“I know it’s not the same, but my point was rather that it doesn’t have to do with a hymen. Maybe you lose your virginity when you’ve had, as you called it, a sexual experience. And you haven’t had that. At least I assume you haven’t, considering you’re wondering if you’re still a virgin.”
I thought about it while staring at the landscape in front of me. Dad had bought the house before he met Mom, so I’d lived there my entire life. It was a big house in the middle of nowhere, and I’d always liked the house even if it sometimes had annoyed me that it was so far away from everything. Since I was taken—raped, I corrected myself—I’d liked that it was in the middle of nowhere. I could walk right out of the house and into silence. It was nice.
“I like that answer better than the one where they say virginity has to be given and can’t be taken,” I said. “I guess it’s silly thing to think about. I’m not one of those who thinks it’s important to be a virgin when I’m married, or anything. I wasn’t really looking for The One or to stay a virgin forever. I was kind of looking forward to getting rid of it, to be honest.”
“It’s not silly,” Roach said.
“I think the idea of virginity being important is kind of silly.”
“Maybe, but that’s not the same as saying it’s not important how you lose it, or that it’s important that you get to decide when it happens. So to you it’s an issue because you don’t like that you have a feeling that your choice might have been taken from you.”
That made sense, and it could be what had bothered me. The act, the rapes, was of course important, but however I felt (or had felt) about my virginity, it hurt to think it might have been taken from me. Because no matter what anyone said about it, it didn’t feel like I was a virgin, and I hadn’t had a say when I lost it.
“Do you think I’ll ever want to have sex?” I asked.
“Yes,” Roach answered without hesitation.
“Because I’ll get over it? Everyone does?”
“Not everyone, but I think you will.”
“Why?”
“Because you want to get better. You’re fighting for it.”
I looked at him where he was sitting on one of the loungers. His hands were clasped over his stomach, and his eyes were closed behind the sunglasses. His coat was slung over a chair close by, so he was only wearing a t-shirt. He had unusually few tattoos for a biker, but then he was young, so he was probably just getting started. I was pretty sure he’d trimmed his hair and beard recently because it looked shorter than I remembered it being just a few days earlier.
When he asked me questions about what I’d said, or when we were talking about everyday stuff while eating or something, he still made sure I looked at him. But when I brought it up like this, just kind of thinking out loud, he gave me free range. It was okay that I wasn’t looking at him, and I usually liked it, but right then I wished he was looking at me.
“I want to get better, and I want to want sex, but I’m scared of it,” I said. “I’m not sure I’m making sense.”
“You are. You’re scared of wanting sex, because it means you might have it, and you’re scared of the idea of you having sex.”
“I… think that’s what I mean,” I said, and thought about what he’d said. “Yeah, that’s what I mean.”
That was when he finally looked at me over the rim of his sunglasses. “It’s not the same. I know you know that, but I still want to say it. It’s not the same when you have actual sex.”
“Way I’ve heard it, it can be pretty great.”
“Yeah,” he laughed. “You’ll find out. One day it’ll feel right, and you’ll find out how awesome it is.”
I always hesitated before asking private questions, but I always ended up asking them anyway, and he always answered them as if it wasn’t a big deal. I hesitated this time too, but I still asked.
“Did it take you long? To like it, I mean.”
“How I grew up,” he started, then hesitated, and then shrugged and continued. “Sex wasn’t a big thing, not the way it is for girls like you. We used it in ways you don’t and never would have… Probably not, at least.”
“Used it?”
“Yeah, sometimes to get money, or just to be close to someone, get some comfort. So, no, it didn’t take me long, but I wasn’t as hung up on sex and virginity as you were.”
“You think I was hung up on sex?” I asked. Then I laughed before he could answer. “Yeah, I guess I was. We called it ‘having visited Europe,’” I remembered with another laugh.
“What?”
“It’s from The Bell Jar.”
“Jesus fucking christ, Princess, I have absolutely no fucking idea what you’re talking about now. Bell jar?”
“It’s a book by Silvia Plath,” I explained, and he still looked confused. “It… It’s about a young woman and her decent into depression and way out of it, basically. It takes place in the Fifties, and a lot of it is about how she’s… worried that she’ll end up like all other women. Very simplified here, but anyway, she’d been in love with a guy, and then finds out he’s not a virgin.”
“And that’s a bad thing?”
“Yeah, he has sort of made her think she’s so experienced and sexy while he’s pure. So she wants to lose her virginity.”
“To get even?” He looked really confused, and I couldn’t blame him. I wasn’t describing the plot or the point of the book very well.
“Maybe. I don’t think so. I think she just wants it over with, to not have to protect it. She says that it’s the most significant divider of people: those who have and those who haven’t had sex. She thinks this huge feeling of change will come over her once she has lost it. That it would be the way she would feel if she ever visited Europe.”
Roach started at me. “If those are the kind of books you read, I’m not surprised you obsessed about sex.”
“It’s not all the book is about.”
“If you say so,” he smiled.
The first time I read The Bell Jar I was fifteen, and I’d loved it and had re-read it loads of times. It was also the first book I read after being taken—raped—and I still loved it, but somehow it was a completely different book that time. I’d noticed completely different things, and the feminist theme, that had been so vital and important to me before, had almost completely disappeared behind Esther’s struggles with herself and her own sanity. The book, and how it was so different to me, was kind of what had made me realize I’d become someone completely different. It had scared me, but I’d still loved the book. If possible even more than before. At the time, my own mind had felt like an enemy, and I’d had a growing feeling that I was losing the war with myself. So reading about it had given me a strange outside perspective of myself… or something. If nothing else, it had made me believe that talking could make a difference. I just hadn’t had someone it felt like I could talk to then. Then I found Doctor Flores.
And now I had Roach, too.
“You should read it,” I said to Roach.
“Don’t think so.”
“Guess I still am in a way,” I said instead of trying to persuade him. “Obsessed about sex and… what happened. It’s sort of the same, since both are really hard to talk about. Why is it so easy for you to talk about it?”
“It’s in my past. I decided that I was going to leave the past behind me. Not forget about it, but keep it there. It happened, I can’t change it, but I’m not going to let it control me.”
“You decided? Just like that?”
“Hell no. There was nothing ‘just like that’ about it. It takes work, Princess, which I think you know. Or at least are starting to find out.”
“So to really put it behind me, I’m going to have to be able to talk about it as casually as you are?”
He smiled, but it was a sad smile. “It’s not casually, and no, you don’t have to talk about it all if you don’t want to. It’s not something I run around and tell people. I’m telling you because I think it might help
you. I don’t deny it if people ask me, but I tend to tell people it’s none of their business, because it’s not. Same goes for you. Not that it’s not your business what happened to me, but you can say that to people about what happened to you.”
I only had vague memories of the last couple of hours I’d been with those men. Initially, they’d made sure I was awake and more or less aware of what they were doing. When I passed out, they woke me up. Of course, I didn’t know what they did while I was passed out, but I’d had the impression that they stopped when I was gone, because there was no one… between my legs, in my mouth, or in my hands when I woke up. The second I awoke, they came back and crowded me again.
After a while, they stopped trying to keep me awake. No matter how much fun they had, they couldn’t keep going with the same enthusiasm, I assumed. The doctors had told me later that my brain was probably shutting down my body to spare me.
I did have a few memories of being found by the Marauders, though. I remembered Bull’s voice, and how I started to cry in relief. I remembered my Dad drying off my face, and how I’d felt a blanket covering me. I’d held on so hard to that damn blanket because it was the first time in hours I’d had some kind of privacy. It had made me feel like a human being again.
And I did remembered Roach being there, which meant he’d seen me, possibly before someone had the decency to cover me with the blanket.
Neither of us had ever mentioned it, that he’d been there, but it felt like this might be the right time.
Before I managed to bring it up, though, we were interrupted by Mom—who asked Roach if he wanted to have dinner with us—and the moment passed.
oOo
Roach
The previous night at The Booty Bank had been unusually eventful. Most customers knew who owned the club, and they didn’t try shit. A truck driver had apparently missed that information and got handsy with one of the girls in a way she hadn’t appreciated. When he was told to keep his fucking hands to himself, he hadn’t taken it too well. Roach had manage to keep his calm until the big fuck started yelling about how he’d paid good money and could do whatever the fuck he wanted. Roach had a huge problem with men who thought that money gave them the right to another person’s body in a way that caused the owner of said body discomfort.
It had gotten out of hand quickly, and the fat fuck had landed a punch on Roach before Roach had managed to take him out. Tired, and with a splitting headache, he’d stumbled into his dorm room once his shift was done, and fell asleep there.
The side of his face was still hurting when he woke up, but it wasn’t worse than what a few painkillers would take care of it. After a shower, he grabbed painkillers and went out to get some coffee to swallow them down. The caffeine would kick-start the effect.
Eliza was sitting by the bar, and she smiled when she saw him.
“Morning, Princess,” he said and sat down next to her. “What are you doing here?”
“Waiting for you. Sisco said you’d spent the night here.”
“Should’ve just banged on my door.” He poured himself a coffee and swallowed down the pills.
“I didn’t know if you had company.”
“Ah. I didn’t, but…” On occasion he did, and Eliza seemed to know what it was he didn’t say out loud.
“I know. I’ll just wait here,” she smiled. “What happened to your face?”
“A too eager customer who didn’t understand the concept of ‘no touching.’”
“It’s not a very hard concept to grasp.”
“One would think so.” He poured another cup. “Have you had breakfast?”
“Would you believe me if I said yes?” she asked, and her smile was growing.
Since that first time at the diner, she hadn’t tried to fake eat in front of him again. They never really talked about it, but they both knew he kept a slight eye on it even if he never said anything. He wasn’t about to make her eat, and he wasn’t nagging either, but at least she tried when she was with him, so he kept taking her to diners and cafés. So far she wasn’t complaining. He suspected it was easier for her to eat when she didn’t feel forced.
“Wanna have breakfast in Tucson?” he asked.
“What’s in Tucson?”
“It’s not Greenville,” he answered and leaned his head against the bar. “I just wanna get out of here for a while. It feels too small today.”
He didn’t mind Greenville, it was pretty okay, but sometimes the lack of people and high rises made his skin crawl, and he had a feeling this was one of those days. Tucson wasn’t New York, but at least it wasn’t Greenville, and those days it was the only requirement he had. To be somewhere not Greenville.
“Why not Phoenix?” she asked.
“I don’t know. I just felt like Tucson today.”
“Can we ride?”
He turned his head and looked at her. “You’d ride with me?”
“Yeah,” she smiled. “I’d ride with you. I like riding.”
“Get your helmet.”
She nodded and took off.
Roach wasn’t that experienced with having passengers, but he’d done it, and he knew Eliza was a very experienced passenger. The drive time was just over an hour. If he’d been alone he would’ve been able to shave off quite a lot of that, but he would take it easier with Eliza behind him.
Eliza met him outside by his bike.
“Did you tell Mel or Brick we’re leaving?”
“Yes.”
He started his bike, and she climbed up behind him. She definitely knew how to ride bitch, and even though he never forgot she was behind him, he soon picked up speed and enjoyed the ride. By the time they reached Tucson, the headache was gone, and both he and Eliza had silly smiles on their lips.
“I love riding,” she said as soon as he’d turned off the bike. “Mac was going to teach me to ride myself, but Mom threw a fit. I might do it now, though.”
“You’re eighteen. Why not?”
“I’m an eighteen-year-old with a job my dad gave me, and I live at home. The smart thing is to do what my parents tell me. At least until I graduate from high school.”
He laughed and got off the bike, too. “Yeah. Stay away from the bikes a while longer.”
She ordered a cheese omelet, and about two thirds of it was still on the plate when she pushed it to the side and had her second cup of coffee.
“The plan was that I’d go back to school this fall,” she said.
“But?” he asked and then pointed at the plate. “Are you eating that?”
She shook her head and shoved the plate in his direction.
“It’s a bit stressful. You know, when you say, ‘I’ll go back next year,’ a year sounds so long. But then it’s sneaking up on you, and you realize that it’s almost the end of the year.”
“You’re not sure if you can do it?”
“That. Or I just like this sitting on my ass and doing nothing too much. You know.” She shrugged, and then she started singing about being busy doing nothing.
“Rihanna?” he asked. Eliza really liked her, and Roach hadn’t been able to figure out why.
“It’s Ace Wilder.”
“Never heard of, and I don’t wanna know. You have a crappy taste in music.”
“Do not!”
“Anyway,” he said, determined to not get into another discussion about her shitty music taste. “You’re not just sitting on your ass. You’re getting better.”
“Honestly, the idea of sitting on my ass for yet another year is freaking me out, too.”
“That’s promising.”
“Yeah?”
“Definitely,” he said. “You feel the need to move on. Even if it’s not the dominant feeling right now, at least you got it in you. That’s a good thing.”
“If you say so.”
It could’ve sounded dismissive when she said it, but it didn’t. It sounded more as if she had mentally already moved on from the discussion they were having. She did that sometim
es. Usually when they touched upon the rapes, but at other times, too.
Just a few days earlier, on the deck at her parents’ house, she’d opened up, and he knew it would come now and then, when she felt secure and comfortable. The first time was the hardest. He’d just reflected on how it wasn’t likely that she’d do it when they were in public when it happened again. And it took him some time to reel back his thoughts to be able to understand what she was talking about. The night when they found her.
“Weren’t you?” she asked, but he’d missed the beginning of her question.
“What?” he asked.
“You were there when they found me.”
“Yes,” he said.
There was no fucking way he’d ever forget that sight or anything that had happened during the night that followed. The men who’d been in the house where they found Eliza had been gathered, gagged, and tied up—the ones still alive. They’d been taken to a warehouse, and Bull had gotten to work. While they’d chained them up around the walls, Bull had explained that the honor of killing them was Brick’s, but Brick had told him to prepare them. After taking off his clothes down to his underwear and putting on an overall, Bull had gone to work. Halfway in, he’d gotten a call. The only thing he’d said was ‘I understand,’ and then he kept going. For a while after that, Roach had been worried Bull would accidentally kill one or several of the men, but he hadn’t. And then, sometime around dawn, Brick had arrived. Roach had been relieved that it was about to end, but instead of killing them, Brick had placed a chair at the center of the room, lit a smoke, and simply sat there and watched them die. Amazingly, the look on Brick’s face had actually been the scariest thing of the whole night.
“When you saw me then, did you think… I could come back? I mean, have you seen it… like that?”
“Yes I’ve seen it like that, and… I’m not sure I thought about it right then. It was more about having found you.” He stopped and looked at her. “Are you sure you want to hear this?”
She nodded.
“Then you keep looking at me. I need to see you to know how you’re reacting, okay?”
Another nod, and she kept her eyes on his.
Equilibrium: A Marauders Interlude Page 7