15. Theo
THEO
The front door is unlocked.
That's the first thing I notice. Paul locks the door. Paul locks the door every night, every morning, every time he leaves for ten minutes to get the mail. The door being unlocked at seven twenty-two on a Thursday morning means Paul has been sitting behind it waiting for me.
I stand on the step for a second. I breathe once, twice. My shirt's still on inside out. Maddox's boxers are still riding up under my jeans. I can feel the bite mark on my shoulder under the collar.
Okay. Time to go in.
Paul's at the kitchen island. He's already dressed. Shirt buttoned. Hair combed. Coffee in a mug. The mug has the team logo on it. He doesn't look up when the door opens. He keeps his eyes on his iPad. He's not reading anything. The screen's dark.
“Where were you?”
No, good morning. No, I was worried.
“Out.”
I set my keys on the hall table. Slow. So they don't rattle.
“Out where?”
“With a friend.”
He doesn't look up.
“Which friend?”
“You don't know them.”
He looks up.
Twenty years of this look and my body still goes small. Every cell in me wants to shrink down and say sorry and offer up whatever information he wants. Maddox's voice is in my head. Not his. Yours. I keep my hand on the counter. I don't grip it. I don't shake. Much.
“You didn't come home.”
“No.”
His thumb taps once against the mug handle.
“You didn't call.”
“No.”
My hand stays on the counter edge.
“You didn't answer my calls.”
“No.”
He taps again. Twice.
“Eleven texts. Three calls.”
“I saw.”
His jaw goes.
I've never said I saw to him before in my life. I've always said I'm sorry or I didn't hear it or my phone was on silent. I said I saw. That's new. He knows it's new. The kitchen gets quiet how a room gets quiet when both people have noticed the same thing at the same time.
“Theo.”
“Yeah.”
His eyes pin me.
“Sit down.”
“I'd rather not.”
His hand goes flat on the counter. I watch the knuckles whiten.
“Sit. Down.”
I sit down.
I sit on the stool across from him with the island between us and I put my hands on my thighs under the counter so he can't see they're shaking and I wait.
He doesn't ask me if I was with a girl. He doesn't ask me if I was drinking.
He doesn't ask me what time I got there.
He doesn't ask me any of the questions a father who wasn't sure would ask.
He asks the question of a father who already knows and wants to hear me say it out loud so he can be angry at the shape of the words.
“Who were you with?”
“A friend.”
He pushes the mug an inch to the side.
“Which one?”
“You don't—”
“Theo.”
His voice is low now. Low is worse than loud. Low is where Paul lives when he's going to do something he's already decided to do.
“Which one?”
“You'll be angry.”
“I'm already angry. Tell me.”
I swallow.
I breathe in through my nose. Maddox's face in the gray light on my chest. His voice saying you're allowed to be a person. The bruise on my neck. The boxers under my jeans.
“Maddox.”
Paul doesn't move.
Paul doesn't move. He doesn't blink. He doesn't breathe. His hand stays flat on the counter past the point my ears start ringing. The only thing that moves is the pulse in his throat.
“Creed.”
“Yes.”
His hand curls on the counter. Uncurls.
“You stayed the night with Creed?”
“Yes.”
He watches the answer land. Doesn't move.
“At his apartment?”
“Yes.”
His throat works once.
“Doing what?”
It's a trap question. He knows. He's asking me to say it so he can hate me with the evidence on the record. I'm not going to say it. I'm also not going to lie about it. I sit there and I look at him and I let the silence be the answer.
His jaw works.
“Get out of my kitchen,” he says.
“Paul—”
“Go upstairs. Take a shower. You smell like him.”
I smell like Maddox.
I know. I washed my face in his bathroom. I brushed my teeth with the travel brush I kept in my gym bag. I pulled on my jeans and walked in the cold for eight blocks. I didn't shower because I didn't want to wash him off me before I had to.
Paul smelled him on me the second I came through the door.
I stand up.
I don't say anything else. I go past him and up the stairs. I close my bedroom door, sit on the edge of my bed, and put my face in my hands.
I don't cry.
I text Maddox instead.
I'm home. Told him. Day off. Can I see you?
The phone buzzes almost right away.
Run. One hour. Meet me at the trailhead past the reservoir. Tell him you're going for a run.
He won't believe me.
I know. Go anyway.
So, I go anyway.
I shower and change into running gear. I come downstairs and Paul is still at the island with his iPad still dark. He doesn't look at me.
“I'm going for a run.”
“No, you're not.”
I grab my water bottle off the counter. Don't break his eye line.
“I am. Day off. I need to move.”
“Theo.”
“It's a run.”
He doesn't believe me. His face tells me he doesn't believe me. But also, I'm twenty years old and my father is not legally my warden, and he knows that and I know that, and the silence between us is both of us knowing that.
“If you get in a car with him,” Paul says, “you're done.”
“Done?”
“You don't play for me. You don't live here. You don't eat at my table. You don't get any more of what I have built for you.”
My hand is on the door.
“It's a run, Paul.”
I go out.
I walk down the drive. I walk past the mailbox. I walk around the corner. And then I run.
I run like I've been wanting to run since he said my name in the kitchen.
I run past the row of identical houses with identical lawns and identical flags on their identical porches.
I run past the bus stop where I've been waiting in the dark since we moved here.
I run past the coffee shop Paul likes where he once told the barista that a medium should be a small.
I run past all of it. My shoes hit the pavement.
My breath is loud in my ears. My legs are still tired from last night and they don't care. They run.
Four miles out. Past the reservoir. Up onto the trail.
The trailhead is a parking lot with a single vehicle in it.
His truck.
He's leaning on the hood in joggers and a hoodie with the hood down, and his hair is a mess from sleep or from driving with the window down, and his breath is white in the cold. He sees me come up the road doesn't smile, doesn't wave, doesn't move.
He watches me come to him.
I slow down twenty feet out. I walk the last bit. My lungs are burning. My face is hot. I stop two feet from him, and I don't know what to do with my hands.
He opens his arms.
I walk into them.
He holds me against his chest in the parking lot in the cold with the pine trees leaning over us and the only sound the tick of his engine cooling and the wind. He puts his hand on the back of my head. He holds me like I’m important to him.
“You okay?”
“Yeah.”
His hand flattens between my shoulder blades.
“Was he a bastard?”
“Yeah.”
He presses his lips to my hair.
“Did he put his hands on you?”
“No.”
He tilts my chin up. Looks.
“You'd tell me?”
“Yeah.”
He pulls back. He looks at my face. He thumbs a line of sweat off my temple.
“You ran here.”
“You told me to run here.”
His mouth twitches.
“I told you to say you were going for a run. I had a cab on standby.”
“I ran here.”
He huffs a laugh that's mostly air. He shakes his head.
“Kid.”
“I needed to move.”
“Yeah, okay. I get that.”
He pushes my damp hair off my forehead.
“Also, I wanted to see you.”
“Yeah, I get that too.”
He kisses me.
Not soft. Not morning-slow. He kisses me like he's been holding the kiss in his mouth since the door closed on me in his apartment this morning.
“Trail,” he says against my mouth. “Let's walk.”
“Walk where?”
He grabs my hand. Threads our fingers.
“I scouted this.”
“You scouted?”
“Yeah.”
I stare at him.
“When?”
“This morning. After you left. I drove out here and I walked it and I found us somewhere.”
I laugh into his jaw. Actually laugh.
“You scouted a make-out spot?”
“I scouted better than that.”
The trail climbs. We walk. He holds my hand. On a public trail. In daylight.
I have never held a boy's hand in daylight. I have never held anyone's hand in daylight unless you count Paul walking me across a parking lot when I was four. The air is cold. His hand is warm. My palm sweats into his palm and he doesn't let go.
Nobody passes us. It's Thursday morning and the trail is empty. The only sound is our feet in the pine needles and a raven complaining about something three trees over.
About a mile in, he leaves the trail.
“Here.”
“Where?”
“Follow me.”
He steps off the path and down a small bank and between two boulders and into a clearing I would not have seen from the trail.
It's about the size of my bedroom. Soft with needles.
A fallen log on one side. Thick pines blocking the view from the path.
Sun coming down through the branches in patches.
He's right. He scouted better than a make-out spot.
He turns to me.
“We could get caught here,” he warns.
“How likely is that?”
He glances back toward the trail.
“Low. Not zero.”
“Good.”
He raises an eyebrow.
“Good?”
“I don't want zero.”
He grins.
That grin is not something I have seen on his face often. It's sharp and private and all mine. He takes two steps and has me against the trunk of a pine with my hood pushed back and his mouth on my throat.
He's careful with me this morning. I feel him being careful.
My body is sore from last night and from the morning, and he knows it.
He's not going to take anything from me I can't give.
He kisses my throat slow. He runs his hand up under my running shirt and he finds the mark he left. He presses his thumb over it. I gasp.
“Still tender.”
“Yeah.”
“Good.”
He kisses the bruise through the fabric. He kisses the hollow of my throat. He kisses my jaw. His hand is inside my shirt now, flat against my stomach, not moving, just there.
I push him back.
Gently. Just enough.