I wrap my hands around the coffee and I look at him across the counter. He just held me while I cried and told him the worst thing about myself. Yet, he still looks at me like I'm still worth wanting.
"Tex?"
"Yeah, baby?"
"Thank you."
He stops flipping the pancake. He looks at me and his eyes are full of everything he said upstairs and everything he'll say at the clinic and everything he'll say every day after that.
"You never have to thank me for being here," he says. "This is where I want to be. With you, darling. Always with you."
The first pancake burns while he's staring at me.
"Shit! That pancake gave its life for this conversation and I want you to know that I respect its sacrifice. We'll have a moment of silence. Actually no, I've never had a moment of silence in my life. We'll have a moment of loud acknowledgment. That pancake was a hero. Hang on, I'll make you a good one. I'll eat the burned one this morning. Extra syrup fixes anything."
Tex hands me a plate and I dig in.
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.
