“I have to go,” he managed. It was getting hard to breathe.
She stuttered to a stop, the air shocked between them, and then she rushed forward. “No, no, wait, I didn’t mean that, that’s not why I called, I just—I’ve been trying so hard, and this is the first time I’ve gotten through to you, and I can’t—I wanted to do something for you. I want to help or give you something, I want to make something better for you, I don’t care what, if you’ll let me, I’ll—it’s your choice, Tobias, not theirs, you can choose to—”
She was right about one thing—it was his choice. Not his parents’, not Ashley Benton’s. And he chose to stop dealing with this before he had a panic attack.
“If you really want to do something for me, don’t call me again. I’ve got your number, and I’ll—Don’t call me again.”
“Tobias, please—”
He hung up on her. He’d never hung up on anyone in his life, but he hit the disconnect button with his thumb with furious satisfaction. The world seemed to swim around him, going too bright and too distant, and everything inside him had gone bright and distant too. His fingers were trembling.
He had no idea how much later it was when a knock came on his bedroom door and Papa said through it, “Come into my study, Tobias, I’d like to talk with you.”
Before the call, Tobias would’ve had the same reaction he’d always had to one of his papa’s directives: the assumption that Tobias’s schedule didn’t warrant so much as a token question as to whether he was available would chafe, but he would say nothing because it was a tiny thing, and it would be ungrateful to raise a stink when his papa was going out of his way to help him.
Now he felt a very strong urge to say words he’d never said to one of his parents before. The panic hummed under his skin, and he thought—still distantly, almost like the words were echoing in his skull—that he was on a precipice, that he was fragile in a way he’d never been before, and that he had to be careful, had to rope this in before he broke down.
With numb fingers, he turned the knob. With shaky legs, he followed his father down the hallway.
Andre Alcide’s tastes ran to the practical and meticulous, preferences never more on display than in his home study—the fastidiously organized and polished oak campaign desk, the thick oncology texts with their cloth bindings resewn at the first sign of fraying sitting on the shelves, the framed degrees hung in a line straight enough to satisfy a level. The only personal items in the room were the two paintings on the wall: one of a group of Haitian women in colorful skirts and blouses carrying baskets of fruit on their heads, and another of the Rada Loa hanging directly behind Papa’s chair. Gorgeous as it was, Tobias hated that painting—he couldn’t face it without thinking of countless lectures about school and ambition.
Tobias’s father was thin and narrow. His skin was the color of acorns, and he had a sharpish chin and intelligent eyes with a propensity for disappointment. He was a man of high expectations—for himself, for his work, for the world at large, and it had resulted in considerable success for him. When he applied those high expectations to his eldest son, however, the results had to be far less satisfying.
Tobias took a seat, every fiber in his body strung tight as piano wire, and Papa sat across from him, crossing his legs and folding his hands in his lap.
“I brought you in here to discuss your internship.” Papa’s gaze raked over Tobias. “But I see now that’s something for later. Are you all right?”
This again. And again and again, it seemed. “How do you mean?”
“You seem upset.”
“Do I?” Tobias’s throat might’ve been lined with razor blades, the words came out so sharp.
His father looked taken aback, but only briefly. “What’s happened? Are you all right? Has someone done something to you?”
“Yes.” Something barbed and choking and vicious was rising within him. “You did.”
His father’s gaze went flinty. His pupils expanded, and Tobias’s brain filled in the explanation for that absently—fight or flight response. Fear or anger triggers the release of adrenaline, and one of the side effects is greater pupil dilation to provide increased visual perception to aid in a dangerous situation. Nice to know his classes were good for something.
“You’ll explain yourself now, please,” Papa said, voice as rocklike and heavy as his stare despite his calm intonation. That was the worst thing about his lectures, generally. He existed in a state of perpetual rationality, so that even a hint of anger or defiance seemed grossly out of place, and yet the whole time he gave off an air of dominance so strong that to do anything but obey seemed potentially catastrophic.
It was so strong, in fact, that Tobias had yet to come across a more intimidating consequence in life than the disapproval of the man sitting across him. It seemed nonsensical, perhaps, that Tobias could love his papa, and know that he was loved in turn, and yet still dread being in Papa’s presence when he had to admit to some failing—when he’d gotten lost on a shopping trip as a small child; when he’d broken his arm falling from a tree when he was eight; when he’d come out to his parents at eighteen, so tempted to apologize that he’d had to press his palm against his lips to hold it at bay. And while his parents had accepted his homosexuality with gradually increasing pragmatism over the years, he’d never quite forgotten the potency of his fear when he’d first begun explaining. His hands had trembled so much that he’d been forced to sit on them.
Now he waited for that familiar dread to overwhelm him,
