by Eden Butler
We’d managed to get undressed, awkwardly holding on to each other as we fumbled to the bed. And when I hovered above her and all that straight, red hair fanned out around her, I thought maybe, once in my life, I’d have a perfect moment. It was something that had never happened for me, something I’d prayed for. “Blessings delayed are not blessing denied,” Bobby would always say, but I didn’t think God cared for my prayers or that the raging hormones in my body edged me toward a sin I wouldn’t want to ever be forgiven for.
“Ransom?” she’d asked, stopping me with her hands on my shoulders and in my mind I worried that she’d changed her mind, or if, like so many times before, Emily had once again gotten scared of what we both professed to want.
Arms trembling as I paused over her, my hips on top of hers, my dick covered in a condom, ready to take what I believed was mine, I looked down at her, expecting that her fear had won out again.
It hadn’t.
Those small fingers moved from my shoulders, to my neck, then to back of my messed hair and Emily touched my face, fingertips on my mouth, the cleft in my chin as though she needed a moment to see me and think about nothing but the two of us right there in that moment. “You’re getting something no one else in the world will ever have. I’m giving that to you because I love you.”
“Em…God.”
My heart broke a little bit then, in the best possible way. I’d never quit loving her, wanting her. Not ever. From that night until the last time I touched her, I’d never stop. If she was with me, near me, I’d touch her, hold her, let the love that I had felt for her from the day I met her grow stronger, fiercer inside my chest. She held on tight as I drove inside her body, that safe, warm, wet part of her wrapping around me, clenching, holding me until I thought I couldn’t stand the grip, until I felt my heart swelling up.
At that moment, I could have pried open my chest, shown her what she’d given me, made her promise to never stop feeding it, begged her to make it stronger with just a flash of her smile, or the subtle, sweet look in her eyes that answered “yes” to a question I never had to ask.
I moved past her resistance, breaking the hymen until I was deep, so deep inside Emily that I could not have told you where our bodies met. And then, just there, with my beautiful girl wrapped so securely around me, with her clutching my arms, gasping against my chest I found my one, perfect moment.
“I love you, Em,” I’d told her and repeated it twice before we fell onto the mattress, still wrapped together in that thick quilt and each other.
No, I hadn’t forgotten a thing.
Liar.
That voice was vicious again, coming from the space that still held the husk of my heart. Now it was cold, cobwebbed by shame, by time, a chrysalis that would never be shed. There would be no wings, no stretch of rebirth or potential to grow stronger.
You have forgotten. You forgot today.
Maybe I had. Rolling to my back, I rested my wrist on my forehead and looked up at the ceiling. There was a thin layer of dust on my fan and in the corner near the window, an old watermark carried the shape of a lightning bolt. The laughter outside my room had gone quiet, replaced by the unmistakable slap of skin against skin and the creak of Trent’s bed.
They have what you can’t. Not ever.
She was right. I didn’t deserve what Emily had given me that night. I didn’t deserve to be the one who’d taken her innocence from her and never given anything back but heartache. I didn’t deserve for Aly, who never smiled at anyone, to smile only for me, to kiss me with everything she had.
She doesn’t know you. She never will.
She might. One day, if I ever stopped listening to that damn voice. I scrubbed my hands over my face, trying to ignore the sound, that distant phantom voice that hated me, that wanted me to hate myself. It was the same one that cursed, raged when I thought about Aly’s skin and the texture of her hair on my fingers. One of her eyes was a fraction smaller than the other and her nose was almost too long. She was imperfect, flawed, and I’d been fascinated by the sight of her, all those sensations she worked inside me that day on the piano bench and nearly every day since.
I closed my eyes, numbing myself to the shrieks inside my head, feeling stupid and weak for the guilt, for the shame of my memories. For the first time, I felt bad recalling that night with Emily. Why? I had no idea. I felt worse for the dance I’d get. I felt all these things because I’d kissed Aly twice. And that, more than anything, had the voice growing, the words harsher, crueler, more punishing.
And then came the final memory, the images of that last day: Emily screaming at me as I laughed, her clutching that charm around her white fingers as I gunned the boat’s engine, pushing it faster and faster. Me being too caught up in her reaction, in the humor I found in her worry to realize she was truly terrified. Then, the water, the lake and the sobering fear of what I’d done. To her, to my girl, to my love. To Emily, who I promised I would never hurt.
LIAR!
I shot up in bed, slamming my feet to the floor when those images replayed in my shackled mind over and over, the screaming, the shouts and I closed my eyes, feeling weak, impotent, pathetic.
“Ransom?” I heard, looking between my fingers at Krystal Myers, one of Trent’s regulars, as she peeked in from the door.
Do it. It’s what you deserve. Do it!
I stood, let the sheet fall from my waist, naked except for my boxers, and didn’t care that Krystal’s eyes that had likely seen many stripped men, rushed over my skin like liquid. I didn’t care who she was or what was thinking.
I just didn’t care anymore.
She didn’t try to leave when I pulled her into my room. “We heard you, um, moaning. You okay, sugar?”
She didn’t get an answer, yet made no attempt to stop me or even talk to me again until I had her on my bed. “What are you doing?” she muttered, but it was all for show. She knew. That much was obvious from that poorly disguised grin and the dent of her bottom lip as she bit it.
“I…” Nausea came to me then, clotting my throat until I cleared it away. “I can make you feel good.”
Krystal wore a smile that was stupid and giddy, like a kid being told they could have another scoop of ice cream. She lay back, slipped her thong off, then lifted her arms above her head. I didn’t touch her, didn’t pay much attention to her at all.
My hands would not stop shaking and that voice, though lower, still came at me fierce and badgering, telling me to touch her, demanding that I service this girl.
“Touch me,” Krystal said and I got the feeling it was a line she used, something she said that some guys would find hot. She sounded too practiced, too used to getting the reaction she wanted.
She tilted her head when I got to my knees in front of her, but kept my hands at my side.
I like you, I heard.
That didn’t come from Krystal.
It didn’t come from the phantom voice, either, and as Krystal reached for my wrist, pulling me towards her, it wasn’t her that I imagined lay beneath me.
Krystal’s skin wasn’t warm and when she moved her hips off the bed, thrust herself at me, for the first time ever, I wasn’t remotely eager to service her or anyone.
I didn’t want to make her feel good, no matter how badly I needed to atone for my sins.
I love your family.
“Dammit.” My curse burned in the air.
“What’s wrong, baby?” Krystal tried to pull me back to her when I rose, her sharp, long fingernails scraping down my back, making me jerk at the sensation. But I broke away and stepped back, running my fingers through my hair. “You never let anyone make you feel good, Ransom.” She slid forward on her knees and tried slipping her hand down the front of my boxers, but I stopped her with my fingers on her wrist. She looked up at me with her best come-hither eyes. “I can do that for you.”
I like you and Do it battled in my brain. One voice was soft, sweet. The other grating and mean.
“No,” I
told Krystal, turning around with my hand still on her. “I’m good.”
“But, baby, you’re so tense.”
“I’m sorry. You need to leave.” She stepped off the bed, but instead of gathering her clothes, she tried to sidle up to me. My temper surged and I pointed at the door, raising my voice with a boom I’d only heard my father manage. “Now. Get the fuck out of here.”
She walked backward, watching me like she thought I’d finally lost it completely and she didn’t want to be patient zero when my Hale temper exploded. When I fell to my bed, even though the voices were still ticking off conflicting memories, the mix of confusion gave way to relief, lulling me, finally, to sleep.
14
July, 2015
Leann used the infrequent lessons and smaller classes of summertime as an excuse to repaint the studio. Freed from a packed dance schedule, I worked longer at the diner, sometimes nearly ten or twelve hour shifts, and when the bussing of tables and tolerating drunk assholes was done, I’d return to my apartment bone tired but eager to help Leann with what I could.
It was a Sunday afternoon, the kind of hot summer day where the heat from the paved parking lot and the quiet road in front of the building came off in waves, blurring the cars passing beyond the intersection. The heat was barely tolerable, the humidity indecent even as sundown neared. I’d stopped my solitary painting on the front entrance molding to grab a bottle of water from the kitchenette inside, distracted by the sweat pooling at the center of my back and the voices on the other side of the window. Both were deep, and male; one placating, the other, at first flippant, but then as that voice rose, anger surfaced in a loud, cursing clip.
“Come on, man, it’s one night. One night out of the dozens you spend on your sofa flipping through bad 80’s movies and ESPN. She won’t go with me otherwise.”
I could make out Tristian’s pleading tone, and I thought about walking away. I had no business eavesdropping on that argument, but the second voice had me stopping, leaning against the counter in front of the window. Ransom.
“Why the fuck am I repeating myself, Tristian? I said no and I mean that shit. I’m not interested.” And he wasn’t, not then, not since then, as far as I knew. Ransom was starting college soon and much of his summer had been eaten away with football practice and camps that Keira had complained about more than once when she came to visit Leann, feeling that they kept the men in her life away far too long.
“It’s one damn night. One.”
Ransom’s curse was so quiet I couldn’t hear what he said and then came the rumble of garbage cans being kicked, or possibly punched. I straightened, not even aware of how tightly I was gripping the water bottle.
“Why not?” Tristian asked, his voice softer now, the tone missing that whine. “Man, you can’t…it can’t be like this forever.”
“Yeah, it can.” Ransom voice cracked, a small fracture in the careful composure that always made him seem cool and aloof. “I wouldn’t be good for anyone, brah. Not some girl who I might like or even your girl’s sister who just doesn’t want to be a third wheel.”
Damn. It had seemed like he was getting stronger. Now I realized that the laughs, the jokes he told Tristian when they worked around the studio, the friendly attitude he sometimes gave off had all been a mask he wore to keep others from worrying about him. He did it for his family, and maybe to avoid pity from people who had moved on, who had forgotten that he had lost something excruciatingly precious.
“Ransom, you can’t live like this.”
“Who the hell said I’m living?”
I closed my eyes then, almost able to feel the weight of his words as they crippled him. What kind of girl would keep such a grip on Ransom? And what kind of woman could help him break free from that hold?
Present
We had kept to our agreement over the next week. Ransom was very welcoming, a little too cordial and platonic during our practices and the one voice lesson at the lake house. I didn’t like it, had a hell of a time fighting the itching need to touch him, to give him a smile or kiss him soundly anytime we were alone.
I didn’t like it, but I hadn’t acted on a single impulse. If he could be my friend—despite how often I caught him staring at me while I listened to Leann’s instruction or watched Kona and Keira flirting—then I could swing it too.
This night would be our last Kizomba practice. With the approach of November, the football season was kicking into high gear and the coaches on his team were expecting more from their players. Since that day in his car, we hadn’t practiced much at all and though I’d seen him at his parents’ house, there had been very little time for us to be alone. Koa had taken to sitting between us during lunches and wouldn’t leave us in peace when we sat in front of the piano to practice my audition song.
Now Ransom was nearly twenty minutes late for our last rehearsal. I wanted to text him and find out what was going on, but I felt that would come across as too needy (and it probably was). When another ten minutes passed and Leann had given up on him to return to her office, I decided to head for my apartment, disappointed, but eager for a nap before my shift at the diner.
It was only when I left through the back entrance and headed for the stairs that I spotted Ransom in the parking lot, sitting alone in his Mustang with his head lowered onto the steering wheel.
We were friends, right? Friends gave you shit for standing them up and this was twice he’d flaked on me. Friends offered a hand when you looked like you were ready to hit something. Just like Ransom did then.
The engine was running and from the muted volume of the radio, I heard Breaking Benjamin’s “Ashes of Eden” pulsing from his speakers. A few taps on his window and Ransom pulled his head up in a jerk, fists still tight on the steering wheel.
“What are you doing?”
Ransom’s long blink was slow, like he was coming out of a stupor, and he stared at me for a few seconds as I tilted my head, waiting for an answer. “You’re late,” I finally said when he rolled the window down.
“I’m sorry. I just…”
I reached for the door handle, and he suddenly jerked up straight, seeming to fumble for the latch. “No don’t…” he managed to get out, but it was too late to stop.
I opened the door and dozens, hundreds of rose petals fell out of the car and fluttered onto the ground.
“What’s all this?”
He was on autopilot, I was sure of it, letting me pull him from the car, standing blankly as I brushed back the petals that covered his floor and seats. There were sharp, broken stems with sharp thorns around the car’s console and on the dash.
Ransom’s fingers had been pricked and were bleeding, with small cuts crisscrossed around his knuckles. I didn’t think, just grabbed his big hands to examine the marks more closely, not concerned that this was the first time I’d touched him without the pretense of a lesson since I’d danced for him at Summerland’s.
“It’s her birthday.”
My gaze sliced up and I tightened my grip on his hands so that it was no longer tender. He looked completely lost, worse than I’d ever seen him before, and any irritation about a missed lesson completely evaporated, replaced by something fierce, some consuming desire to take care of him, to make that washed out, pale flush on his face disappear.
What could I say? The roses, that defeated, weary expression could not be eased by something as simple as “I’m sorry” or “Do you want to talk about it?” Of course he didn’t. He never did, and though we were friends, or so I thought, it was clear that Ransom didn’t share his secrets with anyone.
Behind us, the back entrance swung open and Leann’s voice echoed across the parking lot as she yammered to someone on her phone. She couldn’t see us, not with the dumpster blocking Ransom’s car, but her appearance seemed to waken Ransom from his trance and he pulled his had from mine.
“I shouldn’t have come here. Leann sees the damn roses and she’ll bother my folks. Mom’s already worn out…”
Ransom didn’t ask where I was taking him. He followed me like a child, like he was so lost that he had no idea where to turn.
A brief dash up the stairs and Ransom was in my apartment, slipping his hands in his pockets as he looked around my place. No one but Leann and some of my friends from the studio had ever been in my tiny apartment. Ransom filled up the space so completely, I had to step back and let him pace around, his movements a little slow and listless, before he finally crashed onto my sofa.
My place was nice, small but comfortable, though it wasn’t really more than a couple of converted storage rooms. I had a small kitchenette with a mini fridge and stovetop and there was a tiny bathroom at the back.
My style was a little eccentric—vintage because I could only afford thrift store and garage sale finds, and hand-me-downs from Leann that I knew she’d bought for me and lied about using.
The sofa was really only a loveseat, and was plush but threadbare, covered in an olive cable knit throw Leann had given me for Christmas the year before. It matched the sporadic pops of green and turquoise around the living room and on my neatly made bed at the back of the loft. Ransom took up most of the seating area on the sofa and held his head in his hands as he looked down at the whitewashed hardwood floors.
“Who did this?” I asked him, coming closer to the sofa with my knee leaning against the plank wood coffee table.
“It doesn’t matter.”
Those large hands trembling, the defeated, exhausted tone of his voice, were almost too hard to bear. I’d never seen him like this up close—broken, wounded in a way that I worried couldn’t be healed.
When I came to my knees in front of him, Ransom didn’t move. “Hey,” I said, pulling his face up to look at me. “Talk to me. How can I help?”