by Amy Hatvany
Instead of answering my text, Mason opened the front door and motioned for me to come up the front steps and inside. I noted that his dark hair was pushed flat on one side, as though he’d recently gotten out of bed. A moment later I was sitting on the brown leather couch in their living room, a big glass of water that he said it looked like I needed in my hand.
“We’ll have to keep our voices down,” Mason said as he settled into the rocking chair on the other side of the square table in the center of the room. “Gia and the baby are still sleeping.”
“Okay, sure,” I said, the glass trembling in my hands.
Mason saw this and cocked his head. “You okay, bro? Have you talked with Amber?”
“Not really,” I said, in answer to both of his questions. I drank down almost the entire contents of the glass, knowing it was the best thing for me, and then put the glass onto the table. “Do you know how she got home?”
“We drove her,” Mason said, frowning. “She said you were passed out and she felt sick, so she asked for a ride.”
“Oh.” My mind reeled, relieved that regardless of what Amber might think had happened, she hadn’t voiced it to Mason and Gia.
“What’s going on, Ty? You two looked mighty happy with each other out on the dance floor, before you took her into the house—”
“Before I took her?” I said, cutting him off.
“Yeah,” Mason said, giving me a strange look. “You don’t remember that?”
I sat back against the couch, hard, and closed my eyes. “I thought she took me inside. I could have sworn . . .” My words trailed off as I tried to organize the jumbled mess of images flickering inside my head. What else did I get wrong? What else had I forgotten? What did I do that made Amber scream at me and kick me off the bed?
“You were both hammered,” Mason said. “Have you blacked out like this before?”
“I didn’t black out!” I insisted, opening my eyes again.
“Dude! Keep it down, please.”
“Sorry,” I said, lowering my voice. “I just don’t know what’s going on. I went over to her house this morning to check on her and she freaked out. She didn’t want me anywhere near her.”
“Freaked out how?” Mason asked in what I recognized as the same deliberately calm, information-gathering tone he used with victims in the field.
“She screamed at me to leave. Like, crazy screaming. And when I sat down on her bed to try to talk with her, she went nuts and kicked me off it. Then her parents came in and I just . . . bolted. I didn’t know what the hell was going on.”
Mason was quiet a moment before speaking again. “Did you have sex with her?”
I nodded, fighting the harshly edged ache that had risen in my throat, recalling the look of terror on my best friend’s face when I walked into her bedroom. I’d seen her through many dark moments in her life, but I’d never seen her look anything like that. It finally registered that part of why she seemed so different was her hair. Since last night, she’d chopped it off, up to the line of her jaw.
“And she was into it, right?”
“Yeah,” I said, but my voice faltered, and I shook my head. “I thought it was all her idea. I mean, I wanted it, too. You know that. But you saw the way she was dancing with me. Did you see her kissing me?”
“I did.” Mason didn’t say more, he just stared at me, expectantly.
“I thought it was finally happening, you know? That she realized she’d made a mistake being with Daniel and it was me she wanted. She’s been having second thoughts about getting engaged. She’s been flirting with me since she got home . . . we’ve been flirting with each other. I know we have. And we were kissing all the way up the stairs until we got to the bedroom. It felt like we couldn’t get there fast enough. I didn’t imagine that. I know it happened.” My head ached as I tried to remember exactly what came next. My hand on her leg, pushing up her skirt. Feeling how hot she was for me, how ready. I remembered rolling on top of her. And then again, those two words, her voice, exploding inside my head: Tyler, wait!
“You made sure she wanted to do it, though, right?” Mason asked, quietly.
I didn’t answer, but inside, I was thinking that of course Amber wanted to do it. She wouldn’t have danced with me the way she did if she didn’t want to have sex. She wouldn’t have let me press my erection against her; she wouldn’t have kissed me or let me take her up to the bedroom. She gave off every sign of wanting it as much as I did. I thought about Whitney, how I’d never had to stop and ask her if she really wanted to sleep with me—her willingness to come inside my apartment that first day, the way she let me touch her was permission enough.
But Amber told you to wait, I thought, and the realization that I hadn’t listened, that I didn’t hear her over the loud roar of my desire, made me feel as though I might be sick. What if I did hear her, I wondered, and I went ahead with it anyway?
“Tyler,” Mason said, loudly enough to snap me out of my thoughts. “Please tell me you asked if she was okay with what was happening. Tell me she didn’t say no.”
“She never used that word,” I said, my voice breaking. I cleared my throat. “But I think she told me to wait. She might have told me to stop.” I breathed in, feeling the air hitch and get stuck inside my lungs.
“Jesus, man,” Mason said. He shook his head in disbelief, and his thick fingers gripped the arms of his chair. “Are you kidding me? I thought there was something wrong with her. She seemed jumpy and kind of out of it, like she was in shock or something. But I chalked it up to the booze . . . I told myself I didn’t know her well enough to actually be right about that.”
“We were drunk,” I said. “Both of us, right? So maybe she’s just having second thoughts. Maybe she’s feeling guilty about cheating on her boyfriend and that’s why she was acting weird.”
“Her fiancé, you mean,” Mason said, giving me a pointed look.
I stood up from the couch and began to pace behind it, desperate to think of any explanation other than the one that made me a monster. “Maybe she’s just confused, like me. Maybe her mind is all fucked up because we were drinking. Maybe she’s just trying to figure out exactly what happened, too.”
“Maybe . . .” Mason said, but he didn’t look convinced.
“I wouldn’t hurt her!” I said, coming to a sudden stop. I gave my partner an imploring look. “You know me. I’ve loved her my whole life. All I want . . . all I’ve ever wanted . . . is to be with her. To make her happy.”
“I get that,” Mason said, “but you know as well as I do that people do some crazy shit when they’ve been drinking. How many drunk drivers have we taken to the hospital after they’ve killed someone with their car? Most of them don’t remember the accident. All of them say they didn’t mean to do anything wrong, but the fact that they were fucked up doesn’t absolve them of responsibility for what they did.”
“Are you saying that you think I raped her? That I could do something like that?” The pressure that had been building in my body since the moment I left Amber’s house, increasing since the officer pulled me over and gave me a ticket, amped up and felt like it might burst open the valves of my heart.
“I think under the right set of circumstances,” Mason said, carefully, his eyes not leaving mine, “pretty much anyone is capable of horrific behavior.”
I was silent, unmoving, bracing myself with my fingertips pressed against the spine of the couch, staring at him. I let what he’d said sink in as best I could, still trying to fight off the worst-case scenario as possibly being true. This had to be a misunderstanding. Maybe Amber and I both just needed to recover from our nasty hangovers, and then try to talk again. Even during the most difficult times in our lives, we’d always been able to sort out our differences. I told myself that that would happen again. Amber and I would talk and the truth would find its way to the surface, and everything—and everyone—would be just fine. I had to tell myself these things, because the alternative, a world without A
mber in it, a world where I’d committed an unthinkable sin, was one I didn’t want to be a part of.
Amber
“I’m going to kill him,” my dad said, after I finished telling my parents what happened with Tyler at the party. “I’m going to tear him apart.” He stood up and paced in my room, his hands clenched into tight fists at his sides. I’d never heard his voice sound like that before, flooded with enough contempt and disgust that I believed he meant to follow through on his threats.
“Daddy, no,” I said, sniffling and wiping my eyes with the edge of my sleeve. I hadn’t called him “daddy” since I was eight.
He stopped pacing, staring at me with tears in his blue eyes. “Baby girl,” he said. His voice cracked, and he didn’t go on, looking like he was struggling to hold himself together.
“I can’t believe it,” my mom said, tears running down her cheeks. “I just can’t. How could he do something like this?”
“It wasn’t just him,” I said, leaning back against my headboard. My eyes were practically swollen shut from all the crying I’d done in the last fourteen hours. I’d never felt so tired or drained in my life. All I wanted to do was go back to sleep. All I needed was oblivion. “I was drunk, too. I shouldn’t have danced with him the way I did. I shouldn’t have—”
“Stop that!” my mom said, cutting me off. “None of this is your fault. Do you hear me, Amber? None of it. I don’t care if you were drinking or not.” Her voice rose as she spoke, becoming more tense and shrill as she went on. “You told him to stop. You told him you didn’t want to do it. Right?” I nodded, numbly, and she bobbed her head, too. “Then what he did to you he did without your permission. He raped you, honey. That’s what it was, pure and simple.” Her shoulders began to shake and she pressed a curled fist against her mouth. “I can’t believe it,” she said again. “How could he?”
“I’m going to find him,” my dad said, turning toward the door, but my mother leapt up and grabbed him by the arm.
“Tom, don’t,” she said. “We have to take Amber to the hospital. We have to call the police. They’ll handle it.”
“No!” I said, shaking my head. “I just want to stay here! Please, don’t make me go.” My bottom lip trembled as I pictured having to lie back on a hospital bed, my legs spread, enduring a doctor’s poking and prodding between my legs. I couldn’t bear it. There was no way. “I already took a shower. They wouldn’t find anything.” Except the bruises, I thought. Except the way that he used his body like a knife inside me and made me bleed.
“But you have to report what happened,” my mom said. “He needs to be held accountable for what he did!”
“And how would I prove it?” I said. “Everyone at the party saw the way I was dancing with him. I made out with him, too. No one’s going to believe me . . . that I told him to stop. It’ll be my word against his.”
“The police can get him to confess,” my dad said. “That’s their job. You just have to tell them what happened, like you told us, and they’ll take it from there.”
“I don’t want to talk to the police!” I said, spittle flying from my mouth. “I won’t! Please, leave it alone. I just want to be left alone!” I started crying again, and I wondered how it was possible for my body to produce this many tears, if I’d ever be able to stop. I kept seeing the look on Tyler’s face when he’d walked into my room, the confusion and concern, and it didn’t make sense. Did he not remember what happened? Did he black out? Would he blame his actions last night on alcohol? Would he proclaim his innocence because of an inability to recall what he did?
My parents were silent for a moment, frozen where they stood, looking at each other, then back to me. “I just need to sleep,” I said, trying to calm down. “Let me sleep and we can talk about it later. Right now I can’t think about anything. I can’t make any decisions. My head’s a fucking mess.” I never swore in front of my mother—crass language was one of her pet peeves—but my energy levels were so depleted, I couldn’t stop myself. I didn’t care what she thought.
“Okay,” my dad said, but I could tell it pained him to agree with my request. He took a couple of steps over and cupped my head with his hand, leaning down to kiss me on the forehead. “I’m so sorry this happened to you, sweetheart. Your mom and I are here for you, okay? We’ll support you, no matter what.”
I nodded, and my mom opened and then closed her mouth, like she changed her mind about what she was going to say. “We’ll be right downstairs,” she finally said. “We’re not going anywhere.”
They left, and I sunk down beneath my covers again, lying on my side and tucking the blanket tightly up under my chin, the same way I had when I was a child and woke from a bad dream, telling myself if I just closed my eyes and rocked back and forth, I would eventually lull myself back to sleep. Escape was all I could think about, and the only escape route I had was the ability to fall into unconsciousness. But just like last night, after my shower, my mind spun with too many thoughts to let me drift off. I tossed and turned, my body aching, until I remembered a trick that I used to use when the phentermine I took at the height of my eating disorder made it impossible for me to sleep.
As quietly as I could, not wanting my parents to hear me and come back upstairs, I slipped out of bed and opened my door, sneaking across the hallway to the bathroom, where I rummaged around in the medicine cabinet until I found the clear bottle full of tiny pink pills I needed. A standard dose of antihistamines always made me drowsy; a double dose would give me the relief I so desperately needed now. I took two pills, swallowing them down with a few handfuls of water from the sink, again making sure to avoid looking in the mirror. I stared at the bottle a bit longer, wondering what might happen if I took three, then four, or even the entire contents. That would give me a way out of having to deal with any of this. It would make this entire nightmare go away.
No, I thought, screwing the cap back on and returning the bottle to the cabinet. I can’t do that to my parents. No matter how much it hurts, no matter how unbearable my feelings might be, I can’t just give up like that. I won’t.
Within minutes after returning to bed, I felt the comfortable buzz of impending sleep roaming around in my head. The allergy meds had numbed out my thoughts, quieting them down enough that my eyes stayed closed, and my heart stopped racing.
It was almost dark outside when I woke up, with my mouth so dry, my tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth. I blinked, trying to get my eyes to focus on the digital clock next to my bed. It was a few minutes past eight—I’d slept almost ten hours—and I saw that my mom had removed the tray of untouched tea and toast from earlier and replaced it with a bowl of cut-up fruit and two bottles of water. I knew I couldn’t eat, but I did drink down both bottles in just a few minutes, knowing that the antihistamines I’d taken had dehydrated me even more than the tequila from the night before.
I forced myself to swing my legs over the side of the bed; I still felt woozy and bruised, so I took several deep breaths in through my nose, blowing them out of my mouth, trying to restore a proper level of oxygen to my brain. It was a trick I shared with my clients who struggled to catch their breath after a particularly intense workout. “Press one nostril closed, and then take in three quick, hard sniffs of air through the other, like you’re snorting some kind of drug. Then slowly blow the air out your mouth, as controlled as you can manage.” This instruction always garnered me strange looks, but when they complied, my clients always felt better. “Your brain functions best when it gets lots of oxygen,” I’d tell them. “That’s why exercise strengthens your mind, as well as your body. Oxygen rinses it clean.”
I almost laughed as I thought about this now, guessing there was nothing in the world that would ever make me feel clean again. I stood up, planning to go back across the hall and take another hot shower, but as soon as I opened the door, I found my mom waiting for me.
“Hey, sweetie,” she said, reaching out to brush my hair out of my face. “How are you feeling? I came
in to check on you a few hours ago and you were totally passed out.”
I nodded, knowing I couldn’t tell her about the pills I’d taken. “I need to take a shower,” I said. “I feel disgusting.”
She winced, upset, I was sure, picturing what Tyler had done to me to make me feel that way. I took another step, but she rested a hand on my shoulder, stopping me. “Honey, wait,” she said. “Daniel is here.”
“What?” I said, practically hissing the word. “Jesus, Mom. Did you call him? Did you tell him what happened?” My heartbeat, which had been calm just seconds ago, ramped up again, banging around behind my rib cage. I’d forced myself not to think about Daniel since I’d come home from the party; I’d been too overwhelmed by everything else. I didn’t know how to fit him into the messy, imbalanced equation of it all.
“No, of course not,” she said hurriedly. “I wouldn’t do that. He just showed up about an hour ago. He said you two had argued, and he felt horrible about it. He just wants to talk.”
“I can’t see him,” I said, the tears already returning to my eyes. “Not like this. Mom, please. Make him leave.”
“Oh, honey,” she said, pulling me into her arms, where I stood stiff as a board, afraid of what might happen if I let myself succumb to the comfort in her touch, worried I might lose control and never get it back. “Daniel loves you. He needs to know what Tyler did.”
A thought struck me, and I yanked back, glaring at her. “Have you told anyone else? Did you tell Liz?”