Chapter 6: Family Intervention
He walked out of the study room, his reader under his arm, moving like a man who had just learned a fundamental and terrible truth about the world, and his place in it. The taste of her skin was a thin, persistent film on his tongue. His pocket held the damp, twisted weight of the silk.
His feet carried him back to his dorm on autopilot. The campus seemed absurdly bright, students chatting about parties and deadlines as if the architecture of power hadn’t just been physically demonstrated on his knees. In his room, he threw the reader on his bed. The lavender fabric spilled out.
He stared at it. Then he grabbed his phone, a stupid, reflexive itch for a distraction from his own skin. He opened Instagram, thumb scrolling mindlessly through memes and sunsets.
A notification glowed. @Pat_Mills mentioned you in a comment.
His blood, already sluggish, seemed to stop. He tapped it. It was on a post from his younger brother, Sean. A dumb, proud mirror-selfie in his new high school varsity jacket, the caption: Big shoes to fill. Thanks bro @Ben_Thompson. Sean was fifteen, all awkward grin and earnest admiration.
Patricia’s comment was directly under Ben’s own congratulatory reply.
@Pat_Mills: 🐕👣 Looks like he’s already got a leg up! Saw some impressive new tricks recently. You should ask him to demonstrate sometime. #ProudBigBro
The emojis were innocent to anyone else. A dog, a foot. To Ben, they were a strobe light flashing directly into the core of his shame. The casual, aunt-like tone was a masterpiece of malicious plausibility. Sean would probably just think it was weird. He might even reply with a laughing emoji.
Ben’s hand trembled. He saw the sequence with perfect, horrifying clarity. Sean clicks on Patricia’s profile. He sees her highlights, her feed. Maybe he gets curious, digs deeper, finds the anonymous streaming account she’d hinted at. Maybe she’d already sent him a follow request. The bridge between his two worlds—the brother Sean idolized and the creature who licked feet on command—was now a single, public comment.
He couldn’t delete it. That would draw more attention. He could reply, try to deflect. His thumbs hovered over the screen, but any words he typed sounded guilty, panicked. A cold, surgical horror settled in his stomach, sharper than any previous humiliation. This wasn’t in a locked room or a soundproof cube. This was in Sean’s world, a permanent digital scratch on the image Ben had spent a lifetime building for him.
The phone rang in his hand, making him jolt. The screen flashed: Patricia.
He let it ring three times before swiping accept. He didn’t speak.
“Saw you liked my comment,” her voice came through, cheerful. “Thought it was a nice touch. Family is so important.”
“Take it down.” His voice was rust.
“Why? It’s just a friendly joke. Your brother seems sweet. He really looks up to you.” She paused, and he could hear the smile. “It’d be a shame if that changed. If he found out his role model was more of a… footstool.”
“What do you want?” The question was ash in his mouth.
“I want you to understand there’s no ‘off the clock’ anymore. No library, no dorm, no private life. It’s all the same field now.” Her tone shifted, businesslike. “Meet me at the campus gym. Mat room three. In an hour. Wear something you can move in.”
“I’m not wrestling you again.”
“Who said anything about wrestling?” The line clicked dead.
Ben lowered the phone. On the screen, Sean’s grinning face was still visible under Patricia’s comment. The emojis taunted him. He looked at the crumpled silk on his bed, then back at his brother’s eyes. The weight pulling him down was no longer just in his pocket. It was everywhere, a atmosphere he had to breathe. He changed into gym shorts and a t-shirt, each movement mechanical. The walk to the gym would feel like crossing a border into a country where he was already a known citizen, his passport stamped with barked sounds and the salt of her skin.