17. Theo
THEO
Itell him what Paul said.
Some of it. Not all of it. I can't fit all of it into words yet.
It's still a shape in my chest, not a sentence.
But the big things come out. The unlocked door.
You smell like him. Get out of my kitchen.
How he opened my bedroom door after I came back from my run, waking me from a nap, and despite being groggy, I knew, instantly, that he'd spent the time I was gone deciding what to say.
He said it. All of it. The part where if I keep seeing Maddox I'm not his son.
The part where he's already called the owner.
The part where the room I sleep in isn't mine, it's his, it's always been his, and I'm lucky to have a bed in it.
The last thing he said before I ran out of the house was, “I raised you better than this.”
I got halfway down the block before the shake started. I sat on the curb. I tried to call my aunt. I couldn't. I didn't know what to say and I couldn't make my thumb press her name. So I called Maddox instead. Not called. Texted. Because I'm a coward.
I tell him this sitting on the bench. My forehead is on his shoulder.
His jacket smells like a bar and something underneath it that's just him.
Skin, the shampoo he uses, the warmth of a body that's been a body all day.
I breathe it in because that's the part that keeps me stitched together right now.
He doesn't interrupt. He lets me talk. When I run out of sentence, he doesn't ask the next question. He waits. Like he trusts me to find the next one.
“I don't know what to do,” I say finally.
“Okay.” His hand is on the back of my neck. Warm. Still. “You don't have to know tonight.”
My fingers curl into his jacket.
“I can't go back there.”
“No.”
I make myself say it out loud because it matters.
“I mean ever. I don't think I can ever go back there.”
He's quiet. His thumb moves once against the knob at the top of my spine.
“Then you don't,” he says.
He drives slow. One hand on the wheel, one on my thigh. Not sexual. Anchoring. Like he's making sure I'm still in the car. I watch the streetlights pass over his face. The set of his jaw. His eyes going from road to mirror to me and back. He's checking on me without making it a production.
At a red light he glances over.
“You want food?”
I hadn't thought about food. I haven't eaten today. My stomach is a knot, not a hunger, but he's right, I should eat.
My jaw does a thing I can't control.
“I don't know.”
“I'll make you something at the apartment.” The light changes and we go. “You don't have to decide. I'll make it and you can pick at it.”
I press my head against the window.
“Okay.”
“Your aunt,” he says, after another block.
I look at him.
“You mentioned your aunt earlier. On the bench.”
Did I? I don't remember saying her name. Maybe I said my aunt. Maybe I said it as part of the list of people I couldn't call.
The name comes out of my mouth before I decide to say it.
“Diane.”
“Diane.” He tests it. Nods once, like he's filing it. “She close?”
I rub my thumb along the seam of my jeans.
“She was.” I swallow. “When I was a kid.
She's Paul's older sister. She hated him when we were growing up.
Said he was a drill sergeant with a clipboard where his soul should be.
She used to take me to the library on Saturdays when he was at the rink and let me read whatever I wanted.
He didn't let me read fiction at home. Said it made boys soft.”
Maddox makes a sound that isn't quite a laugh. Just air out of his nose, short. “Your aunt sounds fun.”
I stare at the dashboard.
“She's the only person in that family who ever looked at me like I was a person.”
His jaw tightens.
“Have you talked to her lately?”
“Not really. Paul cut her off when I was thirteen. Something about her influence at the time. I don't know all of it. I have her number. She sends me a birthday text every year.”
He's quiet for a second.
“Text her tonight,” he says. “Not about this. Not yet. Just text her. Tell her you're thinking about her.”
“Why?”
“Because you're going to need her in a week, and you don't want the first message you send in eight years to be a 9-1-1.”
I look at him. His face is still on the road. His hand is still on my thigh. He's thinking about strategy. About how to protect me. It's the exact opposite of every instinct I had about him when we first met, and I can't tell if I want to cry again or crawl across the console into his lap.
“Okay,” I say.
Apartment 304. I know it now. The buzzer, the stairs, the creak of the third step, the gray door that doesn't quite close flush unless you lift it an inch. He lifts it. We go in.
The low gray couch. The one lamp he leaves on because he hates walking into dark rooms. The city glittering through the balcony door. It smells like him. Cedar and clean laundry and, faintly, yesterday. I stand in the middle of it and something in my chest uncoils for the first time in hours.
He takes my coat. Hangs it on the hook by the door like it belongs there. It doesn't, yet, but he's decided it does.
“Sit,” he says. “I'm going to scramble eggs.”
“You can cook?”
“I can make eggs. It's not cooking. It's eggs.”
He disappears into the kitchen. I sit on the couch. I pull my knees up. I can hear him. Pan on the stove, fridge opening, the small clink of a bowl. He's humming something. Not a song. Just a low steady sound to fill the space. I don't think he knows he's doing it.
My phone is on the coffee table where he set it down for me. I pick it up.
Diane. Last text from her: Happy birthday, kiddo. Call if you ever want. xx D
I type, hi. i've been thinking about you lately. hope you're well.
I send it before I can un-send it.
The read receipt comes back in about twelve seconds. Then a typing bubble. Then: Hi baby. You okay?
I stare at the screen. Tears come up without asking. One lands on the phone before I get it off my face.
I respond, not really. can i call you tomorrow?
You can call me right now. Or tomorrow. Or whenever. I'm here.
I hold the phone until my thumb goes cold. Wipe my face. Type, tomorrow. i love you.
I love you too. Whatever it is we'll figure it out. Sleep okay.
I read it three times. Whatever it is we'll figure it out. Not whatever you've done. Not what did he do to you now. The we lands like a hand on my back. I didn't know how starved I was for a we that included me until she handed me one through a screen after eight years of birthday texts.
The phone goes dark in my hand and I sit there until Maddox comes around the couch with a plate.
Scrambled eggs. Toast. A mug of tea. He sets them on the coffee table, crouches down in front of me, and takes the phone out of my hand like it's a fragile thing.
“Hey.”
“I texted her.”
“Good.” He sets the phone screen-down. Puts his hands on my knees. “Eat.”
I eat. Not a lot. Half the eggs. Most of the toast. Tea in small sips because my throat is tight and big swallows hurt.
He eats the other half of the eggs right out of the pan, standing up in the kitchen, watching me over the counter.
When I finish, he takes the plate, rinses it, comes back, and sits down on the couch next to me.
We don't turn the TV on. We don't put music on. The apartment is just the hum of the fridge and the low rumble of the city through the glass.
“Can I ask you something?” I say.
“Yeah.”
“In the beginning—” I stop. Start over. “When you told me in the shower…that first week…that you were going to ruin me to get back at Paul…”
He goes still.
“Yeah.”
“That was the whole thing, right? That was the plan. You were going to sleep with me until Paul found out and it would destroy him. Or whatever.”
“Yeah.”
I nod once. My hands are clenched in my lap.
“Okay.”
He waits.
“I want you to know I figured that out. Pretty early. I'm not stupid.”
“I never thought you were stupid, sweetheart.”
“I'm saying I knew what this was. I knew why you picked me. And I did it anyway.” My voice does something.
I steady it. “I did it anyway because I wanted to.
Because I'd never wanted anything in my life, and you were the first thing I couldn't not want.
And I thought, okay. Even if this is revenge for him, it's still mine.
It's still the first thing I ever picked.”
He doesn't say anything. He's looking at me like I've hit him square in the chest with something heavy.
“So I just… need to know.” I make myself look at him. “Is that still what this is?”
He opens his mouth. Closes it. Opens it again.
“No.”
The word sits between us.
“No.”
“That was the original plan.” His hand comes up. Finds the side of my face. Holds it like it matters. “Things have changed.”
I stop breathing for a second.
“When?” I say. It comes out almost steady.
“I don't know. Somewhere between the first hookup and this morning. I didn't notice it happen. But suddenly I was thinking about you when you weren’t there, wanting you in my space, wanting to be with you again. I wasn't doing it on purpose. I was just doing it. That's when I knew.”
I swallow hard.
“Okay.”
“I don't say this stuff, Theo. I'm not… I don't know how to do this part.”
My hand finds his wrist.
“You're doing it.”
“I'm saying it bad.”
“You're saying it fine.”
His thumb is on my cheekbone. His eyes are on mine. He looks terrified. He looks like a man who just stepped off a cliff voluntarily and is only now realizing gravity exists.
“You opened my whole world,” I say.
I don't know who moves first. I think I do. I think I reach for him and he meets me halfway because he's been waiting for me to reach. The kiss is slow. This one has weight behind it. This one is a sentence spoken after a long pause.
He leans back. Pulls me with him so I'm against his chest. Kisses my forehead. Kisses my temple. Murmurs something into my hair that I half-hear—I've got you, sweetheart, I've got you.