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I rubbed my thumb against the rough wood beneath me. “Nope. Not even a micro-penis amount.”

He looked surprised. Probably because the Alvin I was now wore tiny skorts, painted his nails, flirted recreationally, dyed his hair like a retired cosmetologist, and had spent half the week getting feistier every time one of these little assholes made a gay joke.

Alvin now made confidence look effortless. Alvin then had been a different story.

“I knew,” I said. “That part was easy.”

“Knew what?”

“That I liked boys, silly.”

He nodded. “How old?”

I thought about Darius. Eight-year-old me, bloodied from my dad’s big hands, an open window, and a cautious smile waiting for me. The wide-eyed boy next door, with a mop of dark hair, who scooted over on his bed and let me sit beside him when I was crying too hard to breathe.

“Pretty young. Younger than you.” I smiled.

Trevor noticed. “Was it Mr. D’Angelo?”

My smile vanished. “That information is classified, nosey-ass.”

He snorted.

“But yes.”

“I knew it.”

“Congratulations, Detective Trevor Waylon. You’ve solved the mystery absolutely no one at camp was confused about ever.”

He laughed under his breath before he went quiet again. “But you weren’t okay with it, were you?”

I leaned back on my hands. “My dad’s a preacher. I was raised to not be okay with it.”

Trevor winced. Exactly.

“He wasn’t always…” I searched for the word. An asshole? An abusive, waylaying dickbag of tit-load proportions? “Cruel.”

That mattered, didn’t it? Maybe I just needed it to matter. At least to me.

People liked their villains neat and tidy. Bad people doing bad things because bad lived inside them or some shit.

Daddy was more complicated than that. He loved me. I think. I knew he loved me at least in some way. The issue was just that he simply loved God more. And that made loving me at all… difficult.

“I grew up in church,” I continued. “Sunday morning. Sunday night. Sunday Bible study. Youth group. Vacation Bible school. Church picnics. Choir practice. If Jesus had opened a bowling league, we would’ve been there too.”

Trevor smiled sadly. “Lot of Sundays, Mr. Carter.”

“Call me Alvin, kid. And yes, I knew every Bible story before I knew long division—that’s for damn sure.”

“That sounds terrible.”

“Long division? Oh, yes. It’s the devil’s math.”

“Church.”

I laughed. “Sometimes it was.”

The water moved quietly beneath us.