11. Theo #2
I get home. Paul's car is in the drive. He must have come straight here after lunch.
The kitchen light is on. I hear him on the phone in the study, low voice, closed door.
I don't go in. I don't announce myself. I take the stairs two at a time, shut my door behind me, lean against it for a second and try to get my breathing back down to a speed that won't give me away.
I lock it.
This is only the second time I’ve ever locked the door. In this house. In any house. Paul doesn't believe in locks between family.
I lock it anyway. Again. For Maddox.
I sit on the edge of the bed.
I text, home.
The reply is instant.
take your jeans off.
My hand goes to the button before my brain has finished reading the words. I take my jeans off. Fold them, for some reason, and set them on the chair like I'm being watched. Maybe I am. Maybe that's the whole point.
shirt
I take my shirt off. Drop it on the jeans. Stand there in my boxers in the middle of my father's guest room with the door locked behind me and my skin going up in temperature by the second.
lie back
I lie back on the comforter and my skin goes hot in a line from my sternum to my hip. The ceiling has a water stain shaped like a comma. I've never noticed it before. I notice it now because I can't look at the phone in my hand without my face burning.
hand in your shorts.
I put my hand in my shorts.
My phone buzzes again before I can close my fingers around myself.
wait. stop.
I stop. I hover. I'm so hard it hurts and my whole body is on the edge of a pulse I'm trying to keep quiet.
i want you to film it.
My stomach flips. And I text back, all of it?
your hand on your dick. your face when you come. send it to me.
I stare at the screen. I stare at it until the phone dims itself once. The idea of my face in a video on his phone, in his hand, in his bed at night, my mouth, the noise I make at the end, is a thing I can barely look at directly. It's too bright.
i can't
you can.
my dad is downstairs
then be quiet.
I put the phone down. I put my hands over my eyes.
I lie there in my boxers with my dick hard against my stomach and I try to talk myself out of it.
I try. I try for maybe forty seconds. Then I pick up the phone and I open the camera and I turn it to the front-facing lens and see my own face, flushed, mouth half-open, hair still damp from the shower where he washed me, and I press record.
I tilt the phone down my body.
I push my boxers down.
I wrap my hand around myself.
My breath goes ragged on the first stroke and I have to bite the inside of my cheek to keep quiet. I think about his hand instead of mine. I think about his voice in the shower saying whose is this. I think about the fingers that were in my mouth. My hand speeds up. My hips come off the bed.
I don't last long.
When I come, I bite down on my own lip and the sound I make is small and ruined. The phone catches all of it, my face twisting, the white on my stomach, my chest heaving, and I lie there shaking and I think, I'll never send this. I'll delete it. I'll delete it right now.
I send it.
I watch the bar fill on the send. I watch the little delivered appear.
I drop the phone on the bed and put my arm over my eyes.
That's when the door handle turns.
The lock catches. The handle stops. On the other side of the door my father's voice says, “Theo.”
I can't speak.
“Theo. Why is this door locked?”
I sit up so fast the room tilts. I yank my boxers up.
I grab my jeans off the floor. I'm wiping at my stomach with the inside of my shirt, and I'm trying to keep my breathing from being audible through the door, and I'm fumbling for the phone because the phone is face-up on the comforter with my own naked face frozen on the screen from the replay that started by itself.
“Just a second.”
The handle rattles again, harder.
“Open the door.”
“I was changing.”
His voice drops half a step. The drop comes right before he stops asking and starts telling.
“Open the door, Theo.”
I shove the phone under the pillow. I pull the jeans on. I zip them with shaking hands. I grab my t-shirt off the floor and pull it over my head and my hair is still damp from the rink shower and I know. I know my face is flushed and my mouth is swollen from where I bit it and my eyes are glassy.
I open the door.
Paul is standing in the hallway in his shirtsleeves. He's holding a folder.
He looks at me.
He looks at my flushed face.
He looks past my shoulder at the rumpled bed and the t-shirt I grabbed off the floor and the boxers I didn't quite get straight.
He doesn't say anything for a second.
“I was going to ask you about Wednesday's tape,” he says slowly. “I can come back.”
“It's fine.”
He doesn't move out of the doorway.
“Is it?”
“Yes.”
His eyes go over my face one more time.
“Who was on the phone?”
“Nobody. I was—I fell asleep for a second. The bus ride.”
“Hm.”
He doesn't believe me. I can see it. He doesn't believe me, and he also isn't going to push it right now—and the not-pushing is worse than the pushing because the not-pushing means he's filing it.
He's adding it to a folder in his head that already has other things in it.
The Saturday he couldn't find me. The Creed thing. The bench.
He hands me the folder he came up with. It's tape notes. Wednesday's opponent.
“Read it before dinner.”
“Yes.”
He's already turning to go. Halfway into the turn he stops.
“And Theo?”
I lift my chin.
“Yes.”
“Unlock the door when you're in this house.”
“Yes.”
He goes back down the stairs.
I close the door.
I don't lock it.
I sit down on the bed and pull the phone out from under the pillow and my hand is trembling so hard I can barely hold it.
There's a new message from Maddox.
fuck. baby.
Then: you did so good.
I stare at the two messages and the shaking in my hand gets worse, not better, and I realize I'm smiling.
I'm smiling with my eyes full and my heart still hammering from Paul's voice on the other side of the door and my body still humming from what I just did for him, and it should feel like I'm coming apart.
It doesn't.
It feels like the only part of my life that's mine.
I type back ok.
I delete it.
I type thank you.
I delete that too.
I type, and send, before I can think about it: when can I see you again?