by M. L. Rice
“God, who knows what else would’ve happened at Aunt Joan and Uncle Ted’s if he hadn’t been there.” Riley felt a rising sense of panic as the memory of the punches, slaps, and burns brought back actual sensations of pain.
“Shhh.” Beth pulled her into a tight hug. “You don’t have to worry about that now. No one will hurt you again. I’ve got you.”
Riley shuddered and let out a sob of torment.
It took a long while for her regain her composure, but Beth just held on, as solid and stoic as anyone Riley had ever known.
Riley’s breathing finally slowed and she said, “I’m sorry.”
“What do you possibly have to be sorry about?”
“I’m a damn mess. You shouldn’t have to deal with this kind of bullshit. My baggage is a psychotic bitch.” She sniffed into Beth’s shoulder.
Beth ran her hand comfortingly down Riley’s back. “You could start growing a purple horn out of your head and I would still be here for you.”
Riley chuckled appreciatively as she wiped her face on Beth’s shirt. “I have never once done anything in my life to deserve someone like you.”
“Well, you can repay me later with more of what we did this afternoon. Would that make you feel better?”
Riley’s knees grew weak, but she hugged Beth tighter and said seriously, “Thank you. For everything. For this. For being you. For loving the mess that is Riley Gordon.”
Beth kissed her cheek. “Thank you for being my Riley Gordon. Mess and all.”
Riley took a deep breath and stepped out of the embrace. “If I don’t go now I’ll miss the gig completely. Tori would kill me.”
“Running off to be with the other woman again, I see. You’re going to forget all about me, hanging around with that insanely attractive goddess of a violinist.”
Riley knew she was joking. She had told Beth about her initial attraction to Tori and instead of being jealous Beth had been ecstatic that Riley had chosen her instead. “Yeah. Don’t wait up.” Riley gave a dramatic wink.
Beth pretended to pout so Riley picked up her cello, ready to leave, and leaned over to whisper in her ear, “When I see you again in two days I’m going to make you forget your own name.” She then kissed her gently on the soft skin of her lower neck, eliciting a lovely shiver, and then turned and walked out of Beth’s front door.
She heard, “Oh, you are just plain evil!” as she walked away.
She smiled, immensely pleased with herself.
*
After playing in the quartet at the wedding, Tori joined Riley at Metro Haus to keep her company during her shift. It was fun hanging out with her now that her hormones were placated and well cared for by Beth. She didn’t feel as nervous or awkward anymore. Of course, Tori’s cool factor still intimidated her, but overall, she was just happy to have another good friend.
Tori sipped her coffee and then asked, “Is she everything you hoped she’d be? I don’t see you nearly as often now that you two have gotten together, so I assume so.”
Riley rested her elbows on the counter and gazed into the distance as she leaned her head onto her fists. “I’m crazy about her. I really have no idea what she sees in me, but I think she is perfection personified.”
“Careful about pedestals, Riles.”
Riley shook her head. “No, I mean, I know that she has flaws. Nobody knows about flaws like I do. I know she’s not a supermodel. I know that when she gets really into her schoolwork she can seem a bit distant and cold. I see how stubborn she can be when she really sets her mind to something. But she is still perfect in her imperfectness. She’s a beautiful human being and is made even more so by the way she works at bettering herself and the world around her even when she struggles. I love her geekiness. I love those nerdy glasses. I love her mousey brown hair. I love those freckles. Tori, I really love her. I never thought I could love someone this much or this quickly, but I’ve fallen and I’ve fallen hard.”
“Tell me how you really feel!”
Riley blushed and stood upright. “Sorry. I’m always thinking about her.”
“Well, now you’re just making me jealous.” Tori winked.
Riley snorted. “You’re not allowed to be jealous with every lesbian in the music school throwing themselves at your feet and a soccer player girlfriend back east. And no matter what you say, I’m nowhere near any of their leagues. I have a hard enough time coming to terms with the fact that you or Beth finds me attractive at all. Especially with the crazy that I have to deal with on my own.”
Tori wadded up her napkin and threw it at Riley’s face. “One of these days you’ll figure out how a mirror works and see what we all see. Riley, you’re a geeky, but hot redhead. You look like you just jumped out of the pages of an Irish fairy tale. You’re quiet, so that makes you mysterious. And your long face and blue eyes are incredibly interesting. I go for interesting over traditional beauty any day of the week. I mean, check out any gathering of sorority girls or look at any beauty magazine. I’ll give you twenty bucks if you can distinguish one from the other. The amazing thing about you and Beth, and even me for that matter, is that we all look like ourselves. We look like real people, not like contestants in a lemming beauty pageant. We’re unique and we…are…hot.” She slammed her hand down on the counter for effect.
Riley laughed. “Thank you for the compliment, but the next lesson should be in humility, I think.”
Tori winced. “Not a concept I’m very familiar with.”
Riley feigned shock. “No? I would never have been able to tell!”
Running her fingers through her pixie cut, Tori shrugged. “Honesty is the best policy, and I’m happy with my ability to serve my community as eye candy. It’s all for the greater good.”
Riley rolled her eyes. “You’re a goddamned saint, you are.”
“Your words, not mine. And anyway, this saint has to head home. Big paper due tomorrow. See you at rehearsal!” Tori pushed her stool back and rose to leave.
“Yeah, see you tomorrow. Thanks for keeping me company.” Riley waved as Tori left the coffee shop. Riley couldn’t help the glance at her backside as she walked out.
*
Two nights later, Riley was once again staying the night with Beth. Brooke had made staying in her dorm room all but impossible. When she was away at her boyfriend’s it was fine, but when she was there, Brooke would only give her the silent treatment and put her things away as if she was afraid Riley was going to take them. She acted almost like she was afraid of her. Riley tried to make polite conversation, ask her about her classes, compliment her outfits, but nothing worked. It was just so much easier to grab a change of clothes and head over to Beth’s.
She felt loved, safe, and truly happy with Beth, but the undercurrent of fear and anxiety was always there, just below the surface.
*
Riley’s sleeping mind betrayed her. In her dream she was crouched in the living room of the now burned down house and Aunt Joan was with her and laughing maniacally. She could feel the unbearable pain, smell the burning flesh, as the lit cigarette was pressed roughly to her arm. She hadn’t washed the dishes like she was told to do. It didn’t matter that she had just walked in the door from school. It didn’t matter that she was unable to reach the sink unassisted. The cigarettes still burned her skin just the same. Aidan was powerless to stop it because Uncle Ted had locked him in the garage for some menial misdeed or another.
Her mouth opened wide in a scream and she sat bolt upright in the bed. Beth was sitting awake next to her within seconds.
“Shh. It was just a dream,” Beth soothed her as she rubbed Riley’s back. “You’re safe. No one’s going to hurt you.”
The words made no sense to Riley’s confused and terrified mind. She looked down at her arms in the dim light of the early morning. The scars looked livid and raw as if they had just been made. Crazy with fear and still struggling to wake from her horrific dream world, Riley threw off her covers and tumbled out of the bed.
She scrambled to her feet and looked wildly around the room, hoping to find escape.
“Riley, it’s…it’s okay.” Beth sounded scared now. A part of Riley’s frantic mind could hear and understand the worry in her voice, but the dream held her too tightly. She crashed back against the dresser, knocking many framed photos onto the floor, and then dropped down into a tightly curled ball, shivering and whimpering for her aunt to stop.
Beth rushed to her side and grasped her shoulders. Still caught in the memories of her aunt’s clutches, Riley lashed out. She shoved Beth as hard as she could, sending her reeling back into the bed frame. Riley only stared, trying to make sense of what she was seeing with her eyes in contrast with what she still saw in her mind.
Slowly, realization hit her and she clasped her hand to her mouth in shock.
Beth winced as she slowly pushed herself to her knees, but was already saying, “It’s okay. It wasn’t your fault.” Her eyes watered with pain, but she smiled hesitantly and stood slowly as if afraid of scaring a wounded animal. Offering Riley her hand, she said, “Come back to bed. I’ll do whatever I can to make you feel safe. I’m here to listen if you want to talk about it. Or I can just hold you. Whatever you need.”
Riley could tell that every word was genuine. Still, she was so embarrassed and horrified by what she had done that she only felt the need to run. It was one thing to have Aidan and the staff at the Home have to deal with her night terrors, but to attack the woman she loved was quite another.
She stood, shaking from head toe and said simply, “I’m so sorry.” She then grabbed her keys off the nightstand and ran out the door, still in her pajamas and wanting only to get back to her dorm room where she could ride out her humiliation in solitude. She prayed that Brooke would be at her boyfriend’s.
As she drove the short distance back to campus, her phone rang and Beth’s face popped up on the screen, smiling and looking adorable with her glasses on a bit crooked. Riley didn’t answer. She knew she’d overreacted, and ignoring Beth’s calls was inconsiderate at best, but her shame overrode everything else. How could she have hit her? It wasn’t a little shove either. It was a full-armed defensive lashing out that had really hurt her. She had only ever done that to Aidan during one of her nightmares, and he had been big enough to shake it off.
Riley could still see the pain on Beth’s face and she began to cry. Why did she have to ruin everything? Why couldn’t she be normal for once? This was what came of falling in love and dragging someone down with her. It wasn’t fair. Again, she knew that she was wallowing in self-pity and should probably pull over and at least talk to Beth, but fear held her back. She still felt like a coward after all.
Eventually the phone stopped ringing, but Riley never checked the five voicemails that Beth left for her. Soon she pulled back into the parking garage near her dorm and slowly made her way back to her room. The campus was still fairly dark and empty as students still had a couple of hours of sleep left before morning classes. Riley was thankful for the quiet.
When she arrived back in her room, she was relieved to see that Brooke was indeed gone so she could brood in peace. She sat on her bed slowly, trying to dissect her rampaging emotions for the millionth time.
A knock at the door startled her out of her planned isolation. Riley got up to answer it, puffy-eyed and feeling confused and depressed. When she opened the door Beth stood there, furious and deeply hurt.
“May I come in?” Beth asked with calm intensity.
Riley hung her head and nodded.
“Sit down,” Beth commanded.
Riley sat on the edge of her bed and Beth knelt in front of her, placing her hands on Riley’s thighs and squeezing. She had never seen Beth so angry or serious before.
“Riley, I want you to listen to me and I don’t want you to say anything until I’m finished, okay?”
Riley continued looking at the piece of carpet she could see between them, but nodded again.
“Okay. What happened was not your fault. Do you think I don’t know about your dreams? Do you think that I’ve never had to watch you toss and turn as you run from whatever monster you see in your head? It kills me to see you so scared in your sleep. I’d wake you up to help you, but you’d never get any rest at all.”
Riley was shocked. She hadn’t realized that her bad dreams were so prevalent. Luckily, she didn’t remember having most of them in the morning. It was only the really terrifying ones that woke her in a panic. No wonder Brooke wanted to stay away so much.
“What happened tonight was nothing that you could help. I know you didn’t know it was me there. I know that you’d never hurt me.”
“But…I did hurt you.” Riley’s lip trembled.
“It hurt, yes, but you could never hurt me. Not unless you pull another stunt like this.”
“That’s why I—”
“No, not the striking out. The leaving. Do not run away from me again. I’m not your enemy.”
“No, you aren’t. I am.”
Beth sighed and got up to sit next to Riley on the bed. She put her arm around her shoulders and then moved Riley’s head to rest against her breast. She held her face in her other hand. “When will you learn?”
“Learn what?” Riley asked, voice muffled.
“Just how incredible you are.”
Riley snorted. “Yeah. I’m Wonder Woman, Xena, Merida, and Hermione Granger in one magnificent ginger package.”
Beth leaned her head onto Riley’s. “Make fun all you want, but if you could see what I see, you’d fall in love with yourself too.”
Riley’s heart surged. Hearing those words was exhilarating, even in her state of self-pity.
“Now. Other than having an amazing girlfriend who’s here to stroke your ego, what else can we do to help you through this? What do you fall back on when you have these dreams?”
Riley thought about it for a moment and said, “My music, of course, and Aidan, and sometimes I just look at my heirlooms.”
“Heirlooms?”
Riley lifted her head from Beth’s chest and nodded. “Pretty much my only valuable possessions on this earth. Valuable to me and Aidan anyway.”
Beth looked interested. “What are they?”
Riley wiped the remaining tears from her eyes. “Let me show you.” No one had ever cared enough to see her little shoebox of memories before.
Riley knelt and pulled out the drawer under her bed where she kept the ragged box. Her brows creased as she rummaged around only to come up empty. Fighting a rising sense of panic, she opened the next drawer. Again, nothing.
Beth could tell there was something wrong because she asked, “Is everything okay?”
There was a tremor in Riley’s voice as she answered, “It’s not here.”
“Your heirlooms are missing?”
Riley nodded, now frantically tearing through every drawer in the room.
“When did you last see them? What do they look like?”
Riley swallowed hard. “They’re in an old Adidas shoe box. I took them down to the office to scan in some pictures for Aidan’s Christmas present, but I know I brought them back up here. I know I did.”
“Well,” Beth said, standing and rummaging through Riley’s closet, “where else do you think you could have put them?”
“I don’t know!” Riley was seconds away from losing it all over again. How could she misplace the single most precious collection of family memories she had?
Beth attempted to calm her. “Don’t worry. I’m sure they’re around here somewhere. Maybe Brooke has seen them. You can ask her when she comes back.”
“Brooke couldn’t give two shits about my stuff.”
Beth signed. “Riley, c’mere.”
Riley continued to throw her meager possessions across the room in an attempt to find the box. “Beth…” Tears sprang from her eyes. “That stupid collection is the only thing in the world I can’t lose. It’s my family when they’re not here. It’s my paren
ts. It’s Aidan.”
Beth bent down and kissed the top of her head. “I know. I’ll help you find it, okay? I’m sure it’s around here somewhere. Just come to bed for a little while. You need sleep. You have class and work in a few hours.”
Riley sniffed and followed Beth under the covers of her bed. She was sniffling and worried sick, but Beth’s warm body and steady breathing soon calmed her. Still, she wouldn’t be able to get any more sleep.
Chapter Sixteen
Several days passed and there was still no sign of the box of heirlooms. She and Beth had checked the downstairs office where the scanner was, the lost and found, and every inch of the bedroom. Even putting up flyers in the hallways hadn’t led to any clues. Riley was distraught and terrified of having to tell her brother that she had lost the only physical connection they had left to their parents.
Despite Beth’s best efforts to placate her, Riley couldn’t help but worry and fall into a depressed funk. Even Tori noticed.
One day after rehearsal, Tori approached her as Riley packed her cello back into her case.
“What are you and Beth doing this weekend?” she asked as they walked out of the music building and toward Riley’s dorm.
“Oh, you know, wild orgies, heroin parties…the usual.”
Tori wasn’t amused. “Gettin’ a little old, Riles.”
“What is?”
“The pouty thing. Either you’re going to find the shoebox or you’re not. Don’t let it ruin your life.”
Riley’s temper flared. “Goddamnit, Tori. You have no idea how much that stupid box means to me. Don’t you dare belittle it!”
“Whoa. Sorry. I didn’t mean to piss you off.” Tori held up her hands in surrender. “I just meant that I hate seeing you so upset over this.”
“I have every right to be upset!” Riley spat.
“I know. I know. But I’m just saying that you still have those memories and the connections without the baubles and knickknacks. It’s a horrible tragedy, yes, but you still have Aidan and you still have your friends. We want to help you. That’s all.”