“Jeremy,” I repeated, somehow making it come out without sighing. “And if you want to know anything about your father’s sex life—”
I relished the look of horror on his face far too much.
“—you should probably ask him. I don’t know anything about it. Your dad makes Charlie happy, and I think Robert feels the same.”
“He does,” Jeremy muttered. “It’s sickening. I heard him singing the other day in the shower. He’s a terrible singer.”
That caught me off guard. “You two live together?”
“We do. I feel better knowing I can keep an eye on him, though he’ll tell you it’s only so he can keep an eye on me. We’re pretty much all each other’s got, so it works for us. We manage to keep out of each other’s way for the most part, and now that he’s… seeing Charlie, I know he’s in good hands.” He pulled a face. “I shouldn’t have said it like that.”
“Very good hands. Charlie is—”
He pointed at me. “Not another word.”
I mimed zipping my lips together.
“That’s better. So you’ll call me Jeremy, and I’ll keep on calling you….” He looked flustered for a moment. Then, “I know you’re bigender and you… you know.”
“Sometimes identify as female?”
He winced. “I’m probably not going about this the best way. I apologize if anything sounds… off. Correct me if I ever get anything wrong, okay? I want to do right by you and everyone else here. So if it’s Corey with a C, that’s fine. And Kori with a K, that’s fine too. You don’t need to feel like you can’t be whoever you need to be. It doesn’t matter to me either way. Or anyone here. All I ask is that you help us make Phoenix House an even better place for our community.”
He was fumbling, but it was sweetly endearing. I’d heard far crueler ways of going about it. Oh sure, we lived in 2016, and queers could get married like everyone else (and, in some states, fired just for existing!), but there were still many, many douchebags in the world. “Thanks. That’s good to know.”
He seemed relieved, not like he was happy that conversation was out of the way but more that I’d understood. Or at least I hoped that was the case. I didn’t think now was the right time to discuss the fact that I had a lot of his facial expressions memorized from the two semesters I had with him, sitting in the third row from the front, forcing myself to take notes instead of watching every movement he made. It seemed better that way for the both of us.
“Great. Now, I’m going to need to get a little more authoritative for a moment, if that’s all right.”
Oh God, yes, my brain moaned. Tell us what to do. Make us your bitch.
Singing church hymns in my head while my brain was tuned to the porn channel seemed like a one-way ticket to hell. There was nothing I could do about that now. “That sounds… ominous.”
He shook his head. “Nah. I just want to get a few things out of the way. I wasn’t expecting you to be… well, you. It’s a good thing,” he added quickly. “But I need to regroup for a moment here. Do some boss things.” He winced. “You’re okay with me being your boss? Well, your boss’s boss?”
“I have no problem with that whatsoever,” I told him, already sure this summer was going to see more jizz going into a towel than ever before. I’d have to go to Bed Bath & Beyond to buy more. I wondered if Nana had a coupon.
He leaned forward again, the vein making another appearance as he picked up a pen from the desk. He flipped open a folder and glanced down at it before looking back up at me. “Why are you here?”
I blinked. “Um. Because Marina told me you wanted to talk to me?
Jeremy snorted. “That’s good to know. But I meant why did you choose Phoenix House? You’re getting your master’s in social work, right?”
I nodded. “That’s the plan.”
“That’s a lot of work. And if you do go into social services, that’s a tough job. Many people wash out. It can take a lot out of a person. Most jobs, you leave for the day and go home and don’t have to worry about it until you go back the next day. With social work, I imagine that it follows
you no matter where you go.”
I frowned. “I can handle it.”
His eyes widened. “Oh, I don’t—that’s not what I meant. I wasn’t suggesting you couldn’t. I’m just curious as to… I don’t know. The why of it, I guess.” He smiled ruefully. “And you can tell me to fuck off, honestly. If I’m pushing you into something you don’t want to talk about, let me know.”
Almost. And it sucked, because there were days—hell, even stretches of weeks and months—that I didn’t think about it. But every now and then it would hit me from out of nowhere. I took a deep breath. “No, it’s okay. I mean, I’m going to have to get used to talking about it, I think. Marina knows some of it because we talked about it during the interviews. And if I go to work for Pima County or wherever after I graduate, they’re going to ask the same thing. It’s also going to be part of my practicum. My academic advisor said it’ll personalize my thesis. Give it more credibility.”
His brow furrowed. “How so?”
I shrugged awkwardly. “I—uh. I was in the system.”