Turning away from the mirror to step into the shower, I thought of my conversation with Jandro at the bar the other night. As close as he and I were, I’d never really talked to him like that before. Most of our heart-to-hearts consisted of him talking at me, with me doing my best to ignore him.
But this time I listened.
Mari loved him. She kept him and made him hers. I desperately wanted that for myself, and needed all the help I could get with the odds stacked against me.
As well as things were going with Mari, I still felt like I was fumbling around in the dark. The lingering fear of scaring her, or possibly hurting her, halted me from taking anything further physically. Plus the uncertainty from having never done that with someone I actually cared about. I knew how to proceed to the act of having sex, but would never forgive myself if I saw that same fear in her eyes that I’d seen so many times before.
I had to talk to her. Ask her what she wanted. Let her lead me through it like she did with kissing. I just had to remind myself that she didn’t hold my inexperience against me. She didn’t think I was stupid or ugly.