Pretty Boy [bxb] | ✔️

Chapter thirty-nine: Are you in love?

𝘼𝙧𝙚 𝙮𝙤𝙪 𝙞𝙣 𝙡𝙤𝙫𝙚?

Alex likes to watch me while I paint, especially when he's stressed.

He makes me sit between his legs on the floor of my bedroom with his back pressed up against my bed, watching without saying a word while I paint onto a canvas. It makes my talent feel appreciated, and I love the gesture. I love how he can calm down by merely watching me do what I love.

I did ask him why it made him calm down. I was half expecting him to explain how the way the paintbrush brushes against the canvas is satisfying or watching something helps him take my mind off of things, nothing about me in particular. However, to my surprise, he responded that seeing me do something that makes me happy, seeing my accomplished smile once I've finished, makes him feel at peace. My contentment is his gratification.

I simply do not know what I've done to deserve someone who cares so much about me, so much about my happiness and my comfort, going out of his way to make sure I'm feeling OK and that I'm not alone. I'm not special, at all, but he is. Why is it me that he's fallen in love with, probably one of the most tedious people in our school?

Today, after only a few weeks since the situation was taken to the police, Alex went to court because Mr Montgomery pleaded not guilty. I think it was unbelievably stupid that it was taken to court because all evidence went against the vile man and he should have been charged as soon as he was confronted with the evidence Alex provided to the police, but it did.

I was surprised at the fact that the first court appearance happened so quickly—it has never gotten explained to me why. I assume that the family already has a lawyer, because of their wealth, and that Alex provided all of the evidence that he had when he went to the police station. I don't want to ask as Alex doesn't like to speak of what he went through or anything to do with it.

I wanted to go with Alex, to hold his hand and to make sure he was OK, but he didn't want me to go. I was going to sit there in the courtroom and watch the trial, making sure that Alex knew that I was with him through it all and supporting him unconditionally. I insisted on going with him, but his insistence on me staying home was more potent. So I did. I didn't want to add to any of his frustration, stress or anxiety.

I waited impatiently in my room, my hand tapping against my thigh continuously and my palm stinging from the constant digging into of my fingernails, until the moment he came back, where I let him fall into my open arms.

He didn't want me to see his dad, never mind be in the same room as him, with the explanation that he doesn't want me to see the man who punched me in the face, as though that man didn't spend nearly eighteen years of his life abusing his son.

All Alex is thinking about right now is me, how he doesn't want me to feel nervous seeing the man that attacked me, or uncomfortable, or anything like that. While I'm eternally grateful for his care, he seems to forget that this case is about him and his mother, not me. I'm a small addition to it, but it hardly has anything to do with me. I don't need help. He does.