Tell Me to Stop

by Charlotte Byrd

I stop breathing and wait. For his tongue. For his fingers. For his dick. For anything to touch me.

  “Tell me to stop,” he says.

  “No,” I exhale.

  Nicholas runs his fingers over my thighs, toying with me. Teasing me. He’s getting off on this.

  Before I agreed to spend a year with him, I thought I would spend the year pushing him away.

  I thought he would make his moves and I would stay strong. I never knew that I would want him this much. I never knew that he would be stronger than I am.

  My hips move up and down with each invisible concentric circle that he draws on the inside of my thighs. My body is begging for him. Pleading. Now, my mouth has to do the same.

  “C’mon,” I say.

  “What?” Nicholas smiles. “What did you say?”

  I kiss him again. He squeezes my nipple and I open my legs. He presses his lips onto the outside of my breast. I flex my toes and hold my breath.

  “I need you inside of me,” I whisper.

  “You have to beg me,” he whispers back. “Remember?”

  I lift my head off the pillow and look at him.

  “I made you a promise. I intend on keeping it,” he says, smiling out of the corner of his lips.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Unless you plead, and I mean, really beg, it’s not going to happen.”

  “I don’t believe you,” I say, challenging him. He shrugs, continuing to run his fingers up my thighs just close enough before pulling away.

  He wants me as much as I want him. There’s no way he could say no to me. I lean over to him and start to kiss him again. But he pulls away.

  “I’m sorry,” he says. “It’s not going to happen tonight.”

  My mouth drops open.

  “Are you going to beg?” he asks. His eyes twinkle as he speaks, making me even more aroused.

  “No,” I say firmly.

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” he says, reaching over to the headboard and untying my wrists.

  TODAY…

  24

  When I see her again…

  The only ticket that I can afford, and that’s using the word liberally, is five hours later in coach with two stops. My seat is narrow and cramped and everything including a glass of water comes at an additional charge. Since the ticket is so last minute, it costs close to $1300. I put it on my credit card, knowing that I will have to pay this horrible flight off for the next year.

  Despite the tiny seat, the three dollar bottle of water, the passengers next to me who take up both of my arm rests, I fall into a peaceful and deep sleep. I only wake up when the wheels touch the ground in Los Angeles. I get to my next flight in a daze, take another brief nap during my two hour layover and then fall into another trance on the next flight to Chicago.

  My layover there is five hours and I spend the time reading standing in the airport bookstore before grabbing a croissant and a tall black coffee from Starbucks. It is only on my final leg over to Logan International that I begin to feel somewhat normal again. Everything that happened in Hawaii seems like a bad dream. Maybe it all happened to someone else. Perhaps, it’s even something that happened in a Netflix binge.

  When I drop my bags on the floor of my apartment, Sydney’s not here. I realize that Maui was not a dream. I head straight to my bedroom, take off my jacket and boots, and climb into bed. I sleep for the next twelve hours and when I wake up Sydney is still not here.

  I took a week off work for this trip and there are still a number of days left. I stay in bed until I can’t stay here anymore and then I force myself to go outside. Walking along Boston Commons, I watch a duck making a zigzag pattern across the water. She darts back and forth before floating up to the edge where a little girl throws crumbs into the water.

  Maybe I’ve been too hasty.

  Maybe I shouldn’t have made my decision on so little sleep.

  Maybe I should’ve just got a hotel room by the airport with Sydney and enjoyed the rest of my vacation.

  When will I ever be in Maui again? Probably never.

  The girl makes a sudden move and the duck quickly swims away. No matter how much she wants the bread, she can’t risk getting hurt.

  Just like the girl, Nicholas didn’t make any threats.

  But when he said he would pay me the million dollars, I had to leave. It felt too dangerous to stay and my intuition is all I had.

  Don’t second-guess yourself, I say silently. You wouldn’t have enjoyed the trip if you would’ve stayed the rest of the week. You would’ve been looking over your shoulder the whole time. That’s no way to take a vacation.

  My phone vibrates.

  I look at the screen hoping that it’s a text from Sydney telling me what a big mistake I made leaving. Maybe it’s even a selfie of the happy couple smiling on top of a volcano. But I’m wrong.

  I’m in trouble.

  It’s my mother. She has been blowing up my phone ever since I left. I wrote her back once saying that I am no longer coming back to see her, and I’ve resisted the urge to reply each time she texts.

  * * *

  I need your help.

  * * *

  Her other messages were pleas and exaggerations. Most filled up almost the entire screen. All told me how much she missed me while at the same time telling me how terrible of a daughter I am. But these two catch my attention.

  This doesn’t sound like her. Of course, she could be using another angle to get to me. I could be falling for it all over again.

  I put the phone down on the bench next to me.

  I try to ignore it.

  She’s not my problem anymore. She’s mean and full of hatred. She just wants to control me. She has money coming in from her social security and it’s enough to live on. She can get around by herself and if I’m not there to abuse, then she’ll just have to be nicer to the nurses that will come by (also paid by the government) and not drive them out by screaming profanities.

  I pick up the phone again and click on the News app. I scroll through the headlines mindlessly as if reading the news has ever made anyone feel any better about anything.

  I need to talk to you. I owe a lot of money.

  My mother’s texts come in as a notification on top of the screen. I read it before I can stop myself.

  Despite my better judgement, I grab the keys and drive to her house. I arrive there without texting her back. She lives in a peeling row house in Charlestown, the oldest area of Boston. The Irish Mob used to run this place in the sixties and seventies but now parts of it are a desirable neighborhood with many hip city moms pushing their strollers around to yoga studios and coffee shops.

  Charlestown is a lot less gentrified than other parts of the city, still making it relatively affordable. Of course, it still has dilapidated apartment buildings where the landlords don’t keep up with repairs because the renters have no better options. Mom lives in one of these buildings. My brothers and I grew up in countless of these apartments, all in Charlestown and all shitty in their own ways.

  Different layouts, same scenery.

  Different streets. Same heating and plumbing problems.

  Different neighbors. Same school district with metal detectors in the front.

  When I walk into her narrow living room, I look around at the piles of cardboard boxes and trash that she’s generated since the last time I was here. The place stinks of old pizza and rotting food. I fight the urge to clean. That’s not what I’m here for.

  “Ma, it’s me!” I yell.

  Ever since high school, I have fought hard to get rid of my nasal Boston drawl, but being here in her presence, her name comes out as a mush without any final sounds.

  I brace myself for a slew of hurtful remarks and name calling but instead her whole face lights up when she sees me.

  “Thank you for coming,” she says, putting down the glass she had been using to water the plants on the windowsill.

  25

  When I find out…

&
nbsp; I’ve never seen my mom like this before.

  I have seen her passed out on the floor covered in her own vomit after a night of drinking and partying. I have seen her writhing around in pain after her doctor cut off her opioid prescription and before I could get her a few pills from a dealer at the corner. I have seen her consumed with tears and pain, wailing and banging on Patrick’s casket before it went into the ground.

  The look she has today is one of total detachment. Her eyes are glassy and stare somewhere into the distance behind me. While they are usually quick to meet mine and make me cower, this time they barely make eye contact.

  “What’s going on?” I put my arm around her. “Ma?”

  “I thought that this time I would win for sure,” she finally says. “I was certain of it.”

  “What? What do you mean?”

  She picks up the cup of coffee off the windowsill and picks at the W in World’s Best Mom. Patrick made her this cup when he was in elementary school and it’s her most precious possession.

  “What are you talking about, Mom?” I ask.

  She nods toward the iPad. I turn it on. I already know what she did, just not the extent of it.

  Her favorite online poker room turns on. A pop-up urges me to put up more credit to play another hand.

  “How much money did you lose?” I ask, holding my breath. I have to inhale before she answers.

  “Thirty-thousand,” she says slowly, chewing the words in her mouth as if they were one of her cigarette butts.

  “Thirty-thousand dollars?” I gasp. “Oh, Ma. No.”

  “Yesterday,” she says quietly.

  I don’t know if I heard her correctly.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I heard from this forum that this one game was a sure thing. It was supposed to be rigged. It was a secret forum and only a few people knew about it. We all play together. We all share the profits.”

  I stare at her in disbelief.

  I knew that my mom enjoyed gambling, going down to Atlantic City.

  I knew she dreamed of going to Vegas someday, but I always thought that she just played the slots. Poker?

  “We were going to make eighty each. But only if we all put in thirty. I didn’t have the money,” she says, looking out of the window. “My credit cards are all maxed out.”

  “What did you do?” I ask.

  She shrugs. Rummaging through the pocket of her bathrobe, she pulls out a lighter and throws a cigarette in her mouth.

  I wait for her to take a long drag.

  “I had to ask Marlo for the money,” she says, exhaling slowly.

  She uses the word had as if there was no other choice. As if the sentence is as natural as I need oxygen to breathe.

  A lump forms in the pit of my stomach.

  “You didn’t have to,” I say.

  “I did. This was a sure thing. We were all going to make money and I would be able to pay off all of my debts, including my medical bills.”

  The only problem is that whenever someone says something is a sure thing, it’s not.

  “What happened?”

  “It worked. At first. But then the poker website found out about it,” she says. Imagine that. “They closed our accounts. They didn’t explain anything, they just sent me this form letter saying that my account is closed as a result of an irregularity.”

  That’s one way to put it.

  “Someone must’ve tipped them off. Maybe someone who lost money.”

  I look down at her hands. They are balled up in fists, with the whites of her knuckles showing.

  “This shouldn’t have happened,” she insists. “We’ve done it before and it worked.”

  My mouth drops open.

  “What do you mean?” I ask.

  “We did it a week earlier. We each put in seven thousand. We each won twenty.”

  I don’t know how the details of this particular scam work but I have a feeling it goes something like a normal pool hall hustle. A hustler comes in, loses a round, makes everyone around the table feel comfortable with the fact that they suck, and asks for another chance to win their money back. A false sense of security makes it impossible for the others to resist taking the sucker’s money again. Only this time, the hustler wins. Big.

  “Why Marlo?” I ask.

  “I can’t get any more credit. I haven’t paid my minimal payments in months. You should see all of my past due bills,” she says, defensively.

  “Why didn’t you make your payments?” I ask.

  “I don’t have any fucking money, Olivia!” Mom snaps.

  I knew that she had medical bills but I didn’t realize that her credit cards were maxed out. I didn’t know things were this bad.

  “You could’ve told me,” I say quietly.

  “I know everything that you have done for me. You’ve done enough,” she says, shaking her head.

  It’s words like this that make me forgive her for every goddamn awful shitty thing that she has ever done or said to me. She buries her head in her hands. I wrap my arms around her.

  “Why Marlo?” I repeat my question.

  “Who else is there?” Mom shrugs, her shoulders slope down as she slides onto a rocking chair.

  She’s right. Around these parts, there is no one else.

  Marlo is the Alpha and the Omega.

  The First and the Last.

  She’s the Beginning and the End.

  There used to a number of different bookies and organized crime bosses but as Marlo consolidated power, the others were either swept under her wing or taken out completely.

  “So you borrowed thirty-thousand from her?” I confirm.

  “I borrowed more.”

  I take a deep breath and ask the question that has been sitting on the tip of my tongue the whole time I’ve been here.

  “How much do you owe her?”

  Mom looks down at the floor. Her stringy hair covers her face.

  “Mom?” I prod.

  “Fifty-thousand dollars,” she says quietly.

  26

  When I try to figure out something…

  I’ve never seen Marlo before, but I’ve lived in this neighborhood long enough to know which rumors to believe and which to ignore.

  She is charming and effervescent and likable and cruel and unforgiving. She has a long memory and likes to hold a grudge. The people who pay their debts, get a smile and a pat on the back, and an offer of another debt. The others?

  Some are lucky to get away with a broken ankle or knee. After, they still pay the principle and the interest. Others, who can’t pay at all, are never heard from again.

  Mom never told me this, but Owen did. It was the night before he went to prison. He hung out with me that night, which was unusual, and drank too much, which wasn’t. We sat and talked for a long time. After a while, he told me the truth about Dad.

  I always thought that he just walked out on us one day. Got sick of fighting with Mom. Got sick of her yelling at him for spending his whole paycheck at the bar. But, according to Owen, Dad owed Marlo fifteen thousand dollars. He liked to bet on the ponies and, just like Mom, he heard that one was going to be a sure thing. The race would be fixed that day and this one horse was going to win.

  Well, something happened, either he had the wrong intel or they lied to get him to bet big. He lost all of the money that he’d borrowed from Marlo. He couldn’t pay her one week. He couldn’t pay her another. On the third week, he went out for a carton of milk and never came back.

  We called the police.

  We filed a missing person’s report.

  His picture was on the 10 o’clock news that night.

  But nothing came of any of that.

  Mom told me that he just left and I believed her. Then Owen told me that Marlo had him killed. Either way he never came back again.

  “Why do you owe her fifty instead of thirty?” I ask, trying to get the full grasp of what has happened.

  “I already borrowed anoth
er twenty-thousand two days prior and lost it. I had no way to pay that off without going in on this,” Mom says. “I thought I would be able to pay off the whole fifty when I won and still have thirty left over for my own bills.”

  “When do you have to pay?” I ask.

  “Thursday.”

  “In two days?” I gasp.

  She nods.

  “I don’t know what to do, Mom. I don’t have this kind of money.”

  “I know you don’t, but what about credit? You must have some credit.”

  I’d run over the credit card limits of my five cards. Two are maxed out and the other three only have a limit of three thousand each.

  “I don’t have anywhere near that amount.”

  “I don’t know what to do, darling,” she says.

  I can’t remember the last she called me that.

  “Maybe you can…disappear? Go somewhere and lay low for a while. Until, this whole thing blows over,” I say, thinking out loud.

  “Where can I go? I don’t have any money.”

  “It will take a lot less money for you to start your life somewhere else under another identity than to pay Marlo back,” I say, with an idea starting to brew in my head.

  “You always wanted to go out west. Texas. New Mexico. Arizona. Wherever. You can stay in cheap motels on your way out and then get a weekly rate somewhere far away. I can get some money together for a studio apartment for you. I can rent it under another name.”

  Yes, this is possible.

  This isn’t the end of the world. Or the end of her life.

  Maybe that’s what Dad should’ve done. Marlo has a big name and a lot of power around Boston, but that doesn’t mean that she has enough connections or people to find someone hiding out in a dusty one-horse desert town near Tucson.

  “It will take me a week or so but I can send you a fake driver’s license, maybe even a passport. I will send you some money,” I add.

  Mom considers this. I take it as a good sign that she’s even thinking about it because she has never been further away than New Jersey. She knows how to drive but hasn’t had a car in years. And now she’s actually contemplating driving alone across the country.