“I’m fine,” Geno kept saying to the infirmary staff. “I’m fine, I just got upset. I was already anxious and seeing those guys triggered me.”
Useful word, trigger. Both nurses and the doctor and even Frank Stein—who left the dinner table to call in—agreed that was what happened. They also agreed Geno should spend the night in the infirmary and be restricted to the facility for a week.
“Great, so I’m being punished for something I couldn’t help,” Geno said.
It’s for your safety, the consensus replied.
Bullshit, he thought. He sat on the narrow bed in the tiny, sterile infirmary and hated everything. He wished he could head to EP’s fitness room, jump on a treadmill and run until his head exploded.
I want to die, he thought. I mean it this time.
What he really wanted was that coffee can full of hardware to sort out. But with it came the memory of the sound it made when it collided with Stef’s head.
I could’ve killed him.
What if he had? He’d be in fucking jail right now.
That is, if Jav didn’t kill him first.
Holy fuck, Jav and Stef.
Crazy how I’ve never wanted something so bad.
Groaning, Geno fell back and closed his eyes. He tried turning his head away, but the handwritten words of that fucking love note were etched on the insides of his eyelids. Because, like an idiot, he’d read them not once, but about twenty times.
I’m going to kiss you until you’re limp. Lick you in places you didn’t know you wanted my tongue to touch.
Geno pressed the heels of his hands to his burning face. He was an idiot. He’d memorized the words but it never occurred to him the handwriting didn’t match the other notebook entries. It wasn’t a note Jav wrote. It was a note he got. From Stef.
“Jee-zus,” he said through his teeth. He’d touched himself to that shit. Fine, he didn’t get off on it because he was fucking defective in that regard. But he’d gotten hard and had a grand old time stroking himself to all those lewd, racy, intensely passionate and, now, undeniably gay words.
Watching your face the whole time, I’ll slide into you.
Geno’s head turned this way and that, trying to get away from into. He clenched up, remembering all the pain, all the indignity, all the mortifying exams. His own shit funneled to a bag strapped to his body because his asshole had been reamed for two days. Every enema. Every suppository. Every fucking gloved and lubed finger that had probed up his works.
You need me in you.
Don’t you, baby boy?
He threw the thin pillow against the wall and sat up, violated to his core. His henhouse ransacked and pillaged. Furniture overturned, feathers floating from slashed pillows and ashes raked out from the hearth. Dirty footprints trampling on everything he’d worked so hard to build. Worst of all, the sleeping arrangements rearranged. Stav kicked out of the bedroom to sleep on the couch.
Sorry, Little Ears. This house craves dick.
“Son of a bitch,” he said. “How could you fucking do this to me?”
What was he even talking about? What the hell was this jealousy flooding his guts as he stared at the closed door of the master suite. Wondering what they did in there. Wondering how they felt in there. Closed up together, alone and naked with all those words.
Never wanted anyone the way I want you. Never felt this way with anyone else.
The room swam wet. Geno ran the back of his hand roughly over his eyes, remembering crumpled notes he’d pulled out of Carlito’s jeans. Corny lines he thought were written by a girl. Rolling his eyes at the sappy sentiments while tasting the new and bitter knowledge he no longer had exclusive rights to his twin’s love.
You’re the only one who knows me, Carlito wrote back to the A who wasn’t an Amy or Amanda or Andrea. You’re the only one who sees me.
The words joined hands with Stef’s note and sidled up next to Anthony’s voice. Geno hunched over, fingers clenched in his hair, pulling a silent scream out of his follicles.
Crazy how I never wanted something so bad.
Yeah, you want it. Can’t have only one twin be gay.
You’re a whore just like your brother.
Geno sniffed hard, swallowed harder through the swamp in his throat. Trust was heavy, but it was so fragile. When it slipped out of your hands, it shattered into delicate, sharp pieces that cut hard and deep.
“It’s nothing to fucking cry about,” he said.
Cry all you want, baby boy.
He stood up and started pacing up and down the short length of the room. The anxiety was coming over the horizon and nothing could stop it.
Except the wrath of Caan.
His fists clenched as he mindfully ripped circuits out of anxiety and plugged them into anger.
“Sick fucking faggots,” he said, his feet smashing his raging emotions into the linoleum, grinding them down until they were nothing he owned, but everyone else’s character flaw.
He couldn’t believe he didn’t know Stef and Jav were gay.
He stopped walking. Did anyone else know? Did Stav know?
Did everyone know except him?
“Child, it was just the lovebirds,” Kandice said, while Corley and Juan stared. Not at the lovebirds but at Geno. Like, What kind of clueless schmuck is this kid? Thinking Stef was trying to rape Jav? Stef of all people? What a moron. It was just the lovebirds.
The Finches. Perched on the roof of the henhouse like they owned the place. Rubbing beaks, chortling and laughing because they loved each other more than they loved Geno.
In his mind, he seized a rock and pegged it. A flurry of wings and feathers and they were gone.
Good.
He didn’t need them. He’d find another set of hands to hold his trust and the homo lovebirds could find somewhere else to butt-fuck each other to death.
Not in my house.
Not in this land.