She’s apologizing to me. All that happened to her and she’s apologizing to me.
Something swarms inside me, making me feel at once enraged and helpless, and then I recognize the impulse behind it. I want to hit something, to hurt something, to break everything. I should be anywhere but here right here right now. Being this close to her when I feel like this scares me. I can’t believe I’m touching her with these filthy, furious hands.
I bow down until my head hits her bony shoulder. “No.”
Her cold hands slid over the coiled snakes inked onto my wrists. Her hands are delicate. Small. Beautiful. Someone else saw how beautiful they were, and instead of cherishing these hands he tried to break them.
“No,” I whisper again. My tongue dries on her shirt. My mouth fills with the taste of cotton.
She’s gasping. Choking. Her stubby, chewed down nails dig into the tops of my hands. “I can’t. I can’t say it. I can’t.”
“Then don’t.” I don’t want her to say it. I already know, and it breaks me. If I hear her say it and I still know I can do nothing…
I’m such a fucking coward.
I wrap my arms around her, pulling her close. Her heartbeat mirrors mine—furious and overwhelming. She’s so fragile, I remind myself. You can’t hold her like this. She said she hated Brian’s touch, that she never wanted to be touched again. You’re going to break her. But I can’t stop holding her, tighter and tighter, as if my pathetic, useless strength could somehow achieve something.
She doesn’t try to push me away but she doesn’t quite accept me either. Her shoulder knocks against my chin with every sob, and her hands claw at my back the same way they’d clawed at her legs. When she settles down, she presses her damp cheek to my temple.
“I—I need…” she presses her wet lips to my skin. “I need you.”
I don’t know what she needs me for and I don’t care. I’ll do it. I run my hands up her back, feel her spine through her thin shirt. My fingers get tangled in the hair stuck to the nape of her neck. “I’m here, sweetheart. I’m always here.”
“You won’t be.”
“Yes I will. I’m not going anywhere.”
“No, you’ll go.” Her voice breaks and she starts shaking again, more violently, wringing the front of my shirt as if it’s the only thing holding her up. “I need you.”
“I know you do and I’m not going anywhere.”
She pulls in a loud, ugly breath through her nostrils, choking on it. “Don’t say that until I tell you.”
“Nothing you could say is going to change anything.”
“Just don’t. Please.”
“Alright.” My hand moves over the back of her skull, holding her head in place. “I won’t say anything more. Just tell me what you need, sweetheart.”
“H-hurt.”
I know it hurts. I’ll take all your pain away. I won’t let anything hurt you again. My parted lips spread over her salty, wet cheeks. I can’t say it. I don’t have that much power, so won’t those kinds of words seem empty now? They aren’t what she needs to hear. Their lies I want to tell myself because I let this happen to her.
The anger returns, making my arms shake. My teeth knock into hers. Our mouthes are next to each other, gasping.
Warm, pomegranate flavored breath fills my mouth. “Hurt me,” she whispers.
This time I can’t hold back. “I won’t let anyone hurt you.” I’m not even thinking when I say it. My finger pads caress the the back of her skull. Her sobs grow louder. She seems to shrink in my arms. But I can’t stop saying all these things I want to be true. “I won’t let anyone hurt you ever again.”
She sucks in air through her stuffy nose. “But I want you to.”
“You want me to what?”
“Hurt me.” She pushes her mouth into my shoulder. I feel her teeth through my shirt. “I want you to hurt me.”
I stop rubbing her head. My hand curls around the curve of her skull. I can’t be hearing her correctly.
We stand like that together. My shirt gets wetter as she bites down harder on my shoulder. “I want you to fuck me.”
I got still.
There’s no way she just said that.
No. Fucking. Way.
Her hands slide down my arms. She leans into me. I groan and shut my eyes, trying hard not to think about the fact that I think she’d just said fuck me and the immediate, precise effect hearing those words from her lips had on me.
Her stomach hits my hips. Oh fuck. There’s no way to hide it now. My erection is pushing up against her navel.
I don’t think I’ve ever been so disgusted with myself. What the fuck is wrong with me? How can I even get it upright? Was it really just because she was so close? I grab her shoulders and push her back.
“Trev.” Her lips open. Time stops as her tongue darts between them, pink against red. I realize she has make-up on, applied way too thickly, like she’s trying to hide something. “I know you want me.”
My blood pounds in my arms. “I don’t understand.”
She looks down at my pants and shivers. “I think you do.” She shrugs out of my grip and brings her hands to the collar of her blouse. I watch as she pops the first button off.
It isn’t much skin. I saw her naked the summer I met her, and since I’ve seen her in bikinis and dresses that left all too little to the imagination. But something about that simple motion mesmerizes me. The moves to the next button, undoes it, undoes something in me…
I see her white lacy bra and grab her hands. “Stop. You’re not thinking.”
Her bottom lip trembles.
“You don’t realize what you’re doing. I mean, after what happened…fuck, I don’t know…but I don’t think this is right. I think you need to see someone. Not to fuck, but to talk to.” Christ, could I sound like any more of an asshole?
She flinches. “Already you’re saying no, and I haven’t even told you what I want.”
“What do you mean you haven’t told me?”
“I want you to take me, Trevor.”
“Take you where?” I feel like I’m trapped in a High School sketch in sitcoms, one where the popular girl seduces the nerdy guy and there are tons of unfunny puns, only this situation wasn’t meant to be funny. It was a nightmare.
She takes a deep breath. “I want you to throw me on the bed. I want you to rip off my clothes and overpower me as I struggle. I want to do everything I can to try to push you off, and I want to be unsuccessful.”
It’s hard to hear her voice over her stuttering and ugly sound of her sucking air in through her nose to keep it from running. I must be mishearing her. This can’t be real. This is some horrific scenario my mind has conjured in its most recent attempt to try to make me stop loving her. It won’t work. There’s nothing anyone could do to make me hate her, or stop wanting her.
I sigh. “You need to talk to someone about this.”
I feel her hand above my heart. This time it’s me who flinches at the contact. “They say that after someone has been traumatized, they should be reintroduced to their trauma in order to overcome it.”
“I don’t think this is what they had in mind, Sasha.”
She runs her fingers up my chest to my neck. She pulls down my head until our lips are almost touching. “Every time I shut my eyes I feel his body on top of mine. I think about him more than I’ve ever thought about anyone, even the people I love. It’s like he hurt me so bad that he became the only thing that could exist in my heart. I don’t want to talk to someone about it. I don’t want to talk, and talk, and talk until it eats away whatever’s left of me. I don’t want it to kill me, do you understand? I don’t want to feel anything anymore.”
What are you asking me to do exactly, Sasha? I don’t ask. I already know. Even if she hadn’t told me, a sick understanding has already begun to form in the back of my mind. “This isn’t right.”
“Of course it isn’t, but it’s necessary.”
I can’t believe our lips a
re so close and I’m not kissing her. She doesn’t want to be kissed; she wants to be hurt. “I can’t.”
She moves her hand back down my chest, to my pants. I suck in a breath.
“I think you’d be surprised at what you can do—what any person could do. I know you want me.”
“No I don’t.” Not like this.
“Then why are you so hard? You’re so hard you’re trembling.”
“Stop it.”
Her hand grips my cock through my jeans. I groan as she holds it softly, tentatively, like she’s never held a cock before.
“Do this one thing for me and you can have me however you want, in any way you want, for as long as you want.”
No. If I do this, then I can never have you how I want to. I push her back. “I don’t want this.”
She swallows. “Hit me.”
“What?”
“I said hit me.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
Her face crumbles. “Hit me. Please.”
The room is spinning. “I think you need to call Dianne.”
Her eyes sharpen. “No.”
“Di doesn’t know, does she? You should to tell her. You need support from your friends.”
“No.” She staggers forward. “I don’t want to tell them.”
“You don’t have a choice, sweetheart.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
I glance away. “I know you’re going to hate me for this—”
“No!”
“—But I can’t let you do this to yourself.”
“No Trev!” she shrieks. “Don’t you fucking do it. I asked because I knew you wouldn’t tell anyone. That’s the only reason why I asked!”
My hand shakes as I reach for my pocket. She always told me everything back then because I never tattled on her. I even took the blame when she got caught. Always.
I guess this will be the last time.
I try to reason with her. “You can’t go through this alone.”
“Fuck you! You don’t fucking understand shit!”
I fumble around in my pocket for a few seconds. Where is my damn cell? “I can’t help you like this. What you were asking me to do—that isn’t helping.”
Her upper lip curls back. “I can’t fucking believe you. I can’t fucking believe you’d even dare to take away my choice again.”
Her words stun me. “That’s not what I’m doing.”
“Yes it is. You want to decide when I tell somebody. You want to decide what I do. And do you know what the worst part about it is? You don’t know anything. You’re just following a fucking blueprint in your head. You’re trying to pass me off to someone else because you don’t want to deal with it. Well I don’t want to fucking deal with it either, asshole, but I don’t get a choice!”
My hand makes a fist in my pocket. That’s right. I left it at the studio. That’s why I couldn’t call Sasha to tell her I’d be late. I’d been in such a hurry to get here. I’d been so foolishly, selfishly happy… “I’m sorry,” I whisper. “I don’t know what to do.”
She grabs my shirt. “Don’t do it. Don’t tell her.”
“Sasha, I can’t even ca—”
“Don’t fucking tell her! I don’t want to feel like this anymore. I don’t want every fucking second of every fucking day to be me reliving this shit! If you tell her, then she’ll know. She’ll always know. Every time I look at her, I’ll know that she knows. Don’t you understand? I won’t see her anymore. I’ll see…him on top of me…and…”
Her hands shake before her eyes. It’s like she’s not seeing them. Like she’s not seeing anything.
You just told me, I realize. Does that mean every time you see me for the rest of your life, you’ll see him on top of you?
I push down the selfish thought. I’ll deal with that later. “Sasha.” I try to let all the love I’ve ever felt for her seep into my voice. If there was ever a purpose to all that love, it was so that it wouldn’t make me go insane at this moment.
“Don’t tell her. Please.”
“I won’t.”
“Trev, please.”
“I won’t. I don’t even have my cell. I left it at the studio, remember? Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t call her.”
“Good.” Her voice breaks. She falls to the ground and hugs her knees, rocking back and forth.
I want nothing more than to touch her. To rub her back as we cry together.
I want.
My hands twitch nervously at my sides. She doesn’t want to be touched right now, does she? What a stupid question. Of course she doesn’t want to be touched. And more than that, I don’t trust myself to touch her.
My heart breaks piece by piece. It isn’t enough. I can’t make my pain match hers. Whatever horrific images sits inside my head isn’t as bad as hers. I haven’t lived it. I can’t really feel it.
I remember the day I came home from Trevin’s house that Sunday morning my Freshman year in High School. Mom and dad had been off on some trip and John was at some girls’ house. I saw Brian and Sasha sitting at the counter on mom’s antique stools. They hadn’t heard me come in. Their ankles were linked and they were holding hands. Sun streamed through the kitchen windows between them and Sasha couldn’t stop smiling. And I knew, I just knew, that they’d lost their virginities to each other the night before.
I used to think nothing could hurt me more than seeing them together in that moment. What a stupid, selfish, immature kid I’d been.
She sobs as if she’ll never stop sobbing. Nervous energy I can’t do anything with builds inside me. I want to scream. I want to break something. I want to run. I’m still stupid and selfish. I’m still so goddamn immature.
Some people think that everything happens for a reason. That experiencing bad things only makes you stronger. But what is the fucking point of her having to endure something like this? I wish I could rip that memory from her and bury it so deep inside my heart that only I would know what happened.
But I can’t. She’s right. I don’t understand or know what to do. I can only stand here as she breaks before me, too afraid to touch her as this useless, consuming love for her eats me away. As the stale air dries my cheeks, making my skin tight. As the growing darkness envelopes us both.
Chapter 3
Trevor
She stands and wipes her eyes with the back of her wrist. She smears her makeup, making it look like she has a black eye. “So you’re not going to do it.”
“No, I’m not.”
“You don’t want this disgusting body anymore than I do, do you?”
My stomach twists. “That’s not it.”
“Sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.” She takes a few steps, then leans back onto the wall next to where I stand. “Are you leaving, then?”
“Do you want me to stay?”
She strokes the base of her neck. “Do you want to stay?”
Instantly, I go hard. Fuck. Me. I can’t do this. I turn my back to her and walk out of the apartment.
A ray from the setting sun hits my eyes. I throw my forearm over my face. Just as I’m about to step forward, she grabs the back of my shirt.
“Don’t tell anyone. Please, Trev. Don’t. I’m begging you.”
I grit my teeth. Don’t tell. Don’t fucking tell. Just stay silent while those memories eat the girl you love from the inside out. I step out of her pathetic grip, grab the cast iron railing and look out over the lot. Tia’s down there beside four other beaters, looking like shit behind those scraggly bushes.
“Trev.”
I don’t hear footsteps as she approaches, just her jeans rubbing against each other. A glance at the ground shows me she’s barefoot. She really shouldn’t be walking around outside like that.
She reaches for my shirt again.
“Don’t touch me.”
She jumps back. For a moment I think she’ll retreat back into her room, but she doesn’t. Not yet. She has more to say to me—something even
more important than the proposition she gave me a few minutes ago. “Promise me you won’t tell.”
Of course that’s what she’s worried about. Not what happened to her and how she’s gonna deal with it. Or maybe she doesn’t care how she deals with it as long as no one else knows. Yeah, since she’s been sitting alone in a dark room for a few months, that sounds about right.
I slouch over, resting my elbows on the railing. “When are you gonna tell somebody?”
She lets out a shaky breath. “I just told you.”
“Other than me.”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know,” I mutter to myself. “Do you know who you’d tell?”
She doesn’t answer.
“I can think of a few people,” I offer.
“What, like the therapists at the Women’s Center?” she asks bitterly.
I don’t expect her acerbic tone. “Yeah,” I say, taken aback.
“I’m not enrolled anymore.”
“I don’t think it matters. It’s a good place to start.”
When she answers, her voice is small, fragile, and infinitely breakable. “I don’t want that.”
Out of habit, I reach for the cigarettes in my pocket. “How do you know? Have you tried it?”
I know I’m walking on shaky ground. Earlier, back in the apartment, questions like that one made her fall apart. But she looks as tired as I feel, and I doubt she’d let herself go like that outside.
“No, and I don’t want to,” she responds evenly. “I don’t want to sit in a circle with a bunch of other women while someone tells us how strong we are because we survived. Surviving didn’t take any strength. It didn’t take anything. Just enduring it, and not fighting so hard that the only way he could finish the job is if he killed me.”
I don’t think I’m breathing. I think the ground just opened up and I’m falling straight down. I think I’ve already hit the bottom. I think I’ve dead and my mind hasn’t yet realized it. I let go of the cigarettes and tun to reach out to her, but the sound of her voice stops me.
“If I was in a ditch somewhere, or the hospital with every bone in my body broken, that would mean I’d been strong. Instead, I merely survived.”
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