Scars

“I got you a present,” Grey text me one afternoon.

I was at work, but it had been a pretty quiet afternoon so far. A Grey text was exactly what I needed. “Oh, yeah? What it is?”

“It’s a surprise. What time do you finish today?”

“Two hours to go,” I replied. “Can I see you?”

“Yup.”

The motherfucker’s concise, as the fabulous Samantha Jones once said.

Two hours later, he was right outside, leaning on the Batmobile. His face wasn’t as happy to see me as it usually was. The smile wasn’t beaming. Eyes weren’t bright and excited. Arms crossed across his chest. Something wasn’t right. I could sense it immediately.

“My hotel room?” he asked.

“Are you okay? This feels weird.”

“My hotel room.”

It definitely wasn’t a question.

I was too afraid to speak in the car. Grey didn’t say anything either. There was no music on, nothing but the buzz and rumble of the car filling the air. The silence was loud. Almost deafening. My stomach flipped over and over and over again. At one point, I thought I was going to vomit right in my lap.

He parked up silently, got out of the car silently, and opened my door silently. His hand held mine silently. We got into the elevator silently, then walked into his room in exactly the same way. Only when we were inside did he break the silence, and he did it in the most perfect, dad-joke way:

“Bloody loud in here, isn’t it?”

I laughed. He laughed. The awkwardness had been broken.

Thank FUCK for that.

“What’s going on here, then?” I asked, dropping my jacket on the cuck chair.

Grey held out a small black case. “For the lady,” he said.

I sat on the edge of the bed as I slowly unzipped it, almost scared to peek inside. All sorts went through my head. Jewellery? A sex toy? An mp3 player? With Grey anything was possible.

Inside was a packet of razor blades, each one individually wrapped in paper; a small bottle of a brown liquid and individually wrapped alcohol wipes; some antibiotic cream in a tube; medical tape, gauze pads, and butterfly bandages in a small Ziplock bag; and a packet of tissues.

“What… is this?” I asked, my voice breaking.

“I don’t want to use them on you, don’t worry,” he said. “I saw the scars on your legs. It’s to make sure you’re safe and not infected.”

My hands started violently shaking, rattling everything together in the case. “This is insane.”

“Yes, but necessary.”

I quickly zipped the case back up and cleared my throat. “That was a long time ago. I was a child.” It wasn’t a lie; it had been at least three years since I’d last done that. I had a very complicated relationship with it, though. It became a toxic crutch for a long time, on and off, sometimes with huge gaps in between. At that particular point in my life, though, in that hotel room, with that man, cutting myself was the very fucking last thing on my mind.

Not now, obviously. He’d just brought it right to the very forefront of my mind,

Grey nodded in a way that agreed with me, but didn’t believe me. “Okay.”

“Maybe I should go home,” I said, throwing the case on the bed. “No, I want to go home.”

It was all too fucking much. What the fuck was he thinking? I couldn’t work out if I was angry, offended, humiliated, or a complicated mix of all of them. Probably the latter.

He walked over to me and held my face with both hands. Okay, but I wish you wouldn’t,” he said, planting a kiss on my forehead.

I grabbed my bag and coat with the first tears falling from my eyes, took four steps towards the door, then stalled. Grey wasn’t going to see me cry. Not yet. Not ever if I could help it. But… I didn’t want to go. As vulgar and brutal as his gesture was, as shocking as it was, it had started to turn in my mind. The initial shock had faded into something else – a realisation that, actually, maybe he just cared about me.

I turned to face him. “Years ago.”

As I dropped my bags, he took three steps closer. Our clothes were on the floor less than a minute later.

“You’re beautiful,” Grey muttered, right before he kissed every scar on my thigh, every tear on my cheek, and every inch of my body after that.

The next blog post in the dating timeline is this one: I’ll Be Back.