Dare Me

by Stella Rhys

  “You do realize we’re all adults, right? It’s not high school anymore.”

  “I’m well aware of the time that’s passed, Callum, but time doesn’t always change feelings and you two did make a few enemies together. Enemies who still live in Manhattan,” she said, raising her eyebrows as she sipped her espresso.

  “I’m keeping her away from any of that.”

  “Good. We need to keep all the negativity at bay because I don’t think I’ve been this overjoyed in…” She threw her hands in the air. Manicured. They hadn’t been in awhile. “Oh, I don’t know how long! It’s immeasurable. But I can tell you I haven’t taken any of the,” she lowered her voice, “you know.”

  I looked up from the cocktail list. “Pills?”

  “Sh!” Ten years she’d been taking antidepressants but she still acted like it was some shameful coke habit. “But yes. I’ve… quit them,” she said with a flutter of her fingers.

  “Really. No withdrawal symptoms?”

  “Bit of a stomach bug, but I heard that’s normal. I don’t care. I’ll brave it. I have to. I tossed out the whole bottle.”

  “Mom, that’s… amazing,” I said, though I felt my throat tighten instantly after. As grateful as I was for the news, I couldn’t help being uneasy about the fact that my mother pinned all her hope for joy on Lake being home. I clenched my jaw, shifting in my seat as the salads arrived.

  I didn’t realize till that moment that I still believed she could do it again. Disappear. She’d spent most of her life by my side before leaving the first time. I wasn’t exactly sold on the fact that the past two weeks with me would keep her from doing it again, and it was making it harder and harder to enjoy the way my mother gushed and sighed and laughed the way she hadn’t for so long. She went on and on about the reservations she’d booked at spas, shops, restaurants from Manhattan to Hudson Valley. All for Lake. I tried not to let my mind dip into my negative thoughts but I caved. I imagined how hard my mother would crash from this high if Lake ran off again. I had no doubt that a second time would officially break her. Imagining it shot my mood straight to Hell.

  Leaning in my chair, the distrust for Lake crawled back like a disease. I touched my hand to my mouth, nodding, thoughtful and reactive to every giddy thing my mother said but under the table, my drumming fingers moved faster as my fury rose again. Lake had promised not to leave again but there was little guarantee in words. I wasn’t going to blindly believe her and for that reason, I couldn’t bring myself to enjoy my mother’s smile, which I found a little fucking depressing.

  There goes that. The last week with Lake had been phenomenal and the morning capped it off. I’d felt a strange ease with her, moving around the kitchen, having breakfast, talking about our plans for the day. I’d enjoyed the hell out of the simple pleasure of it all but it was only one step forward and with the realization that I still doubted her, I’d just taken two back.

  I ran the water scalding hot when I got back to the apartment. Lake was going to be home soon and as tempting as it was to unload on her my every dark thought and suspicion, I knew to instead find a way to calm myself down. Nothing productive would come out of my accusations. It was my distrust versus her insistence and that was a pointless conversation so I tried to just wash away my anger before she returned. I didn’t want to lash out the second she walked in. I knew it probably wouldn’t be fair. So I breathed in the thick steam and reminded myself that Lake had loved my mother, too, with all her heart and as much as I did.

  As I ducked my head under the raining water, I heard the whisper of her seventeen-year-old voice.

  “We should cancel the beach trip, Callum.”

  I remembered her climbing into my bed that one night. She did it often but I was particularly annoyed that time because I’d actually fallen asleep.

  “Get out of my bed.”

  “Did you hear me? We should stay home this weekend.”

  “Stop. Talking to me. Go to sleep.” I tossed away from her. She ignored me and climbed under my sheets. “In your own bed.”

  “I can’t sleep, she’s crying.”

  “She’s always crying. Take her Ambien.”

  Lake was quiet for a second and that made me hopeful that she was going to leave me alone. I had wrestling practice before school and after and I’d gotten about eight combined hours of sleep all week thanks to all the late-night sobbing. But Lake only cuddled her body into my back. “Can I tell you my dream from this morning?”

  “Are you fucking kidding me, Lake?”

  She fell away from me, quiet again. I could feel her about to go back to her room but at the last second, she changed her mind and said it all in one breath. “I dreamt I woke up and there was this really cute baby girl at the foot of my bed and she had this perfect pink crib with little bows tied to it, and it felt so real ‘cause in the dream I knew her name was Ella and when I went to hold her, she was – ”

  “Fuck. Off. Lake.” It was harsh. I knew that. But now she was touching on a nerve and about to make it impossible for me to fall back asleep. At this point, we’d figured out that my mother had been bugging my dad for another baby. Through adoption, unless some miracle happened. I’d overheard her on the phone with my aunt, saying she didn’t get enough time to be a mommy to a little girl. She’d gotten the briefest taste of it with Lake and that only made things worse because now Lake was seventeen with a boyfriend and bound for college in less than a year. My dad was rarely home but I knew he was irritated by her desperate pleading. On the rare occasions that he got drunk at home, he muttered about how my mother took a teenaged girl in without giving him a choice to say no. As much as his eyes flew to Lake the second she walked into a room – as much as he couldn’t help staring at her with the most thinly veiled lust, he resented her. He was bitter for being put in a situation where he had to father this beautiful stranger and he was bitter at the amount of attention she sucked from my mother. He saw Lake as the reason his wife was suddenly begging him for a child when he’d already agreed to have me eighteen years ago and then basically adopt another – wasn’t that fucking enough?

  He was rarely ever home but Lake’s increasing sex appeal and my mother’s baby fever kept him more often away from the house. There wasn’t a whole lot I could do about the situation and I knew Lake would feel insanely guilty if she ever found out, so any mention of the baby thing from her had me bottling my thoughts and stewing in silent irritation.

  “I’ll leave you alone if you promise to stay home with me this weekend. We can wake up early and make her breakfast and take her to see that fashion exhibit at The Met. And then at night we’ll just chill and make dinner and watch like, Ghost or Dirty Dancing.”

  “Do you want to chop my balls off while we’re at it.”

  She pulled me onto my back and held my face, giggling into it and waking me officially up. “We’re staying in with her this weekend,” she said an inch from my lips. “Tell me you’ll do it, Callum.”

  I tried to ignore her but then I let out a breath. “I’ll do it.”

  “Thank you.” She kissed my forehead and my anger dissipated too easily for my liking. “Can I sleep here tonight?”

  I stared blankly at the ceiling as she climbed onto me. “Yeah.” I slid my fingers through her hair and stroked the way I knew she liked. To my irritation, she was out like a light in a minute. And I stayed wide-awake because that was just how it went – Lake woke me up when she heard my mother crying, I’d say something to eventually ease her heart and then she’d conk out while I spent the rest of the night sleepless and annoyed. I knew I was doomed to this fate every time her sharp whisper stirred me from slumber – a night of memorizing every inch of the ceiling and counting her soft breaths till I saw the sun rise. She was damned lucky I loved feeling her asleep on my chest.

  Chapter Twelve

  Lake

  I realized I wanted to go home before the conversation even started. Maybe because Theo had made it weird the second we got into t

he café. He held the door open for me and after I walked through, put a hand on the small of my back and flashed me a big smile.

  “Let’s rewind this whole thing and start over,” he suggested with that big, gallant prince laugh he always thought sounded so charming. “Lake. It’s so good to see you again. And I have to say, you look incredible.” With that, he did his version of the Spencer family kiss on the cheek. His parents had always been big on greeting their guests with it, so Theo and his brothers adopted that way of saying hello. Of course, they only insisted with girls and Theo, every time, loved to press his kiss closer to the mouth than the cheek. That hadn’t changed. Despite the fact that we once dated, I flinched when I felt his lips on me. He noticed, looked annoyed and muttered “sorry” as the awkward air started floating in.

  He and I had been together on and off from junior to senior year. We broke up whenever he got too pissed that I wouldn’t have sex with him and our group of friends, knowing it would be temporary, would begrudgingly split with us every time. Everyone still spoke and got along, aside from Theo and myself, but our lunch tables would separate – Callum, Isabel and Logan always sat with me – and we’d have to carefully arrange our plans so Theo and I didn’t both show up. I was generally the one to bow out. Caroline always got pissed at Callum for not boycotting social outings with me, so whenever there was a party I was skipping for breakup reasons, she’d make pumpkin shakes and homemade whipped cream and we’d sit at home watching chick flicks till we fell asleep on the couch.

  “I just don’t get what your hang-up is,” Theo said one day while we hung out in his bedroom. We were on our longest streak without a breakup – a whopping four months. “It’s gonna hurt the first time for every girl. And then you get used to it and it’s fine.”

  “That’s not the issue, Theo.”

  “Then what the hell is it?”

  “Don’t curse at me.”

  “Then what is it? I’ve been dating you for two years, Lake. I know there’s something. Did, like, Ethan do some messed up shit to you or something?”

  “Ew – what? No!” I wrinkled my nose. Caroline and Ethan Pike had just separated and were talking divorce. The kids at school were only whispering about it because their parents were. But apparently, I was thrown into the mix of rumors despite understanding nothing of their roots. Ethan was barely ever home and when he was, he hardly spoke to me or Callum. “It’s not that and don’t talk about that shit with anyone. Please. She’s going through a really hard time right now.”

  “Fine. Just tell me what the issue with the sex is or I’m not going to be able to fix it.”

  “Why do you have to fix it? I don’t want to have sex yet. I told you. I’m trying to hold off for as long as I can. People do that, okay?”

  “Weird people do that. No one who looks and acts like you ever gets to eighteen without getting fucked.”

  “Ugh, you’re crass.”

  “Stop pretending to be all innocent.”

  “I’m not innocent,” I spat. I still remembered the things I’d seen and heard before my grandma took me away from my mom. I was five years old then but I still knew how much worse things got when Trish didn’t have a man in her life. The house would stink, she wouldn’t eat and I’d be hungry day and night. I didn’t like her and I didn’t like them but at least when she had some semblance of a “special friend,” she’d go out and come back with leftovers from McDonald’s. She’d have more patience with me when I asked her to help me turn on the shower. The knobs had fallen off forever ago and it was broken, rusty and confusing. The one time I tried to finagle on my own, I cut my finger open and she got pissed that I needed a tetanus shot.

  Theo rolled his eyes. “Well, if you’re not innocent, have sex with me. Do it with me tomorrow at Logan’s house. At his party. We’ll find a room.”

  “How romantic.”

  “Who cares about romantic – we’re just getting the first time over with so you can stop being such a pain in the ass.”

  “Oh, you’re really selling yourself by talking like that.”

  Theo groaned to the ceiling. “I’m sorry.”

  “I thought you said you’d stop bothering me about this if I did the thing.”

  “What thing?”

  “The pictures.”

  “Christ, Lake, I can’t jack off every day of my fucking life.”

  I stared with true amazement. “You’re an asshole.”

  “And you’re a fucking priss.”

  I went to leave at that point but he pinned me to his bed and laughed at how I couldn’t move. He was a wrestler – he and Callum both – and while Callum was the one going to college for it, Theo was still very much strong enough to immobilize me. I cursed him out when he finally let me go and stormed out of his house, in tears by the time I got home. Caroline freaked out, of course, and when she couldn’t get anything out of me, she sent me to Callum. He flew into a rage when he saw that my wrists were still red. “I’m going to kill him,” he said, eerily calm. He was halfway out the door when I stopped him. I refused to let him go and his stare seared through me. “Are you going to break up with him?”

  “Of course I am.” I had every intention of breaking up with Theo. I just couldn’t figure out the best time. I wanted to not think about it for a little but Callum was so worked up I knew that answer wasn’t going to suffice.

  “If you give him time, he’s just going to put his hands on you again.”

  “What, you want me to dump him the next time I see him? At Logan’s party?”

  “Yes.”

  “No.”

  “I dare you.”

  “It’s not your turn.”

  “Fine. Dare me something now so it is my turn.”

  I dared him to cut in the second Theo went crazy on me when I ended it. I was scared about how he’d react – he could get mean in a way I didn’t know how to handle. Callum was often brusque and blunt but Theo’s brand of anger had him falling still and quiet and lashing out when I least expected it. He’d gone crazy on me that day for not having sex with him so I had no idea what kind of reaction he’d have to being dumped. As far as I knew, he’d never been before. So we devised a signal. If Theo got in any way threatening, I’d look at Callum, tuck my hair behind my ear, and he’d come right to me.

  And that was exactly what happened that night. I told Theo it was over and he lost it. He was the one who always broke up with me. The fact that it was me this time seemed to make it more of a reality for him so he immediately got in my face and said every awful thing under the sun. It made me wish I’d never told him about Trish’s existence. I never even talked to Callum about her but Theo saw me messaging her on Facebook one day – I never did it at home – and looked through her photos. He was delighted to know that I’d come from “trailer park trash.” It was the only thing he had on me that no one else knew about. He saw her provocative pictures and guilted me into taking some for him.

  “It feels bizarre bringing it up now,” Theo said as we sat in the café, almost a decade removed from the three big incidents in high school. The fight, the posts online, and then that other horrible thing. I didn’t know what to call it but it was way too lopsided to be labeled a fight. When I thought about it, I hated Theo all over again and wondered what the hell I was even doing there with him. He could see it in my face so his apology came hastily, all at once. “I’m sorry about everything, Lake. About the way I treated you, about making you take the pictures and then fucking… posting them. For Christ’s sake, I can’t even believe I ever did it.”

  Callum came between us when my breakup with Theo got predictably hostile. Theo had thrown the first punch but after Callum pinned him easily to the wall, he begged for a truce – only to slam Callum into a big frame or mirror or something made of glass that ended up slicing up his back. I tried to pull Theo off but the back of his hand smacked me sufficiently away and for that, Callum knocked him out. He took one look at the blood on my face and then beat Theo so endlessly that none of us could tell exactly when he fell unconscious.

  Our families fell out after that night. Caroline stopped going to as many charity functions. She was already losing her place post-divorce but this was the nail in the coffin. Her son had sent a Spencer boy to the hospital, and all because of “that Lake girl.” I was liked until I had the gall to break up with Theo Spencer and get him beat up. After that, I was “trash.” Theo had seen the way I smarted at the word. He’d seen the message Trish sent me where she called me “worthless,” a “burden.” He knew it would hurt so he spread it around. And to really sell his point, he posted the naked pictures I’d taken for him the year before – online, for all to see.

  I was humiliated. Obviously. I felt dirty. But the worst part about that situation was seeing how embarrassed Caroline was. She distanced herself from me for a couple days but it felt like an eternity. I knew she didn’t want to think of me as anything but her perfect girl and I felt like the biggest disappointment to her. I imagined that she was sitting in the dark on her bed and regretting the fact that I ever came into her life. She gave up so much for me. She should’ve sent me away when my grandma got sick. She was just too good of a person to start something and quit halfway. That was the only reason she kept me around. I tried tallying up how much money she’d spent on me over the years and figuring out how long it would take me to pay it back. But it was impossible and I was so filled with true shame that I couldn’t leave my room. I spent the weekend shut in and skipped Monday at school. I wouldn’t even let Callum in. If I had, I’d have stopped him from seeing Theo before school that morning. He was through with him but agreed to meet because he wanted the pictures taken down. Tears still burned my eyes shut when I thought about what happened that day.

  Damn it. I stared into my drink, drowning once again in that guilt and shame. My trip down memory lane had been so nice before Theo showed up.

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