Moonlight Kisses

la lune dans le noir

"Jo!" Beau calls out for me, his tone of voice replicating that of someone who was in genuine danger.

Had I known it was some "boy who cried wolf" kind of situation, I wouldn't have ran up the stairs so damn fast.

"What is it?" I say out of breath slightly. My eyes instantly scan around his bedroom in search of anything out of place, but at a first glance, Beau looks untouched.

He points a harsh finger at the other side of the bed. My ears finally attune to the low grunts coming from that end of the room. "Piglet's trying to attack me," he accuses.

My hands drop down to my sides with a loud smack. "That's what you called me up here for?" I glare.

He stares at me dead in the face. "Yes."

"Right," I scoff, "How can a little puppy attack a six-foot giant?" I move around the bed to find Piggy perched up on his hind legs, using his front paws to keep himself upright. When he notices me standing a few feet away, his bright gray eyes widen and his head tilts. Seriously, how does Beau find any sign of threat in this puppy? I thought eventually they'd grow onto one another, but we adopted him months ago. Their 'feud' has yet to change.

"Oh now he's all sweet and kind," Beau ridicules sarcastically while I go to pick Piggy up.

"He's always sweet and kind," I coo, tapping the tip of my index finger against his nose. Piggy lets out another little grunt as a sign of gratitude.

"I can never win against him can I?" His light-hearted chuckle rings on my ears. I have to look up from Piggy in time to see the vivid grin on my boy's face. For a second there I thought I'd never see it again, but here we are. Healthier and stronger than we ever have been.

"Nope," I pop the 'p' for emphasis. Sitting down beside Beau, I hold Piggy on my lap, keeping what the puppy deems a 'safe distance' from his sworn enemy. "When are you two going to warm up to one another?"

"Never," he teases.

I sigh, gazing down at Piggy's small frame. Most of his body hangs off the side of my leg furthest from Beau while only his head and one of his paws lay in my lap to make sure I don't go anywhere. "You woke up early this morning," I mention. Usually, I don't wake up any earlier than eight. But since I stayed up almost the entire night reading, I stayed in until twelve, giving me only a few hours to spare before I had to go to my therapy appointment. Beau on the other hand woke up bright and early at seven in the morning, audacious if you ask me.

"I didn't have the best sleep last night to be honest," he murmurs, twiddling his thumbs in his lap to avoid eye contact. "Yesterday I told Derek about the shit my dad put me through when I was a kid. It resurfaced a lot."

"Oh," I whisper, reaching out a hand to him. He takes it gingerly. "I'm sorry."

"There's no need. A part of me is relieved to have all of that lifted off my chest. And he did give me some suggestions to mediate the weakness I felt as a kid to how it translates into my need for control over every aspect of my life now. He said it'd help to get my mind off things."

Ruminating over past events we can no longer control has been a mutual issue between the two of us. Not knowing what to do with those repressed emotions and thoughts made our relationship a tumultuous mess all in all. We drove each other to say things we shouldn't have said. We were unnecessarily cruel to one another because for the longest time neither of us knew how to express our feelings in any other ways other than physical.

Now that that safety net was essentially ripped out from underneath us, it has been up to us to keep our relationship afloat in absence of physical intimacy. Sure it still is a vital part, but at one point it played too big of a role. To the point where we used it to communicate the things we couldn't say to one another. Both of us had always carried a fear that a destructive pattern like that would take us down in the long run, but we didn't know how else to go about it. When running to that option became nearly impossible with all my traumatized reservations, we were forced to rely on other factors to keep our relationship alive. Hence, communication. Personally, I think we've gotten significantly better at it in the last month than all the seven months of our relationship.