by Stacey Jay
I stand, throwing off Stan’s arm. “Thanks for the chili.”
“You didn’t eat none.”
“I’m not into rat.” I grab my purse and the bottle that still has a few inches of amber liquid at the bottom. I’m done drinking, but I want the Kings to know they don’t get to keep my leftovers anymore. The bastards.
“It’s not rat. It’s pig,” Nigel says. “And we know you like them. That pig boyfriend of yours was over at your place just last night.”
“But he don’t sleep there no more.” Harlan speaks up for the first time, in a soft voice that, despite the heat, makes me shiver. I’ve always thought of Harlan as the sweet, slow, silent type. But he doesn’t sound sweet now. He sounds eager. Hopeful. About things I know I don’t want him to be hopeful about.
My feet tingle, itching to run. Instead, I take a slow step back and then another, resisting the urge. If I run, I’ll never be able to stop. I’ll have to run by this stretch of road every day and these hard-eyed men with their stink and their mean will know they’ve won.
“No, he doesn’t.” Nigel shifts his belly and loops his hands together underneath. “Maybe she don’t like pig, either.”
“Or maybe pigs don’t like her.” The man next to Harlan—Jake or Juke or something that starts with a J—smiles, showcasing a mouth full of black spotted teeth.
“Could be.” Nigel clucks his tongue. “That ain’t good, girl. This ain’t a good town for people on the wrong side of the pigs.”
“Seems like you rats do okay.” I sound tougher than I’m feeling.
“We pay for our safety,” Eli says, speaking up for the first time since the vibe in the yard started going sour.
He’s got to be kidding. Cane and Abe wouldn’t take graft from the Junkyard Kings. They’re not crooked. The internal affairs investigation found nothing. They were led astray by false evidence when they arrested Fernando, not taking the law into their own hands. And they’re certainly not strong-arming people into paying for their safety.
“You’ve been paying for yours, too.” Eli plunks his bowl onto the ground by his feet. There’s red sauce in his beard, but it doesn’t make him look silly. He’s too intense to be silly. “You stop paying, and you’ll learn things you don’t want to learn.”
“And maybe I’ll be the one to teach you,” Nigel says. “I’d like to—”
“Shut your mouth,” Eli orders. Nigel does. Immediately. Which makes me wonder just how mean Eli is underneath the relatively pleasant facade.
Pretty mean, I’m guessing, to keep this bunch in line. Pretty damned mean, and I’ve been pretty stupid to think I live in an idyllic small town where everyone loves one another and gets along and me and the crazy homeless guys are BFFs because I bring them booze. Maybe I’ve only been “getting along” because I had Marcy and Cane on my side. Maybe, now that I don’t, things will change. Maybe I won’t feel as driven to protect the people of Donaldsonville. Maybe it will be okay to leave them to the Invisibles and get the fuck out of town.
Deedee. Sweet, weird little Deedee with her fuzzy braids and her skinny arms wrapped around my waist and all the need in her eyes. There’s no excuse to abandon her. Especially if D’Ville is even less child friendly than I’ve thought.
“Go home, Annabelle,” Eli says. “We don’t have anything else for you.”
“Nothing else you’re willing to give, anyway,” I say, still doing a decent impression of not being intimidated. “That’s fine, Eli. But you’re not the only one with information. Remember that when things start happening that you don’t understand. Maybe then we can have a real conversation.”
Eli doesn’t nod or raise his eyebrows or look in any way interested in my bluff that’s not a bluff but might as well be.
Fine. Asshole.
I take another step back and mumble “Whatever,” under my breath before turning and picking my way back through the mountain range of trash, gripping the glass handle of the whiskey bottle tight, refusing to look over my shoulder. I won’t show fear, even if every nerve ending in my body is sending out run-for-it flares that sizzle as they shoot up my spine.
I keep a slow, steady pace as I weave around a huddle of half-crushed trucks and a tower of old office furniture one of the Kings must have used to play blocks. There’s no other explanation for why every rusted desk in the junkyard is gathered in one location. I stop and stare at the tower for a long moment, looking for a weak spot, thinking about pulling one of the desks out and sending it crashing down just to be childishly vindictive. I’ve had enough whiskey for that to seem like a good idea. But I’ve also had enough whiskey to be too tired to bother.
“Fuck you, desks.” I flip off the tower. It’s easier to be angry at a bunch of inanimate objects than bitter and sad and confused by my failed attempt at information gathering.
It wasn’t a failed attempt. You learned that Marcy killed her dad and her kid, Cane and Abe might be crooked, and the Junkyard Kings are dangerous assholes who find it amusing to scare the shit out of the hand that’s fed them. Or drunk them. Or whatever.
And Eli knows something about that cave—that it’s dangerous, bad news—but won’t spill the details.
“So many good things.” I weave on my feet as I twist the cap off the whiskey.
Another drink is starting to sound like a good idea. A few more swigs and maybe I’ll be able to stumble home and pass out instead of looking for Tucker or answers or thinking about all the scary stuff that’s gone down today. It will all still be here tomorrow at 6:00 a.m. When I’ll have to drag my ass out of bed and tell Hitch I’m a failure. It’s okay to forget.
It’s okay. Everything’s going to be okay. I repeat the mantra as I tip the bottle back with both hands and chug cheap whiskey.
It only burns a bit. I’m good at chugging things. It was my parlor trick back in my college days. The amount of hard liquor I could take down without passing out or throwing up was legendary, and every new person at a party would want to see the legend in person. I can’t count the times I woke up in my narrow dorm bed with no memory of how I got there. Enough that I should have stopped chugging things.
But I didn’t. I never stop. I never learn. And things are never okay. Never.
I know this.
So I’m not really surprised when I round another pile of trash and find Gerald waiting for me, an ominous light flickering in his dead eyes.
He comes for me.
I drop my purse and swing the whiskey bottle at his head, but he ducks a second too soon. I adjust and go for a backhand, but he snatches a handful of tank top and stomach skin and squeezes tight.
Tight, tight, tight. So tight the pain makes me scream and my fingers spasm and my makeshift weapon thuds to the ground. I lift my hands to scratch his face, but he’s already on the move, knocking me to the ground, landing on top with that ropey body that feels so much heavier than it looks.
My breath rushes out, but his other hand wraps around my throat, keeping me from pulling in another. And then he’s tugging at my jeans and I’m kicking my legs and slamming my fists into his head, but he doesn’t seem to notice and I feel the button on my jeans pop open and panic smashes through all the protective barriers in my mind, blowing me open like a hurricane made of screams.
Not again. I can’t. Not again.
I squeeze my eyes shut and thrash and kick like I’ve been set on fire. I won’t look at him. I won’t look up into his gray face and watch his eyes fill up with the satisfaction or victory or violence or whatever it is he’s going to feel while he does this.
I’ll fight him until I black out, but I won’t look. I won’t. I won’t. I won’t.
I won’t remember another man this way. I only have fleeting glimpses of Anton, but they’re enough. I see him sometimes when I’m really smashed, in those seconds just before I black out, when everything I’ve forced myself to forget comes surging to the surface. I see his red face, jaw clenched, veins standing out. He’s so angry, but pleased with hi
mself at the same time. What he’s doing seems to hurt him, but it hurts me more—so much more—and that’s what he wants. The hurting is better than the fucking, better than the release that comes at the end, better than—
Thunk! There’s a burst of sound—metal hitting flesh and bone with some serious force—and I can breathe.
Air rasps in as Gerald goes limp and I scramble out from underneath him, scuttling like an insect; a small, filthy thing that can’t think beyond getting away from the danger and the pain and the hands.
“Don’t!” I scream and bat the new hands away.
They’re clean and I recognize them, but I can’t let them touch. I’m not safe. I’m never safe. Never. Because all the things I’ve tricked myself into thinking I’ve put away are still there and I will never forget them and I will never remember them and I will never know the truth. Because Anton took that away, too. Whatever he slipped into my drink that night blurred the edges of the nightmare, until I can’t even say for certain that I have the right to feel like a victim.
Maybe I’m just a drunk. Maybe it’s all my fault.
“No.” Suddenly I’m crying. Or maybe I’ve been crying for a while, and just suddenly become aware of it. As I become aware of Hitch beside me, pulling me close, pressing my head into his chest, whispering that he’s got me, asking me if I’m okay.
It’s the worst thing he could have asked. I’ve already answered that question, and the answer is “No.” I push him away and wrap my arms around my knees, squeezing tight, staring at where Gerald lies unconscious—but still breathing—on the ground a few feet away. Looks like Hitch hit him with a piece of an old fender. He’s bleeding a lot, but I don’t care. Not happy about it, not sad, not . . . anything.
Just empty, except for the raw feeling inside, almost like it happened. Even though Hitch stopped it.
This time.
Last time, he assumed I was a willing participant, assumed I’d jumped into bed with his brother without even asking me what happened. The disgust on his face tore me up all over again, made me feel like I was back on the bathroom floor, bleeding and puking and helpless while Anton stood grinning down at me, smug in his victory over his golden boy big brother.
What he’d done wasn’t about love or lust or hating women or hating me. It wasn’t about me at all. It was about proving that he could have what his smarter, better-looking, more successful, mommy-loved-him-best brother could have.
And that only made it worse, made it impossible to look into Hitch’s accusing eyes and defend myself. Because I shouldn’t have had to. Because Hitch should have known what a waste Anton was and given me the benefit of the doubt. At least. At the very, very least.
“I remember it sometimes,” I find myself saying, words spewing without permission. I think about slapping my hands over my mouth, biting my tongue until it bleeds—whatever it takes to stop what’s coming—but I can’t. Not anymore. I just can’t. “I remembered it a second ago. What his face looked like . . . during. So angry. Why would I remember that, if it wasn’t true?”
“What are you talking about, baby?” He puts a gentle hand on my back.
Baby. He hasn’t called me baby in forever. Not since the night he found out that I slept with his brother while he was pulling an all-nighter at the hospital. His brother. His fucking brother.
“Anton.” I spit out the name, hating the way it feels in my mouth.
Hitch’s hand turns to stone. I can feel how much he wants to pull away. I save him the trouble and scoot on my ass through the dirt. His fingers slide down my spine and contact is severed.
It feels better. And worse.
I grit my teeth and hunch around my legs, digging my chin into the top of my knees. “I remember being scared and trying to scream for help,” I continue, voice wavering up and down as I try to get a grip. I’ve never said any of this out loud. Not even to the therapist I talk to once a year during my FCC annual training, not even to myself. “But I couldn’t. I couldn’t move and I was already fading out again.”
I sniff and my entire body shudders in response. My arms are shaking and my heart is racing and it’s getting harder and harder to speak, but I’m not done yet. I’m going to finish this, get it all out to the only person who ever cared and maybe then it will be done. Maybe then Anton’s face will fade from even my buried memories.
As long as I don’t look at Hitch, as long as I keep my eyes on the slow seep of blood from Gerald’s head, I can do this. “But for a few minutes, I was there. And I know I didn’t want to be. I know it. No matter what Anton said. I didn’t want it. I didn’t want him.” Deep breath, hold it tight for a second, will down the pressure rising in my guts. “And when I woke up the next day, I was bleeding.”
There. It’s done. My next breath comes easier.
But I still can’t look at Hitch. I can’t. Not now. Maybe not ever. Maybe I’ll never look at anyone ever again. Maybe I’ll sit on the ground in the junkyard forever, staring at the second man who tried to rape me. At the moment, it sounds like an okay idea. I can sit here, curled up and hugged tight, the danger behind me, refusing to stand up and walk back to my house or go on with my life or admit the possibility of living through any more of this same damned shit.
Shit.
My life.
There are moments when it’s good, but there are so many more when it’s bad. And maybe that’s my fault, too. I don’t know. All I know is that I wish I were like Tucker and could go invisible at will. I don’t want to be seen anymore. I don’t want to meet Hitch’s eyes and know what he sees when he looks at me.
He doesn’t say a word for a long time. A really long time. But I know he understood me. He sits so still. Frozen. As if he, too, has decided that stopping time right here, right now, is for the best.
He’s probably right. Where do we even go from here? What was the point in telling the truth?
“Because it’s the truth,” I whisper, shocked to find I believe it. I used to think the truth only mattered if it made a difference, but maybe the truth matters simply because it is the truth. People perceive things differently, politics and opinions come into play, there are shades of gray and alternate points of view, but sometimes, a thing is just true.
Marcy didn’t deserve a father who terrorized her. True.
Grace Beauchamp and Deedee’s mom didn’t deserve to be killed. True.
Fernando didn’t deserve to take the rap for a murder he didn’t commit. True.
I didn’t deserve what Gerald tried to do. I didn’t deserve what Anton did all those years ago. I didn’t deserve a boyfriend who thought so little of me that he didn’t stop to consider I might be innocent.
True. True. And true.
“I don’t know what to say.” Hitch sounds empty, hollow. I can’t tell if he’s angry or sad or feels anything at all.
“You don’t have to say anything,” I say, realizing that’s the truth, too. “I just couldn’t lie about it anymore.”
“Why?” Hitch’s voice cracks. I risk a peek at him out of the corner of my eye and watch him . . . shatter. Lines that I’ve never seen before crease his face, like what I’ve said hit him so hard it made permanent slivers of brokenness across his skin. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“You didn’t ask,” I say, angry for a split second.
And then he pulls in a breath and says, “You’re right,” and buries his face in his hands. And cries.
Hitch is crying. Not the angry tears he cried the night he screamed for me to get out of his house. Not the happy tears he cried the time we found a bunch of kids alive and safe in the back of an iron-plated eighteen-wheeler after Hurricane Katrina wrecked the gates around New Orleans.
Sad tears. Hopeless tears. Tears that come from deep inside where I can tell he feels as lost and wrecked and afraid as I do. A person can’t cry like that if they have real happiness, real hope. Despite the perfect education, the perfect job, the perfect fiancée, and the promise of a perfect family, Hitch isn’t hap
py. He’s not even okay.
I put a hand on his knee. A part of me shouts that it’s stupid for me to be comforting him, but the rest of me knows feelings don’t play by the rules. Some things may be black and white, but emotions are always red. Messy, sloppy red that bleeds outside the lines and stains and stings and doesn’t care about labels like accuser and accused.
“I was waiting for it to happen,” he says, rubbing the back of his hand across his face. “Since we first went out.”
“Waiting for me to cheat on you?” Now I’m angry again. “Why? What did—”
“No. It wasn’t—” He makes a frustrated sound and his hands clench. “I don’t know. I guess I was . . . You were so beautiful. And smart. And you didn’t give a shit what anyone thought. You’d do crazy things. And you were never afraid. And I was . . .”
“So ugly and stupid.” I shake my head, floored by what I’m hearing, by the truth I see in his face. Cocky, ambitious, brilliant, sex-on-a-stick Hitch had doubts about whether he was good enough for me. Me. The fuck up Sweet Haven kid who only brushed her hair every other day, wore the same pair of jeans to class for a week, and lived on frozen fish sticks and beer. It’s . . . dumbfounding.
“And you loved me.” He catches me with those soft blue eyes I used to see every morning. It’s Hitch without barriers, all the sweet, wicked, messy, perfectness of him. “All of me. Even the parts I hated. It felt . . . too good.”
Too good. It’s crazy. Because I felt the same way. About him. And now . . . about Cane. He’s too good. At least for me. I really believe that, but maybe . . .
Maybe . . .
I thought I was afraid to commit to Cane because I was still carrying a torch for Hitch. But maybe I’m simply carrying the baggage I’ve always had, the same baggage that ruined my first relationship. Helped ruin it, anyway. It takes two to kill something like what Hitch and I had. If I were a normal person, I would blame him for thinking the worst of me and be done with it. If I stay true to my own destructive bullshit, I’ll blame myself and my innumerable flaws and keep loathing myself enough to make sure that a bottle continues to be the most significant attachment in my life.