by Robin York
I’m about to tell him it’s not happening—not with his sister hovering out there—when he pulls my knee up and rocks into me, hard.
Oh. God. It’s so happening.
“If you’re not out in five minutes, I’m going to eat at Rikki and Laurie’s,” Frankie says through the door. “I’ll tell them you starved me. I’ll say you’re locked in the bedroom making dirty noises, and—”
West picks up a book off the nightstand and throws it at the door.
“Hey!” Frankie shouts.
“We’ll be out when we’re done with the laundry,” he says.
“Fine.”
I hear her footsteps retreating down the hall.
“We really should go,” I say, but it’s completely halfhearted. I can’t make myself mean it, because his eyes are blue in this light, dark and intent, and his hand is moving under my shirt.
“In a minute.”
“One minute?”
“Maybe two.”
“You can’t make me come in two minutes.”
“Watch me.”
His thumb finds my nipple again. My eyelids droop. I can’t keep them open—not when he’s touching me like this. Kissing me this way. Not when he’s unsnapping my jeans, lowering the zipper, finding me hot and wet and making me hotter and wetter.
He whispers dirty promises in my ear, licks and sucks me. He finds all my weak spots and exploits them.
“Ninety seconds,” he says after I come. There’s laughter in his voice. “Easy.”
“Don’t call me easy,” I rasp.
I sound so weak and soft, exhausted as though I’ve run a marathon when all I’ve actually done is breathe hard, tighten up against West’s fingers, and bite down on the noise while he makes my body sing.
West chuckles, clasping my wrists in his hands and collapsing on top of me.
We’ve only got thirty seconds left before Frankie’s back at the door, but they’re sweet.
So sweet.
By the time I get off the phone with the senator’s aide, I’m smiling. This is the third time I’ve talked to him this week and the first call when I felt like I was making solid progress.
“How are my toes coming along?” I ask Frankie.
“I’m doing the second clear coat.”
“Sweet.”
She concentrates on the motions of the little black nail-polish brush. I look up at the kitchen ceiling, walking back through the conversation.
I forgot to talk to him about fraud. All those sites that take customers’ money with the promise of wiping their reputations online—someone needs to stop that. I lost a bucketload of West’s money to one of them. And I need to see if—
“Who’s Jane Doe?” Frankie asks.
“Hmm?”
“Who’s Jane Doe?”
It takes a minute for my attention to settle on the question. “It depends. It’s a name the government uses when they don’t know who someone is. Like, if you find a dead body and can’t identify it, if it’s a man, it’s John Doe, and if it’s a woman, you call her Jane Doe. But in legal cases, you use those names for when the victim wants to keep her identity a secret.”
“You told that man on the phone not to use the word victim.”
“I did. I like the word target better. But usually when we talk about crime, we talk about perpetrators and victims.”
Carefully, she brushes polish over my big toe. “So you were a victim, but you don’t want anyone to know?”
“Well, not exactly.”
“But you’re Jane Doe. That’s what West said.”
“For me it’s just a strategy,” I tell her. “It’s a way of keeping the records of the case sealed.”
Frankie puts the brush back into the bottle and twists the cap closed. “I wish I could do that.”
“Do what?”
“Make it so no one knows about Clint.”
“Is he still bothering you?”
“No, he stays away from me now. He has to. But when Mr. Gorham came to our class to talk about bullying, I think it was kind of like Jane Doe? Because he didn’t use my name or anything, only everyone knew he was talking about me anyway. I wish I could just … I don’t know. Erase what happened. Start over.”
“I know how you feel.” So much of last year, I wanted to erase what happened to me. “But you know,” I say carefully, “when bad stuff like that happens, sometimes it can be good, too. Like, last year, this guy I used to care about, he wanted me to feel like I didn’t matter—like I was a bad person, and I deserved bad things to happen to me. So he did something to embarrass me online. And it worked. I felt awful. But then I figured out that he was wrong about me, and that he was the one who had a problem, not me. And it made me stronger.”
“How?”
“It’s hard to explain. I guess it’s that I don’t think anyone’s ever going to be able to do to me again what that guy did. I’m sure I’ll get hurt other ways, but not that way.”
I don’t realize until after the words are out of my mouth that I’m not just talking about Nate. I’m talking about West, too.
If it weren’t for Nate’s attack, I wouldn’t have been able to deal with what West did to me in Silt. But I can deal with it. Because I’m stronger.
I’m different.
And I’m glad for it.
“You know what I figured out?” I ask. “That only I get to decide what my actions mean. Only I get to choose how I feel about who I am and what I did. I get to define what I’ll accept and what I won’t. And that goes for you, too. You’re in charge of your life.”
She wrinkles her nose. “West is in charge of my life.”
“He’s in charge of keeping you alive and fed and all that, and making sure you have a chance to learn stuff and become a good person. You’re in charge of everything else. And you know, what Clint did, that sucks. It should never have happened. I’m sorry it did happen. But the thing to remember is, he was the one with the problem, not you. You were the one who fought back. Not in the most constructive way possible, I think we can agree …”
She cuts me a glance. Smiles when she sees I’m smiling.
“… but you know you have it in you. You can stand up for yourself and take down the guy who’s threatening you. And that has to feel pretty good, right?”
Frankie nods. “He’s afraid of me now.”
“Awesome. Just so long as you don’t use your mighty fists again, right?”
“Right.” Frankie tilts her head, thinking. “Is the guy who tried to hurt you afraid of you?”
I see it in my head—Nate passing me on my way home from class. Glancing to the side so he doesn’t have to meet my eyes.
“I think he kind of is, actually. But what matters to me even more is that I’m not afraid of him.” I wiggle my toes. “Are these done?”
“Yeah, but you can’t walk around for a while.”
“You want to make some popcorn?”
“Movie style?”
“Is there any other way?”
“No.”
“You’ll have to do the hard work, though,” I say. “Since I can’t move.”
“I know how.”
Frankie skips over to the cabinet to get out the air popper.
Skips.
I wish West could see her. I’ll tell him later tonight, when he gets back from working with Laurie.
I’ll tell him all of this, because it will help remind him that even though she’s struggling, his sister is amazing and resilient.
So am I.
Bridget uses tongs to pick four hard-boiled eggs out of the bowl on the salad bar.
“Can you make some for me?” I ask.
“Sure.” She adds three more eggs. “Are you going to do a sandwich?”
“Maybe just on crackers.”
“Okay. Pick me up some bread, and I’ll get the mayo.”
It’s halfway through December, and we’re in the dining hall, grabbing lunch between classes. This has been our Wednesday thing since
freshman year, and even though we’re both off the meal plan, eating most of our meals at the house, we still do Wednesdays.
Or we try to. I missed last Wednesday because I had to go to Iowa City for depositions with my lawyer in the afternoon. Those weren’t too bad, but this morning I had to get up at the ass-crack of dawn and drive to Iowa City again, this time to be deposed by Nate’s legal team.
November belonged to West, although I spent a couple days with my dad at Thanksgiving.
December belongs to the case.
“You want me to get your drinks?” Bridget’s scooping low-fat mayo into a bowl.
“Yeah, maybe two waters and a skim milk?” The dining hall uses these tiny glasses, so you have to take three or four to get enough liquid.
I carry the drinks, bread, crackers, and the bowl of soup I got on the line over to the table by the window where Bridget and I like to sit. She’s already there, mashing up hard-boiled eggs with a fork. There’s a pile of finely diced dill pickle on a plate. I slide into my seat and reach for the celery stalk.
I dice with a butter knife, remembering the first time I saw her make egg salad with ingredients off the salad bar. It was just a few days into first-year orientation. I was so glad, then, to have been assigned to Bridget by the housing gods, because here was a girl with ideas.
Here was a friend who was smart and kind and matched to me in every way that mattered.
She finishes mixing mayonnaise into the bowl of eggs. “I can take that celery.”
I pass her the plate, and she tips the diced celery in, along with the pickle, salt, and pepper.
“How was your lawyer thing?” she asks.
“Horrible.”
“What was it like?”
“They asked me every question fourteen times, and most of the time I wasn’t allowed to answer. When I was, I had to say whatever one thing I’d rehearsed with the lawyer, and then Nate’s lawyer would say something to make it sound like I was a crazy slut.”
“God.”
“I know. But it was exactly the way my dad told me it would be, so I knew what to expect.”
“Does that help?”
“What?”
“Knowing what to expect?”
I shrug, because the cry-pressure is building behind my eyes, and I should be tougher than this. I am tougher than this. “It just turns out that when smart, rich guys in suits spend hours asking you questions designed to make you feel like a crazy slut, it’s really hard not to start feeling like a crazy slut.”
“You’re not a crazy slut. We don’t even believe in sluts.”
“I know. But it’s still hard. It’s, like, superhuman difficult.”
“Did you cry?”
“In the car on the way home.”
“But not in front of the lawyers?”
“No, but only because we took two breaks so I could pull myself together.”
“Can’t you get out of doing this?”
“Only if we withdraw the suit.”
“But you’re not thinking about that.”
“I don’t know. I don’t know if I’m thinking about it.”
I haven’t let myself think about it.
But I keep hearing what Frankie asked me. So you were a victim, but you don’t want anyone to know?
It feels wrong.
I’ve always believed I could do whatever I put my mind to, but if I want to get into law school with my sex pictures on the Internet—if I want to get through law school and out the other side, to practice and advocate for social justice, to run for office and become a legislator and change the world for the better—what do I have to do to make that happen?
My dad says this is what I have to do. Push through the suit. Wear the Jane Doe straitjacket.
I’m not so sure anymore.
At the long table to our left, a big group of students bursts into laughter.
I have to swallow, because my throat hurts. I wonder if I’m coming down with something.
“Caroline?” Bridget reaches across the table to cover my hand with hers. “Why are you doing this when it makes you so unhappy?”
I swallow again.
My throat aches, and my eyes fill with tears.
I don’t have an answer.
I wake up in the dark. The clock reads 2:48 a.m.
West is plastered against me, and he’s way too hot. The air in his bedroom is dry from the space heater running in the corner. I have one nostril that’s completely blocked, and the other is so desiccated I can only inhale a thin stream of overwarm oxygen.
There’s no way I’m getting back to sleep.
When I try to wiggle out from under his arm, it tightens for a second. “Where you going?” His voice is husky with sleep.
“Just out to the living room.”
“You need me to rub your head?”
It’s my favorite way to fall asleep—West’s fingers rubbing circles over my scalp. “Maybe later. I have to pee anyway.”
“Come back soon.”
“I will.”
After I visit the bathroom, I stop in the kitchen for a glass of water, then pad out to the sofa. I wrap myself in the ratty afghan on the couch and sit in the dark.
Untethered, my mind wanders.
I pluck at the holes in the ratty old blanket, which I suspect West’s grandma must have knit in the 90s. It’s got the color palette—maroon and forest green.
In the bedroom, I hear West turn over, rustling the covers.
I think about the depositions. How terrible they made me feel.
I curl into a ball under the blanket and close my eyes.
A spring creaks.
Seconds later, a telltale floorboard groans, and then I hear water running in the bathroom.
By the time he comes into view, I’m sitting up again.
He’s got nothing but boxers on, which seems crazy for December, but West’s internal furnace runs hotter than mine.
He scratches his stomach. “Scoot over.”
When I do, he sits down sideways and positions me between his outstretched legs.
“Pillow.”
I hand him one. He sticks it behind his head, wraps me in his arms, and leans back, pulling me down with him, my body wedged between the couch and his skin, my head resting in the nook beneath his shoulder.
He feels good.
He smells good.
It’s so good being with West.
I wish I could explain to my dad—to anyone who thinks I don’t belong with this man—how I feel in moments like this one. Moments when the rightness of the two of us expands inside me, pushing out against the walls of my chest until what I’m experiencing is so much more than I can put in words.
Gratitude. Satisfaction. Contentment.
I don’t know how to say it. There isn’t any way. There’s just this big, blissful feeling that I want to spend the rest of my life in.
West kisses the top of my head. “Pull that blanket up, would you?”
I raise it to cover my shoulders and his stomach, and then from underneath I tuck it in along his side, pushing a few inches of blanket beneath his thigh, his stomach, his upper arm. I like to fuss over him, but not too much. Just a little bit, where he might not notice and get spoiled.
“Sorry I woke you up,” I say.
“S’okay. What’s going on in your brain?”
“Too much, apparently.”
“Yep.” He shifts his shoulders, settling us deeper into the couch. “Tell me.”
“I talked to Paul again today,” I say.
“Remind me who’s Paul?”
“The senator’s aide.”
“Oh, right.”
“So, I don’t know. I was just thinking about it. Not about him, but more about what it’s like when I’m talking to him. I feel like … like there are things I can tell him that no one else is going to. Things he doesn’t get—doesn’t understand properly—but I can change his mind.”
“About revenge porn?”
“For starters, yeah. I think it’s getting so I could change almost anyone’s mind on that, if I had a clear shot at it. If they aren’t, you know, a prejudiced jerk or whatever.”
“I bet you could.”
“And this is going to sound dumb, but I feel a little bit like I was born to do that.”
His reaction is an exhale across the top of my head—a huff of pleasure and amusement. “Maybe you were.”
I twist so I can see his face. “Maybe I was, West.”
His eyes hold mine, steady and calm. There’s no mocking in them.
He runs his hand up and down my back beneath my T-shirt. His palm is warm on my bare skin, but his eyes are warmer. So sure of me.
“He wants me to talk to the media,” I confess.
“Who, the aide?”
“I guess the senator. They think their best shot at getting this passed is to start with a public education phase, and they want to set up interviews with major newspapers and some of the morning shows on local news in Des Moines and Iowa City, the Quad Cities … They want to put a face on revenge porn in Iowa.”
“Your face.”
“My face.”
“Makes sense to me. You’ve got a beautiful face.”
“My dad would shit a brick if I said yes.”
“Yep.”
“But I was thinking …”
“You were thinking you were gonna say yes.”
I smile a little. I can’t help it—it’s nice to be known. I love that he knows me.
“I want to. What’s the point of suing Nate, spending all this money trying to destroy Nate, if it means I can’t do any of the other stuff I want to do? There’s no point, right?”
“Right.”
He squeezes me tighter. We lie there like that for a while, just breathing. West’s hand warms the base of my spine.
“What do you want, baby?” he asks.
“Right now?”
“No. Down the road. Ten years, twenty years … what do you want?”
I hitch my leg up over his stomach and snuggle closer until I’ve got my face in his neck. I tell his throat, his pulse, “I want to be president.”
His heart beats, steady and strong. I can feel him, alive against my lips.
“I’ve never said that out loud before,” I admit. “Not since I was a little girl and Janelle told me women don’t get to be president, and that even if they did, I would never be the president because just how special did I think I was anyway? And she was right. I get it, how impossible it is. Even then, I got it. So I stopped saying it out loud, and I kind of stopped letting myself think that far ahead. I just think about, you know, law school, getting a job after, working my way into local office.”