8. Maddox #2
“You can walk away from me right now. Right here on this pier. You can turn around and walk back to the parking lot and go home and I will not come near you off the ice again. I will leave you alone. I will be a teammate and that is all. You say the word and I walk. No chirping. No punishment. You have my word.”
“Okay.”
The wind lifts his hair off his forehead and drops it back.
“Or.”
“Or?”
I let the word sit between us.
“You come with me to this room, and when we get in the door, I am going to do what I want with you. Do you understand what that means.”
“I—”
“Say yes or say no. Don't guess.”
His face goes through three colors in about four seconds. He looks over my shoulder at the water. He looks at my chest. He looks at my mouth. He looks at my eyes.
“Yes,” he says.
“Yes, you understand or yes, you're coming.”
“Both.”
I do not smile.
I want to smile.
I do not let my face smile because if I smile he is going to misread it as this is a soft thing we are doing, and this is not a soft thing.
Or it is not only a soft thing. Or I do not know yet what this thing is.
What I know is that if I smile at him on this pier the kid follows me into the harbor and drowns.
“Okay,” I say. “You walk behind me. Not next to me. Not holding anything. Ten minutes up the boardwalk. If someone from the team drives by and sees us, you are a rookie who got lost and I am giving you directions back to your apartment. Yes?”
“Yes.”
“Walk.”
He walks.
The place is called the Harbor Arms.
It is four stories of brick on the corner of Water and Market, two blocks off the boardwalk.
The kind of building that was a workers' boardinghouse ninety years ago and is a weekly-rate hotel now.
The kind of place that does not ask questions if you pay on the first of the month in cash.
The lobby is a counter, a plastic plant, and a radiator.
The clerk is not at the counter. The clerk is never at the counter. That is one of the reasons I come here.
I go up the stairs. Theo follows behind me by three steps. His sneaker laces make a soft sound on the stair carpet.
Second floor. Hallway. Number nine.
I unlock number nine.
I hold the door. He steps in. I shut the door. I turn the lock.
The room is a room. A queen bed with a faded duvet.
A chair. A small table. A lamp that was designed to be cheap.
A bathroom off to the side. A window that looks at the brick of the building next door.
A rug that has seen things the rug does not want to talk about.
On the dresser is a paper bag with a brand-new pack of condoms and a bottle of lube I bought last month and have not opened.
On the nightstand is an ashtray and an unopened pack of cigarettes I keep for after.
Theo stands in the middle of the rug.
He has his backpack still on one shoulder.
I take it off him.
I take the strap in two fingers and lift it off his shoulder and set the bag against the foot of the bed. He lets me. He does not help. He does not resist. His arms come down to his sides as soon as the strap is clear.
He is shaking.
Not a lot. Not a shiver. His hands are at his sides and his fingers are doing a very small vibration, and a muscle on the side of his jaw is doing a very small jump. His breathing is the four-seven-eight thing he does, and he is doing it badly, because his four is a two.
“Breathe,” I say.
“I am.”
“You're not. Four in. Seven hold. Eight out. Again.”
He breathes. Four in. Seven hold. Eight out.
“Again.”
Again.
“Good boy.”
His eyes close.
His eyes close for one second and open again, and in the one second his face does something I have not seen on it yet, which is relief. A small, sharp relief. A horse getting a hand on its neck after a loud noise. A kid told, by a voice that is not his father's, you are doing a thing right.
His throat works.
“Okay,” he says.
“Okay.”
I look at him.
He looks at me.
He is in my room. He is twenty years old. He is Paul Laurent's son. He is the kid I told the bar I was going to fuck and I am now in a rented room with him, and he is looking at me like a deer at a hunter who has not raised the gun yet, and I am looking at him like I do not need to raise it.
I run a hand through my hair. It is still damp at the roots from the gym sink.
“One question,” I say.
“Yes.”
I make myself keep my hand at my side.
“Ask you a question first, sweetheart.”
“Yes.”
His hands settle at his sides.
“Is it true?”
“Is what true?”
The lamp on the table clicks once as a bulb filament settles.
“What Magnus said on the ice. What your dad probably told Phoenix. What I have been telling myself in every mirror for a week is the reason I cannot let this alone. Have you been with anyone before?”
He looks at the floor a long time.
He is not stalling. He is choosing the version of the answer he is going to give. I watch him choose. I watch his mouth decide that the truth is shorter than the lie.
“No,” he says.
“No what?”
“No, I haven't been with anyone.”
His hands tighten at his sides.
“At all?”
“At all.”
His throat works.
“Kissed anyone?”
“No.”
A pipe in the wall ticks as water moves through it somewhere above us.
“Touched anyone?”
“No.”
“Touched yourself thinking about anyone?”
His face goes a color I have not seen a face go outside of this kind of moment.
“Yes.”
“Who?”
He does not answer.
He does not have to answer. The answer is standing in front of him in black shorts and a black tee with his hair drying wrong. The answer is me. He does not say it because he does not have to, and because if he says it out loud in this room, I am not going to make it to the bed.
I take a breath.
I let it out.
I step toward him.
He does not step back.
“Laurent.”
“Yes?”
I am a foot from him now.
“Last chance.”
“For what?”
“To leave.”
He lifts his chin a half inch.
His jaw does the thing it does on the ice right before a faceoff, which is set.
The green of his eyes gets darker. His hands are still at his sides.
He is still shaking. He is still the small version of himself in street clothes.
But his chin is up. The chin is up, and his mouth is a line, and he has made a decision somewhere between the pier and the carpet, and I am watching the decision arrive on his face.
“I'm not leaving,” he says.
“Say it again.”
“I'm not leaving, Maddox.”
My name in his mouth for the third time tonight.
I close the three feet between us.
I put one hand on the side of his throat where the jump is. The jump stops. His breath stops. His eyes come up to mine. Green. Wet at the corners and not crying.
“Good boy,” I say again, and this time I say it like a promise, and this time his eyes do not close, this time his eyes hold mine, and this time he breathes in once, very slowly, four counts, and holds it, and lets it out.
I do not kiss him yet.
I do not kiss him yet because the kiss is the next chapter, and the next chapter is on its way, and I have the whole rest of the night to take this kid apart the way I have been telling myself for a week is just about Paul.
This is about Paul.
I say it inside my head.
This is about Paul.
It does not work anymore. The sentence has worn out in my mouth. The sentence is a coin with no face on it. The sentence is the word a liar says right before he stops lying.
I keep my hand on his throat.
“Come here,” I say.
He comes.