Break My Fall (No Limits)

by Cameron, J. T.

When we got back to the suite, Drew went to the restroom and I stayed out in the living room. I walked over to the enormous floor-to-ceiling window that took up the entire wall. The drapes were wide open and with the lights in the living room still turned off, it was like looking at a movie theater screen that was playing a continuous loop of the skyline of Vegas at night.

  I was watching the flickering lights of the Las Vegas strip when I felt his hand on my shoulder and his body against my back. He swept my hair to the side and kissed my neck. A chill ran through my body and my skin prickled with excitement.

  Drew looped a finger under one of the straps of my dress and lowered it halfway down my arm. I reflexively pulled my arm against my body to keep it from going down farther.

  His voice was soft in my ear. “I liked having you with me tonight.”

  My voice a mere whisper, I said, “I liked being with you.”

  “But I’m much happier we’re up here, alone.”

  His lips settled on my neck again and he gently sucked on it.

  He turned me around and pinned me up against the window. I felt the coolness of the glass through the thin fabric of my dress.

  Our faces were close together and I could smell the faint hint of rum on his breath. He told me he always ordered a Coke to make it look like he was drinking, but he always ordered one with rum at the end of the night.

  He brushed his mouth across mine, his tongue tracing the outer lines of my lips, then he sealed his mouth around mine and he kissed me the way I wanted him to—his tongue sweeping through my mouth like he wanted to devour me.

  His hand dropped to my hip and I felt him grab the dress and hike it up to the top of my thighs. One finger ran along the line of my panties, to the front, teasing me through the fabric.

  My knees buckled and I felt him tighten his grip to hold me up before he lifted me off the floor. I wrapped my legs around his waist as he pressed me against the glass.

  The shoulder strap slipped down my arm again, and I felt the cool air on the top my breast. I pulled my arm away from him, grabbed the front of my dress and yanked it back up to cover myself.

  Drew had been slowly grinding his hips against me, but when he noticed what I was doing, he stopped.

  “What’s the matter?” he whispered.

  “Nothing.”

  “Leah.” That’s all he said. Just my name. Flatly. Seriously.

  I couldn’t look at him. I lowered my head and my forehead rested on his shoulder. I could feel my throat tightening and starting to sting a little, the feeling I always get before I start crying.

  I wasn’t feeling like this because of the pictures, exactly. It was more about the lasting effects of what happened. I was starting to believe that Kevin had robbed me of my ability to be physically intimate.

  I remembered calling Drew a tease earlier in the day, when all along I really did want to stop. Now I was the one bringing this to a halt. I felt guilty again, but I couldn’t let that control my decision-making. I needed to stop, so I did. Fortunately, I was able to fight back the tears and say something. “I’m sorry.”

  Drew kissed the top of my head.

  “I’m sorry,” I said again. “I just can’t do this right now.”

  “Tell me what happened.”

  I looked up from his shoulder. “I can’t.”

  Drew remained silent for a moment before finally saying, “Are you ever going to share it with me?”

  He released me from his arms. My shoes touched the floor. Wordlessly, I walked to the bedroom door.

  Drew’s voice stopped me. “I’ll be right here if you need me.”

  I didn’t turn around to face him. I just couldn’t. “I’m sorry.” The words came out softly and I stepped into the bedroom, closing the door behind me.

  Chapter Eleven

  We had to catch a nine a.m. flight, and we both woke up late, so we had to rush getting ready. We made it to the airport just in time to check in. I was glad we were running behind. It left no idle time for the subject of last night to come up in conversation.

  Early on in the flight, Drew said, “Oh, I almost forgot.” He got up and removed his bag from the overhead luggage compartment. When he sat back down he had a wad of cash in his hand. I looked in amazement at all the hundred dollar bills. He flipped through them quickly and since I hadn’t thought to count when I first saw the money, I had no idea how much he had.

  “This is our winnings from the trip,” he said when he finished counting. He went back to the first bill and started counting again.

  Then his words hit me, and I repeated them. “Our winnings?”

  He nodded, but didn’t say anything. He was concentrating on the counting. Finally, he said, “Here’s your half.”

  He handed me my own wad of bills. I looked at them, then back at Drew. “You’re not serious.”

  “I am. That’s yours. Go ahead, count it.”

  I started flipping through the bills just like he had. When I finished counting, I could hardly believe how much it was. I also couldn’t believe that I hadn’t been curious enough the night before to ask how much he had won, but I guess with the way things ended, it hadn’t even occurred to me.

  I wanted to take it. Who the hell wouldn’t? It would take me months to save up six thousand dollars working at the surf shop, and now I was holding that exact amount in my hands for doing…what? Nothing. “I didn’t win any of this. You won it all. I can’t take it.”

  He looked at me and with more of that confident swagger I liked so much, he said, “Take it. There’s plenty more where that came from.”

  I put it in my purse, feeling more than a little uneasy about it.

  . . . . .

  Drew was distant during the rest of the flight home. There was no physical contact the whole way, not even our hands touched. There were no attempts at stealing a kiss. There was also no talk of any plans for us in the coming week.

  I blamed myself. Why shouldn’t I? We had made a deal to tell each other something private, something big in our lives, and while he had kept his part of the bargain, I had backed out of mine, and then, when we had started to be intimate, I had freaked out a little and made him back off.

  I didn’t think he was mad with me, but I couldn’t blame him for feeling rejected, if that’s what it was. It was the only thing I could think of that explained his distance.

  What little conversation we had during the flight was mostly small talk, sometimes so meaningless it was as though we were strangers who had been randomly placed together by the airline seat assignment process.

  It actually pissed me off a little. He had sworn he wouldn’t judge me, no matter what I confessed to him. And even though I hadn’t told him, he was judging me in a way. He was freezing me out, growing distant.

  . . . . .

  That feeling about taking the money—the uncomfortable one that I couldn’t figure out earlier—suddenly became clear, and there was no way I was going to keep it. I didn’t want charity.

  I had given him back the bond money, so my conscience was clear on that, but this was money for nothing. Unless I thought of it as money for traveling with him, money for my time, which would have made me feel like some kind of escort even though we didn’t have sex…

  My mind raced with thoughts like that. All negative thoughts. Beyond making the financial aspect of my life easier, there were no upsides to keeping the money.

  So when we pulled up to my house and Drew got out to get my bag out of the trunk, I slipped the cash into his glove compartment, just as I’d done when he had refused to take money as payback for the bond. Unlike the last time, though, he didn’t see me do it. That glove compartment was seeing a lot of action lately.

  It was late in the afternoon and I was looking forward to relaxing and getting some good sleep before I had to go back to work the next day. But with Drew acting distant all day, I didn’t want him to leave like that, so I invited him into my apartment for the first time.

  There wasn’t
much to show—a typical studio apartment perfect for one occupant—but I liked my little home. It was furnished when I moved in, but hanging my own pictures and replacing the old, white, lacey curtains with modern blinds really made it more of my own.

  “This is nice.” Drew looked around.

  “You haven’t seen it before?”

  “I have. When I got to Charleston, my grandmother insisted that I live here but I didn’t want to. I wanted to be close to them, but also have my total freedom. What I meant was, it’s nice what you’ve done to the place. Are these yours?”

  He was standing in front of several pictures I’d hung on the wall above the couch. They were what someone had called surf-scapes—all wide-angle shots of waves of all different sizes, some about to crash on the beach, others were crystal-blue-green tunnels.

  I walked over and stood next to him in front of the photos. “Yeah. I’ve been collecting them for a few years.”

  “Nice.”

  “Thanks. They kind of make me feel a little more at home. Do you want something to drink?”

  “Sure. Big glass of ice water would be good.”

  I went into the kitchen, suddenly feeling like inviting him inside was a mistake. Both our movements and words were forced, odd, uncomfortable.

  When I came around the corner with the water, Drew was sitting on the loveseat. I sat down next to him, then gave him the glass.

  He thanked me, sipped the water, then put it on the coffee table.

  Drew leaned back.

  I leaned back.

  This was torture. Something was way off with us, and I couldn’t stand it any longer.

  Just as I was about to say something, he broke the silence. “I’m not being myself.”

  “I noticed that.”

  He grinned. “I wasn’t mad about what happened last night. You stopping, I mean. Not at all.”

  “There’s a ‘but’ coming.”

  Drew nodded, his lips pressed together forming a hard line. “Are you going to tell me what happened?”

  I took a deep breath and let it out more audibly than I had planned.

  “Because,” he continued, “it’s obviously affecting you when you’re with me and so I figure it’s kind of my business. A little bit, maybe. Plus, there’s that matter of the deal we had.”

  He was right about all of that. I owed it to him, and not just because of some silly deal we made. I owed it to him on a personal level because it was having a negative impact on our relationship. Is that what this was? A relationship? I hadn’t thought to put a label on it, and as soon as it occurred to me, I didn’t want to think about it. Whatever we had, it didn’t need defining. Not yet, anyway.

  “I told you I’m not going to judge you,” he urged. “And it took all the control I have not to ask you on the flight back. But I didn’t want you to feel cornered, so I decided to ask you when we got here. This way if you don’t want to tell me, you’re not stuck having to see me for several hours.”

  It was a sweet, considerate thought and it was exactly what I needed to hear. I shifted on the loveseat to face him, pulling my feet up and crossing my legs. I took a deep breath and started the story.

  Drew never looked away from me the entire time I spoke. Even though I looked down at my wringing hands a few times, whenever I looked up he was making eye contact with me.

  I was proud of myself for not crying as I told him, although my heart was racing and I found myself taking deep breaths quite a bit in a futile attempt to calm myself. I felt vulnerable revealing my story, but not as much as I’d expected to. Drew was listening attentively and had a look of compassion and concern for me on his face.

  When I was finished, Drew sat there for about thirty seconds before speaking. “So the pictures are still online?”

  I nodded. “Probably forever. And there’s no way to tell how many sites. There are so many of them like that one he posted the pictures on, then people copy them, post them on other sites…it’s impossible to get them removed everywhere.”

  He leaned forward and picked up the glass of water. “Jesus.” He took a sip, leaned back, and said, “He posted your name, too?”

  “It doesn’t look like it. But people online have a way of tracking things down. I guess someone else I know could do it. Or even just someone in one of my classes. But so far it doesn’t look like my name is attached to any of them.”

  By his facial expression and body language, I knew Drew wasn’t judging me, just as he promised he wouldn’t. But he also didn’t seem to be shocked or even upset for me, which kind of hurt. I didn’t want him to track Kevin down and hurt him or anything. But considering how much we had shared with each other, it would have been nice to see him display a little anger. That is, if it was genuine. And I guess he wasn’t angry or upset for me, so in a way I was glad he wasn’t faking it.

  “It could have been so much worse,” he said. “I thought you were going to tell me you were raped or abused as a child or something—”

  “What?” My voice was shrill, the result of hearing what sounded like a dismissal of my torment.

  “I didn’t mean—”

  I shot up off the loveseat, realizing now that the lack of emotion in his response was because he didn’t think it was a big deal. “You have no idea.” I shook my head, putting my hands up to my face.

  My eyes were closed and covered so I had no idea he had stood up until I felt his arms around me.

  I pulled away. “Drew, no. Just leave.”

  “Leah, come on—”

  I cut him off before he could continue. “No. You said what you think. And obviously you don’t get it. I want you to leave. Now.”

  I hadn’t felt such rage in months, and I guess that’s why he gave up and left. I was glad. The psychological injury Kevin had inflicted upon me was still like a raw, exposed nerve, and Drew had just touched it.

  Chapter Twelve

  There were times when my curiosity got the best of me and I would type my name into Google. Although Kevin hadn’t posted any personal information of mine—name, address, school, etc.—there was always the chance that someone from school would see my pictures on one of the sites and post a response saying something like: I know her! That’s Leah Austin. She goes to USF and we had a class together. I dreaded the day that happened, thankful that it hadn’t yet, but sure that someday it would.

  I got up early and as I ate a couple of hard-boiled eggs and toast, I ran the search and got nothing alarming in the results.

  I’d been curious about so-called “revenge porn” ever since it happened to me, but I had never researched it. I finally did that morning, though, and found an astounding number of articles on the topic, many of them on websites geared toward young women. All of them offered advice on how to deal with having your pictures posted publicly. All of them denounced the guys who posted the pictures.

  Somewhat surprisingly, a few articles blamed the female victims for having the bad judgment to let a guy take pictures like that in the first place. I saw it as nothing short of slut-shaming, and it pissed me off.

  There’s nothing wrong with a woman expressing her sexuality, especially in the context of sharing it with a guy she trusts. It’s not a woman’s fault that some of those guys turn out to be untrustworthy, vengeful assholes.

  Blaming the female victims disgusted me. It was obviously one of the main reasons why only two states had passed any kind of law protecting the victims. New Jersey had done it a while back, and California only recently.

  I’d never been politically active. Only one presidential election had occurred since I’d turned eighteen and I didn’t even bother to vote. But the more I read about this, the angrier I got that more wasn’t being done to protect victims of this type of monstrous violation of privacy. Maybe it was a lack of awareness. Maybe it had something to do with the vast majority of victims being female and the vast majority of people in elected office being male. And I couldn’t deny that maybe part of the reason was that, just like
me, so many people were apathetic and rarely made their voices heard when it counted.

  I browsed through articles and blog posts containing the personal stories of women who had gone through this nightmare. What struck me most was how similar they were—all resulting from betrayal by a trusted boyfriend (even a few soon-to-be ex-husbands). All of them ended the same way, with the woman left twisting in the wind, with very little or no legal recourse whatsoever.

  A few even had to change their names and leave their hometowns for good. It was something that had crossed my mind, but I was determined not to let Kevin steal my life, and with it, my entire identity.

  . . . . .

  “So, when are you going to see him again?” Rebecca asked.

  “I’m not sure. We didn’t make any plans.”

  “That sounds about right for him. Mr. Spontaneous and all that.”

  We were at the surf shop. It was just after ten a.m., and business hadn’t picked up yet, so I had been catching her up on my trip to Vegas. Most of it, anyway. I couldn’t tell her about Drew counting cards, and I couldn’t tell her how the trip ended, with Drew making that comment and me kicking him out of my house. To do so would have forced me to tell Rebecca about Kevin and the pictures, and I wasn’t ready to do that.

  I grabbed some paper towels and Windex to clean the glass case where we kept the watches. Rebecca was restocking the board wax and sunblock.

  “You have way more control than I do,” she said. “I would have jumped his bones.”

  “Really?” I ripped another towel off the roll. “I doubt Kyle would approve of that.”

  She laughed. “Yeah.”

  It was then that I realized I’d all but forgotten about her situation. “Speaking of that, what’s going on?”

  She stopped what she was doing. “Oh, shit. I forgot to tell you. I took the test. It’s all good.”

  “Close call.”

  “Yeah,” she said. “No more being talked out of using condoms. The hell with that.” She looked at me. “Did you make Drew wear one?” She moved her eyebrows up and down.