Enemies with Benefits 2

Chapter 16: What if

"How do you mean?"

She smiled. "Do you spend time with friends? Family? A significant other, perhaps?"

"I'm not- I don't do that. No." Why did it feel like he was on trial?

"You don't do what exactly? Spend time with friends?"

"Not often, no."

"Family?"

"I'm not close to my family. My dad and grandmother have passed."

"What about your mother?"

Steven clenched his jaw. "What about her?" He hated that saying that caused her to write something down in her notepad, so he elaborated. "My sister looks after her, but I don't talk often to either of them."

"Then what about a significant other?"

"I don't have a girlfriend at the moment."

"A boyfriend then?"

"Excuse me?" Immediately he spluttered, a heat rising to his face. She asked such an invasive question so easily. What did his love life have to do with his relationship with his son. Therapist or not, she should keep to her job. He glanced at Ezra, curious as to what he would make of such a question.

Ezra just sat there. A small smile playing on his lips, but his eyes betrayed his annoyance. He wiped a hand across his jaw and he looked anyway in the room apart from at Steven.

"Is something wrong, Ezra?" Dr Rodriguez obviously noticed his annoyance too.

"No, it's just-" he waved his hand, "that's exactly how I expected him to respond."

"What do you mean?" Steven asked.

"What an insult to be asked if you're gay, right?"

"I didn't mean it that way. I was just caught off guard."

Maybe it wasn't annoyance in Ezra's eyes. It was something more complicated than that, something so deeply melancholic, a look that he only had on when Steven was around. "It's not a bad thing."

"I know it's not." Steven insisted. "I don't think of it that way."

He glanced at the therapist then back to Steven.

"What?" He asked.

Dr Rodriguez seemed to take over for Ezra. "You repeatedly insist that you don't have a problem with gay people-"

"Because I don't!"

Dr Rodriguez held up her hand in defence. "That is what you are saying, yes, but the fact of the matter is you kicked Ezra out when he was seventeen. Assumably, the reason being because he is gay. Are you suggesting there was a different reason?"

Steven was quiet for a while. He really did feel like he was on trial now. Dr Rodriguez playing judge, jury and executioner. Ezra playing exactly what Steven had made him, the victim. It was like an itch to fall into the one job he could do right. He wanted to defend himself, pick apart their words for openings to prove false innocence, but that's exactly what it was: false innocence. He defended some of the guiltiest people on this earth, got them off the hook of charges they should've rightly faced. Whether they were guilty or innocent didn't really matter, but he could always tell. If his client was guilty, they would tend to betray themselves in some way but it was always his job to make sure they would never admit it. No matter what, claim innocence. However, this wasn't a court case.

"No." He said. "No, that's exactly why I kicked him out."

"Then why should Ezra think that you don't have a problem with it now?"