The Pretend Boyfriend novel Chapter 46

"And here I thought you were coming back to the Galois," she says, a little pensively. "I was hoping we'd go back to my place to screw."

He laughs. "And here I thought you had met some dishy phantom and you were screwing him in an abandoned section of the opera house."

"I don't do things like that."

"You should." He strokes her hair. "I do."

"Screw phantoms?"

He sighs. "I knew there was a comeuppance in there somewhere."

"Brian, why are you scared? You didn't do it."

"I blanked out."

"Did your blood results come back?"

"Not yet."

"If you blanked out, then you should be technically passed out. You wouldn't have been able to do anything."

"I don't know," he says guardedly. "I just don't know."

She stays silent for a long while. She strokes his chest, taking care to avoid his vicious scratch marks. She likes cuddling up to him, he knows. Staying in bed with him in the afterglow of their lovemaking. Talking to him. Skin to skin. Body warmth to body warmth.

After a spell, she says, "Why do you say that, Brian?"

He hesitates. He wonders if he should tell her. But maybe that's why it happened. Because he never told anyone. Shit happens when you keep it all quashed up inside of you like a big bug.

He swallows.

"I was afraid."

"Of what?"

"That I would just be like ... my father."

"Why do you say that?"

"Because ... " He pauses. This is so hard. So very hard. Harder than he thought it would be.

"Brian, did something ... happen to you?"

She is treading very cautiously here. She is still stroking his chest, but her gestures have slowed down, as if she's afraid to snap him out of his current pensiveness.

"Yes. I did. Ten years later, when I came home from college. It never happened again, of course."

"And?"

He can taste the bile in his throat. "He doesn't remember. He fucking doesn't remember anything. Not even the beatings. Anything. He claimed I made the whole thing up. And some part of me wondered that too ... if I'd dreamt the whole thing. If I'd hallucinated it. I was a very messed up kid."

His breath is hot within his chest.

"Now I'm afraid I'm turning into him. Maybe that blackout is the start of everything. Maybe it's all genetic. I thought I could hold my drink, and for a long time, I did. But I'm not getting younger."

"Brian." Her tone is urgent. She raises herself on her elbows to gaze into his eyes. "You are not your father. You didn't do it."

She is so beautiful with her hair mussed up like that. He wants to stroke her face, but his arm is all bunched up.

He says, "How sure are you? My father wasn't always this way. I was told ... a long time ago ... that he was a very benign man. Then he got into drink, and it all went downhill from there."

"You are not an alcoholic."

"I don't know. I don't know anything anymore."

It's true. This entire incident has jarred him. Shaken him more than he can ever imagine. Everything he thought he had known about himself has now been turned upside down and inside out. He feels as if he has been laundered.