Leave

Alex comes home, to my home, seething. Fists tightening and un-tightening, teeth gritting together, jaw clenched, pacing back and forth, running his hands harshly through his hair, flushed face, steam practically billowing out of his ears seething.

His fists clench in a way that I know he's trying to refrain himself from punching something. Pacing back and forth as an attempt to distract himself from that: something else to do, something else to focus on. From behind, I gently take his fist in my hand and softly kiss his shoulder.

"I need to punch or throw or—or break something," he says. I can hear his stress in his voice. The heartbreak. Sorrow. Something that tells me that it didn't go well with his dad, too. I didn't expect it to. Why would it go well? How would it even go well?

"Is there a way to help how you feel?" I ask, keeping my voice calm through the anxiety that's trying to make an entrance.

"Usually, I would smoke weed, but I can't—I can't do that anymore. I can't—I don't want to do that anymore," he mumbles. I can feel his hands shaking. So much anger resides behind his relationship with his father and I don't know if he needs to let the anger out physically somehow or just talk. Let it simmer away. But does that mean it would easily come back? I'm not an angry person, I don't know how this works.

"Do you need some space?" I question.

"No," he responds, head shaking, right as he starts crying. "Don't leave me. Don't go anywhere."

"I won't," I tell him as I pull him towards my bed and make him sit on the end of it. "Do you think talking will help? What can I do?"

"I'm so scared and lonely," he begins. He's said this many times before, but that doesn't mean my heart doesn't break each time I hear it. "I know I'm a terrible person so I deserve this—this life. But it hurts so much. I wish I had nice parents, I wish I didn't have terrible parents. I hate them so much."

Generally, I would say something like 'you don't hate them, you're just angry at them right now, which feels like hate. You love them really', but, in this sort of scenario, I think the hate is real. Definitely towards his dad. It's allowed. I don't say anything, letting him continue.

"Mom said she left without telling me anything because she wanted to separate herself from me as well as escape dad. She never showed it externally, but she never accepted me, she told me that. I thought she was OK with it, but she wasn't, and it felt like she ripped my heart out my chest when she told me how she really felt. She didn't want to stay with me because she didn't want to be around sin and so she prayed that my homosexual tendencies would go away. I told her that I can't change who I am and that I don't want to see her again. She begged me to stay, which—which doesn't make sense. She can't say those things, that she hates who I am and that it disgusts her, and then say she loves me and that she doesn't want me to go, what does she expect? I can't deal with the confusion. I just want the mom who truly loved me back, and now I don't have that anymore and I never will. My sexuality was the thing that I hated myself for most for—for so long and I can't surround myself with her hate but I just want my old mom back. It's not fair. I want a family for once in my goddamn life."

"My family is your family, and you have your aunt and Jasmin," I say. "You don't need those hateful parents to have the family that you want. You were considered part of my family the day you moved into this house and my parents got to see how much of a wonderful person you are. I know you grew up Jewish, but if you want to spend Christmas or Easter with us, there is always a space for you. Always a space at the dinner table any day. My mum always makes extra just in case you're going to come round and eat with us. You don't even need to ask. You just have to sit at the table, no questions. Because you're family, OK? You have a family."

He rests his head on my shoulder. I kiss the top of it. "My family," he whispers. His voice breaks.

"Yes. Your family."

There's a sort of vulnerability in his whisper. A vulnerability that only I get to see. He doesn't allow anyone else to see him break down, or cry, or without the hard exterior he puts up on the outside. Only I get to see when all he wants to do is cuddle, or have that constant reassurance that I'm here, or him muttering that he's not feeling too good right now, or when he wants to watch cartoons because it makes him feel young again. Makes him feel safe. I'm the only person he tells when he's feeling lonely. Only I get to hear him stuttering over his words when he's trying to describe his emotions because it's so hard for him to do. He used to shutting it away. Pure vulnerability. Naked in the form of his words.

Alex clears just throat a little, "My—my dad—" He doesn't finish the sentence, words evidently failing him.

"You don't have to tell me if you don't want to," I remind him.

"He threatened me. To kill me. He said that when he's out, if he ever sees me again, he'd do it, he doesn't care. And I don't want to admit that I'm scared but I am. I'm so scared. Someday, he's going to be out and he could come and find me. He hates me so much and I don't know why. That's all I wanted to know, that's why I went to visit him. To know why he has hated me all my life but he never told me. He threatened me, told me to never visit him again, then left." He lets out a distressing sob. "I don't want to be scared. I feel so weak."

His crying sets me off because now I'm scared and I there truly is nothing I can do to help, I have no power in that. Mr Montgomery could very well find Alex when he's out of prison. All I can do is hold Alex as he engulfs me in a hug and cries. Cries more than what someone from the outside looking in would expect. No one would ever expect him to be this sensitive, to cry this often, to show these emotions. I never did, until he trusted me enough to see.

Alex cries and cries, and I just hold him. For no reason at all, I start humming a tune to a song.

I don't mean to. I think it's because when I cry, Alex sings to me. His angelic voice always seems to calm me down enough that I stop crying and just listen. The songs he sings always has some sort of meaning behind, something to do with me or something that will make me feel better. It's never some random song. I hum Make You Feel My Love by Bob Dylan. However, I soon, only now realising that this is the first time Alex has heard me un-ironically hum. I feel embarrassed.

"Why'd you stop?" Alex asks me, pulling away so that I can see his face. He's stopped crying. His cheeks are flushed, wet with tears, but no new ones are being shedded. It's nice to know what my singing has the same affect as his has on me.

"Because I got embarrassed," I answer sheepishly.

"A beautiful sound from a beautiful person," He says. Using my thumbs, I wipe the tears off of my boyfriend's cheeks and then lean forward to kiss him. "Can I speak with your mom? She might be able to help. The police should know about the threatening, I think. That can negatively affect his sentencing, right?"

"Threatening someone is class as assault and he has a long history of violence against you, so maybe. Hopefully," I say. I kiss his temple and stand up. "I'll go and get my mum."

After finding my mother in the living room sitting on the floor with Chloe in her lap and Isaak playing with a Barbie doll, and giving her a quick debrief about what's happened with Alex, she agrees to talk to him. I tell her that I'll watch the little ones as she does so. As she makes her way to my room, the doorbell goes off. I go to it straight away, Chloe still in eyeshot.

"Someone at door, someone at door!" I hear Isaak call, paired with little running footsteps. He's running out of the living room, halting right in front of me. "Who?" He points to the door. The bell goes off again. Whoever is there is definitely impatient.

"I don't know who," I say. "Should we find out?"

"Yesh," He responds, nodding his head. He then gently takes my hand, pulling me towards the door.

Opening the door, my expression drops. Stood in front of me is Camilla. A red eyed, pale face, messy hair, rough-looking Camilla. She smiles at me. She has the audacity to smile at me as if that would make everything alright again. I offer no such expression back. My face goes stony. I don't say a word, waiting for her to tell me why the hell she's here. Isaak let's go of my hand to wrap his arms around my waist.

"Your mom came and spoke with my parents, who then told me it would be best if I came to apologise, so here I am," Camilla starts, her arms insecurely crossed across her abdomen. "I know I handled everything badly. I was just mad at you because you never told me about your relationship with Alex, especially as we hated him for three years and suddenly you were, like, in love with him, as if nothing happened, and you were willing to spread your legs for him so easily like that. You replacing me with Mackenzie, Lucy and Jake made me even more angry, more so when you decided you could trust them enough to come out to them and not me. I even asked you if you liked guys or if anything was happening between you and Alex and you said no to both, that you would never, that you would never even forgive Alex even if he apologised. I obviously don't have a problem with you liking guys, I have a problem with you liking Alex. I said those mean things to you because I wanted you to hurt like you hurt me."

"OK," I say, simply. I have nothing to say to her. I don't even have the energy to think. Isaak gets bored, removing himself from me.

I'm about to shut the door when Camilla asks, "Are you not going to accept my apology?"

"No," I respond.

I'm not going to lie to her and give her any false hope of rekindling our friendship. I just want her to go. To let her go from my life. Seeing her stood in front of me is already causing an ache in my heart and I can feel a lump in my throat. She caused me so much hurt. What is she expecting from this? She didn't even say that she was sorry. It wasn't even a apology, just excuse after excuse, none of which justify the horrible things that she said to me.

She blinks back at me in surprise. "Why?"

I let out an irritated sigh, "You didn't come on your own accord, you didn't say the word sorry once, some of the stuff you said was a lie, you missed out the main reason why I am so pissed at you, and mentioning me spreading my legs was unnecessary. You didn't even try to approach the situation in a calm or rational way, you insulted me and tried to make me ashamed of things that I can't control. You ripped my heart out, Camilla. How can you wake up and think yes, this is how I'm going to treat people today? I don't understand."

I repeat what Alex said to me earlier. The feeling of having your heart metaphorically ripped out. It's so incredibly painful. So much so that you can physically feel it aching in your chest. It's not all in your head anymore. It's raw. It's real. It hurts.

Camilla doesn't respond to what I said. Instead, she looks behind me and says, "Sofia—" Turning my head, I see my sister stood at the bottom of the stairs.

"Don't talk to me," Sofia says bluntly, not giving Camilla a second look as she takes ahold of Isaak's hand and brings him back into the living room, out of sight of Camilla.

"You can go now," I say, turning back to the girl who is making my heart beat speed up and is making me feel nauseous, but not in a good way. At all.

"What?" Camilla still looks surprised, and I feel the overwhelming urge to go and get Sofia to come back, so she can slap her son-of-a-bitch ex-girlfriend. I continue to look at her stony-faced. I would shut the door in her face, but her foot is in the way, and no matter how angry I am with her, I don't want to hurt her. She scoffs. "Why are you not accepting my apology? It's genuine."

"You didn't even say the word sorry. It was not an apology. Just bullshit excuses that I don't want to hear. There was no point in you coming here."

She signs in an exasperated way, "OK, OK, I'm sorry!"

"Doesn't matter. You cheated on my sister, using one of my best friends who was under false pretences that you were single and made her feel like a terrible person, which she's not, you are. Not before you invalidated me and tried to make me feel disgusted with my identity and my disorder, and then you mocked my boyfriend when he has already been going through more than you could ever imagine. I don't care how genuine of an apology you give me, I will never forgive you now. I could never do that to myself, or my boyfriend, or my sister, or Kenzie. Now take your foot out of my fucking doorway and leave."

"Come on, Matty," Camilla says, rolling her eyes. "We were best friends. You're really going to throw that away?"

"Yes," I respond. And when I say throw away, I mean thrown in a bin, which is then lit on fire, dissolved in acid, where the left over liquid is solidified so I can throw it at the goddamn walls of her house until it is broken up, to which I will sweep up just to throw it into the pits of the ocean, sort of thrown away.

Sure, she can change. But right in this very moment, after hearing her bullshit version of an apology, which was very much not a bloody apology, that's how I feel. And I'm aware that, in five years from now, she could be totally different: more mature, less ignorant, much less of a bigot, but right now, that does not matter. I can't change how I feel because of how this person might be years from now. So currently, with the knowledge that it can change in the future, although not they foreseeable one, I never want to be friends with that prick ever again.

Our friendship is very much thrown away. Us being best friends prior to this makes me even more pissed off. Best goddamn friends, and she never once showed me support. I will happily be a whorey, delusional, self-centred, pill taking snowflake who is being used for sex by my abusive boyfriend whom I am also using for money without her.

"Actually," I pipe up, realising that I'm not the one to blame for any of this. I shouldn't let her be victimised even in the slightest way, "You're the one who threw away the friendship the moment you opened your fat mouth after I came out to you. And don't call me Matty, you lost that right ages ago. Leave."

"But—"

"Leave."

"I honestly can't understand how you can be in a relationship with someone who bullied you, and then you throw away a friendship with someone who is just trying to help you and make you understand that he's eventually going to treat you like shit if he doesn't already. Have fun sitting at home while he's out fucking other people because he's so bored of having sex with your vanilla ass."

I raise my eyebrows, "Vanilla?"

"You're probably so lazy that you don't do any position other than missionary, refuse to give him a blowjob, and cries if he goes a little bit faster than snail speed. You're so anxious over everything, so yes, vanilla."

"That's funny because I recall his dick being in my mouth last night before he went pound town on me, but nice try. Have fun strumming one out alone every night because no one wants to be with you after you have revealed how much of a two-faced snake you are. Goodbye."

As soon as she has moved her foot out of the way, I promptly shut the door in her face.

I feel completely different than my last argument with Camilla. This time, I'm not going to have a panic attack. While I definitely do feel my anxiety blaring throughout my body, I feel good. I got to say what I wanted to say to her and let her know all the things she did wrong and why I'm so angry. Whether or not she's going to use the information to better herself is not my problem. She's the reason she's now on her own.

And I'm not embarrassed telling her what Alex and I did last night at all. It felt quite liberating, actually. So I laugh. I laugh out loud because although that's an incredibly embarrassing and personal thing to tell someone, I feel no shame, and after living most of my life drowning in it, it feels good to be free from the feeling for just a little while.

And sex—sex is good. Sex is free. Sex should be shameless. What I do with my body should not be something that some girl who knows nothing about my sex life uses to try to invalidate me. Whilst what she said was not true, even if I never do oral, even if the only position we do it in is missionary, even if I only like it slow, I think that's valid. Everyone likes different things. What's the problem?

Sex is something I used to think was a mortifying thing to talk about. But now I know it's not. So fuck Camilla for even mentioning it. Fuck Camilla for even coming to my home just to try to excuse her actions. Fuck her for everything she has done, and I know that some people would think I am overreacting, that this is hardly a big deal at all, but I don't care, because it's a big deal to me. She invalidated my existence and gave me reasons why she thought that it was OK.

I am valid. What she did was not OK. I know that. That's why I won't forgive her. Because it hits way too close to home for it to ever be OK. I may be able to accept her apology in the future, if she one day realises how disgusting she was, but forgiveness will never be in the picture, and that's my choice.

Although I have told Alex I have forgiven him, and the majority of what he did to me in the past has been forgiven, some of it has not and won't ever be. But all of his apologies are completely accepted.

My heart stop for a second and my face drops when I see who has been listening in.

Isaak is stood in the doorway of the living room, hugging the doorframe with his chubby little arms. He has a sad look on his face as he quietly mutters, "Matty, you angry. Is she a meanie now?"

I crouch down so I'm at his level, pulling him away from the door frame and holding his small hands in mine, "Yes, she's a meanie now, unfortunately. She wasn't very nice to me and Alex."

Inwardly, I pray that he won't go around saying the words 'pound town' after hearing me say what I did to Camilla. Why didn't I check my surrounding? Why did I even say such things to her? False claims, that's why. I don't like them.

"I'm sowwy," He says, still pouting, before he wraps his arms around my neck, hugging me, and places his head on my shoulder.

"I'll be OK, fratellino. I don't need meanies in my life," I tell him. "Anyway, it's your nap time now." I pick him up and he wraps his legs around me.

"Did you eat lunch today?" Sofia asks me after we put Isaak and Chloe down for their naps. I shake my head. I was too nervous about Alex visiting his father to eat. Sofia gives me a look and sighs. "I'll make you some food then."

I brush off the offer, "You don't have to. I'm not that hungry."

"Shut your gob, you need some food. I know for sure you didn't have breakfast," she says with a stern