by Nikki Roman
“Anything, Cai, surprise me!” I scream back louder than necessary. I go back to my interpretive dancing, and am just getting the hang of it again when Cai returns with two beers in his hands.
“This okay?” he asks, handing me my beer.
Yeah, I think to myself, if we were sitting on some porch up north, listening to the mosquitoes buzz, not in a club illuminated with lights and pulsing with music.
“Perrrfect,” I purr, putting the glass to my lips and sipping.
“Drink it all,” he says. “You’re gonna start to feel real high, real quick.”
I raise an eyebrow at him. What he said doesn’t make sense at all; one beer is not enough to make anyone feel higher than being on tip-toes. I figure he’s probably a little drunk himself, dismissing the comment, I tip the glass back, swallowing my drink, along with everything that seems wrong about Cai.
“You look familiar,” I say, pointing at him with my empty glass.
“Well, I’m pretty sure I would have remembered a face as beautiful as yours.”
“Touché,” I slur.
I’m surprised by how off-kilter my voice sounds, after only having a beer and a couple of shots. Lightweight. Trenton’s voice rings in my ears.
“That’s what I’m talking about,” Cai says holding my face in his hands. “You look so tasty I could devour you.”
I try to step away but collide with the backs of other dancers. “I should…” I begin to say. He puts a hand over my mouth and shushes me.
“Don’t speak, just dance and kiss. Feel my body like you feel the music.”
“I have a boyfriend,” I say when his hand leaves my mouth.
“So?” He grabs my waist and pulls me into him.
I am far too lightheaded and dizzy for someone who has drunk so little. It’s like I’m on something. Cai’s face begins to blur with all the others, and he’s just another body touching mine, controlling it without my permission.
“Stop,” I think I say but the words leave my mouth so slowly that I forget them as soon as they hit the air.
All my actions fuse together. One minute I’m pushing Cai off me and the next I’m on stage with Ella, a drunken chorus of men cheering me on as I grind against her.
“I couldn’t have been more wrong about you, Bailey,” Ella says. But I hear something’s wrong with you, Bailey.
“Ella,” I say, between a break in the music as the DJ changes shifts. “Cai,” I point to him sitting at one of the tables watching me with a grin, “won’t leave.”
“Then give him what he wants,” she says, grabbing my hand and taking me off stage, down the stairs, and straight back into Cai’s clutches. I look at her, confused; as if I’m a little girl being placed in the arms of a stranger to be babysat.
“You want me to pay for the drink?” I ask Cai.
“No,” he says. “How you feelin’? Tipsy?”
Ella is already back on stage. “What did you do to me?” I ask, a heavy tightness spreading throughout my chest. Oh my, God, I think, I’m in trouble.
“That’s what I was waitin’ for,” Cai says, smiling with one eye closed. “Shit, thought I’d been jipped by a zoomer. That’s authentic stuff right there baby—it wasn’t cheap.”
That’s why you bought us cheap drinks; I think to myself. You spent all your money on that zoomer…what is a zoomer?
“Zoom, zoom, baby,” I say.
Cai chuckles and nods his head. “Zoom, zoom.”
I stare at him but can’t think of what to say next. My body sways back and forth—I’m either going to pass out, or fall back into the rhythm of the song that’s playing.
Before I can realize what’s happening, Cai jerks my hand and pulls me to the restrooms located at the other end of the club. I don’t try to stop him. I’m about to upchuck and the bathroom is logistically the perfect place for me to be heading. Zoom, zoom.
“Men’s,” I say.
He drags me into the men’s restroom, and I run to one of the urinals to throw up. “Why did you take me here?” I ask wiping my mouth with the back of my hand.
He comes up behind me and, latching onto my hair, snaps my head back. In an instant, I am on the ground, struggling with him as he tries to flip me over.
“Nooo!” I scream.
“Shut up,” he says, “you want this.”
No, you do. What I want is to run away and find Spencer’s arms.
I stop struggling; having convinced myself it will hurt less if I don’t fight. I pretend I’m just a bag made of skin, containing bones, blood, and organs. No emotions. No resistance. Just compliance.
Hands rip my clothes off.
What happens next is a mis-mash of thoughts; they shoot at me as quick and painfully as bullets.
Cai squeezing my wrists so tight I feel my circulation cutting off. Trying to get up and being shoved back into tile. Crying for him to let go of me and his maniacal laughter. “It will be over soon.”
What will? The pain of your hands pinning down my wrists? The cold tile digging into my spine? His hands are jack hammers compared to Spencer’s, they are bruising and breaking and I cannot escape them as they tear at my bag of bones, blood, and organs.
•••
I wake up with my head underneath a stall door and my knees bent to my stomach. Cai is gone. He has left bright red finger marks on my wrists as a souvenir.
I sit up and feel my face with shaking hands- it’s wet with tears. I have not been knocked out long. My clothes are at my feet, tattered.
“Bailey?” someone says. “He’s gone. Did he hurt you?”
Ella.
I rise and leave my head behind on the floor, my mind too slow to catch up with the rest of my body. Ella gives me a hand and holds me steady.
“Did he…did you see him rape me?” I only remember my clothes coming off and fighting him.
Ella looks at me in horror. “I don’t know. I didn’t see. Do you want me to call the police?”
I shake my head at her.
“He drugged you…” she says in a strangled voice.
I push past her and stumble into the sea of vibrating people. I stand in the middle of the club feeling desolate and hollow.
“SPENCERRR!” I scream, half expecting the club to stop for me, the music to die down and the bodies to freeze. But everything is as it was before I screamed his name. Nothing is eye-catching, or alarming about a half-naked girl standing in the middle of a nightclub. I’m a clone of every girl here.
“SPENCERRR!” I try again, louder this time.
You could hear nothing above the music. The kind where you can’t hear yourself speak, let alone think, I had said earlier in the night.
But I can think. Clearly, so clearly that I might burst from the thoughts that fight to be front and center in my head. I press my hands to my temples, cursing my mind for being in such chaos.
“Bailey.”
I start because I think it’s Cai, but then I remember I never told him my name. Too intimate.
“Open your eyes.”
“I don’t want to,” I say, sucking back tears.
“It’s me, Spencer.”
My eyes fling open and I lock my jaw. Spencer’s chest is visibly pumping in and out, his hands balled into fists. “Let’s go,” he says furious. “What the fuck happened to your clothes, huh? Are you a stripper here?”
I follow him out of the club in a daze.
“I’m so disappointed in you,” he says.
The cool air snaps me right awake.
Spencer corners me against the brick siding of Indigo, his hands on my wrists cupping over the marks left from Cai. We can only see each other’s eyes in the darkness.
“So, how long have you been working here?” he asks, pupils dilated with rage.
I shake my head.
“Spencer,” I say, “I don’t know what happened. I was dancing and…”
“And what? Men were flinging dollars bills at you? Sweetie, that’s called stripping.”
“No,
” I say, more serious this time. “I think I was drugged.”
He backs off a little.
“What happened to your clothes?” he says slowly as he digests what I’ve said.
“He tore them off.”
“Who?”
“Cai,” I hiss.
“Where is he, Bailey? Is he in the club? I’ll find him.” His chest is pumping furiously again, head spinning around like a true owl. “Where did the bastard go?”
The back door of the club clicks open and, right on cue, Cai steps out with a superior look on his face, like he’s conquered the highest mountain. My eyes flicker to him and I don’t even have to say it—Spencer knows.
I slide down the wall.
Spencer puts his fists in front of his face like a boxer and bears down on Cai. “What’s your name?”
“Cai?” he says, like it’s a trick question.
Spencer decks him square in the nose, and blood squirts out, spraying the asphalt and himself. “That’s what I thought.”
Cai spins once, and then falls flat on his back like you see in the movies—it’s unreal. Spencer jumps on top of him, digging his elbow deep into his ribcage.
“Fuck off, dude!” Cai coughs, trying to get away. “Leave me alone.”
“Like you left my girlfriend alone when she told you to?”
Cai now looks in my direction and rolls his eyes, blood from his nose gushing over his lips and chin. “She told me she had a boyfriend.” He smiles with blood red teeth. “Okay, you want to go, pretty boy? Then let’s go. You’ll be on your ass choking blood before you can even blink.”
Cai digs his nails into Spencer’s upper arms and rolls with him until he is the one on top. Straddling him, Cai directs a punch at Spencer’s face. His lips are forced apart, exposing perfect white teeth as Cai slams his fist into his mouth over and over again.
Spencer doesn’t fight back. No emotions. No resistance. Just compliance. A bag of bones, blood, and organs.
“Stop!” I scream, even though I know that didn’t work before.
I slide back up the wall and break into a run. When I reach them, Spencer is curled up in a fetal position, and Cai’s eyes are wild as he repeatedly drives a fist into his stomach.
“Bailey, get away!” Spencer screams. “RUN!”
Last time somebody told me to run, they ended up in prison. I stay my ground.
Spencer manages to gain his feet.
Bloody fireworks paint his face. I can hold back no longer. “Touch my boyfriend one more fucking time,” I snarl at Cai, swinging at his throat and cutting off his air and voice at the same time, “AND I WILL MURDER YOU!”
Cai clutches his throat and chokes out threats, the punch giving Spencer just enough time to recuperate.
Cai steadies himself. He looks even more menacing now that I’ve taken a swing at him.
“Bailey, get in the truck!” Spencer yells, throwing his arm at me, but I freeze as Cai’s fist swings around in a wide arc and collides with the right side of my face, knocking me off my feet.
I cry out from the sudden change of gravity.
“Whore!” Cai says, spitting on me as he walks away.
Blood fills my mouth, a tang as familiar as orange juice. The right side of my head swells from the blow, and I push both my hands against it to stop the skin from rising.
Spencer, ignoring Cai’s threats to shank him, drops beside me. “I should have made you spend the night.”
I sit up and press his hand against my burning cheek. “No, don’t blame yourself,” I beg him. “Please don’t blame yourself.”
“You’re bleeding.” He thumbs a drop of blood at the corner of my mouth.
“So are you,” I say.
So are you—because of me. In prison, bleeding, abusive - because of me. This is different. Not the taste of blood in my mouth, but the wind blowing against my half-naked body, the orange glow of the parking lot and this dryness in my throat like I have swallowed cotton balls.
“He got you good,” Spencer says.
Got me good. April fools, I drugged you and ripped your clothes off. Beat the crap out of you and your boyfriend. Cai, you sly dog—you got me good.
“He did,” I agree. “But I’ll be okay…” My voice quivers at the end of my sentence and I give over in fresh tears.
“I’ll find that guy, someday,” Spencer says, “and I’ll kill him.” He wraps an arm below my shoulders and another under my knees, and lifts me off the ground.
I bury my face in his pecks—the only pecks I wish I had seen tonight.
“Come on,” he says, “let’s get you away from here.”
“Where are you taking me?” I ask. “Home?”
“Your home away from home. I’ll call your mom and let her know where you are.”
Nestled in his strong arms, he carries me to his truck and settles me in the backseat with a blanket he uses for moving furniture to and from Goodwill. I turn and face the seats in shame.
“I need to think. We can talk about this when we get to my house,” he says. “Okay?”
I nod my head.
Allowing Spencer to ruminate on tonight, I close my eyes and rest. The tires spitting out gravel and the radio playing nothing but commercials relaxes me. We’re the only ones on the road tonight and if anyone were to join us, I feel I would crumble under their presence, as if they could see right through Spencer’s truck at the monstrosity I’ve become. A molested, wounded girl.
•••
The sun is rising over the treetops when we pull into the driveway. Spencer cuts the engine and looks over the seats at me. I blink to show him I’m awake. “Can you walk?”
I blink again.
He gets out, opens the back driver side door, picks me up, and takes me into the house. He lays me on his bed and collapses on the carpet, worn thin from Cai’s beating. “What happened after he ripped your clothes off?”
I crawl to the edge of the bed and show him my wrists. “He held me down…and…” I can’t get the words out.
Spencer sits up and pushes the blanket off my shoulders. He looks me over tentatively, not missing so much as an inch of skin. His fingers drag across my collar bone and travel down to my breast over a bright purple bruise.
“Did he rape you?”
“I can’t remember. I don’t even know how I got this bruise,” I say. “He must have hit me…”
Spencer sits down next to me on the bed; draping the blanket over both of us, he puts his arm around my waist and leans his head against mine.
“You break my heart,” he says. “Not just break it, you splinter it, Bailey. It hurts so bad for you right now. I’m scared it might implode inside of me.”
I wrap my arms around him, pressing close. “I love you,” I whisper.
“I love you, too,” he says, his eyes polished by his tears. “I will make it okay again.”
I push his head to my chest. “Hear that? Feel that?” I say. “It’s your love keeping me alive.”
Chapter 13
Last night, if Clad had been the one at Indigo, he would have ripped Cai to shreds. Not that Spencer didn’t give it his all, but sometimes I feel shorthanded choosing Spencer over Clad. One could call it a choice anyway; however, it is really circumstances that have backed me into this decision.
Run, he said. Run from me and everything, run away from this place and live.
He gave me life by threatening to take it away and there are times I seriously wonder if that was a loving sacrifice or a sugar-coated death threat.
Also, Spencer’s arms call to me in a way that Clad’s never could. No, even if Clad weren’t in prison, I would choose Spencer over him because he is my Singer Boy, and now Clad is my Gun Boy. I would choose the gift of vocals over Clad’s gun any day.
•••
I fell asleep in Spencer’s clothes, in his bed, completely wrapped up in everything that is him. The drug, whatever it was—probably roofers—put me to sleep as it slowly left my system.
&
nbsp; I wake up, the right side of my face freezing and sore. I can’t open my eye because it’s swollen shut. I try to sit up, but someone pushes me back down. I try to pull my hands out from underneath Spencer’s heavy comforter but they are stuck. Not stuck—being held down. I feel the pain in my wrists from last night and gasp. Cai is on top of me again.
A forced cry rises from my throat. “Please stop!”
“It’s okay, Bailey, he’s gone. He isn’t going to hurt you again,” says Sarah.
I sit up and free my hands from the covers. An ice pack falls into my lap, I grab for it but Sarah takes my hands in hers. She sees the bruises before I can think to hide them.
“It’s okay,” she says, holding my hands. Crying softly, she turns her head away from me like I have halitosis or something.
“Sarah?” I say. “Are you all right?”
She doesn’t answer.
“Don’t cry. I know you’re crying. I’m okay, honest.”
“You’re so brave,” she says.
Just brave? What happened to being strong? Did Cai take that away from me, did he take away my strength when he had his way with me? When he was done, was my bravery all that could be salvaged?
“Spencer asked me to talk to you… I’m not good at this kind of thing, so I’m just going to come right out and say it…Spencer told me what happened last night,” Sarah says. “Did the boy—”
“Man,” I interrupt.
“Did he rape you? What can you remember?” she asks. “Spencer wants you to go to a doctor. He wants to be sure you’re okay.”
“Jesus,” I exhale. “I’m not going to a doctor, that would just be more traumatic.”
“Come to think of it, you have a point there,” she lee-ways with me. “But you have to try and remember - even if you don’t want to.”
“I think I was blacked out…” I close my eyes and try to dig up the memory that my subconscious has tried so hard to bury away.
“Ella,” I say, “Ella walked into the bathroom…” It starts to come to me, but I have to fight against the desire to suppress it.
“Let it come,” Sarah coaxes me.
“His hand was…” I put my head in my palms. “Forget it, I don’t remember.”
“Yes, you do! You have to tell me.”