Stef stayed home two days. The first voluntarily, the second under duress.
Friday he went in. Max was making up Wednesday’s lost session and Stef needed to project normalcy before the rumor-mill got a foothold.
Fat chance.
The staff had him for breakfast, the story embellished to the point where he and Jav were boning on one of the art room tables. But the ribbing was affectionate, punctuated by a lot of hugging, examination of his wounds, fussing and clucking and an unspoken, Whew, that was a close one.
Even Ronnie embraced him before she dressed him down. “Jesus, you scared me, I’m so glad you’re all right.” Her finger poked his chest. “No more fucking at the office, Finch.”
Corley and Juan’s lips were sealed tight around Geno’s involvement, but they didn’t waste the opportunity to throw a little shade at Stef. He took it in stride, pulled at his collar, looked appropriately sheepish but made no comment other than, “Yeah, yeah, yeah, whenever you’re done.”
By late morning, he was tired. A grudging admission he wasn’t a hundred percent. A slow realization he didn’t feel so hot. He was slightly off-kilter. Slightly nauseous. Not enough of either to be debilitating, but enough to make it feel like the world wouldn’t hold still. His instincts and his knowledge kept wandering off and getting lost.
Worst of all, as the morning progressed, he felt more and more teary. His throat anxious and lumpy, his emotions poised on a precarious edge. The blow to the head had upset some sensory applecart and everything was in a jumbled mess on the floor of his stomach. Every twenty minutes he considered holing up in his office, having an ugly cry and getting it over with.
A cry over what?
He managed to eat a little lunch, then he wanted nothing more than to lie down and sleep. But now Max was running the length of the art room and flinging arms around Stef’s legs. “Where were you? What happened to your face? Did you fall down? Did you bleed? Can I see? Did you cry?”
He climbed Stef like a tree, digging feet into Stef’s quads and sides. Stef heaved him up on a hip and kept his head back from the inquisitive pawing. “Easy, easy. Don’t touch.”
“Does it hurt?”
“Yeah, but I’m okay. What do you want to do today?”
Max pointed to the sand table, then fearlessly leaned out of Stef’s arms, following his pointing finger. Stef had to scramble not to drop him. He stumbled as Max’s feet hit the floor and pattered off, dragging Stef behind by the hand.
The whole goddamn time, Geno watched. Like a vulture, the kid perched on one of the wide window sills, regressed to the sullen silence from when he’d first arrived at EP. But instead of a checked-out, thousand-yard stare, his eyes followed Stef everywhere, narrowed and calculating.
Stef did his best to ignore him, but his mind was all over the place, wondering if maybe he should’ve made it known he was in a relationship with a man.
What the hell does that have to do with how I do my fucking job?
“I have to poop,” Max said to the room at large.
Deadpan, Stef flipped a thumb toward the door and settled back to wait. Max’s bathroom breaks took at least fifteen minutes, ten of which were spent playing with the door. Like most survivors of sexual assault, Max adored a lock. Both the predictable mechanics—the comforting turn and shift and click—and the autonomous act of creating instant, inviolate privacy. He’d go in and out of the john a half-dozen times, testing the knob over and over. Extra inspection to make sure it worked from the outside and no one could come in. One last flip of the lock, just to hear the comforting, solid click and the rattle of a handle that couldn’t be turned. Then he’d take care of business.
Leaning back on two chair legs, Stef rubbed vigorously at the unwounded side of his head. The other side ached. He could use a couple Tylenol.
He looked up to see Geno glaring at him.
Jesus Christ, what?
He slapped his inner teenager out of the picture and pulled on his game face.
“Can I do something for you, Geno?”
Geno was winding a pipe cleaner around his index finger, cutting off the circulation and watching the tip turn purple before unwinding and letting the blood flow back in. “For me or to me?”
Stef kept his face immobile even as he felt the blood drain out of it.
I don’t have the skills for this today.
“Can’t believe I didn’t figure out you were gay,” Geno said.
Stef hesitated, then decided being bisexual was beside the point. “Is it going to be a problem?”
The boy shrugged. “I don’t have a problem.”
“Good.”
“Just hope he lubes you up good. It’s the considerate thing to do.”
“I won’t argue there.”
Geno tossed the pipe cleaner aside, slid off the windowsill and approached the sand table. “Getting dry fucked sucks.”
“I can’t imagine.”
“You like it?”
“Being dry fucked?”
“Having a dick up your ass.”
“I don’t do what I don’t like.”
“What a fucking luxury. You get a choice and I get fucking crayons.” He tipped over a jar of pencils.
“Something about my relationship with Jav is upsetting you,” Stef said.
“You think?”
“You want to tell me about it while you’re picking up those pencils?”
“Why didn’t you fucking tell me?”
“My personal life doesn’t come into play here.”
“Yeah, well, your personal life disgusts me.”
“I can understand that. At the same time, it has nothing to do with—”
“Nothing to do with me? I had seven guys rape me.”
“I wasn’t one of them.”
“You fucking make me sick.”
“I’ll be happy to sit down and talk about this—”
“I don’t want the fucking details of your—”
“—but right now I’m with another client.”
“Yeah, a six-year-old boy,” Geno said. “That’s just great.”
“Hey.” Stef clenched his fist to keep from pointing a finger. “You’re out of line.”
“I trusted you,” Geno said. “But you only hold people’s trust in your hands when you’re trying to get in their pants. Telling them how heavy it is and how you’re so aware of it all the time. Bet men just line up to fuck you after they hear that shit, huh?”
The blood that had drained out of Stef’s face now drained out of his gut.
Looming above him, Geno had gone pale as well. In a simple chain, Stef linked up the boy’s stunned expression to the kitchen, to Jav, to the lost notebook, to words Stef had shyly written on a piece of graph paper. Shocked by his own ardor. Embarrassed at his lack of eloquence.
“Nobody ever wrote me a love note before,” Jav said after reading it, his voice a little gruff. He read it again, then folded the graph paper and tucked it precisely between the pages of his little leather tome. Putting it among his most private thoughts like loving Stef was one of his best ideas.
“How do you know?” Stef said quietly.
Geno swallowed. “Know what?” But all his bravado was gone and his voice trembled at the end.
“How do you know what I told him about trust?”
The blood returned to his stomach, angry and boiling now. That notebook was off limits. Stef didn’t know what was in there. He wanted to, but hell if he’d ask. It wasn’t something you asked for. It was a privilege earned and double hell if he’d fucking snoop before he earned it.
This burgling punk snooped. Read every page, and the things tucked between pages. Now he knew things Stef didn’t. He had information Stef didn’t believe himself worthy of yet.
It was worse than if Geno had fucked Jav.
Or raped him.
Well, no, not really. But in a way, yes, he did. He fucked Jav’s mind without permission. That fragile, weird, complex, curious, passionate, beautiful mind. Parts of which were still such a mystery to Stef.
“You read that without his consent,” Stef said. “Or mine.”
At consent, Geno, merely pale before, went white.
Stef’s anger melted away, leaving only a profound sadness wrapped around his throat like a turtleneck shrunk too small in the dryer.
“You still have it?” he said, chiseling each word out of the air.
A long stare-down before Geno nodded.
“You have between now and three o’clock to put it on my desk,” Stef said. “Then I want to see you in Ronnie’s office. We have some things to talk about.”