“Books were my refuge.” I shrugged, still not looking at him and feeling incredibly exposed, but something about his sober silence made me continue. “They were my safe space, my friends. My escape, really. It’s not like things were awful for me,” I quickly added, not wanting to give him the impression my home life had been terrible, because it hadn’t been. But his eyes held no judgement when they met mine. Just curiosity, and even a hint of understanding. “We came to the States when I was almost eight from the DR and I didn’t speak any English.” I made a zero with my thumb and index finger and held it up to him. “The school was so big and loud.” I cringed remembering the huge concrete building so different from the small school I’d gone to back home. “Those first couple of years were honestly traumatizing.”

“Fuck, how did I not know that?” I gave him a sardonic smile and he shook his head. “I’m such an asshole.”

I waved that away. Because even if he’d been a more casual boss, this was not a story I shared with my employers. This was something I told friends. Not that I was ready to tell Theo Ganas that I was seeing him in a whole new light.

“Hey, you set good boundaries in the workplace and never got creepy on me. I can’t believe I’m saying that after all the times I complained you were a stuck-up ass.” I laughed, and he frowned.

“Hey.” He looked so aggrieved that I had to bite my tongue not to laugh again. “You just said you appreciated my boundaries.”

“I did, I did! It’s just you could be a little intense.” I appeased him, the corners of my mouth turning up at his apparent dismay. “You want to hear about my childhood trauma or not?”

He shot me another one of those half-lidded stares that made my body throb. “Yeah, I do.”

I suppressed a shiver and tried to focus on what I was saying. “My ESL teacher recommended that Mimita, that’s my grandma...” I explained and this time it was his mouth turning up.

“Oh, we’ve met,” he said, with a smile that told me all I needed to know about how my grandmother had behaved during their encounter.