Page 71 of My Best Friend Is Broken
My slippery palms try to find purchase on the wet shower walls. I’m scrambling for something to hold on to before my knees give out. Before I drift far away from reality and never return.
Liam hums. A low sound of pleasure and lust. The vibrations tingle along my cock and curl my toes. I gasp helplessly.
Liam moves. His head bobs. He lowers, taking even more of me. My cockhead bumps against the smooth flesh of his throat. I see stars.
The bottle of shampoo chooses that exact moment to slide off its shelf and hit the marble floor with a sharp, echoing thud.
Liam jerks away from me like he’s been electrocuted, his eyes going wide with panic. For a split second, he’s not in the shower with me anymore. He’s somewhere else entirely, somewhere dark and confined where sudden noises mean danger.
“Liam…” I start, but he’s already moving.
He stumbles backward, slips slightly on the wet marble, catches himself against the shower door. Then he’s out, dripping and naked and breathing too fast, backing away from the shower like it’s suddenly become a threat.
“I’m sorry,” he gasps, his voice high and thin. “I’m sorry, I thought I could…I thought I was ready…”
“Hey, it’s okay,” I say, turning off the water and following him out of the shower. “It’s okay, Liam. You’re safe.”
But he’s already retreating further, with that awful dissociated look starting to creep into his eyes. I grab two towels from the heated rack and approach him slowly, the way you’d approach a frightened animal.
“Liam. Look at me. You’re in our bathroom. You’re safe. It was just a shampoo bottle.”
He blinks, seems to see me properly for the first time since the bottle fell. “Nicky?”
“Yeah, it’s me. Come here.”
I wrap one of the towels around his shoulders, then pull the other around my own waist. He’s shivering now. Notfrom cold but from adrenaline, from the shock of being pulled out of intimacy and into panic without warning.
My raging erection has deflated like a forgotten party balloon. Concern and alarm for Liam has driven out all the lust that was pounding in my veins.
“Come on,” I say gently, leading him toward the living room. “Let’s sit down.”
We end up on the sofa, both of us wrapped in Egyptian cotton towels that cost more than our parents ever earned in a month. Liam is curled into the corner, knees drawn up, looking impossibly young and fragile.
“I’m sorry,” he says again, his voice muffled against his knees. “I ruined it. We were having such a perfect moment, and I ruined it.”
“You didn’t ruin anything,” I tell him firmly. “There’s nothing to apologize for.”
“But I was ready. I wanted to be there with you. I chose to get in the shower, chose to kiss you, chose all of it. And then one stupid noise…”
“Liam.” I shift closer, careful not to crowd him but near enough that he can feel my warmth. “Healing isn’t linear. It’s two steps forward, one step back. Sometimes three steps forward and two steps back. That’s normal. That’s how it works.”
He lifts his head to look at me, and his eyes are bright with unshed tears. “But I wanted to be better for you. I wanted to be able to do normal things, intimate things, without falling apart.”
“You are better. Look how far you’ve come. You got a job yesterday, you chose to join me in the shower, you kissed me. You blew me. One moment of panic doesn’t erase all of that progress.”
“It feels like it does.”
“I know. But it doesn’t. Recovery isn’t a straight line from broken to fixed. It’s messy and complicated and full of setbacks that feel like starting over. But you’re not starting over, Liam. You’re exactly where you’re supposed to be.”
I reach out slowly, giving him plenty of time to pull away if he needs to, and brush a strand of wet hair back from his face. He doesn’t flinch, doesn’t recoil. Just leans slightly into the touch.
“The shower will still be there tomorrow,” I tell him. “And the day after that. We don’t have to rush anything or force anything or prove anything to anyone.”
“What if it happens again? What if every time we try to be intimate, something triggers me and I fall apart?”
The question hangs between us, heavy with all his fears about our future, about whether he’ll ever be able to give me what he thinks I need.
“Then we’ll deal with it when it happens,” I say simply. “We’ll figure out what works and what doesn’t. We’ll take breaks when you need them and try again when you’re ready. There’s no timeline, Liam. No deadline for being ‘normal’ or ‘better’ or whatever standard you think you need to meet.”
