by Kristen Mae
There is a crack of thunder from outside, and suddenly the walkie-talkie’s connection is severed, leaving only the oppressive static of raindrops on glass. “Yes?”
“Are you hearing a word I’m saying?” She’s staring at me, furrowing her brow.
“I’m sorry, I…” I sit very still, embarrassed that I’ve been caught with my mind wandering. I’m going crazy.
“Malory, my dear, is everything okay? At first I was worried that you were simply having trouble adjusting to college life, but we are in November now, and I’m afraid you seem to be…well, it seems to me that you might be depressed.”
Something inside me tumbles a little, such a real, powerful shift that my heart seems all of a sudden too heavy to beat. “I don’t know,” I say. “I came here with such conviction, with such determination to…to succeed.” I try to recall that feeling, that tenacity I used to be so sure about, but it’s inaccessible right now. I don’t know where it went.
“Did something change? Are you having trouble with your classes? Or personal trouble of some sort?”
I think of the bruises on my thighs where Garrett grabbed and twisted my skin last night, how, when I cried out in pain, he clutched even harder. He made me cry, but then he toyed with me for hours, brought me to the edge of orgasm again and again and again, only finally letting me have it early in the morning. I’d screamed with such an outpouring of relief and ecstasy that I probably woke the neighbors.
“No,” I say. “Classes are going okay, and I have a nice group of friends.”
I’m not your boyfriend, and you’re fucking me.
She rubs her forehead with her gnarled hands. “Fine. I can’t seem to get through to you. When you decide you want to talk to someone, please do…there are counseling services on campus.”
I laugh. I know it’s inappropriate, but I just can’t help myself. Counseling services, oh please, as if my life is even remotely fixable. That’s hilarious.
Yarvik is staring at me with wide eyes like she thinks I’m crazy—a logical assumption.
“Sorry,” I tell her. “I’m just…it really is just an adjustment thing. Homesickness, I think. I’ll be fine.” I straighten up in my chair and shake out my arms, push my hair away from my face, and lift my chin.
I can act normal.
* * *
I spend all my spare time with Garrett, and even some time that isn’t really spare. Sometimes I study on the couch next to him, but he doesn’t seem to like it when my head is in a book; he always finds a way to distract me. It makes me feel wanted, though, so I don’t fight him. I never fight him.
After a couple of nights, though, he sends me home in the evening, says he needs to sleep alone. I seek my old study partner, but Rome’s not around—probably off being someone else’s loyal, comforting friend. I try not to let this bother me.
When I return to my room, Daphne is surprised to see me: “Sleeping in your own bed tonight, huh? You and Garrett doing okay?” I don’t even try to explain it to her, the way he sometimes needs his space. She doesn’t ask, either; but later, she wakes me up in the middle of the night climbing into bed with me. I like having her there, her brittle body lying close to mine, offering me a connection I didn’t know I craved. But the next time Garrett sends me home, while she’s curled around my back like a kitten, I feel her mouth against my neck, her lips forming a kiss, and I whisper, “Oh, Daphne, not me, not me.” She begins to cry, pulls away from me as if to leave, but I grab her and hug her arm to my chest while she cries.
“It’s impossible,” she says. “I can’t live this way.”
“Yes you can,” I whisper into the dark. “Just not with me.”
She cries, sad little hiccupping sobs, and I say, “Is it too much, lying with me like this?”
She doesn’t answer me, but she chokes her tears into submission and hugs me tighter, and we sleep that way, a pair of cold, hard spoons, each seeking warmth from one who has none to offer.
* * *
Later that week I get my quiz back in Twentieth-Century Europe. The 78 percent is there in bright red, circled, garish, accusing. My ears flush with the same embarrassed heat. I flash my paper at Rome, and he grimaces guiltily, and yes, we did miss that last study session together before the quiz, but it’s not his fault I’m stupid. After class, I tell him so, that I’m stupid, and he shakes his head in exasperation: “You’re not stupid, Malory.”
In studio class, Bethany plays the prelude to Bach’s fourth suite. Her intonation is lovely, right in the center of the pitch, but she spends too much time languishing on the first note of each triad and it annoys me the way she just sits on that sad, dark note and won’t move forward. Listening to her, wishing she’d move on, makes my palms sweat. I bend my neck from side to side trying to get it to pop.
Then it’s my turn. I’m performing the Elgar today, the piece I’ll be using for my Aspen audition in January. I settle my cello’s endpin into the little hole in the carpet that all the cellists before me have carved out, and I begin the slow, haunting intro, digging into the notes, trying to feel them. But my hands are shaking again. Dirty little slut, says a voice in my mind.
You play very well, for someone who doesn’t have very much talent.
Midway through a phrase, I have to stop and peer out at the faces before me. What do they see when they look at me? Am I even a cellist at all?
…couldn’t have been more seductive if you had stripped your clothes and spread your legs for them.
What am I?
Yarvik is getting up from her seat, coming toward me. “Malory? Are you well? You’re very pale.”
Sweat pours down my back, sticking my shirt to my skin. My armpits are soaked. Even my scalp is burning up, and now I’m having trouble breathing. My airway’s the width of a straw.
“I’m…” But I have to try again because my voice has gone froggy. “I think I’m sick.”
Yarvik nods, and I rise unsteadily. I can see from Bethany’s face that she is worried, that she knows I’m not really sick, not physically, anyway. I avoid her eyes while I pack up my cello and leave.
On my way out of the room, I bang into the doorjamb because I’m so shaky and stiff that I cannot walk straight.
* * *
I try to play downtown that night, but I’ve come down with a headache so bad that I’ve lost my peripheral vision. I give up and drive home with only twenty-five dollars in my pocket. At least it’s enough to stop by the pharmacy for some Excedrin because I simply cannot stand another minute of this pounding in my head. Maybe I really am coming down with something. My glands seem swollen, so I add Nyquil to my basket too, anxious to get back to my dorm and go to bed.
On Friday the virus hits me head-on. My glands are enormous and aching, my ears hurt, and I’m so congested I can’t breathe. I don’t remember the last time I was so sick. Garrett messages me, expecting me to come over that night, and I am too sick to feel nervous when I tell him I can’t. I pull the blinds in my room closed and chug Nyquil so I can sleep.
I sweat through my sheets and then the extra set so fast that I end up in the laundry room early Saturday morning, hunched over the back of a chair waiting for my linens to wash. I can hardly lift my head, but I can’t bear the thought of sleeping on those nasty, germ-infested sheets. I need to smell something that doesn’t reek of illness.
Sometime Saturday afternoon I’m roused from a Nyquil-muddled sleep by the sound of knocking. I sit up, blinking, the light from outside only slightly less painful to my eyes than it was yesterday. I shuffle to the door and open it a crack.
“Rome?”
“Holy fuck, you look like ass.”
I raise an eyebrow at him.
“Um, I brought these for you.” He holds out a plastic Walgreens bag: a bottle of Nyquil, Theraflu, Vicks VapoRub, and a tube of dissolvable vitamin C tablets.
“Whoa, thanks. I just ran out of Nyquil like an hour ago. How’d you know?” I’m so congested I sound like the world’s bigge
st nerd.
He shrugs. “I wasn’t sure you had any at all. Anyway, I’m on my way out for the night. Just wanted to bring that by.”
“Thank you, Rome. This is awesome.” But I’m wondering where he’s going, who he’s going with.
“Don’t mention it.” He gives me a warm smile. “Feel better, okay?”
I close the door slowly, shaking my head. I do not deserve how nice he is to me. But I chug some more Nyquil, smear a glob of Vicks all over my chest and neck, and am asleep again within minutes.
Daphne stays out Friday and Saturday night—trying to avoid getting sick, I’m sure—and by Sunday morning, though still weak, I’m at least awake and moving. I take a long, hot shower, then come back and sit on my bed to watch Daphne’s TV while I force myself to eat some cheese and crackers. It’s the first time I’ve had anything solid since Thursday because I haven’t been able to swallow. It feels good to finally be clean. I was starting to be able to smell myself.
I hear a knock at the door—Rome again, probably. He texted earlier to ask how I was doing, and I’m sure he wants to check on me even though I ordered him to keep his distance.
I swing the door wide, smiling, but it’s not Rome standing in the hallway.
It’s Garrett.
Chapter Twenty-Three
I haven’t seen him since Wednesday. Thank god I at least took a shower. Still, I shrink a little, as if hunching my shoulders will hide me from him—he’ll think I’m ugly like this, all swollen with sickness. I wipe at my nose in case there’s runaway snot I’m not aware of.
If he is disgusted by my sickly appearance, he doesn’t show it. He holds out a covered Tupperware bowl. “I brought you some soup.”
“Thank you,” I say, moving to the side and ushering him in. “I’m still…I mean, you’re not worried about germs?” I can’t believe he’s here. This is…sweet. He brought me soup. “How did you know which room was mine?”
“I ran into Daphne yesterday and told her I wanted to bring by some food.” He smiles, and his eyes are kind and tinged with…worry? About me? This can’t be the same guy who was so furious at me just last weekend.
I shut the door behind him, and he sits on the edge of my unmade bed. My cheese and crackers are still sitting lamely on my desk, half-eaten. The soup looks way better. “Can I eat it now?” I ask.
“Please.” He looks around the room, as if he’s trying to learn about me from my décor choices. There isn’t enough on my side to tell a person much though, unless you consider a lack of possessions telling. I suppose it is. My shoulders slump.
Garrett scoots back on my bed until he’s leaning against the beige cinder block wall. “Go ahead and eat, Malory. Mind if I flip channels?”
“Not at all.” My voice sounds stuffy and nasal. I can’t believe he wants to hang out with me when I’m like this. I touch my nose again, sure there must be a rogue drip, but feel only dry skin, cracked and raw from tissue abuse.
The soup is still warm, and it has a comforting smell that reaches me even through my stuffed-up head, like the Campbell’s I ate as a kid but with more herbs. Homemade. As if Garrett would give me soup from a can. I grab a spoon from the cutlery tray on top of the mini fridge and sit down at my desk to eat.
It’s delicious, unsurprisingly, but I can only eat half the bowl because my stomach is too small after days of not eating. I turn in my chair to face Garrett. “Thank you so much. That was incredibly thoughtful.” He’s so relaxed, leaning against the wall like he is perfectly comfortable here with me, like this was all meant to be, like we’re a real couple, and I think again how much he looks like Superman with his thick dark hair, those impossible blue eyes. I want to touch him, but I don’t want to get him sick.
He pats the bed beside him. “Come sit by me.”
“You sure?” I scrunch my nose. “I don’t want to pass my germs to you.”
“You can sit by me without breathing on me,” he says.
I laugh nervously and promise not to breathe in his direction.
He’s turned the TV to an old movie, and there’s some bucktoothed chubby kid lifting his shirt and jiggling his pasty stomach fat. By the pissed-off look on his face, I figure he’s doing it against his will, like he’s been bullied into it. I feel my forehead wrinkle. “What the fuck is that kid doing?” I climb over Garrett’s outstretched legs and sit on the other side of him, laying my head on his chest.
“You’ve never seen Goonies?”
“Um…no?”
“It’s a classic. You’re missing out.”
I snuggle down further against Garrett’s chest, warmed from the soup and languid from my flu, but I’m only there for a minute before I have to reach across him for a roll of toilet paper to blow my nose. He doesn’t react at all.
“You’re pretty brave coming near me when I’m sick like this,” I tell him.
“No big deal.”
I toss my tissue in the trash and lay my head on his chest again. He’s stroking my hair, and as the kids in the movie argue about something or other, my eyelids become heavy. I can’t believe how nice he’s being, how he’s caring for me. It’s like that day with the manatees when he knew exactly what I needed.
“Hey, Malory,” Garrett says, nudging me. “You liked the soup, right?”
“It was perfect,” I say, and it was. It’s been years since someone took care of me when I was sick. I nuzzle my cheek against him.
“I’d love for you to give me a little thank you gift.”
I raise my head a little to look at him. “Thank-you gift?”
He remains still, but his eyes flick downward, just for a microsecond, to his zipper—and it finally registers that he’s asking for a blow job. Before I can think to stop myself, the words come tumbling snippily out of my mouth: “I didn’t know there were strings attached.”
He stiffens. “No strings.” His voice is neutral. “Just a little thank you.”
“I mean…but I’m sick.” My heart accelerates. Is he fucking serious? I push up to sitting and give him an incredulous look.
“It’s a small thing, Malory.”
His smile is easy, lopsided, but my chest is on fire. I sit back a little more. “Garrett, I’m so congested I can hardly breathe.” I thought my voice would have been enough of a clue for him. My pulse throbs in my ears, hot and defensive.
He fixes his eyes on the TV. The kids are riding their bikes. I sit staring at him for a while, waiting for him to relax, waiting for him to acknowledge that it isn’t fair to expect this of me, but he is utterly still, does not look at me once. A muscle twitches in his jaw. My nose is running again, so I tear off more toilet paper to blow it, and still he does not move. I reach over him to toss the used tissue in the trash beside the bed. Still nothing.
Understanding settles like an anchor in my mind: Garrett didn’t come here so he could cheer me up with some soup. He came here to get his dick sucked. And I, fucking naïve idiot that I am, fell for it. My head feels like it’s stuffed with Silly Putty, I can’t breathe, and now I’ve got to deal with this fucker wanting me to choke myself on his dick. Fuck him. For the first time, I am truly angry with Garrett and I don’t care if he knows. “Do you honestly think it’s fair to ask me to do that?” I say, and suddenly I’m almost shouting: “Listen to my voice, how congested I am. This isn’t a joke, this isn’t—”
His fist is coming at me now, too fast for me to duck, there is no way around this—
His knuckles hit the cinder block behind me with unbelievable force. I’m frozen in place, strung up with fear, afraid that I’m next, afraid that he’s broken his knuckles. Has he hurt himself? I want to check his hand, wrap it in bandages, get him ice. Why do I care?
He’s breathing through gritted teeth, seething wetly, his face gone red with fury or pain or both.
I look down at his hand—at his bloody knuckles. “Garrett, I—”
He grabs me by the throat and shoves me into the wall. The back of my skull cracks against the ci
nder block, sending lightning bolts of pain into my already-throbbing head. His fingers are tight around my neck, constricting my airway. Please. I’m begging, silently begging him to have some compassion for me, to not hurt me anymore. I hate that even with his eyes narrowed and his lip curled in anger, he is beautiful. I truly do not deserve to be with someone so beautiful. Tears run heated lines down my cheeks.
His fingers tighten. “Can’t you just suck my fucking dick?”
Something inside me ruptures, breaks apart a little, because who am I now, what am I but a girl who has to decide whether to give a blow job or…or what? What will he do to me if I don’t? I want to vomit the soup I’ve just eaten—it sits in my belly like a poison. Everything from this beautiful man is a poison.
“Okay,” I whisper, and he releases me, and right away I’m unzipping his pants and pulling him free, his penis already hard, as if terrifying me excites him. But that is exactly the case: terrifying me, belittling me, turning me into a shell of myself, that is what gets him off.
And so, though I can barely breathe, I bend over his lap, take him in my mouth and work him, somehow managing to gasp air through the little cracks at the edges of my lips. Once I need to stop to blow my nose, but he waits patiently, smirking, maybe enjoying how difficult it is for me all the more since I defied him. His injured hand is curled in my hair, dripping warm blood onto my scalp, my temples, my cheeks. I think some of it might even have trickled into my mouth, but I ignore the coppery taste, just move up and down on him, faster and faster, praying he’ll come quick so I can breathe again, so he will just fucking leave. When he finally spews in my mouth, it’s endless and disgusting, and as his fingers tighten around my hair, his hips and legs tensing beneath me, I force myself to swallow, breathe, swallow, breathe.
* * *
Monday morning. Professor Yarvik is sitting across from me, tightening her bow, her cello between her legs even though her knotted hands cannot skitter up and down the fingerboard as they once did. She doesn’t normally bring her cello out for lessons. If she needs to demonstrate a hand position, she borrows mine.