"What about you? Aren't you supposed to be working?" I tease.
"I am. Just adding the final touches to the Maroon show piece." Ah, I love thinking about that night, and soon I will get to see it in my favorite magazine. And by my favorite columnist, who just so happens to be my…well, not sure what to call us yet.
"What are you doing after work?"
I tell him, and he lets out a soft laugh. "Too bad, I'm not going to be there, huh? How will you ever get through it?"
"I don't know, Ben."
A moan invades my ear. "I love it when you say my name." He says as his accent rolls and deepens, when he is aroused, which in turn turns me on.
"Ben."
"Tess, stop or I'll come in and drag you to the back room."
"Hey, I've got to get back to work before my boss fires me for being late coming back from break. Rather than be fired for screwing in the stockroom." I snort.
He full-on laughs. "I suppose so. OK, have a good class. Bye."
I am five minutes late, rushing, remembering the chat Ms. S. and I had last week. I nearly face-plant as I trip over an extension cord. Son of a bitch… I can't sneak in unseen, can I? I avoid any eye contact with the other students and with Ms. S., who is laying out what looks like yards upon yards of rolled white fabric. I notice a few fans set up around the room, what the hell do we need fans for? It's almost freezing outside tonight, so it definitely doesn't need to be cooled down in here. Everyone has a strip of the fabric, little tubes of ink, rubber blocks and X-acto knives.
I scavenge for supplies as Ms. S announces that we are doing block inking tonight, and she wants us to etch a few designs in the rubber blocks and roll different-colored inks onto its surface, then transfer it to the fabric. But the images have to be related and create a story.
I decide for my first to carve London's Big Ben. Yeah, my theme is Ben. Yeah, Ben on the brain tonight, but that's OK though because I don't think anyone here is going to get it. For my second, I etch a phone. For the private message he sent me, that first night. The first private message he had ever sent. I smile at that thought. I used a metallic silver ink for this one and I press the rubber to the crisp white fabric. Now, for my third, I try to think of a way to visually sum up what we are now. I can't scratch the word sex into the block, for god's sake!
Ms. S. sees me in deep thought, tapping my knife on the rubber.
"Carver's block?" she jokes.
I chuckle. "Yeah, I guess you could say that. I just can't think of the last design I want to use to tell my story."
"Well, tell me about the first two. That is, if you are comfortable in doing so."
I take in a quick breath. "This new guy I am seeing is from London, hence the Big Ben, but that's his name also, Ben." As I am explaining I am deepening some of the lines in the peak of the Big Ben when Ms. S. squeals.
"Ben? As in the Ben who was last week's model Ben?" She is full of excitement and shock. Why?
"Uh, yeah."
"Ben is my boyfriend's son. Oh, God, Tess!" She screams the last part so fast and loud that I jumped with the news and slipped with my knife.
"SHIT!" I scream. Holy hell, I am bleeding really badly! I sliced right between my left thumb and index finger. I hear some students panic; one passes out from the sight of my growing pool of blood. And one rushes over with a wad of the white fabric she was using for her project. I wrap it around my wound and the fabric fills with a spreading red stain.
"Tess, I have to take you to the emergency room!" Ms. S. says as she pulls me to my feet. "Uh, class dismissed." We rush out the door.
Ms. S. is the most terrifying driver I have ever witnessed. Speeding like a bat out of hell, speeding through a few red lights and slowing for the yellows. Yeah, I know that makes no freaking sense to me, either. At the ER, she pulls up to the doors and a waiting man opens my door and helps me out. Noticing the fabric filled with blood—a lot of it now running down my arm—he leans his head to a speaker on his shoulder, presses a button, and tells them "alert triage," because apparently I'm a "bleeder."
Mrs. S was alert enough to grab my bag, with my ID and insurance card.
A few seconds later a nurse takes me to triage. I start to feel faint as the blood keeps seeping down my arm. It's now soaking my pants. The nurse asks me questions but as soon as I tell her my name I black out.
I wake up in a hospital bed. Tubes with red liquid lead to my right hand, where an IV needle is embedded. Then I remember why I am here, and lift my left hand to see a huge bandage. Great. Just great, you really did it this time, Tess. I rest my head back just as a handsome middle-aged doctor enters the room.
"Tess Martin? Hello, I am Doctor Mitchell. How are we feeling?" He speaks in a familiar English accent.
I try to speak but my mouth is so dry. He reaches for a foam cup filled with ice water and hands it to me. I take a small sip from the straw, and it is heavenly in my hot dry mouth.
"Mmm…better now." I reply. Oh, yep I feel some morphine.
Hello.
He lets out a light chuckle like Ben does…ah, Ben. "Well, that's good. You had a nasty slice, took all of seventeen stitches, but I don't predict any nerve damage. You were pretty lucky, young lady."
"Well, that's good, and thank you." Pretty sure I slurred that a little.
"Once they paged me, telling me that Gwen had brought in one of her students, I ran right down to attend to you. She speaks very highly of your work."
"Gwen?" I ask.
"Ms. Sawyer," he clarifies.
I nod my head and it feels like it's going to roll right off my body.
"You know what, Tess, you look vaguely familiar. Have I treated you before?" he asks, a little weary. I don't think he's ever treated me...
He squints slightly, then speaks before me. "Were you in here a few years back after a concert incident?" he asks me. Uh...oh my god.
I can feel tears filling my eyes and I am sobering up from the morphine. "Yes," I manage.
"Oh, sweetheart. I am sorry I didn't mean to upset you. It's just that you looked really familiar, maybe it's because it was my son who brought you in that night and asked me to treat you." He explains and I think I am going to be sick.
Ben. Ben was the one who saved me from my attacker? Ben was the one who drove me to the hospital? Ben was the one who just dropped me off and left me alone? Alone, after nearly being raped and then trampled on by God knows how many people?
I think I am going to be sick. The room is starting to spin and the doctor is rushing to my side. I see a blur of blue scrubs surrounding both sides of the bed. I feel the blood pressure cuff squeeze my arm and I hear the beeping of the monitors. My mind is swirling, not just for being forced to remember that night at the concert, but waking up in the hospital all alone, not knowing how I got there. And now I find out its Ben who had delivered me. It was Ben's father who treated my broken arm and fractured nose and dressed a few gashes.
I hear the doctor calling my name, trying to get me to focus and speak. "Tess. Tess, can you hear me?" he keeps repeating.
"Yeah," I let out after a moment.
Checking all of my vitals he continues to ask questions. "I didn't mean to bring up any unpleasant memories, Miss Martin. It's just my son went to great lengths that night to ensure that you became my patient."
"Ben? Ben Mitchell is your son?"
"Yes, dear, he is." He is checking my IV. "I assumed you knew Ben since that night."
"No, we just technically met as of recently."
I see a confused look on his handsome, distinguished face.
I can feel my cheeks fill with the new blood that has been transfusing through my body. "We are sort of seeing one another." I admit. And in a way, I'm admitting it to myself.
He smiles from ear to ear. "Ben spoke of a girl last night at dinner, but he didn't mention it was the beautiful girl who I bandaged up those few years ago."
"I don't think he knows it was me, sir," I say in a respectful tone.
> "Please, darling, you're seeing my son, call me Jack." His tone is friendly and loving.
I just nod. I am not sure how I am feeling right now, and I don't mean my body, or the hand I so viciously sliced open.
"How long have I been here?" I ask.
Jack Mitchell takes a look at his gold watch and then at the clipboard in his hand. "Looks like Gwen dropped you off about three hours ago. Do you want me to call anyone?"
Do I? Do I want him to call my mom? No, she would just spaz out. Do I want him to call Erin? No, I can't explain any of this right now. It's bad enough that Ben's father knows even more than Ben does about that night. God, this is so messed up. James would ask too many questions.
Before I can answer, he says, "Want me to call Ben?"
My heart is pounding. I don't know if I can confront this tonight. Then again, I may as well get it over with…
"Sure." I answer.
I can feel my eyes start to get moist as I listen to Jack fill in his son on what happened. My feelings are mixed.
"OK, I will let her know. Bye son." He hangs up with Ben, then looks at me. "He's on his way."
And I breathe.
They've cut off my morphine. I want to rage at the nurse until she brings me something for the pain in my hand.
I wonder if Jack will explain that I am the one he brought in that night. I hope not. I want to tell him. Then there's a knock on my door. My chest starts to pound. Ben peeks in and in a few long strides, he's next to me. He leans in and kisses me hard on the mouth. Oh, now that's a way to forget about the pain.
Holding my face, he looks me all over, and then coils back to look at my heavily bandaged hand. "How are you feeling? When my dad called to tell me you were here I thought the worst, I thought I was about to snap and lose it all."
"I am fine. I just cut my hand pretty bad and lost a lot of blood, but I have been refueled, so no worries." I try to pull this off like it's nothing.
"God, I am so relieved that you are OK." He sounds breathless. I don't want him to feel relief, because I don't feel relieved. I want him to feel the hurt that I have felt for the past three years!
I have to do this. "It was you."
"What was me?"
My eyes start to sting from trying to hold in my tears. "It was you who brought me to this same hospital three years ago."
He just looks at me.
"At the concert, Ben! I was just about to be raped and you attacked the guy, but by the time you got back to me, I was trampled to a fucking bloody pulp! Then you bring me here to be seen by your father, and then you leave! You just left me." I can't help the screaming and the now-heavy crying. This is something that I have held back every day since that horrible night. Not letting anyone know about what happened.
His eyes are wide. He stands and steps away, but doesn't leave the room. "That was you?"
"Yes, that was me. You would have known that if you didn't abandon me at a hospital like you just found a motherless infant by a dumpster! That's how I feel, I feel like I was so unwanted, not worth the time to wait and see if that girl was going to be OK. But you couldn't do that, could you, Ben?"
He drops his head into his hands. I can see the defeat overcoming him; he doesn't know what to say to me, and I don't think there is anything he could say to make me not hate him. So I go on, getting it all out, just like how I have wanted since that night to the guy who tried to force himself onto me, and to the guy who started out the hero and in the end became the villain.
"Before that show I was already tortured and tormented every day. My father didn't give a shit about me or the way I wanted to live my life. My only friend was my mother. I never had a real boyfriend, because I was the weird girl. Music was my escape, that's why I love it so much. I am free to be who I am and love what I love.
"That's why I was at that show that night, as you know James normally went with me, but he couldn't go that night so I went alone. I wasn't going to miss this show. I was having a pretty bad week, so this was my night to vent. Everything was fine until the headliners were halfway through their set, when this guy started rubbing himself up on me from behind. Not wanting that kind of attention, I told him to get lost and to look elsewhere. He didn't take no for an answer. Not the first time, the second, third fourth or fifth. I turned to slap him and he punched me in my stomach and I dropped. I tried to stand but he backhanded me across my face.
"I couldn't talk, I couldn't think. The next thing I know I am on my back on the sticky beer-soaked floor and this guy is over the top of me, grabbing my chest, licking my neck, and then he started to undo my pants, then his own. Then he was gone.
"But I was so dazed and lost, and before I could get up people started a mosh pit next to me. I was stomped on, kicked into. I have flashes of being in a car and seeing the city lights passing above my head. Then on a gurney being wheeled down a bright hallway. Then it's morning and I am all alone in a hospital room, alone. I didn't know where I was and how I got there.
"Then I realize my worst fear, was I raped the night before? Did that horrible human being take something so personal and private away from me? After an exam they revealed that I wasn't, but that didn't make me feel any better. I just can't wrap my head around a guy who saves a girl, and then abandons her."
That's my story. He has to make his choice now. Stay or go. The same decision he faced three years ago.
I am so stoked. This is my big chance to prove myself at the magazine. They finally gave me the opportunity to cover a show by myself. Before, I was an assistant and a go-fer. It's not the sold-out kind of show I want to cover, but hey, I got to start somewhere, right?
While one of the opening bands is on stage, I get to conduct my interview with the lead band. I know their stuff, and they fucking rock! Keep it cool dude, keep it cool. I finish, pack up, make my way to the side stage to watch the show. This is my dream job. I get to hang around some of the people I love and idolize, and be up close and personal to the stage.
I high-fived the last opening band as its members passed, clearly on a total adrenalin high. The closest I ever got to that feeling was doing a few small-ass shows with Dan in our senior year of high school. We weren't exactly the most kick-ass band in town, but we had fun. And I learned how to play bass pretty good. Man, those were good times. But when he went to college on the east coast and I stayed here on the west, to go to school with Nicole we didn't see each other much, therefore no play time. And with my best friend and band mate gone, I stopped playing.
The front-liner band, the one I just go to know and interview, run past me to take the stage. I know this is going to be good. They are just starting their fourth song in the set, something fast and upbeat, and the crowd is getting amped. I can already see a few smaller mosh pits being formed. I see girls flashing the band. Holy shit! Yeah, I will definitely be trying to hook up with one of those girls tonight. I need to get laid!
I see a short blonde girl dancing with some douchebag a few rows back. She doesn't look too happy; the guy behind her is grinding her ass pretty good. She looks really upset. What, trouble in paradise, babe? I can't help but watch this lover's quarrel. But something doesn't feel right, and I don't normally feel anything towards a girl or her feelings. Not since I caught Nicole fucking our professor. But this girl in the crowd, there's something going on. Something I don't like.
I see the guy punch her in the stomach. What the FUCK? What the fuck is that asshole doing? She can't be any taller than five foot three, and doesn't look more than hundred pounds. She's gone. Where is she?
Shit.
I run to the side exit door, to get into the crowd, I shove past the security guards and make my way to where I saw her standing. I finally spot her and she's on the floor trying to stand up, but then the motherfucker backhands her right across the face. Why am I even caring? What if this is their normal relationship? Foreplay, perhaps? No.
I push and shove my way through the crowd to reach the douchebag. I can't hold back; it
's like I lost all control of my body. Just like how I was before we left London. I grab his shoulder to pull him off her and I see that his pants are undone, and I notice that her pants are just below her hips. Was this fucker going to rape her? And as if in a movie, the perfect song starts to play from the band on stage, one that plays what's going on in my head. The lead singer growls out, "When my fist hits your face, and your face hits the floor. It'll be a long time coming. Bet you got the message now. 'Cause I was never going. Yeah, you're the one that's going down."
I have him on the ground in the back of the room, straddling him, and my fist meets his face, blasting away, and I don't stop until one of the security guards pushes me off of the guy. I look down at him. He isn't moving. I can't even make out any facial structure.
"Hey, man you gotta get out of here, before someone calls the cops," the security guy says to me, but I can barely hear a thing he's saying between the music and the blood coursing through my ears. I remember the girl.
Running back to where she was, I don't see her. I keep going in that direction when I see her still on the floor. Not moving. Shit. There are mosh pits in full force on both sides of her. I see a few larger guys in boots kicking into her, not even seeing her lifeless body on the ground. I bend down and scoop her up. Damn, she is a tiny little thing…too bad I can't see her sweet face, it's covered in so much blood…
People barely move as they see me carrying her out of the building. Jerks. As I walk to my car (thank god I chose that tonight over my bike), I keep checking to make sure she is breathing. Man, her nose is messed up, and she has a lot of cuts on her face. One particularly long one on her cheek from when she got slapped. I swear to God if I didn't kill that fucker tonight, he will be done if I ever see him again.
I open the back door of my vintage black GTO and lay her gently across the back seat. Christ, any other day, if I have a girl in my car, if she even looks like she might puke I won't let her in. This car is my baby, right along with my bike, and typically I won't have anything in it that could stain or rip the interior, but I don't seem to care that her blood will stain the shit out of my backseats. I just need to get her to the hospital, and I hope my dad is working tonight.
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