“What’s on the menu?” he asks, setting some weird looking pine bough with a red Christmas bulb dangling from it on my coffee table. Leave it to Gannett to think some lame looking holiday decor was worth saving and bringing with him. Whatever, if it saves him from making more comments about how impersonal and cold my apartment is, I’ll let him have his sad-looking tree.
I shrug. “Got some marinated chicken I need to cook up.” I take a look in my fridge. “Asparagus is about to turn, if I don’t get on it soon. Pretty sure I have some wild rice I can whip up too.”
“Shut. Up,” he gasps. “I thought you were just going to toss some spaghetti in a pot or something. You seriously know how to cook more complex stuff?”
I blink at him. “Uh, yeah? Who the fuck do you think taught Taryn?Trista? That’s laughable.”
“Well, who taught you? You, like, go to school for it or something?”
“No?” I scoff. “The fuck is with the twenty questions? I’m self-taught, man. I used to be an athlete. I had to know how to stick to a prescribed diet. Sure as hell couldn’t count on Marlin to feed me.That asshole used to let me starve for days…” I purse my lips, but it’s too late. Another admission snuck out without warning.
“Wait. Your old man didn’tfeedyou?” Gannett frowns. “What the fuck, dude? That’s, like, basic parenting. You feed your kids, you clothe them, you house them. What the hell else didn’t he do?”
“He didn’t do a lot of things,” I grunt, my molars grinding. “We’re not talking about this. Rule number two of staying here? No bringing up Marlin.”
Gannett’s lips thin into a line, and he nods. “Noted. Ok. No touching and no discussing douchebags, even though you were the one that brought him up.”
I roll my eyes. “The puppy is trainable,” I state instead, hoping to navigate the conversation into safer waters.
“Oh, fuck off,” Gannett mutters. “I’d punch you right now if it wasn’t for that no touching thing.”
“Obedient, too,” I snark.
He chuckles. “You’re such a fucking dick!”
“A dick who is providing you a warm place to stay and who’s about to cook your supper so you can stuff your cakepipe. So, how about you show some appreciation instead?”
The humor in his expression fades into something—softer. “Seriously, thank you for saving my ass. I promise, I’ll be a good roommate. Might take me a bit to get used to being quiet when I get up in the morning again, but I’ll try. I haven’t had to in a while. You know, living alone and all…” He looks down at his feet, shoulders slumping defeatedly.
Swallowing hard, I accept his gratitude—it’s so rare that an asshole such as myself gets something genuine like that. “You’re welcome.”
And I’ll try not to wake you with my middle-of-the-night journeys back into the past, I mentally promise him back.
I cook us both supper while he roams around my space, muttering to himself as he marvels about beingallowed in my sanctuary. He grins, wiping the dust off some of the old pictures I have hung of Taryn playing little league. A few times, he tries to ask personal questions, ones I don’t feel comfortable answering, so I have to keep coming up with creative ways to shut him out. I’m on top of my shit when it comes to shutting down interrogations into my past.
Letting anyone in is something I’ve naively done before, and only wound up hurt in the end.Never again.
Finally, we sit down to eat, which is a whole new level of torture. Listening to his moaning has my traitorous dick stirring to life. It doesn’t have a clue that the sounds he’s making are simply over a home-cooked meal. Looks like I’ll be taking a cold shower before bed tonight, since jerking off without getting caught is an impossibility in an apartment as poorly sound-proofed and small as mine.
Fuck me. Why did I do this to myself?
“Ooomph! Stop!” I curl up in the corner of the basement, fearful of another kick to the ribs like one I just got.
“What the fuck did I tell you, boy?!” Marlin spits, rage in his bloodshot eyes.
“Th-that if I ever talked back to you… I w-would get h-hurt.”
Another sharp blow from his steel-toed boot lands, this one right to the stomach.
“And what else?” heseethes, his hot breath—reeking of whatever liquor he’s poisoned himself with tonight and the mint gum he tries to cover it up with—fanning over my face.
“T-to accept my punishment, a-and not r-run…” Hot tears stream down my cheeks, and I can feel the snot bubbling out of my nose. But if I make a move to wipe it, he’ll think I’m blocking my face.
One more kick to my stomach renders me choking, gasping for air. I can’t catch a breath in time before I vomit all down the front of my shirt. It’s bile, of course, I haven’t eaten since the day before yesterday. Marlin hasn’t seen fit.
“You’re nothing but a waste of space in this house, you pathetic little shit! Lazy as it gets! Can’t even do one fuckin’ thing I ask of you!”
I want to throw it in his face that it’s not laziness, it’s that he’s a perverse pedophile, but that’d just be another instance of me talking back. I already think I have at least a couple of broken ribs. I can’t handle more. The last time there were more, someone at school almost caught on.
