"I'm officially crazy." Jeremy slouched against the door frame with ease, as if it weren't a carefully orchestrated gesture. He had a half-folded sheet of paper in his hand. His neck was choked by the first button of his shirt, always closed. The formal gentleman's jacket had been replaced by a light cardigan, giving him the air of a middle-aged professor.

I was the only one in the room, as often happened, since Andy and Drake had taken to behaving like those irritating couples who fear they'll die if they don't live in symbiosis.

Jeremy and I weren't like that. For all the closeness he could offer, there were always moments when he needed space, solitude.

"Is that how your psychiatrist put it?"

Jey pursed his lips, vaguely annoyed that I had ruined his melodramatic entrance. "No... he said to stop using the word crazy."

He advanced to the lower bed, where I was half-sprawled on one side, and handed me that half-folded sheet of paper.

Oh, right. Borderline Personality Disorder. I folded the paper back without bothering to read Dr. Fetcher's lengthy letter.

"How are you?" I sat up properly, making sure not to hit my head on the upper bunk's bar.

Jey took a seat beside me, not too close, not skin to skin, especially since his legs were completely covered by a pair of long cashmere pants, despite the June heat.

But still, he was close. Closer than he had allowed himself to be in our early days together.

"I'm okay, actually. I feel... freer. A bit less responsible, but I'm not sure if that's a good thing."

Well, I wasn't a psychiatrist, and now Jeremy had one, so I refrained from trying to do his job. I simply reached out and placed a hand on his shoulder, drawing him close.

His head tilted slightly, brushing my cheeks with his hair. He had dyed it black after the first few months at the Smiths'. He said he was tired of people mistaking him for that nutcase of his brother, but the color was too suspiciously close to Alex's to be a coincidence.

After learning about Jeremy's various issues, his childhood, his complicated relationship with his parents, Alex had taken him under his wing like some sort of apprentice.

The fact that Jeremy had swapped jackets and ties for soft, muted cardigans enraged Drake to no end. He couldn't conceive how his brother could be so desperate for a father figure that he'd latch onto Alex like an unweaned puppy in less than two months. Or rather, he could conceive it, and he knew the real culprit was the father who had abandoned him in the crib, and therein lay the fury.

As for me, if Jey had to choose someone, I was glad he chose Alex over Kevin, despite Mr. Miller actively working as a mediator between Jeremy and his father. That didn't sit well with me. I still believed Jey should simply cut ties with Kevin once and for all, and I had had no qualms about voicing that, along with Drake, until one day Alex took us aside and silenced us in the firmest tone I'd ever heard him use.

"Stop talking about Kevin. Jeremy already knows everything that's wrong with his father, he doesn't need to be reminded every three seconds. If you grow up drinking dirty water because you have nothing else, it doesn't help when people make you feel stupid for not deciding to die of thirst.”

I had never thought about it from that perspective, and I don't think Jeremy had either. Somehow, that view brought a little peace to me too, in remembering my past life alongside my mother.

And so the first few months passed. Jeremy had four more crises before the end of the year. He had unlocked his father's number without telling anyone and read the messages Kevin had sent him since their last meeting. That man must have realized at some point that he was in real danger of losing his children, and he had began to use the blocked chat with Jeremy as a black hole to drop everything he had never said.

Son, you probably don't remember the first time we met. You had just turned four. You were at the supermarket with your mother, having a bad tantrum, and Stephanie couldn't control you. People around were staring at this crying woman, getting kicked and punched by her child, without doing anything. No one said or did anything, and I felt a rage I couldn't bear. I stood between you and her, and you stopped.

I'm sorry to admit it, but it wasn't your mother that I fell in love with that day. I realized you needed a father, just as Stephanie needed a husband. And I needed to be needed.

My divorce from Sophie destroyed me. Isabelle was my whole life, and things with her weren't going well. I know I should have been more present in her life, but I was afraid. I've always known that a part of my father lives in me. I always feel a lot of anger. I knew I wouldn't be a suitable father for a girl, but I could be for a boy. I could raise you to be a good man, that's been the only goal I've dedicated my life to since I met you all those years ago.

Then, in front of the police station, when you accused me of being violent with you, I felt outraged and scared. A part of me feared that you were telling the truth, even though I knew nothing like that had ever happened. I know it doesn't make any sense, but it's how I felt.

Forgive me, my son. Give me the chance to make amends for my mistakes.

It was from that moment on that Alex's mediation between the two began. Jeremy was completely confused when it came to Kevin, but as far as Alex was concerned, he hung on his every word. Any doubt he had about his father was shared directly and invariably with Mr. Miller. And he always returned, with a calm and steady voice.

"Your father gave you something you needed when no one else was willing to do so. But he also hurt you, and you don't know how to reconcile these two realities. I'll never tell you that you have to cut him out of your life. But right now, you need to give yourself some space. Put some distance between you and him so you can think, heal, and grow. And once you've done that, you can approach him again, and from the distance you've created, meet him from a place where you are safe and independent. The world is not divided between abusers and victims. They say that abusers always remain so, but I've never been able to believe it. If there truly is no hope for them to change, that would remove all their responsibility. People change, Jeremy. All of them. For better and for worse, always. But it doesn't happen overnight, and it doesn't happen just because one truly desires it. There's hard and continuous work behind every significant change."

Dr. Fetcher had decided to put Kevin aside, for the moment, to focus together with Jeremy on his past with his mother, and with Thomas. Then he prescribed him pills to take one in the morning and one in the evening, which had a leaflet as long as the Divine Comedy.

Finally, he advised him to start doing a violent sport, which left everyone quite confused, considering the goal was supposed to make him less violent, not more.

Alex's opinion was that you don't argue with the doctor, so Jeremy started doing Muay Thai, a type of boxing that allowed the use of kicks, knees, and elbows, thus increasing the likelihood of breaking his nose by 300%.

He had been training for six months now, two hours a day, three days a week, in a small gym with only one ring, and about ten other guys.

I spent those hours sitting on the only bench, gripping the edge with sweaty hands, waiting to see his head explode in a cocoon of blood. Truth be told, he had never really gotten seriously hurt. After a while, I convinced myself that the coach knew what he was doing, and that Jeremy was starting to figure out what he was doing too, yet I kept going to all the matches, maybe for a different reason than the initial one.

The sight of Jey in nothing but a pair of shorts and gloves, giving more than he was taking, had a certain effect on me.

And, incredibly, the more Jeremy learned to throw punches in the ring, the less he lost control in real life.

There was also the fact that he was pumped full of sedatives and had two hours of therapy a week, but still, boxing helped.

...

Jeremy knew what effect those hours spent in the gym had on me. He took advantage of it, the innocent little virgin, who was no longer innocent, nor a virgin.

In true Jeremy style, our first time was the result of careful manipulation on his part. That day, first of all, he finished his training by annihilating this guy named Pete, hitting him with an elbow in the chest and kneeing him in the side.

We came back home by subway. He was sweaty. I shouldn't have found it attractive, but one can't control certain things.

The house was empty. I had no idea how he managed it, there was always someone in there, we were too many in too small a space, yet that day I didn't hear a single breath crossing the threshold.

Jeremy led the way to his and Drake's room. He dropped his bag with his gloves on the floor, took off his shoes, and went to put them back in the shoe rack, locking himself in the bathroom for a minute.

In that short span of time, I noticed that Drake's guitar and amplifier were gone. Even his usual scattered clothes, socks thrown on the floor, were gone. Jeremy's bed had been made with fresh laundry sheets, while Drake's upper bed was completely stripped, leaving only the bare mattress.

Jey had removed every trace of his brother's existence from that room, and it wasn't hard to imagine why.

Despite all the gigantic steps forward he had taken and was still taking, Jeremy still had slightly exaggerated reactions in certain situations. Like when even the minuscule mention was made that Drake and I had had a semi-relationship that lasted less than a month and didn't go anywhere.

And Drake, being Drake, never understood when it was time to shut up and stay quiet. He thought it was a brilliant idea to use this fact to his "advantage" when he wanted to annoy his brother. The last of his hilarious jokes had left him lying on the floor holding his stomach and wheezing for breath.

I shouldn't have found it attractive the way Jey beat up his brother, but one can't control certain things.

I didn't even have time to realize what was happening before Jeremy came back from the bathroom, wet from the shower, wearing a white T-shirt stuck to his damp chest and a pair of shorts.

That hunched posture from when I first met him was gone. He had broad shoulders now, looking me straight in the eye.

"I bet you've stored lube and condoms in the nightstand. What's going on? Were you planning to ambush me?"

He ignored my joking tone and narrowed his eyes: "Why should we use condoms? Are you having sex with other people?"

The possessiveness and paranoia were still slightly out of control. We would find a healthy balance on that too, sooner or later.

"No, but you never know."

"You never know if you're having sex with other people? You should be aware and conscious of..."

I silenced him with my lips, making him startle. Even though he had rinsed off, he still had the acrid smell of those punches on him.

I would never, ever get used to the way his mouth opened for mine. A kiss from Jey was the moment he gave up all pretense, leaving only an honest and vulnerable desire.

My hands wrapped around his hips, gently. Jey pulled his lips away with a smack and pressed his hand over mine, sinking firmly into his skin. "I'm not fragile."

No, he wasn't, but that didn't mean there shouldn't be room for gentleness.

"What do you want, Jey?"

He sank his eyes into mine, searching, probing, until he convinced himself that there was nothing hidden behind that question.

"I want... I want it to be special. I want you to remember it forever."

And I wanted the same for him. I kissed him at the corner of his mouth before embarking on the traumatic journey of separation that would lead me to the window. I closed the blinds, leaving only a small gap. The room fell into semi-darkness as Jeremy turned the key in the door.