His mother. Meredith is his mother, and she hit him in a parking lot for being upset.
Wow. “I’m sorry,” I whisper.
“Don’t be.” Pax grabs the avocado and slams it down on a chopping board, cutting it open. He digs the pit out and throws it in the trash so forcefully that the hard stone makes a loud clang against the side of the metal trash can. “Also when I was seven, Meredith drove me all the way up to Syracuse to visit my aunt. I pissed her off on the drive up there, and so she refused to speak to me the entire time we were at my aunt’s place. On the way home, I told her I needed to go to the restroom. But she was still ignoring me and wouldn’t pull over. So I pissed myself. She was so furious at me that time that she stopped the car, wrenched me out of the backseat, dumped me on my ass in the snow, took my jacket off me—this was in December, by the way—and then drove off. I was so scared that I hid right there, in a culvert on the side of the freeway, for three hours before I got so cold that I decided I had to walk and find someone who could take me home. She was waiting for me at a gas station a mile or so down the road, livid that it had taken me so long to drag my ass along the side of the freeway. She made me take off my pants and my underwear and sit up front, next to her, naked from the waist down, because I was a ‘disgusting little pissy pig’ for having wet myself.”
He sticks his hand in the bag of shredded cheese, grabs a fistful, and dumps it into the eggs. He pauses for a moment, breathing angrily as he just stares at the contents of the pan. “When I was eight, I got meningitis. Three of us from my elementary school caught it at the same time. One of the kids died. My friend David. I was so fucked up, I was in this weird fever dream for four fucking days. My dad sat by the bedside, but Meredith was in the middle of a high-profile trial, so she stayed away. Didn’t visit me once. When my father brought me home, I was weak and exhausted, so he made me up a bed on the couch in the living room so I could watch T.V. Meredith was so enraged when she got home and found me bundled up on one of her precious white couches that she made my father carry me into my bedroom. She left me there in silence, in the dark, by myself for a whole week so I could ‘properly convalesce.’ She didn’t speak to me once. A house maid who didn’t even speak English came in and force fed me when she deemed it appropriate.”
I am reeling from this horrific download. I’ve never heard Pax speak this much all in one go for a start. And the things he’s telling me—they’re fucking horrifying. My heart is breaking for him. “Pax?”
He ignores me, going to the fridge and taking out a pack of tortillas. He opens it and holds one over an open flame on the cooktop, spinning it slowly as he warms it. “When I was nine, I started having these night terrors.” He exhales loudly. “I was stuck in this maze, and I couldn’t get out. I was being chased by these demons. Monsters. They were trying to eat my fucking soul. Night after night, I’d scream and scream and scream. Meredith moved me to the bedroom furthest away from theirs at first, so I wouldn’t disturb her sleep. When that didn’t work, she’d pour a bucket of freezing cold water over my head while I was still asleep to try and ‘condition me out of it.’ I’d have to sleep in a soaking wet bed every night as punishment. And when that didn’t work, she sent me away to a child psychiatry treatment center in Connecticut, where they actually used shock therapy to treat m—”
“Oh my God, Pax! Stop!” I can’t breathe. I can’t fucking breathe.
He gets the tater tots out of the oven and drops the tray down on the counter with another loud clang. He stops with the stories, but I can still feel the anger fizzing off him like a dangerous electric charge. He constructs a burrito silently, jaw working all the time, and then crosses the kitchen and sets a plate down in front of me on the counter.
“Want any hot sauce?” he asks mechanically.
I gape at him, still reeling from all of the awful things he just dumped on me. “No!”
He shrugs. “Suit yourself.”
He shuts his mouth again, returning to the cooktop to warm another tortilla. He makes another burrito, for himself this time, and when he’s finished, he faces me, leaning against the counter on the opposite wall, and he begins to eat.
“Well?” he says around a mouthful of food.
“Well what?”
“Eat. It’s getting cold.”
“I don’t think I can eat now. Funnily enough, my appetite appears to have died on its ass.”
He chews. “Don’t overreact. You passed out because you were so hungry, remember. Eat.”
Ohhh, I am going to hurt this guy. Frustrated beyond belief, I grab the burrito up off the plate and take a bite out of it. Surprisingly, it’s really good.
“She left me there until I was eleven,” Pax says quietly. “Nearly two years in a facility for mentally disturbed children. They eventually kicked me out when I set my therapist’s office on fire. They told Meredith that there was nothing wrong with me. I wasn’t sick. I was just an asshole. And shit, did Meredith not like that. She tried to check me into three other places, in New York this time, but they wouldn’t take me based on that final diagnosis. They said it was unethical.” He takes another bite of his food. I watch him chew, and he watches me back.
Eventually, he swallows and says, “That was when she shipped me off to boarding school instead. First a prep school in Wyoming. Then here. She’s had me committed three separate times, to institutions with fewer scruples since then, though. Usually when I’ve displeased her. They keep me on a psych hold for a couple of days, or a week. The last one was actually for two weeks. Now that I’m a legal adult, she can’t pull that shit anymore, though. She wouldn’t fucking dare. So instead, she fucks with me in other ways. Whatever she can think of to get a rise out of me or control me.”
“Why are you telling me all of this?” I whisper.
He pops the last of his burrito into his mouth and picks up his plate, taking it over to the kitchen sink. I’m left to stare at his broad back while he washes the dish and places it in the drying wrack. He comes and stands in front of me, on the other side of the breakfast counter, when he’s done, leaning, palms flat on top of the marble. “I’m hoping,” he says, “that you’ll listen to all of my fucked-up shit and realize that your fucked-up shit isn’t anywhere near as bad. I figured that way you might be okay with just telling me what’s going on and I won’t have to break the promise I made.”
“For fuck’s sake, Pax! Was any of that even true!”
He doesn’t react to my anger. “All of it.”
“I don’t appreciate being manipulated like this.”
“How am I manipulating you? I just told you my entire plan. I’m not coercing you into doing anything. It’s still your choice to make.”
I rocket to my feet. “And I’m not going to! I—I have to go, Pax.”
He shakes his head. “No, you don’t.” I can tell he’s still angry, but he’s keeping his temper well under control. He speaks calmly, and the effect is strangely grounding. I haven’t met this version of him before. This steady, solid Pax, who can control his hostility if it serves a higher purpose. “Come upstairs.” He holds out his hand.