Page 91 of The Associate
Samuel’s head snapped up, his eyes flying to Gael’s face. They were wide with shock.
How?The question screamed inside his skull.How does he do that?It was as if Gael could hear the frantic, staticky noise of his thoughts, could see the frantic dance of his anxieties playing out behind his eyes.
He gave a jerky, graceless nod, a marionette with a single tangled string. Then he moved, his steps quick and slightly clumsy. He practically fell onto the sofa, perching again on the very edge, mirroring his posture from the night before. He placed his hands in his lap, one over the other, and stared down at them.
His knuckles were white. He forced them to relax, willed his spine to straighten.
And then he felt it.
The weight of Gael’s gaze like a physical pressure. It settled on the crown of his bowed head, traveled down the line of his neck, across the tense set of his shoulders. Samuel could feel it like a touch, like a hand hovering just above his skin, mapping the heat of his shame and the frantic rhythm of his heart.
His cheeks caught fire. The blush was immediate, a hot, prickling wave that swept from his hairline to his collarbone. He hated it. He hated the way his body betrayed him, broadcasting his discomfort, his vulnerability, like a neon sign. He hated the powerlessness of being so utterly perceived, of having nowhere to hide from that dark, knowing stare.
He loved it.
He loved it even more than he hated it. The attention was a drug. It was the opposite of the lonely, echoing silence of his own apartment, the opposite of being politely overlooked at familydinners, the opposite of being a ghost in his own life. This gaze, for all its intensity, for all the terror it inspired, made him real. It confirmed his existence in a way nothing else ever had. It said,I see you. I see the mess, the fear, and the want. And I am still looking.
It was the most terrifying and the most precious thing he had ever known.
The silence stretched. It was a taut wire between the chair and the sofa, vibrating with the hum of Samuel’s nerves. Each second was a grain of sand piling onto his chest, the pressure building until his lungs felt too small, his skin too tight. He was convinced he would combust; that the heat in his cheeks would ignite, that the frantic energy coiled in his muscles would erupt and send him shattering into a thousand brittle pieces right there on the sofa.
Just as the scream was building behind his teeth, a silent, pressurized thing, Gael spoke.
“Last night,” he began, his voice not loud, but so clear it seemed to carve its own space in the dense air. “You revealed some things I had not known.”
Samuel didn’t move. Didn’t breathe. He stared at his whitened knuckles as if they were the only solid things in a tilting world.
“And this morning,” Gael continued, the words measured, deliberate, “you panicked. After.”
“If we are to continue with this,” Gael said, and here, for the first time, Samuel heard something new in his tone, not a command, but a sliver of something almost like…regret? “And I apologize for not establishing this before we began… we need to be honest.”
Ripples of panic spread instantly through Samuel’s chest.
Gael went on, his gaze a physical weight Samuel could feel on the top of his bowed head. “What we are building… it cannot exist without trust. And trust is impossible without honesty.”
Samuel’s mind was a spinning top, careening off the walls of his skull.
Trust. Honesty.
They were words from a foreign language, concepts for people who lived in the light. People who weren’t made of secrets and shame and old, buried screams.
“I do not expect you to tell me your whole life story. Not today. Not ever, if you so choose.” Gael’s voice was firm but quiet. “I do not expect you to voice every thought that passes through your mind. But I need you to try. To be truthful with me. Even if the truth is that you cannot talk about something. Even if it’s just to tell me, ‘I can’t answer that right now.’ That, in itself, is a truth. Do you understand me?”
Samuel sat perfectly still. His hands in his lap had begun to tremble, a fine, constant vibration he couldn’t stop.Honesty. It was a trap. A beautifully laid trap. To be honest would be to open a door he had welded shut years ago.
What if Gael asked about his past?
What if he asked about the tense, silent dinners in Queens, about the way his mother’s eyes skittered away from his, about the heavy, disapproving silence of his father?
What if his questions, with that terrifying perception of his, went further back?
What if they found the wordsThe Hills?
A cold, familiar terror rose from the pit of his stomach. It was a black, oily wave, choking his throat, tightening his chest. His breath came in fast, shallow hitches. His heart was a frantic, trapped bird.
I can’t. I can’t do this. I can’t talk. I can’t...
A shadow fell over him. The scent of cedar and clean skin filled the air. Then, fingers, warm, firm, unyielding, slid beneath his chin.
