Primrose #2
The panic on his face gives me pause. “Felix, you’re not in trouble,” I begin carefully.
“This,”—my eyes flick to the screen and I try not to wince—“isn’t something you have to be ashamed of.
Being curious is all part of growing up.
Not that watching this kind of stuff is exactly healthy.
But your dad is the person you should be speaking to… if you have questions.”
“I don’t want to talk to him.” He digs his fingers into his dark hair, pulling on the ends. “I cannot!”
“But why?”
“He would not understand.”
“I think you’d be surprised.” This comes out flatter than I mean it to.
“Non, please Primrose.”
Oh, sweet summer child, you wouldn’t be wearing such a panicked look if you knew what your father was into. Or maybe you would because you’re only twelve.
Not that I know what he’s into, either. I kind of wish I did.
My body goes ramrod straight thought.
Nope! I do not need to know how Lucien du Beaumont gets his rocks off on the regular. Even if I think he’ll be kind of beautiful when he does.
My attention moves back to the kid, and my heart sinks.
I don’t wanna do this! I wail internally. This isn’t my job—I’m not qualified! I might be a doctor and might know the basics of sex—which bit goes where—but I’m neither a sexual expert nor a child specialist.
Maybe I could call Emmy.
But she has enough on her plate.
Dammit, I suppose I’d better suck it up. Pull up my big-girl undies. “You know you shouldn’t be watching this kind of thing, don’t you?” I begin, swallowing over the lingering whiny lump of whyyymeee in my throat.
“All of the boys in my class watch.”
My mother’s voice instantly echoes in my head: If all the boys in your class jumped off a cliff, would you? “That doesn’t make it right,” I say instead. “It doesn’t make it healthy, either, but I’m not here to give you a lecture.”
“You aren’t?” His head jerks up, his eyes narrowed and his tone filled with a bucket load of suspicion.
“No, I’m not. But if you want to talk,” I say as I mentally make a sign of the cross over myself. “Or if you have questions, I’m here.” Physically, if not mentally.
He gives an awkward-looking shrug that doesn’t say no. So ignoring this sinking heaviness, I cross the room.
“If we’re doing this,” I say, as I reach out and pick up a small silver balloon dog from his nightstand. I turn it over in my hands. Jeepers, this is a Jeff Koonz. “I supposed I’d better sit down.”
“Okay,” he replies as I take a seat on the chair next to his bed.
My bum has barely touched the blue striped fabric when words immediately begin to spill from him.
“I can’t help it. Looking, I mean. I don’t want to, but some of it lives in my head, and I think about it when I shouldn’t, and then when I’m alone, I cannot say no. ”
“Well.” I put the ridiculously expensive and totally frivolous bit of art back and shove my hands between my closed knees. “If you can’t get the images out of your head, it’s not going to help if you keep looking at them,” I reason carefully.
His shoulders roll forward and his head sinks. “Non.”
“And I’m going to say that it doesn’t help that your brain isn’t ready to view these kinds of acts. These kinds of images.”
“Are you really a doctor?” His question is tentative as he twists the hem of the duvet cover around his index finger.
“I really am.”
“And you know these things?”
“It takes a lot of years of study to be a doctor, and I do know a lot of things.” And I generally don’t wing it with the things I don’t know, but in this instance, what choice do I have? “Like, I know that at your age your brain is still developing. That it’s not yet ready to process explicit…”
A frown ripples across his brow.
“Your brain isn’t ready to view images of a sexual nature.” My gaze slides to the TV and I physically start. Maybe my own brain is suffering from a sexual delay because it would seem I’m not ready, either. “Can we turn this off?”
He quickly reaches for the remote.
“It’s just a bit—” I was going to say in your face, but I’m sure that but comes later, pardon the pun. “It’s a bit much,” I settle on. “Right, so.” I run my hands down to my knees, my fingers hugging them. “I know a bit about brains from being a doctor, but I also know about this from experience.”
“You watch pornographie?” His eyes grow to the size of dinner plates.
“I—no.” Porn makes my soul want to escape my body. I’m still having nasty flashbacks about the things I saw at that bloody house in Paris. “Not that I think there’s anything necessarily wrong with watching porn, for adults who want to watch. But it’s not for kids.”
Felix frowns.
“When I was at school, and I was not much older than you, someone showed me something my brain wasn’t ready to process.
” Fucking Piers Landers. He cornered me, his mates holding me by the arms so I couldn’t move as he shoved his phone in my face.
God, it was awful—not your regular run-of-the-mill vanilla porn.
And his expression was so vile, and I still remember how horrible it was when his spittle hit my cheek as he spat such venomous words.
He said he was doing me a favor. That if I watched it, then maybe I wouldn’t be so…
. Well, he used my least favorite word again. Frigid.