I do not kiss him yet.
I do not kiss him yet because the kiss is the next chapter, and the next chapter is on its way, and I have the whole rest of the night to take this kid apart the way I have been telling myself for a week is just about Paul.
This is about Paul.
I say it inside my head.
This is about Paul.
It does not work anymore. The sentence has worn out in my mouth. The sentence is a coin with no face on it. The sentence is the word a liar says right before he stops lying.
I keep my hand on his throat.
“Come here,” I say.
He comes.
9
THEO
His hand is on my throat.
His hand is on my throat, he saidcome here,I came, and now we're a foot apart in a rented room above Water Street. A lamp on a cheap table. A duvet the color of nothing. His hand on my throat. I'm shaking.
I'm shaking hard.
I'm shaking the way I haven't shaken since I was twelve and Paul left me on a lake with a fishing rod and no jacket. My hands shake at my sides. My knees shake inside my jeans. My teeth would shake if my teeth weren't clenched so hard I can taste the enamel.
I'm terrified.
I'm terrified and I'm not leaving. Those two facts are in my body at the same time. My skin is hot where his palm is on my throat and cold everywhere else. My chest hurts. My mouth is dry and wet at the same time. My hands want to be on him. My hands have never wanted to be on anyone and they want to be on him. I don't know what this wanting is. The not-knowing is worse than the fear.
His thumb moves.
Half an inch along the line of my jaw. Very slow. A test.
I make a sound.
I didn't mean to. It's a small sound, a half-breath, a half-word. He hears it. His pupils do a thing. The green-brown of his eyes goes almost black around the edge of the brown. His mouth opens a little. I watch the shape of his mouth open because I've been watching the shape of his mouth for a week without letting myself call it watching.
“Laurent.”
“Maddox.”
“Look at me.”
I am looking at him.
“Good boy.”
My stomach drops how stomachs aren't supposed to drop. A drop like the top of a hill on a bike. A drop like missing a step on a staircase. A drop and a pull at the same time. The pull is in a place I didn't know was a place, low in my belly. My hands make fists at my sides because my hands have to do something.
He sees the fists.
He looks down at them. He looks back up at me.
“Hands,” he says.
