Sweet Dreams 15 … Alex.

*Alex……….

You ever have a day that just starts out nothing like you could ever dream? I just did, it went from…the best place that I’d ever been to angry and just boiling with rage inside to this…to Hunter wanting for us to go home…asking to go home so we can make love.

Love…..

Somebody…Hunter…somebody actually loves me and that’s something right out of those scarcely dare to dream places in us….

You all know what I’m talking about. Where you dream these dreams of what life could be but just never is….

Where you can’t help not to…but every time the dreams end and fade you’re still in that hell….and it hurts so bad that your soul can’t breathe.

I guess I’d have to explain some stuff first. It hasn’t been that long but at the same time there is so much that’s happened with us so fast.

Hunter, it’s all about Hunter.

I met Hunter when we were getting picked up from an away game. I’d broken up over the summer with Jennifer because…well, we had hooked up the year before and we were the top couple in school. But it was a lot of bullshit, Jen had her moments, there were times she could actually be a decent girl. When she’d let herself. It just came to a head…her…the plans, there were plans she had for me and her and right through our high school years into college and kids and law school…I’m not sure when it happened but I stopped being Alex and started just being hers, or at least in her own head.

Dumping her didn’t go over really well. I’d dated a few times and kept finding either girls were so much like Jen there wasn’t any point in seeing them again. I even just got tired of them putting out. I must sound like an ass right now but I was getting sex without really having to start or really ask for it.

I’m a really good football player, I use it as my pressure valve, you know those guys that are tightly wound, on that edge of being a menace…Me…there’s just a ton of shit and stuff that just builds and builds ….

Anyway…I throw all of that stuff into my game and training so yeah I’m good. I’m also a good student and most importantly with these girls…those girls…I come from money…I’m that guy I guess that’s “the catch” I was getting to the point of honestly starting to hate people, to hate my life, the trap I was born into.

No one knows how many nights I’ve sat up holding my fathers .357 in my hand feeling the weight of it and just that…just one click…and a bang and I’d be free.

I had no idea that when I threw myself into that back bus seat that I’d meet someone like Hunter.

Blonde, blue grey eyes like bright burnished steel with her hair down loose but the ends of her hair dyed blood red, a black knit lace wool cap pulled over making her hair all pushed down. Cheap red running shoes with black laces and this baggy old black Ramones t-shirt like a dress over one of those glovey? Emo sweaters all under an old sexy jean jacket, and she was wearing fatigues.

She’s thin and I mean really thing in this delicate angel like way. Yeah I know Hunter’s a guy but that’s so, so not the case. You know those guys that look like these really pretty girls, almost better than, that’s Hunter…and she’s all this street and she looked so tired it wasn’t make up under her eyes when I saw her.

Normally the way things were going I wouldn’t have bothered, if she’d been like the others I’d have grabbed my shit and split. But unlike anyone I’ve know, Hunter doesn’t act like that, instead she hits me with her attitude and giving me shit.

I’m not used to someone being that unimpressed by me. She called me a jock, okay that I’ve gotten before.

No one has ever called me a goon before though….

No one had hypnotized me, gotten me that hard before, made my brain fire up and working in seconds….Then Jen and her entourage of ass kissers I like to think of as the circle jerk of evil came traipsing up the bus aisle.

I panicked, I was just so not able to deal with her and her entourage…they blitz you, you get hammered on by her and her nearest and dearest and then the rest of them flank you until you can’t think, can’t breathe and haul you down into….

Well into their level…

I pull Hunter into a kiss not knowing that she was a he and there could have been a freak out but Jen got all super-cunt about it and…Hunter through attitude back into Jen’s face and then she kissed me back.

Those were some of the best kisses I’ve ever had. Y’know those first kiss kisses all over again. Like those but better actually…

Then Hunter goes with the whole thing to get Jen off my back but then reveals to me she’s a guy. Asked me if I was gay, said I owed them…other things that sent me reeling.

You know it wasn’t kissing another guy as much as the whole thing should freak me out, no it was this sort of hit to the heart that I just did, I just assumed, I just took and I was just…

I was just fucking like him.

Hunter kept talking and most of it did register but the few times I could see out of the whole I was falling in inside…I saw someone there looking at me who just looked like they kept…losing, then the nosebleed.

I lost it when Jen and them got in our faces, well Hunter’s and I get to see the bruises.

Bruises and me acting like that.

Like him.

Bruises, nosebleed, that look and I just lost my shit, had a sort of mini explosion and got me and Hunter out of there.

She didn’t get me to take her home just to some little strip mall in this shitty, really shitty area of the city. The entire drive I’m fighting with everything going on in my head, and following Hunter’s directions.

I kissed them in the parking lot, then…putting everything I had left in me into it and gave her my card and all the cash in my wallet. Hunter was the most real person I had ever met and considering she’s a he and all those things there was just something in me that needed to try and to show Hunter what kind of guy I am…and there’s just times that words just curl up and die inside of me and I can’t get them out…can’t….

I’m not him Hunter…I can be better than that…Just give me the chance.

Didn’t even know I had her hat until I was just about getting to the car and put it on and pulled off and away.

I drove just not, not able to go home. I just can’t. My home isn’t a home; it’s never been a home. My Father is an obsessive control freak and it’s part of the family thing I guess he got it from his old man and so on and so on. When I was younger I wasn’t really aware of it too much.

I’m sure he wasn’t physically abusive to my mother but she just, just couldn’t deal. They weren’t a good match; I think he had to marry her if you know what I mean. She went straight from high school where she was prom queen to being married to him…she was more or less just stuck in the relationship, no…no divorce wasn’t an option with him. There was a pre-nup or something or just the fact that he won’t let you go until he’s done with you.

She had always been into the bottles of wine as long as I can remember, pills…methe…oh I didn’t know what it was when I was that age but there’s a lot of housewives and mothers from things I’ve read that say there’s a lot of hidden domestic drug use.

That was my childhood as a little kid. Chardonnay in bottles of Welch’s white grape juice, her popping stuff to make everything go away including me…Methe to make herself happy and when He was home I know he knew things, I know he rubbed her nose in it. He wasn’t happy with her or me….

Never was Dad’s little guy. Nothing like that ever passed his lips. No the only times I got any attention was when I’d do something that reflected on him as a father. Sports, school even getting lectures in the park from him about how he never wanted to see me lose again…all because another kid beat me to the ice cream truck.

How he didn’t ever really want me around, or really see me. Every little thing I did wrong was him “correcting me”. He and Mom fought or rather he flooded her daily with why she isn’t good enough and more times that I can even remember he wouldn’t even let me to try to make it better.

Why kind of guy doesn’t let his four year old hug his mom when she’s crying?

Then in the ultimate act of fucked uppedness, my mother strapped me into the car seat. We’re even singing as we drove to what I thought was daycare with her and she is drunk and high…really high and she drives up down the overpass on the freeway the wrong way right into oncoming traffic….

And there’s night’s sometimes even days when I’m there in the wreckage, with her and she’s dead her eyes just staring and I’m trapped in there covered in her blood….

Because she didn’t want to live…and she didn’t want me to turn into a monster like him…

And I can feel it, or I did…Him, and me starting to become like him and I’ve got tears running down my face as I drove around all night literally just one shitty little thing from finding a way to kill myself.

I ended up about three in the morning down walking until dawn on the Riverwalk. I was thankfully left alone for the rest of the night while I stewed in the funk I was in until I dawn came and I watched the sun come up over the waves that were lapping in from the lake. You know what saved me? Hunter’s knit cap, I had taken it off to run my fingers through my hair in frustration at everything and had spent the night walking with it in my hand playing with it like a priest with a rosary.

***

The rest of the day was just a waste; I went to school and my classes not really knowing why. Got a warning instead of a detention because I’m Alex Donovan and we can’t y’know treat the high performing scholarship winning athletes be treated like normal folk now can we?

The one thing was this weird almost relaxing isle of them keeping away from me with them not really getting me and Hunter. I’d gone home and got changed but wore her knit cap all day long and it’s like it was this thing that held them at bay because when you’re in a relationship when you wear something of the other person’s right?

No one knew shit about Hunter which made me miss her, him, her…I was missing someone I barely knew. I spent most of the day worrying too. The nosebleed, the bruises…the fact they didn’t let me drop them off at home.

I just went in a daze through work after practice. I just was pretty much burnt out of it by the time I was done with the whole thing. Everything from yesterday and last night and being up all day. I wasn’t really overly social despite working at a coffee shop. I went home like a zombie pulled into the garage and I just hid away like I usually do, except I dug things out from my art space and turned on some music it’s a random mix of stuff but once I started drawing this poster side drawing of Hunter I was listening to “White flag” by Dido and replayed it over and over as the song somehow just spoke to me of Hunter….

***

The next day was still just kind of more of the same only there were more questions that people weren’t asking and there were more stares from Jen and her crew. I did get bugged a few times from some of the guys that were pretty much pestered into trying to find out about Hunter because no one knew her and it was just fucking killing Jen and her crowd.

Honestly it was going to look ugly if she got really mad. She’s like April my Step mother, a modern girl who gets what she wants because it’s what she wants and fuck whoever is in Jennifer’s way.

I broke up with her and that didn’t give her the option of taking me back or any of the other stuff that goes on through the heads of people like her. I dumped her and that was a no-no. Apparently I haven’t read the rules of how things are supposed to work.

But I’d broken it off with her and wasn’t really interested in getting back with her.

Apparently I’m not supposed to find anyone first after the break up either.

I just kept to myself really, New school going into high school even as a freshman can have it’s perks. There is the fact that those in the classes over you really don’t like or care for the drama going on that much. Jen and I are sort of stand outs but we’re still freshmen and that gives even someone like me a bit of anonymity.

I had just coasted through the day when I got the phone call after practice on my cell phone. It was Hunter and she sounded not too good, not too good at all.

***

I had the address and I thought it might be bad but I never thought it wound been this bad. I mean you know in your head that things like this happen, that these things go on and that there are people that end up living like this but…

The squalor was just…

Entering the building you could taste the air, musty and foul from everything from nasty sex and probably diseases to mold, drugs…oh…oh…fuck I could smell that reek in the place…burnt rubber mixed with burnt sugar, copper and menthol….that smell from when I was little.

The reek of crystal methe, it’s like…no this pretty much was a crack house. I found Hunter on the floor on a carpet so fucked up you really couldn’t tell what it used to be like, there were patches worn to nothing and others that were black and filled with something that resembled tar at this point.

Someone had beaten the living hell out of them, and they seemed to have taken almost anything in the place that might have had the least bit of value.

I checked Hunter out, and she was really hurt, there was swelling everywhere but while things might have been fractured there weren’t any breaks that I could tell. I still took my time getting her to the car and why I didn’t take her right straight away to the hospital I’m not sure but instead I stopped at a pharmacy and did what I could with the stuff I could get there.

Then there was the freak out she had when she woke.

I…I…never seen that before.

Then the freak out about going to the hospital and foster care or a group home and the stuff that…again it’s something you kind of know about. Hunter made it sound like what they said about those places wasn’t just words but something she new with absolute certainty.

I finally agreed or rather decided to take her home.

No, it wasn’t like one of those things that He would have done. This was different, Hunter needed me.

***

I…I …still don’t get the reaction to the poster painting…I mean I do know, I think the more I sort of know about Hunter but I never really expected the breakdown, I mean it could be they were moved by it and add those emotions onto of everything she’d been with. I guess there’s only so much someone can take before breaking.

But I…I just tried to be there to make it better because I’m not really able to express stuff like that…it’s because I’m broken inside somewhere…but I can’t really do anything about that. But Hunter, Hunter feels things and I’m all tied up inside…

I knew she needed me and I knew inside that I needed to help her.

It took me awhile before I started to get just how much I needed her, more than she needed me. Hunter’s the strongest damned person I’ve ever met.

***

The trip to the mall was so different. Hunter was so adamant about me buying things too of equal to the things that she was getting. That if she could she’d pay it back as a loan….girls I knew just wanted, they didn’t want to pay things back, they never cared to see that this was as much about me as it was them….

I guess it was the first time I’d ever gone shopping as a “we” instead of the regular shit I was used to.

I’ll never get over her reaction there and in the grocery store. It was like she’d never been in these kinds of places that I just took for granted. It was a mix of wonder and curiosity but also there was Hunter sort of looking around like she was expecting to get tossed out of these places. There was this shy, really quiet thing going on with her this vulnerability that made…makes me want to hold her and make it all better.

Then she had another showdown with Jen in the food court and I get to see her go from this shy scared lonely person to someone who’s been through so much that the crap that Jen and them were pulling just seemed so petty and so easy for her to face down.

But in my world facing down a clique like that’s something most people can’t bring themselves to have the strength to do.

God I was so pissed at Jen and them and all of the bullshit.

You ever literally see red.

I’m trying so hard not to lose it and I was trying so hard to walk away from all of it with Jennifer screaming my name and ….

“Alex!... Alex!...Is it true? You moved that little bitch in? What about me Alex? We’re supposed to be together Alex! How could you do this to me?”

I swear if I had a gun…as it was I damned near went violent on her, damned near snapped her neck.

I’m not a violent guy, I swear I’m not but there’s times that the world just…

Then I’m not just yelling at her but I’m screaming.

“This! This is why we’re not together! You’re mental Jennifer, Hell I don’t even matter to you! If I didn’t have the cash or the cars or being on the team you wouldn’t care…we’re done, we’re totally and utterly done you got that. You know why? It’s because Hunter has something you’ll never have!”

God the look that Jen had…

I didn’t fucking care. Why because she’s the kind of person who actually says about another person….

“What could THAT have that I don’t?”

Who the fuck does that? What kind of person gets raised to actually say the about another human being?

And this weirdest thing happened. I looked at Jen and then I looked at Hunter and it was like time stopped…and Hunter was looking at me like she was the one who was worried for me?

After the hell she just been through and the fight with Jennifer and…she was looking at me like she was more worried for me than anything that she was going through.

And it was like the red faded to normal in my head and everything changed looking at her like that.

“Heart Jennifer, Hunter has real Heart and you’ll never have that. Not now, not ever.”

I reached out and took our stuff and Hunter and just walked away. It was like nothing I ever knew and I sort of zoned out for a few minutes and then I kind of came back to things and realized Hunter’s been real quiet, really quiet…I get really worried, in that it doesn’t feel good kind of way.

I set our stuff down and turned her to look at me and she wasn’t there a second she was off somewhere inside herself and hers eyes had the shine of tears trapped inside of her from years of abuse from those fucking assholes that she was trapped living with.

It takes a few moments to get her attention. I ask her if she’s okay and then she…thanked me…stood on her tip toes and leaning on me she kisses me. Right there in the mall she kisses me over and over for god like five minutes straight we’re kissing and I can’t help it.

Hunter…I love you…God I’m so fucking scared right now.

Who falls in love this fast.

I wrap my arms around her and hold her, hold her and rock from foot to foot just to keep her there close to me and to make sure she’s real.

I would’ve gone home but there was a few things we still needed to get, that I needed to get and we still sort of were quick about getting done and heading home.

Funny…Home….My place had always just been that My Place but tonight it feels different, it feels like…Home. Hunter makes it feel this way I think.

She does the laundry and puts things away and she’s humming even though she doesn’t seem to notice, she’s almost letting herself sing.

I cook supper, hamburger and macaroni kinda like a goulash but not. It was really something good watching Hunter eat and go back for seconds. I wonder if she’d ever done that before.

We both ended up curled up on the couch together and fell asleep watch TV. I never do that, I never feel safe enough with people to relax enough…alone and I’ve always got my nightmares to keep me company.

I woke and it was late and Hunter woke while I was carrying her to bed. I made her a hot chocolate while she got into these flannel Pj’s with snoopy on them that made her look…I asked her to wait….if I could while she was drinking her hot chocolate and folding our clothes…

I had to take out the bag of make up, use it like my art supplies and try to…

Try to show her who I’ve been seeing there in her, just buried, hiding alone and afraid in plain sight.

It was actually hard to do but fun trying to do that when she was twitching and warning me not to make her look like a clown.

I slipped out letting her see who I see….

***
Everything that night once things had seemed to settle down was actually pretty good. I had settled on the couch and actually fallen asleep.

Then the nightmare came back.

One of the worst ones out of the ones that I have and in it I’m me but I’m four again and even though I feel like I’m four in my head I’m me but the script never changes, the things never change and my Mom’s a housewife wine drunk and a methe head as well as a pill popper.

I remember us singing in the SUV as I though I was going to 5th street daycare. There’s us going down the off ramp and the flash as we pass the sign saying wrong way…

………..the green Impala hitting us and spinning our SUV around. Mom was still smiling as that happened; her nose was broke from her head hitting the headrest while being turned around to face me.

“It’s gonna be alright now baby, it’s going to be alright, Momma promises….”

Wham, in mid spin we’re hit from behind and I’m not sure what that was as it makes us spin right into the path of the big semi truck.

You’d think that’s were I lost consciousness, but I remember the impact the SUC rolling and the smell of gas and the thick red slickness covering me …

I woke up fell off the couch and it took everything I had to hang onto me…not to just loose it. I can’t I just can’t…I try to breathe through it and then Hunter’s there.

This Angel on Snoopy and Woodstock Pj’s.

She helps me sit up and set me on the couch and she’s shaking, she knows that there’s every chance in the world that some guy’ll lash out and hurt her, focus on the him aspect of then just for a reason to pound out their pain.

Instead Hunter faces those fears head on and straddles my lap, wipes away my tears and shares her scars with me.

She tells me she gets it…touches my head, she touches my heart and I had for her a little bit more. There’s been nobody that human that honest and real in my life.

I just about broke when she leans into my chest and she hugged me.

Hunter hugged me then and held me and I was shivering and shaking, there was so much there bottled up inside, coming loose because hunter was there…Hunter was safe. I felt nothing like it when she held me and rocked me back and forth humming to me and her fingers ran through my hair.

God….

As much as I was falling in love it hurt like my heart was breaking…or was it hurting because I finally met someone that made me actually feel again and I’m just now feeling all the pain stored in there.

I can’t help but to kiss her, I can’t help but get aroused by her, because of who she is. I don’t think now that it’d ever matter if she passed at all, she could be older and a trans-girl who’d never pass in public and I’d still be head over heels in love with her.

That picture…I painted that of Hunter from the inside out of her.

I’m touching her, my hands move and roam and we get hotter and hotter as we kiss…I massage her and she touches me and she kisses and bites a little too on my shoulder, my neck…I feel her giving me a hickie, it’s actually my first.

I massage her chest and her…breasts…there’s this girl instant reaction to my fingers as I rub and touch her nipples and roll them under that bit of hardness underneath and behind them…She really seems to like that.

Morning and my phone alarm cut off us getting together, together sooner and I do thing then it was a good thing.

When I got back from my training run and work out the very first thing that greeted me was the smells of a real breakfast and everything that you’d get if you’ve ever had a normal life.

Bacon, eggs, hash browns and coffee amongst other things. I’ve cooked some things but honestly Mom didn’t even like do this. I think that first breakfast hunter made me was the first real home cooked breakfast this entire house had ever seen.

I hope dad fucking got cramps from smelling it cooking.

I know that it was the most normal morning I ever had in my life. I know I made a pig of myself but honestly I swear I could taste love in there. I never had something so good in all of my life.

It was one of those little…huge things that a lot of people never think about.

There’s some of us that do.

I love Hunter and when there’s someone you love who does stuff like this when you’ve never had it before…or think you ever do….

Those people out there who have an S.O. that makes you a meal, or does housework for you or brings you a tea or a coffee just because…it’s because it’s one of those little …huge acts of love.

Treasure those things.

There’s those of us who are alone who just ache, screamingly ache to get that cup of coffee with that casual soft kiss.

God Hunter…I love you so much it’s almost hard to breathe sometimes.

Actually dad might have smelt everything. He was waiting for us when we came downstairs. He was his usual sarcastic ass and I think he was goading me into another one of his “life lessons.” I know he was trying to scare Hunter.

Hunter actually got me out of there.

Hunter spotted the tail that dad had put on me.

How often, how much, just how much does he have to control things that go on in my life?

This kind of would have had me freaking out or doing something stupid but Hunter was so brave…so street smart and fearless. It was like she had sort of stepped from my world back into hers and there was this stainless steel edge in her than was just so…

Angel, Goddess, my heroine….I felt actually better even being followed by the time I was dropping her off at the Ren-Cen. I gave her some cash openly and the dangerous, smart feral look in her eyes made me so turned on.

I still really wish that I could see it, her and what she did then.

I love her for that; I know she wasn’t just defending herself but me as well. I mean she told me what she did but at the same time to close my eyes and see her doing that to them and facing off with the two guys he hired…even the way that she talks me out of this whole what do we do about “Adam” freak out that I might have had. I could just see that between her and Dad the whole dirty pool street smarts thing I’m out of my league but Hunter isn’t.

Never heard the old man referred to in a street way and with this measured contempt too. Like I said Hunter’s the strongest person I’ve ever met.

The way she found out all that stuff that “He’d” had done on my computers and fixed them so that he couldn’t do it again.

But it’s more than that too why I love her. Why I’m in love with her.

***

Like our mornings, her making lunches, the way she actually was almost the way a Christian person is supposed to act when the thing happened with Jen and me and the fact that Jen didn’t have a seat at “Our” table and you could almost see some of that crowd just drooling over the chance to tears to social shreds.

Hunter was bigger than that and she was all kinds of cool about it and she set the whole way that things worked in the whole social scene on its ass.

I love the fact she’s got friends outside of the clique and that she keeps them. I love that she thinks to bring a box of day olds from the café for our friends and others.

Mornings have been changing from that whole almost getting your bearings in the popularity thing to us actually hanging out.

The guys love her because she’s not too, girly? I know it’s not like that. Hunter’s like a friend to them and just that she doesn’t play the usual bullshit games and is just plain cool. The fact she packs lunches and that we’re the way we are? I’ve heard that a lot has from what I can see some of the girls acting differently.

Yeah I know they’re sheeple but it’s more than that. I think they see how people just respond to Hunter. I know some of them want that too.

And Hunter and Jen are just…I’d love to know beyond the rumors of the thing in the girls bathroom or maybe I don’t…all I know is it went bitch to bitch and Hunter’s kung-fu was strong as they say.

I love the fact that she comes to my practices even though she’s not into football but she’s there anyway and she sticks out like a sore thumb and I know she’s catching grief for just being there But it’s Hunter and she sticks it out for me.

Honestly I’m not sure who’s taking care of who or who’s making who’s life better.

I want to be y’know, that guy.
I want to be good enough for her so much.

The dumb bitches up there in the reserved seating tried to make her feel like she wasn’t good enough.

They did get in her head though that first day. I had to sort of pick her up emotionally but not like I ever done…see most guys try to have this mental philter on, there’s a whole host of girls out there that really won’t let you talk straight to them. They speak womanese…that the language of female passive aggressive bullshit, double talk and deception. Don’t get me wrong I like women and girls but they have this whole way about them that’s based on this and over analyzing things that drives us nut.

Most guys learn enough of it that they can do what you want us to do. Like… Can you take out the garbage when you get around to it? Doesn’t mean that….it means do it now. What are you watching can mean everything from change the channel to turn off the TV.

So when a girl is upset the rules generally state that you cheer her up, you say nice things about her.

You don’t tell her to shut up.

Actually what I had said was. “Shut the fuck up.”

“Wh…what?”

“I said shut the fuck up. I’m not the kind of guy that’s into bullshit remember. And that’s what this is it’s bullshit. You have survived shit that none of these people can even imagine. They think that getting their credit card limit is a fucking crime. You’ve not just been through more than they have but you came through it a better person than they’ll ever be. I’m not going to let you tear yourself down because they’re threatened to look at a decent person. That thing with Jen in the Caf, they’d never have that kind of class and they fucking know it!

Stop tearing away at yourself okay, you’re hurting somebody I really care about when you do that.”

It just came out right past all the ingrained blocks of …Wait!...you don’t say that to girls!

I think it all came out because it was all true and I meant it and I care more for her than even those stupid silly unwritten rules that people seem to have.

Of course it either freak out and panic or man up to everything I just said and Kiss her.

So yeah of course I kissed her.

It was the same day a little later I showed her the whole bubble-gum kissing thing. It was kinda to deal with her smoking. She quit y’know, she quit for me. I know it’s better for her but yeah she quit.

It was that night she got to see me at work, and got her own job but it was also the night that we, very, very nearly went to bed together.

I wanted to but I wanted her to want it, be sure of it and I wanted to be sure too…safer.

Safe from me…Jennifer and I had sex, and we’d dozed off together but really sleeping in the same bed being that close for that long with someone scares me. I have nightmares, I had one that morning.

I can sometimes thrash when I’m in them…I can feel the blood sometimes mine and Mom’s but there’s that smell too buried deep inside my brain of gasoline, burning plastic, fresh blood and burning skin.

God, oh god, oh god I don’t want to hurt her…I don’t want to freak her out or scare her off…

It was a hard night getting to sleep after I told her G’night…there was so much bouncing around in my brain that. When I finally did get to sleep I’m jumped by my nightmares again.

I was four or three I don’t know but I was really little and mom had drank enough wine and popped enough pills that I couldn’t wake her up. I tried ad tried and tried but I couldn’t. I could call “Daddy” because that’d make him hate me even more.

Yeah, even that young there was just something I just knew….”Daddy” barely looked at me, he barely gave me the time of day much less hug me or treat me like I was actually his.

I asked once when I was twelve. He showed me the DNA tests. And He said “You’re mine.” But it wasn’t like he was proud, it was like he owned me.

Hunter woke me out of my trip to my lovely past. I’ve…I’ve got scars from when I tried to do stuff myself. Faded and stuff but there.

A three or four year old shouldn’t have to be picking up a broken wine glass off the floor, or fixing his own meals….

She makes that better too.

I remember snuggling into her and holding her tight.
Not her needing me because of her nightmare but me holding her because I really, really needed someone to hold, to hang onto.

You ever need to do that so much that if you don’t you might just hurt and shake so bad you might literally fly apart.

Hunter, made it better.

Saved me.

I think though that US becoming us was/has been a serious part of everything feeling like it’s getting to be better, that things are starting to heal.

I don’t have to slap on my fake face to the world with her. Before Jen…other’s they didn’t care that I’d have had a nightmare and that inside everything was like someone stuffed me full of razorblades. It was shut up Alex, just be the pretty rich boy with the perfect life and smile…do as you’re told…

Hunter I can breathe around, be real around. It’s like everything I knew was black and white and shades of grey and then I met Hunter and fell in love and she brought color into my universe.

***

And that takes us right up to today and why it was a really…..great and why it was kind of really messed up too and back to being amazing…maybe more?

Hunter and I made love.

She and I the day before had a good day if a weird one? We had slept together in our bed and in the shower…we…we took a shower together which was amazing and it had gotten moreso as Hunter touched me, really touched me and she gave me a “hand” that morning…we had just a really good day really and ended it going to bed together.

It was really early in the morning when Hunter woke up and we went there. We made love and she was scared as scared gets of exactly what this all means and there’s stuff going on in her head that had more to do that what we were going to do, or rather what we had done…

Hunter took the lead. I’ve wanted to but I’m scared to hurt her. I didn’t want to hurt her.

And yes I’m fully aware of Hunter Not being genetically a girl but…I have never really felt or seen hunter as a guy, even naked and together there’s just nothing really guy about her, it’s not really a gay thing or even I think one of those gender crossing things?

I think this is a heart to heart connection and like I said before…I love Hunter so much that it’d never matter.

Honestly making love to her was the best sex I think I ever had, and I was so scared at first of hurting her because she’s still recovering…still so thin and tiny and to me, the most beautiful gift in the world.

Part of me cried because of that.

Part of me wanted to have never been with anyone before Hunter.

And as much as it was sex it was so much more. It was making love and my sweet, beautiful brave girl took me to the limits of my heart and soul and she pulled me out of them.

She changed me, then in those moments and Alex that had always been the guy, the person that I had thought that I was just stopped…and Alex the guy that she see’s when she looks at me started. The me that I never though I could be took his first breath of air in her arms.

Yeah……..Guy’s….

That’s what the Love of the right woman does for you.

Hunter gathered up all those pieces of my broken soul and made me whole again.

Then “He” just had to stick his nose into a perfect day. Into this perfect morning and he pretty much ordered me to go to this dinner with him and April and some clients. I know he doesn’t think much of Hunter. I know she’s pissed him off by interfering in his plans and the way that he wanted things to go with me.

This isn’t even about me.

No I know “Him” it one of those life lessons that he’s going to run at Hunter’s expense.

I called his bluff though, I said we’d go.

It’s Hunter, she can do this, she can do anything. And I was mad…yeah really mad but at the same time…I want to see her show him, I want to see Hunter just shove his bullshit in his face…

I got madder than I should have. I know I did and it hurt, it hurt that he just sort of trampled over what Hunter and I just shared and had been through.

What happens?

Hunter made it better, we hadn’t even gotten into the Quad when just…just by being her she makes it better.

You know that whole…Hunter letting me hold her and hang onto her thing….she does it again and I get to smell her and breathe in her scent and just decompress. She takes away the anger and the pain and she makes it better, more than better as she turns and she pulls herself to me…and stands on her tip toes and she kisses everything better.

She’s so happy this morning it lifted me up, and she just seemed to shine. I honestly couldn’t take my eyes off of her. Hunter has this little half smile, this I’m hiding something I know something you don’t know smile half the time.

This morning she’s got this smile on her face and…. Seeing that smile on her face is like a blind guy seeing the sunrise for the first time.

……………Lunch time was even better. A bit of a picnic and a whole lot of kissing and making out and actually just laying out in the sunshine, kissing and just…I got to hold Hunter in my arms in the sunshine and see that smile stay on her face while she just slept in sunshine.

Even going home, even going home was cool and getting ready and seeing Hunter all dressed up was…

Ow…My heart.

The date was the best date I ever had in my life. I’m not a dancer but I dance with her. I have a good time, great food. Armstrong’s is always a great place to come and hang out rather than ending up at some of the skeevy so called teen dance places.

In between the dancing we sit and drink, talk and more than ever kiss and kiss and make out and touch each other and It all comes to this.

Hunter kissing me and straddling my lap and looking me deeply in my eyes as she kisses me then she puts her forehead to mine and stares into my eyes and says to me in this take my breath away soft intense voice.

“Take me home Alex, please. Take me home and make love to me.”

Again…

Ow…My heart.