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There were so many secrets he wanted to tell her. He wanted her to know that he liked her laugh and her lazy smiles in the morning more than anything else; he wanted to tell her that he once hurt someone so bad it sometimes still haunted his mind; he wanted to tell her that he was afraid; he wanted to tell her everything and nothing.
But it was never those things that he told her.
“He stands taller than me,” he whispered in a morning.
It was raining outside, only a soft pitter-patter that she so liked to watch. She sat by the window, wearing a thick sweater and shorts. She looked comfortable despite it all, and it made him thought about how much he envied her, how much he loved her.
He was on the bed, the blanket a mess around him and he pulled it tighter. He liked to pretend that it was his shield, that maybe if he engulfed himself in it long enough, he’d see something better when he emerged. She called it foolish, knew that he thought the same.
She looked away from a race of hundreds droplets on the window. “I know. He told me. It’s ten centimeters.”
So Alex told her bullshit. “It’s nine,” he corrected.
She smiled, and it was the same smile she gave him when he insisted that he would cook for the night, right after he burned a pot. It held exasperation and fondness. For him. For his hopelessness.
“Come here, I want to hold you,” he wanted to say, and didn’t.
“He used to hold me close,” he said instead, his tongue never knowing of shame. “So close it sometimes suffocated me.”
“I know,” she said again. Maybe this wasn’t a secret. Maybe this wasn’t a secret to anyone but him. But he saw the way she whispered, as if the droplets might want to stop and listen, too, and thought that he could pretend in this room. He could still think that no one knew this but them.
Them and Alex.
Something rattled inside, like thousand of stones clanking against metal. Against a cage, he thought, they are secrets inside his cage. He wondered if they were too big to slip between the spaces, or if they were too many to decide which one should fly out first. It churned his stomach, so he poured them out to her and watched the recognition flashed before her eyes.
He told her that he was the first stain, that he was the first light, that he was the first glimpse of darkness, and the first prick of blood. He told her that he started everything. He told her that they, too, started from him.
And then he told her how he held him down, his grip strong on his wrists. He told her that he couldn’t move and Alex didn’t want him to. He told her that he tried to escape and Alex later made him regretted it, that he made him wanted nothing but to be by his side—confined and secured.
So he told her everything; everything and nothing.
The race had stopped, the last droplet made its finish on the edge of the window. She didn’t move and didn’t scream. He figured that maybe she’d known everything.
(That maybe she knew about his cage, too.)
She then said. “I can still love you.”
He thought he told her everything (because there was nothing he could say about Alex more than she already knew), but the cage still rattled and the pad was still locked tight. He pulled the blanket tighter and swallowed the last secret.
(“I love you, too.")
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