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The pain behind my eyes let up just a little bit listening to him. This time his unbreakable calm didn’t piss me off, it infected me, working like a fucking blood pressure pill or something, and I took half a breath without it feeling like it was lighting my insides on fire.From now on. Say you’re mad instead of throwing thingsfrom now on.
From now ondid not meanget the fuck out. At least I didn’t think so.
I still couldn’t quite make my body work until he dragged his hand all the way down my spine and patted me on the ass a few times. That worked like a wake up or a warning or something, and it got me rolling over, sitting up against the pillows and peeking up at him long enough to see he still looked calm as hell. Guy had a hundred-yard fuse, and I didn’t think it was even lit.
He handed me a glass of water and I drank it without being told. I felt like I was dying of thirst and downed it in about ten seconds, before giving it back.
“Good boy.” He put the glass down and picked up a little plate of apple slices, sitting them on the bed between us, and guilt bubbled up my throat when I thought about apples rolling all over the kitchen. I hoped he hadn’t washed them. I hoped he was feeding me fucking dirt and germs. “This is from the refrigerator, not the floor,” he told me, picking up a slice, like he knew what I was thinking.
“I’ll eat the ones I knocked on the floor.”
“You’ll eat what I tell you,” he told me, and held the piece of apple up to my lips.
I hesitated a minute and then took a bite. It tasted as good as it had yesterday— better, maybe, because it was cold, and I swallowed and let him feed me the other half.
“When you’re hungry and dehydrated you get tired and grumpy,” he told me, lifting another slice up to my mouth and waiting for me to bite into it. I wasn’t sure I liked being fed like that, but I liked how he nodded, happy with me when I ate it. “I’m not saying you wouldn’t be tired and grumpy anyway, but Iamsaying you need to drink water and eat a snack when you come home from practice. That is not a punishment. It’s just what I need you to do. It’s what your body needs you to do.”
He expected me to agree with him, I was pretty sure, but eating the other half of the apple slice was about the best I could do.
He tilted his head, looking at me a little too closely. “Food is not a punishment. Do you understand that? It’s not a reward or a trick, it’s just something you need to stay healthy.”
I didn’t really like being seen this clearly in this specific spot, but I nodded anyway.
He held another slice up to my lips and I took it. “Little boys eat three meals a day. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner. And they eat a snack after school. They eat any other time they get hungry, but that’s when theyhaveto eat. Those are the rules. From now on, there’s going to be a snack waiting for you after school. It’s going to be in the refrigerator with your name on it and you’re going to eat it as soon as you get home, whether I’m here or not. And then you’re going to sit down at the table and start your homework. Those things are very important and if you don’t do them, you’re going to be in trouble.”
I swallowed and nodded. I would have done anything he said at this point, and that sounded so welcome, so easy, not nearly as hard as I was making it. It helped when he was specific, telling me exactly what to do and where and in what order. Made it easier to follow. I still didn’t like the idea of him not being home after school, but I didn’t like being in trouble, it turned out. At least not real trouble. So I’d give it a shot.
“One more,” he told me, holding up another slice and then bringing it up to my mouth. This time he held my eyes while he fed me, and I felt squirmy and a little turned on, and I guess maybe I did like being fed that way, after all.
“You threw those shoes at the wall, didn’t you?” he asked me after I swallowed the last of the apple. He put the plate back on the table and looked over at my shoes laying in the middle of the floor.
Didn’t seem like a glass of water and an apple would be able to perk me up so much, and it was probably some placebo bullshit, but I felt like I was coming out of a fog a little bit. I blushed hard and rubbed my hands over my face, mortified by my dumb, desperate attempt to bring him running, make him mad, settle down my insides that wouldn’t settle.
“At the door,” I admitted. “One at the closet.”
“Do you think that was very nice?” he asked me seriously.
“No,” I whispered, feeling ridiculous.
“No, what?” he nudged me, and I felt more ridiculous.
I wasn’t sure the word was going to come out, like maybe it was hiding or broken, but my mouth was in charge, and I wasn’t. “No, Daddy.”
Fuck, I couldn’t believe how good that one single word made me feel. I still didn’t know why, I just knew it felt right and good to call him that, the perfect mix of safe and scary that kept my blood hot and my palms sweaty and my insides vibrating. I knew I didn’t ever want to stop saying it.
“No, Daddy, it wasn’t nice,” I repeated, and he squeezed me on the thigh like he was proud of me for getting the right answer.
“It sure wasn’t,” he agreed. “Does it make you feel better to yell and throw things and try to be scary?”
A weird dog sound happened in my throat, a sort of cut-off-in-the-middle whine like someone yanked my voice box out. Like yeah, obviously that’s what I was doing, but having it spelled out so clear like that fuckinghurt.
I shook my head, but that wasn’t fully true. “A little. For a minute. But then I feel really bad.”
“That’s because you’re a good boy and you know how you should act. But you’ve also been affected by some very bad things. It does a lot of damage when people who are supposed to keep you safe and take care of you hurt you and scare you instead. It leaves a big mess inside and now you have things in your head yelling at you that other people don’t have, and sometimes that makes it hard to behave, doesn’t it?”
Fuck. I didn’t realize we were going full-on therapy, straight upjust because your mom goes on a violent fucking bender when she’s mad doesn’t make it a good choice.It shocked me so hard I felt like my whole body was crying, on the verge of puking up something awful, getting rid of some toxic shit that had been rotting in there for so long. Goddamn, I didn’t know how much I’dneededsomebody to say that, just brutal and soft at the same time, telling me the truth— that I was awful, but he understood why. Even if hearing it made me feel like the most pathetic kind of monster.
“I didn’t mean to scare you,” I whispered, and I got yanked up out of some dark shit when he just laughed.
