Chapter 18 Tex
I burn the first pancake because I wasn't paying attention.
I burn the second one because I'm shaken up, and by the third one, I've got it together enough to produce a pancake that's actually edible for Stormy.
Blueberry. Golden brown. Stacked high on his plate with butter and the cheap syrup from the Walmart run because we don't have the real stuff yet.
We don't talk much. The morning is full of what he told me. There are no words I can produce that will make it lighter, so for once in my life I keep my mouth shut and let the quiet be.
I still can't get past it. His mother's boyfriend. He was ten.
I eat my pancakes and smile when he looks at me. I don't let myself think about what I want to do to a man who put his hands on a ten-year-old boy.
Different places. Different men. Different situations.
I pour more coffee, and slide it across the counter the way I always do.
He wraps his hands around it. We're two people sitting in a kitchen having breakfast and the only thing different about today is that I now know what I've been seeing the shadow of since the first night.
The chair against the door. The flinching.
The way he said "yes sir" the way it had been trained into him by someone who enjoyed the training.
Deep down, I always knew. Not the details.
Not the names. But I knew. I've known at least since the morning I pushed open his door and saw the bruises on his back.
The layered pattern of someone who'd been hit over time, by hands that knew what they were doing, and where to leave marks that a t-shirt would cover. Before that probably.
Hearing it out loud is different. Hearing my sweet Stormy say it, with tears on his face and his hands shaking in his lap, is different from knowing it in the abstract. It makes it specific. It makes it real. It gives it an age. He was ten years old.
I finish my coffee and rinse out the mug.
"Alright," I say. "Let's do this. Do we need real clothes or are you going in what you're wearing?"
He looks down at himself. My t-shirt, his shorts, flip-flops. "This is fine."
"Okay. I'm going to put on pants that aren't covered in barbecue sauce because I believe in making a good impression at medical facilities.
Give me two minutes. I own exactly one pair of jeans without a stain on them.
They're my court jeans. My insurance adjuster jeans.
Today they're my clinic jeans. These jeans have seen more high-stress situations than most people's entire wardrobes. They deserve their own drawer."
I go upstairs, put on the clean jeans and a decent shirt. Standing in the bathroom, I look at myself in the mirror. My eyes are still red. There's a muscle in my neck that's been clenched since he said the word ten, and it's not going to unclench anytime soon.
I breathe, fix my face and head back downstairs.
The drive to the clinic takes twenty minutes.
There's a walk-in urgent care on the main strip that does testing, one of the ones that popped up after the hurricane to handle the influx of medical needs.
The parking lot is half full. The building is a converted storefront with a hand-painted sign that says MEDICAL WALK-IN CLINIC in letters that are trying very hard to look professional.
I pull into a spot and kill the engine. Stormy hasn't said much during the drive. He's been looking out the window, his hands in his lap. He's armoring up. Putting on the same stillness he wore the first week, the protective blankness that says I'm not here, you can't see me, I'm nothing.
"Hey," I say.
He looks over at me.
"I have a confession to make. I don't like needles. I know I'm big, and should be braver, but seriously do not like needles. If I pass out in there, you are honor-bound to never tell Sheila."
His armor cracks. Just a fraction. The corner of his mouth twitches.
"I'm serious," I say. "She already thinks I'm a baby about getting my flu shot.
If she finds out I went down like a sack of potatoes over a blood draw, I'll never hear the end of it.
She'll bring it up every time she gets a chance.
She'll put it in my eulogy. 'He was a good man, but he fainted at needles.
' I can't have that on my permanent record, Stormy.
What happens at the clinic regarding needles, stays at the clinic. "
"I won't tell Sheila."
"You'd better not. Let's go get poked."
We go inside. The waiting room is standard issue.
Fluorescent lights that make everyone look like they're recovering from a hangover, plastic chairs in rows, a reception desk behind a glass partition, and magazines that are six months old.
There's a TV on the wall playing a talk show with the volume too low to hear and closed captions that are about three seconds behind.
I walk to the desk. Stormy is next to me, close, his shoulder almost touching my arm, and I can feel the rigidity in his body, the way he's holding himself together through sheer force of will.
"Morning," I say to the woman behind the glass. She's got reading glasses on a chain and a name tag that says PATTY. "We'd like to get STI panels done. Both of us. Full workup."
Patty doesn't blink. She's seen everything. She hands me two clipboards with forms and two pens. "Go have a seat and fill these out," she says.
I take them both and hand one to Stormy. We sit down in the plastic chairs, side by side, and I start filling out my form.
"Name," I say out loud, writing. "Got that. Age, thirty-two, and feeling every year of it today. Address. Big Tex's Roadhouse, Panama City Beach. Technically I live above the bar, which sounds sadder than it is." I look at Stormy. "How's yours coming?"
He's staring at the form. His pen is in his hand but he hasn't written anything.
I lean over. The first field is NAME. He's staring at it.
"Whatever name you want to put," I say quietly. "Whatever name feels right. They're not checking IDs. We're paying cash. Don't worry about it."
He writes. I don't look at what he writes. That's his secret. When he's ready to show me, he'll show me.
We fill out the forms. I narrate mine like a comedy routine because it's the only tool I have right now, and I will use it until it stops working.
I make him almost smile twice during the medical history section by listing "barbecue smoke inhalation" and "chronic pelican-related stress" under pre-existing conditions.
I'm not actually writing those things. I'm writing the real answers.
But the performance is for him, and it works.
By the time we hand the paperwork back to Patty, his shoulders have dropped half an inch.
They call us back separately. Stormy goes first because I insist. I want to be there when he comes out, standing in the waiting room where he can see me the second the door opens.
He's gone for about fifteen minutes. I sit in the plastic chair and I look at the muted TV. I don't watch it. Instead, I think about a ten-year-old boy in a dark room.
I think about the system that failed him horrendously. The adults who didn't notice or didn't care. I think about every person in that kid's life who looked the other way or didn't look at all, and the fury that I put away this morning, the cold stone in my chest gets heavier.
The door opens and Stormy comes out. He's pale but steady, a Band-Aid on the inside of his elbow. When he sees me sitting there his face does that thing, that small, careful brightening, that still takes my breath away every time.
"How was it?" I ask. "Was it bad?"
"No, it was fine. Quick."
"Did they use the big needle or the small needle?"
"There's only one size needle, Tex."
"That's what they want you to think. There's a secret drawer of giant needles they save for people who look too tough and big. I'm concerned they're going to pull that drawer out for me."
"You're being ridiculous again."
"I'm aware, but I'm still scared."
They call my name and I go back. At the door, I turn around and mouth the word 'help' at Stormy, just to see him smile.
The nurse is kind and she draws my blood in about thirty seconds.
I don't faint, which I will absolutely be telling Sheila about later.
I'm a grown man who handled it with dignity and only minimal sweating.
When I come back out, Stormy is sitting in the chair where I left him. He glances at the bandage on my arm.
"Still standing?" he asks.
"Barely. Touch and go there for a second. I saw a white light. I think I saw my grandma."
Patty tells us results will take three to five business days.
They'll call with results or we can check the online portal if we set up an account.
I set up both our accounts on my phone while we're standing at the desk because I'm going to be checking that damn portal every six hours for the next five days. We all know it.
Patty watches me set up the two patient portal accounts simultaneously on a cracked iPhone screen with fingers the size of bratwursts and says, "You're pretty fast with that thing.
" And I say, "Ma'am, I run a bar. I can text, pour a beer, and break up a fight at the same time.
This is nothing." She doesn't smile but I can tell she wants to.
Patty and I have a connection. It's professional and it's based on mutual respect and the fact that she didn't judge me.
We walk out into the parking lot. The sun is brutal again today with August heat bouncing off the asphalt. I unlock the truck.
"One more stop," I say, when Stormy climbs in.
"Where?"
"You'll see."
I drive to the ice cream shop on Front Beach Road. It survived the hurricane with minimal damage and reopened two weeks ago. The line is out the door because it's August in Florida, and everyone within a five-mile radius needs frozen sugar to survive.
Stormy looks at the shop and raises his eyebrows at me.
"When I was little," I say, "my mama used to take me for ice cream after I got my shots.
Every time. Doctor's office, then Baskin-Robbins.
I'd get a double scoop of mint chocolate chip and sit on the curb outside.
I'd eat it and the shot didn't matter anymore because I had ice cream as a reward.
It's a scientifically proven fact that ice cream neutralizes all medical procedures.
You can look it up. I'm not going to tell you where because the source is my mama and her research methods were questionable, but the conclusion stands. "
His eyes are doing the thing. The bright thing where they fill with tears, but they don't fall. I don't think he even realizes when it happens sometimes.
"I've never had that," he says quietly. "Someone taking me for ice cream after something bad."
"Well, now you do because I never miss an excuse for ice cream. Pick whatever you want. Double scoop, triple, banana split, I don't care. Sky's the limit. This is a medical situation that requires aggressive ice cream intervention."
We stand in line. The sun beats down on us, and I put my arm around his shoulders because I'm allowed to do that now. He leans into me and we shuffle forward in line like every other couple in Florida waiting for ice cream on a hot day. Two hot, sweaty gay guys with bandages on our arms.
He orders a double scoop. Mint chocolate chip and strawberry.
I order a triple because I am a large man and I require volume.
We sit on the bench outside the shop and we eat our ice cream.
The heat is melting it faster than we can keep up.
There's chocolate on his chin and I wipe it off with my thumb.
"Three to five days before we get the results," he says, not looking at me.
"Yep, three to five days."
"And then we know."
I take a bite of my cone. "And whatever we find out, we deal with. And then we come back here for more ice cream because ice cream is also the scientifically proven best response to test results, good or bad."
"Your mama's research again?"
"Peer-reviewed and everything."
He leans against my shoulder. His ice cream is dripping down his hand and he doesn't notice.
On the drive back, he's quiet again. This is the soft quiet of someone who's been through hell and come out the other side and is resting in the aftermath.
I reach across the console and take his hand. He laces his fingers through mine without hesitation.
"Tex, I want to tell you everything," he says, tightening his grip on my fingers. "The whole story. But I think it's better if I write it down. I can't say all of it out loud. Not yet. I'm sorry, I just can't."
"Then write it down," I tell him. "Take as long as you need. I'll read every word. There's no rush."
He squeezes my hand. We drive home with our fingers locked on the console between us.
Three to five days. Whatever comes back, we handle it. Whatever he writes, I read it. Whatever comes next, we face it.
That's our deal.