Page 110 of Finance Bros

“And he never touched you?” Ryan asks.

“No…I like… It was more that I had a crush on him. He was nice to me.”

“How nice?”

“Just nice,” I tell Ryan. “He’d hug me and bring me Pokémon cards. He’d pick me up from school sometimes, and we’d throw a football or play catch or whatever. He was just like—my mom’s cousin who I liked, and I wanted him to like me, too.”

“How old was he?”

“Maybe our age. Twenty-five-ish. I don’t remember what he did for a living, but something in healthcare. He always had scrub pants on when he’d pick me up from school. He was one of those guys that was good at everything. He taught me to play chess and cards and all the rules of all the sports. He was at our house a lot.”

“But he didn’t live there?” Ryan asks.

“Honestly, I’m not really sure. He might have for a while. There was definitely a room I thought of as Will’s room.”

“A room, huh?”

I look Ryan in the eyes for the first time since I started talking. “Not the metaphor room. That literally was just a metaphor.”

“Then what does he have to do with anything?”

“I just said. I had a crush on him. Like a crush.”

“You were how old?”

“Young. I was little.”

“How was it a crush?” Ryan asks. “Sounds like hero worship.”

I rub my face. I might be sick. Inhaling deeply, I try to translate all the uncomfortable images in my head into words. A question comes out instead. “How’d you learn about sex?”

He scowls in that way he does when he’s baffled or annoyed or focused. “Um…my mom had the talk with me when I was ten, I think. Around the time they were teaching it in school.”

“You hadn’t run across any porn at that point? No sex scenes in regular movies?”

“No, and my mom wouldn’t let me anywhere near the internet. You remember how she was.”

“What about from kids at school?”

He scowls at me. “What kids? I didn’t have as many friends as you did. No one who would show me porn for sure. Did you?”

I shake my head. “Not in grade school, no. But I knew about sex.”

“Since when?”

That’s when I come out with it. “I walked in on my mom and Will doing it when I was seven.”

Ryan’s eyes widen. “She was fucking hercousin?”

I nod.

“Like they were actually related?”

“Yeah. He was her aunt’s son.”

“Oh. Damn.”

Yeah, talking about this is weird. Go figure. I’ve never been more grateful for the fact that Ryan never met my mother. “I didn’t understand what was happening the first time I saw it. They were wearing clothes, mostly, so all I could see looked like a hug. Like a really good, full-body hug. Anyway, when I saw them like that, I asked if I could have a hug, too.” I swallow hard, remembering the way they reacted. Like I’d opened fire on them. I remember Will coming at me, putting his pants together, and guiding me by the shoulder out of the room.

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