Page 62 of Resist Me Not
“Good night, Mother,” Trey calls after her.
“Good night, Ms. Fish…Lois,” I correct.
“That’s a good boy,” she calls back to me.
My eyes immediately go to Trey, and he is wearing the most oddly neutral smile, yet it’s enough to make my knees weak. Apparently he can repurpose another person’sgood boyand make it his own with a look.
The jerk.
Trey ushers me inside and moves to the record player to turn the speaker down a hair but leaves it on, motioning for me to choose the next record.
Obviously, I go with Foreigner, since we haven’t gotten to them yet.
“She is really great,” I say to Trey, voice low but not quite whispering.
“She is. So are you. She could tell that too.” Trey puts on the next record. He is so practiced at it, I can imagine him having done so for years like he told me, whether at his own behest or his mother’s.
“You think she likes me?” I ask.
“I know she does. She isn’t unguarded around most people. Not even the neighbors. She’s only ever truly relaxed around me. But she was acting that way with you too.”
“Maybe only because she could tell you’re so relaxed around me. Unguarded.”Real, I think, but don’t say aloud. It’s not that I think he wasn’t real with me before, but there was that veneer I didn’t notice until it wasn’t there anymore. There’s none of that veneer now.
And it’s not like Trey is robotic or emotionless. He’s just different, like he’s not, well, burdened with so many of the things that burden me. Which I am totally not saying being a sociopath is better than not being one, but… maybe it’s not fair to assume it makes someone worse. Even if in Trey’s case, he’s… well. He’s not like anyone else I’ve ever known, but I do know that antisocial personality disorder, which diagnosed or not, Trey absolutely is, means he, in general, has no empathy. I know he feels no guilt for what he does, because to him it serves the purpose he desires.
But he's also not everything that fits the stereotypical bill. Sure, he uses his charm to manipulate people and maybe he has manipulated me, but I could ruin everything he’s cultivated for himself, and just tonight, he put everything else aside to make me feel better and brought me home.
To his mother.
“Is everything all right, Walker?” Trey asks. Then he sighs with a shake of his head. “I know everything is not, of course, but I meant to ask if there is something else on your mind? You seem lost in thought.”
Oh, lost was a long time ago, when that body fell out of the closet at my feet, and I didn’t run.
I don’t really know the first song on this album. I think it’s “Tooth and Nail” and the lyrics are way too apt, about being with someone even if you have to fight tooth and nail to keep them. And all you want is for them to do the same for you.
I know Trey would. I know he’d kill for me, because he already has. But does that mean…
“It seems like you really love your mother,” I say.
Trey tilts his head in that alien way he has sometimes that I somehow still find attractive more than eerie. We’re still standing by the record player, each with our remaining wine. “I do.”
“How?”
“Do you think I can’t love?”
“Can you?”
“Of course.” Trey eyes me with this soft earnestness, this contradiction to the cold brutality I know he’s capable of. “As you said, I show love to my mother. I show kindness and consideration for those worthy of it. Children. Those who show kindness and consideration to me. Lacking emotional connection at times or not always understanding it does not mean I am incapable of showing love.”
“Showinglove,” I repeat, “but is that loving?”
He tilts his head the other way and sips his wine as he thinks. “Honestly, I am unclear on the difference. What love is to me is a conscious decision to recognize and reciprocate the positive impact another person has on my life. If someone repeatedly has a positive impact, I want to keep them in my life.”
“Who else have you kept?”
“Only Mother. There have been others I have considered keeping, but none like you who could accept me as I am.”
That stings in a way I don’t anticipate. Because I want to accept him. I really do. “I’m trying to do that part, Trey, accept what you are, but sometimes…” The flood of tears I keep trying to hold back rises to the surface again. “S-sorry. I’m sorry…”
