Page 10 of Something Good
I came around a bend in the trail, and there he was, the boy who was never far from my thoughts and haunted all my dreams. He sat atop the giant rock with his knees tucked against his chest, looking at me with an unreadable expression.
I stopped in my tracks, torn between wanting to run toward him to wrap my arms around him and tell him all the ways I was sorry I’d fucked up all those years ago and wanting to turn back and avoid him altogether. He made me feel too many things. Big things. Things I was sure he wouldn’t want me to feel.
Would he know? Would he know that I’d woken up this morning dreaming of what it would feel like to kiss him? That I’d jacked off in the shower, thinking of what it’d be like to have his lips, swollen and red, wrapped around my cock, my fingers tangled in his blond hair, both of us moaning as I came down his throat?
“You going to just stand there, or are you going to come up?” he asked, intruding on my memories from this morning. I swallowed thickly, trying to shove those depraved thoughts aside and desperately hoping my hard-on wasn’t noticeable.
“I, um, I didn’t know if you’d want me to bother you.”
He shrugged. “I don’t. But we should probably talk.”
“Okay,” I said as I made my way around the back side of the boulder, where it was a little easier to climb up. I sat next to him, careful to leave some space between us. I didn’t think I could handle touching him, even if by accident. Unsure what to say, I waited for him to speak.
“So, at the pool earlier…” He threaded his fingers through his hair before continuing, “Jimmy said you caught him in the middle of a panic attack and did some kind of breathing thing with him. He said it helped.”
I shrugged noncommittally. “Is he okay?”
“Yeah, I think so. He was asleep when I left him. Those things usually leave him pretty tired.”
“I’m glad he’s okay.”
“How did you know about that breathing thing?”
I sighed, the weight settling a little heavier on my chest once again. I didn’t really care if people knew about my anxiety, but I hated talking about it because the more I talked, the heavier the weight felt. But this was Sammy, and I’d never been able to keep anything from him. He held pieces of my soul no one else knew existed. He might as well hold this piece too.
“A little over a year after we moved, around the time I started middle school, I started having anxiety symptoms. At first, they were small things. My mind would spin out, someone would ask me a question, and I couldn’t respond. Or there’d be this weight on my chest that was annoying but didn’t really hurt. For a while, I just dealt with it, not really understanding what was going on. I finally told Mom, and initially, she thought I was just being dramatic and it was like a puberty thing that I’d grow out of. But after about six months of me losing my shit over the most random things, she got a call from the school that I’d collapsed in the middle of a science test.”
I chanced a glance at Sammy, but his face was unreadable, so I continued, “She took me to a doctor who ran some tests and determined it was likely anxiety. The doctor prescribed medication and referred me to a therapist, who taught me some grounding techniques, which is what I used with Jimmy.”
“What triggered it? The anxiety, I mean?” His gaze was intent on me, focused as he asked the question. For the first time since I’d returned to Astaire, there was no animosity in his tone, no callous disregard. He seemed genuinely…concerned? Could that be possible? Or was that wishful thinking?
I blew out a breath. “At first, we weren’t sure. It started more than a year after the move, so it seemed unlikely it was related to that. I didn’t really have any issues making friends and school wasn’t much more challenging. I was still making decent grades. But even though the work wasn’t a whole lot harder, all of a sudden, the grades felt like they really mattered. And I felt this pressure to be perfect. Everyone knew my stepdad was the principal at the high school, which meant I was expected to act a certain way. And I’d always been good at sports, but I hit a huge growth spurt, and I felt like a baby giraffe trying to figure out how to walk. I wasn’t comfortable in my own body. Everything felt like it was out of control. The weirdest things would set me off. Like I wouldn’t be able to get my locker open, or I’d be running a tiny bit late for practice, or my damn shoe would come untied, and I’d just lose it.”
He was quiet for a moment as if weighing his words. Sharing all of that made me feel hollowed out, as if someone had removed my insides in order to inspect them closer, so I waited for him to respond, feeling like I’d already shared enough for one day.
“You always were a bit like that.”
“Like what?”
“Anxious. Like sometimes the littlest things would trip you up.”
My eyes widened in disbelief. “I was not,” I retorted hotly. “I was chill.”
He nudged me with his shoulder and snorted a laugh. “You were most of the time, yeah, but what about when you forgot your lunch on our second-grade field trip and Mrs. Hamilton had to buy you one?”
“So? I didn’t freak out.”
“No?” He raised an eyebrow. “You didn’t talk to anyone the rest of the day.”
“I was annoyed.”
He crossed his arms, turning to face me, his eyes alight with mischief as he warmed up to the topic. “What about in third grade when you spilled a tiny drop of chocolate pudding on your shirt? You hid in the bathroom for like twenty minutes until Mr. Lewis had to go in and get you.”
I huffed out a breath of annoyance. “It was a brand-new shirt and it was white. I thought Mom was gonna be pissed. ”
“You could barely see the spot. And any mom who buys her nine-year-old a white shirt is asking for it.”
I glared at him, annoyed at how the conversation had turned on me.
