The Stepbrother [BXB]

chapter 28

I never thought that love was meant for me. I didn't believe in it after my mum died. I never felt it after she was gone. My dad never showed me love, and I think those feelings I used to feel with my old girlfriends and friends were just platonic that could be never expressed as more than a shoulder tap. And that was already a big gesture.
When I first met Newton, the feelings weren't any different. But as time moved forward, feelings started to change. A weird feeling I wasn't used to, started to develop. I fought hard against it. I didn't want to feel that unusual emotion. It was like a magnetic field that pulled my chest towards that small boy. It took me months to find out why.

Little did I know that while I was fighting against the feelings I told myself not to feel, another being fought as well. The only difference between us was that he knew and understood his feelings, and I didn't. Now that I understand and accept, I've let my emotions lead me. I didn't fight against the path my heart wanted to follow. I accepted that my heart wanted to follow a path my dad was against.
You need to understand and accept yourself before you can love yourself.

I looked at the person to blame. He was reading like always. I got him the book he so gently touched with his fingers. I don't know if he likes it. I sure hope he does. I was mesmerized by his fingers. They slid down the page to later flip them and start at the top again. I imagined his fingers to be like mountains. Rough and harsh, yet beautiful scenery once you zoom out. The roughness of the peaks would make you able to hear them touch something. Whether it was a page, an instrument, a plant. Anything. He could make every sound stuck in my head like an annoying song from a commercial gets stuck, the only difference of course being that I like the sounds, maybe because he makes them. I mix it with music as well. I try to combine the sounds he produces with the music I make. He's in everything I do, even my music. Isn't it in the lyrics then in the sound.

Not only in my music does he play a big part. In my art as well. I always put something from him in it. Sometimes I make the lake as blue and icy as his eyes. Sometimes I give the rocks golden specks, like Newt's eyes which have golden specks in them. Sometimes I even mix his hair colour with the grass, or the colour of his glasses in the mountains. Sometimes I make the snow with the thought of Newt's white teeth. I make the moon like the half-moon on his nails.

I looked at the bigger picture of Newton. The way he was sitting and reading made me want to capture it forever on a canvas. It looks like he could be a person from a painting. Maybe that Star Night from Van Gogh. A depressed little town where one light was still on, because one tiny boy in the big night sky, was reading the mysteries of the world.

Sometimes I'm afraid that I'll wake up and realise this was all a dream. That maybe I went to an art gallery with my mum and stared into a painting for too long, making me lose touch with the real world and I'm just imagining this. If it was an imagination, it would be pretty good one and my imagination would deserve an Oscar.

I deserve an Oscar anyway for the acting skills I have for pretending Newt and I aren't dating. It was easy to pretend towards Leslie, but it was hard towards my dad. Suddenly he kept an eye on everything I did. I don't know If it's because of the therapy he now follows or if he really knows something's up, but he's been acting differently. I have therapy now as well. It is a big help. We work on my anxiety with all kinds of little practises and my depression and trauma with other practises. I love my therapist. She's so good and can remember everything I tell her what really amazes me! Like she remembers a name I mentioned a month ago like I just said it! She explains how my brain works with little kids' drawings which for some reason help really well. My anxiety has become less and less and I can actually go placed without freaking out.

It went so well that after this school year ended me and my friends decided it would be fun to go to the forest and camp there. And that brings me to the start of this chapter.