“So what?”
“It’s…it’s just not…”
He stares at me for a second, then he reaches for his clothes strewn haphazard on the floor.
“Hey—I didn’t mean…”
He puts on his underpants.
“Paul.”
His jeans.
“Hey.”
Puts on his shirt and glasses and turns to me. “You really think I’m just some stupid kid, don’t you?”
I stand. “What?”
“You don’t want to do it with me because my aunt’s house is too close? Is that what you’re saying?”
“Listen. I’m her neighbor,” I try to explain. “And I’m older than you. It’s, it’s…it makes me feel like I’m some kind of sicko preying on you. I mean, that’s what she’d think. That’s what anyone would think.”
“I don’t care about what anybody thinks,” he says. So sure. So proud.
I huff and grab my own clothes and start putting them back on, frustration bubbling up inside me. “I have to live here, stay here, and one day you’ll be…” I let that fade and the irritation on his face does the same.
We stand in silence for a minute or so, getting used to the imbalance between us, like ball bearings shifting. I don’t want it to be like this. I didn’t plan for it to be like this. In so many ways.
He sits on my bed, hands folded in his lap. I slowly sit next to him. We say nothing for a long, long time. My bedroom gets darker. Cicadas begin warming up for their nightly chorus.
Then he turns to me. He seems to contemplate something, pushes up his glasses, then he says, “After my mother died, I started noticing empty bottles in the kitchen. Liquor bottles. Sometimes in the hallway. Just all around.”
I shake my head. “You don’t have to do this.”
“I just kind of ignored it for a little while.” His gaze shifts from me to beyond me. “It helped him sleep, and he’d sleep a lot.” A long pause. “He didn’t know what he was saying sometimes. The housekeeper he hired to help my mother would come by to make us our meals for the week, and he’d say things to her. And I’d have to apologize for him.” He looks down and messes with his thumbnail. “I didn’t really care what he said to me. We’ve never gotten along, and I knew he wasn’t happy to be stuck with me.” A shrug. “I was used to it.”
“Paul. You don’t have to — ”
“So, one night he had way too much. I tried to get him into bed, and he wouldn’t do it. He said things to me…it made me angry, I was just so fed up, so I said some things back—” He pauses there. It’s for so long, I almost speak up, but he says, “He swung at me. I got out of the way, but my glasses fell off. I went to pick them up, and he hit me. Right in the eye. Then he did it again…”
My hands ball into fists.
His chin trembles. “I pushed him…I…I was angry. He fell. He fell back, hit his head, and it scared me. And then I ran out and all the way to my aunt’s. I didn’t know where else to go. And he called the cops on me. Because I pushed him, and they showed up at her house. I felt awful. She was so confused. I didn’t want them to see my face. I didn’t want him to get arrested. I didn’t want him in any trouble, he couldn’t...” He stops, tongue flicking over his lips. “And so my aunt tried to intervene, but I just lied.” He pauses again. This time, I think he’s finished. But then he says, “I can’t go home. I don’t want you to think — I mean…I can’t go back home. Ever.”
I don’t realize how tight my hands are clenched or my jaw until I speak. “How many times?”
“How many times what?”
“Did he hit you?”
“I don’t know. Two or three.”
“And the police?”
His voice falters. “I didn’t know if I hurt him or not. My aunt went over to get my things. She said he had a bump, but he was sober. At least there was that.”
There’s an upwelling inside me, a slow-growing wave, and it’s protective, it’s furious, it’s shocked. It all mixes together so I don’t know what to do: storm out and find his damn father. Take Paul in my arms. Call the police myself. Call his aunt. Demand that man never be allowed near him again.
