by Marni Mann
As my eyes drifted down the sky, something else grabbed my attention: the movement in the car across from mine. Two girls sat in the front seat, holding their phones out in front of them. It looked like they were snapping pictures of each other, probably posting them all over social media or some shit like that.
They couldn’t stop laughing.
One put lipstick on the other. With a glossy red mouth, she began to fix the other’s hair, teasing the sides to curl around her face. I was only feet away, but they were too caught up, too busy to notice I was staring.
It didn’t look like they worked at the casino. They were most likely just having a girls’ day and had decided to spend it here. I had no one to do that with—no girlfriends to curl my hair or put makeup on to cover my scar. No one who wanted to take my picture.
No one who wanted to look deeper than my scar tissue.
I only had guys in my life. They fed me joints and made sure I didn’t swing my fists.
Maybe that was all I needed.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
I GRIPPED the handrail as I climbed up the basement stairs—not with just the tips of my fingers, but with both hands, leaning against it as I walked. The stairs were moving, shifting…wiggling underneath me. It was like a ride at the fair.
Or maybe it was just my eyes.
And that I didn’t have any balance.
And that I’d chugged way too many beers over the last few hours at Caleb’s party.
I was prone to losing control whenever I consumed anything stronger than weed, which was why I didn’t usually drink. But tonight, or this morning—or whatever time it was—I wanted to lose control.
He had called, using an unlisted number.
Him.
Gerald.
Or I thought it was him, at least. There wasn’t anyone else it could have been.
I also drank because it was raining. Storming. It had started when I was at work. Customers came in with their heads dripping wet, laughing about the sudden downpour. But once I was finished with my shift and ready to drive back to the house, the rain had cleared. Only a few times had it released even a sprinkling of tears. Or raindrops.
Whatever the fuck they were.
But as soon as I joined the party in the basement, the weather changed again. The thunder was louder than the bass pumping through the speakers. I felt both in my chest. The lightning lit up the small windows at the top of the ceiling—the ones Caleb had opened to let out the smoke. It let in the smell of the circling storm, of the heavy air.
Of mud from the ground wet with rain.
Rain.
I had grabbed a red plastic cup filled with keg beer and drowned it all out—the noises, the smells, the flashes of white light, the tears. Rain and him. I’d eaten a roll during one of my breaks. Other than that, my stomach was empty. The alcohol hit me quickly.
And hard.
I rounded the corner to the living room, holding onto the wall and keeping my eyes trained on the sticky wood floor. I didn’t want to bump into anything, to touch any of the filthy surfaces that surrounded me. But the hallway was so slanted and yellow from the flickering lamp. Endless. There were way too many steps between me and my bed, but finally I collapsed on top of it.
My thumb hit a button on my phone, and the screen lit up. It showed a picture of Brady and me. He still hadn’t called. I fucking missed that boy. He listened. Always.
My finger hit another button. Then a second one. The screen felt so smooth on my skin. Smooth and unmarred. I held it against my scar and rubbed the softness over my jagged edges.
“I hope you’re not driving home in this weather,” Hart said.
I jumped at the sound of him. “Hart? Where are you?” I glanced at the doorway, looking for him, and across the carpet of my room.
“At my house.”
He was on the phone. The phone was…on?
“Did I call you?” I asked.
“Well, I didn’t call you.”
At least his voice was familiar. Not as familiar as Brady’s, but it would do. And it did things…to my stomach, to my chest. But I couldn’t fully feel those places right now. The beer had numbed them. It had numbed all of me. But I still remembered how much he’d hurt me.
I hated him for that. Yet I liked him in spite of it.
Shit.
“You’ve been drinking,” he said.
“How can you,” I stopped to hiccup, “tell?”
He laughed. “I think we both know the answer to that.”
I pushed myself up a little, resting the back of my head against the wall and digging my heels into the mattress.
Everything was…spinning.
“Got a call today while I was at work,” I said, just rattling off information I wouldn’t have normally shared with anyone but Brady or Shane. “Fucker didn’t even leave a message.” My forehead dropped onto my bent knees, and I wrapped my arm around my head to block out some of the light. “Can you believe that shit?”
“Who called you?”
“The number didn’t show up on caller ID…but I know it was him.”
“Who is he?”
I hiccupped again. My forehead banged against the hard knob of my knee. “Ouch. My head hurts. Bet it doesn’t hurt as bad as Becky’s. You know Caleb screwed her so hard, her head went through the wall? Then she called me ‘Scarface.’”
My stomach started to churn, flipping almost as fast as the room. My mouth began to water. I untangled from the ball I was in and searched the floor. There was a trash bag on the carpet—the one that had held my clothes. I reached for it and barely had it open before beer shot from between my lips. I tried to hold my hair out of the way, but I couldn’t get all of it. My coordination was off; my balance was uneven. Each time I heaved, I leaned to the side and coated more of my hair.
When I felt like there was nothing left in me, I dropped the bag and huddled back into my ball. I couldn’t make it to the mattress. I just stayed on the carpet, with the trash bag next to me, my puke-dampened hair dragging over my arms and the knees of my jeans.
“Rae?” Hart’s voice was small, but I could tell he was shouting at me. “Are you okay?”
I lifted my head and opened my eyes, searching for his voice. My phone was on the floor. “Hart?” I reached over and grabbed it. “Hart…”
“Where are you?”
“Caleb’s.”
“Caleb from high school?”
“Yeah…high school, Caleb.”
“Where does he live?”
I tried to bury my head between my stomach and my knees, and got a solid whiff of the puke. The bag had opened. The beer stared at me from the bottom of the plastic. It hadn’t gotten only in my hair; it was on my shirt and my jeans, too. I was covered in it.
“I need to wash it off me,” I said. “It’s everywhere. It’s all I can smell.”
“Wash what off you, Rae?”
Hart’s voice grew small again as I stood and dropped the phone. I held onto the wall as I moved into the bathroom. I stared into the mirror. The yellow light on the ceiling showed all the wet spots on my face and the round, chunky circles on my shirt. The front of my hair was soaked. The smell made me heave again, but nothing came out. There was nothing inside but a massive ache in my stomach and a cry seeping from my lips.
I looked up again, my eyes catching the mark on my cheek.
Twenty-six days.
I tugged at the bottom of my shirt and yanked it over my head. Then I pulled down my jeans, turning them inside out just to get out of them. The black shower curtain was closed. There were white stains on the bottom of the fabric. They looked like snowballs. Snowballs that had gone…splat.
I pushed it open and stepped inside, turning on the water, and closing the drain with the metal plug. There was crusted goo all over it. It stuck to my fingers. I had nothing to wipe them on except the wall of the shower. So I did.
I sat at the edge of the bathtub, feeling the grime against my skin. It was slick and s
limy. There were small slivers of bar soap sitting in the holder. I didn’t know what it took to turn white soap brown. Whatever it was, Jeremy had discovered it. The bottle of shampoo behind me was nearly empty. I sniffed its cap; it smelled like pine trees. There was a long strip of black where the tile met the tub. It was mold. Something musty was on every surface in this entire house. I was probably coated in it.
I should have cleaned the bathroom.
As the water started to fill, I leaned against the back of the tub and placed my feet under the stream. The heat burned the blisters on my toes, the ones those damn heels gave me. Steam floated up to my eyes and made them want to close. The tub wasn’t long enough to fully stretch out my legs, so I tucked them in and lowered myself as much as I could.
I’d left my shampoo in my room. My body wash, too. I hadn’t even brought in a towel. Shit. It didn’t matter. The water was washing my hair. My stomach wasn’t flipping as much as it was before. Even though the spinning wasn’t as bad, I swear I saw three eyes staring back at me. Maybe it was four…or two?
“Those are some nice tits,” a man said.
I couldn’t place the voice, though I knew I’d heard it before. It belonged to one of the guys who’d been in the basement. I just wasn’t sure which one. There were a lot of them down there, and the beer made them all sound the same.
And it made me so tired.
I placed my hands over my breasts and drew my legs in even closer. “Are you talking to me?”
“Don’t cover them up. I was enjoying the view.”
“Towel,” I said, pointing toward the sink. “Get me one.” I realized that by pointing, I’d just uncovered one of my breasts again. My hand immediately returned to my chest, the movement sloshing water over my face. I wiped it out of my eyes—this time showing him both breasts. As I rubbed, I wondered if there were even towels in the bathroom. Maybe they were in the hall closet.
Was there a closet in the hall?
The heat made me yawn.
“I’ve never been jealous of Saint before,” the guy said, “but now that I see what he used to fuck every day, I think he was stupid to give you up.”
The water had almost filled to the top of the tub. My toes reached for the knob, but missed. I tried again. Each try threw me off-balance, my back sliding up and down the end of the tub. Water washed over my face. I spit it out.
It tasted dirty. As dirty as this stranger.
His nasty eyes were on me…I could feel them. I couldn’t see him because he wasn’t standing under the light.
But neither was I.
“Pussy fully shaved…fuck,” he said.
I tucked my leg back in. Everything was now under the water except my face. “Stop staring at me and get me a goddamn towel!” The warmth was really working on me. Steam floated above the tub and there was a haze spreading throughout the room. I could almost taste its thickness as it mixed with the beer on my tongue. “I know you’re there,” I said. “I can hear you breathing.” And I could hear my words slurring, but I couldn’t form them any better. I had completely lost control. My back fell a few more inches and my face tilted to the side, resting on top of the water. My lips dipped and teased the pool; a tiny wave formed from the breath leaving my mouth.
My calm exhales made my lids even heavier.
“Stop staring at me,” I whispered. “Please…stop.”
I could feel the bubbles around my mouth. I could feel the darkness surrounding me. I couldn’t see anything through it. My eyes were closed.
Everything had finally stopped spinning.
CHAPTER TWELVE
DROP, DROP, DROP.
It felt like someone was dropping a needle against the backs of my eyes, again and again.
The reverberation pulsed straight up to my head, then down to my stomach. Something had rotted in my mouth. My body ached. Even my toes throbbed. But the bed was surprisingly comfortable…at least I thought it was a bed. It was squishy, and there was something covering me. It was softer than the sheets I’d purchased the other day. And the mattress felt bouncier than the twin that was on the floor in my room.
It was probably the hangover making everything on the outside feel better to compensate for how sick I felt on the inside.
I slowly spread out: first my arms, then my legs, carefully lengthening each limb and stretching the muscles. I still couldn’t open my eyes. My brain couldn’t take the brightness I felt searing against my lids.
How many beers had I chugged last night?
“There’s some medicine right next to you on the nightstand along with a big glass of water. You should take it…and drink every drop of that water.”
My body froze. So did my breath. I knew it wasn’t Caleb’s voice that was telling me to take the medicine, or Jeremy’s. And it certainly wouldn’t be Brady.
“Hart?”
“Don’t open—”
My eyes burst open, immediately meeting his concerned gaze as he leaned against the doorframe on the other side of the room. The sight of him was cut short when the stabbing in my forehead mixed with the sunlight that seeped in through the blinds. The pain became almost unbearable. “Ouch.” My palms went to my head, trying to balance out some of the hurt.
“…your eyes,” he continued, but it was much too late.
I rubbed, and the blanket fell out of my arms and to my waist, revealing a T-shirt…one that wasn’t mine. I yanked the comforter off my legs and saw the pair of boxers I was wearing. Those weren’t mine, either. I clenched my eyes as hard as I could and pushed my fingers against my forehead, trying to remember what had happened last night.
I couldn’t recall any of it—not changing into Hart’s clothes (or what I assumed were his) or coming to his house (where I assumed I was) or lying in his bed (which I didn’t even want to think about).
Had he put me in these clothes?
Or worse: had we done something before they had been put on?
I squeezed my thighs together, searching for that satisfying ache I got after sex.
“Nothing happened,” he said, as if he had read my thoughts in my body language, “if that’s what you’re wondering.”
My eyes opened again, watching him move from the doorway to the end of the bed. His dark jeans hung low on his waist, showing the outline of his thighs, and his white T-shirt accented the curves of his chest. His hair was wet. And as a breeze of his cologne and body wash rushed past me, I found out that he smelled more than just clean. He smelled enticing.
I pointed at my T-shirt. “Are these your clothes?”
He nodded.
I wished I didn’t need to ask my next question. “Did you…put them on me?” I held my breath while I waited for his answer. It had been years since Hart had seen me naked. My body had changed so much since then. Although I was too thin, I still had more curves than I did back then. And my breasts were larger, too…and I was fully shaved now.
And then, there was my scar.
Being unconscious meant I hadn’t been able to see the look on his face when he examined it, hadn’t known if he’d taken the opportunity to really stare at it.
“I did,” he finally said. “You were naked when I found you. I was a gentleman, but it wasn’t easy. Your body, Rae…it’s only gotten better.”
My eyes widened, and my body started to shake worse than it already was. “I was naked…” I took a breath, “…when you found me?”
He nodded.
How the fuck had that happened?
I couldn’t remember.
“I think I’m going to be sick.” I should have headed for the bathroom. Instead, I quickly swallowed the pills, pulled the blanket up to my neck, and leaned into the headboard. He had already seen me without these clothes on, but modesty wasn’t the point here. All I wanted was to hide completely, to crawl underneath the comforter and make it all go away.
I was back to wanting an umbrella.
“Tell me where we are and what happened last night.”
“Can I sit?” he asked quietly.
I tucked my legs beneath me to give him room and watched him carefully take a seat on the end of the mattress. His movements sent me another whiff of his cologne. It was impossible to ignore the smell, and the effect it had on me no matter how hard I tried.
“We’re at my parents’ old house. I bought it from them so it’s now mine.” I hadn’t glanced around the room all that much, but what I had seen looked familiar. “Do you remember calling me from Caleb’s?” he asked.
I attempted to rewind my thoughts. The last thing I remembered was the railing, the one that bordered the stairs in the basement. I remembered how I’d held onto it with both hands. Everything before that was clear, but nothing after. “No.” I shook my head, trying once more. “I don’t remember.”
With his eyes softly on me, he explained how I’d called him in the early hours of the morning, and how I’d gotten sick on the phone. When I told him I needed to wash it off but hadn’t hung up, he became concerned. I just disappeared. So he called Shane to find out where Caleb lived and came to get me.
“You left out the part about me being naked.” It was kind of shitty of me to say.
He sighed and ran his hand over his cheek. That was when I noticed the cuts on his knuckles. They hadn’t been there when I’d last seen him at the casino.
He caught me staring and put his hands behind his back. “When I found you at Caleb’s, you were in the bathtub.”
Fearing what he was about to tell me, I pulled the blanket up to my mouth and bit the edge. “What was I doing in there?”
This was the reason I almost always just stuck with weed. I didn’t black out when I smoked, or make stupid decisions. I knew better than this. I knew what could happen when I lost control, and I knew what men were capable of. Not just strangers, but the ones who were supposed to love me, too.
“You were sleeping. Or more like passed out.” The muscles in his jaw clenched and his eyelids narrowed. “There was some guy in the bathroom with you and…shit.” He breathed again. This time it wasn’t a sigh. It was deep, pained. “He was watching you. I don’t know long he’d been in there…he promised me he hadn’t touched you.”