Page 46 of Puck the Coach's Son
“Kissed anyone?”
“No.”
A pipe in the wall ticks as water moves through it somewhere above us.
“Touched anyone?”
“No.”
“Touched yourself thinking about anyone?”
His face goes a color I have not seen a face go outside of this kind of moment.
“Yes.”
“Who?”
He does not answer.
He does not have to answer. The answer is standing in front of him in black shorts and a black tee with his hair drying wrong. The answer is me. He does not say it because he does not have to, and because if he says it out loud in this room, I am not going to make it to the bed.
I take a breath.
I let it out.
I step toward him.
He does not step back.
“Laurent.”
“Yes?”
I am a foot from him now.
“Last chance.”
“For what?”
“To leave.”
He lifts his chin a half inch.
His jaw does the thing it does on the ice right before a faceoff, which is set. The green of his eyes gets darker. His hands are still at his sides. He is still shaking. He is still the small version of himself in street clothes. But his chin is up. The chin is up, and his mouth is a line, and he has made a decision somewhere between the pier and the carpet, and I am watching the decision arrive on his face.
“I'm not leaving,” he says.
“Say it again.”
“I'm not leaving, Maddox.”
My name in his mouth for the third time tonight.
I close the three feet between us.
I put one hand on the side of his throat where the jump is. The jump stops. His breath stops. His eyes come up to mine. Green. Wet at the corners and not crying.
“Good boy,” I say again, and this time I say it like a promise, and this time his eyes do not close, this time his eyes hold mine, and this time he breathes in once, very slowly, four counts, and holds it, and lets it out.
