Off-Limits Box Set

by Ella James

  Her stepmother is the other reason.

  I drive in circles around Chatham Hills and try to tell myself to calm down. I can tell her. She’ll listen.

  Will she, though? What if she doesn’t?

  Fuck.

  I’m sweating as I drive back home and go in through the front door, so I can avoid my parents.

  I check the movie room first, and when she isn’t there, I pray she’s waiting on the roof. She could have called an Uber. Fuck, I hope she didn’t…

  I climb out my window, but I don’t see her. I walk carefully across the roof to Lex’s window—and that’s open.

  Okay. Shit. I stop a minute. Try to take a few deep breaths. Then I move slowly and carefully around the corner.

  I find Am sitting on the ledge of a big window that goes to the upstairs laundry room. She’s got her head down on her knees. When she hears me, I see her body tense. She doesn’t lift her face.

  I’m shaking as I sit down, near her feet. Goddamn, my heart is pounding. I want to touch her, but I know I can’t. I don’t deserve to.

  “Am…?” She doesn’t move, just shakes her head a little. I shut my eyes, and for a second, I don’t think that I can do it. I can’t talk about this shit—but I push through…for Am.

  “Fuck…” I heave a big breath out. “I know you probably hate me right now.” I have to stop and swallow just to keep my fucking voice from breaking. “I just want to talk to you. If you don’t want to hear from me, get up and I won’t follow you. I’ll do anything you want…”

  She doesn’t move, so I inhale and exhale, then begin.

  “I was…” Fuck. I lick my lips. “I was a junior when your— Manda first came up to me. I was swimming and she came over. You were gone with…Lex somewhere.” I swallow again, because saying my sister’s name makes my throat tight. “I told her that, and she sat down and…watched me swim.”

  Amelia lifts her head and glances at me before looking back down at her shoes.

  I grit my molars. “She hung around. I didn’t know what the fuck to think. She had a mixed drink, some sort of daiquiri or some shit, and when I got out of the pool, she asked me if I wanted some. I didn’t. She said, ‘maybe just the liquor next time’ and winked, and yeah, I thought it was kind of weird and funny that she acted that way. When you’re sixteen, it doesn’t take a lot to make you feel excited about a woman wanting you. You can’t figure out if you’re the shit or nothing. You want everyone to want your dick.”

  Her face tightens, and I want to kick myself in the fucking face. I rub my head, clenching my jaw.

  “She would come over sometimes, always when no one but me was there, and she would bring shit. Food, one time this lemon cake. Another time a screwdriver. She said she got it for me since she knew I didn’t like the fruity shit.”

  “An orange is an actual fruit.” Amelia eyebrows arch, and I let out a nervous laugh.

  “Yeah, it is. So that was fucking stupid. Anyway, I got the message that she…liked me. She told me that your— that she heard I was a good artist. She wanted to see my stuff. I still thought she was just being really nice, some kind of proxy mom gone overboard or something. Everybody knew my parents were never here. I kind of liked the mom attention.” I let out a long breath. I can’t look at Ammy anymore.

  “She started coming over more. It was the fall of my senior year, and she would wear her bathing suit. She started getting in the pool with me. One time she asked if I could help her with her backstroke. She would ask about school, my friends. She acted like she…you know…gave a shit. About me.” Telling Ammy this shit makes me want to shoot myself, but I continue. She deserves the fucking truth. “She would offer me advice and tell me how mature I was. Tell me I was a man.”

  I take a few more breaths, because it’s so fucking embarrassing. So humiliating, even now.

  “I was fucking stupid, okay?” My gaze flickers to her face, finding it grave. “When I think about this shit now, Am, it makes me want to claw my fucking skin off, but I didn’t know this then. I was…just stupid.”

  I know I was stupid, because Amelia’s face gentles and she starts to look like she feels sorry for me.

  “Don’t feel sorry for me. One day Manda came over and the pool was warm, it had started getting cold outside. And she took off her swim suit. I was worried, kind of freaking out that someone would come by and see her. They might think that I’d done something…you know, something wrong. She was a married…” I shake my head. My face is hot. My heart is pounding. “I know this is horrible to hear.”

  “It is. I can’t believe this.” I look over at Amelia, and she’s crying. “Why, Dash?” Her voice sounds brittle. My chest hurts like something physical is wrong with me.

  “I don’t know.” I put a hand over my face.

  “I’m sorry.” She sounds quieter. “I shouldn’t have— keep on going,” she says softly.

  “She found out....that I wanted you.”

  “She came over,” Ammy prods, gray-faced. “And it was cold outside.”

  “And she said, ‘Don’t you think I’ve noticed that…’” I blow my breath out. “That I reacted to her. She said she knew I wanted her, and that she never felt that way before about…a younger guy, but she… But I was different.”

  “You were different. You were different! Fuck, of course you were, the guy I wanted, he’s the different one!” Ammy’s jaw is tight. Her eyes glitter with tears. “So go on, Dash.”

  “I can’t.” I shut my eyes. I feel like a weight is on my chest, and I can’t breathe. “I’m a fuckup. I was just a fucking pawn she used, because my stupid ego… I never felt like anything and here she was, wanting to do this shit with me. Shit that I felt bad about—I felt fucking terrible, I was up every night and on this roof, wanting to jump off—but she would come back, wanting me. She wanted me. She made me feel like I was so important. She would talk to me, she’d help me with my homework even. I was so fucked up, I thought this shit was great! That someone gave a fuck, that someone wanted to spend time with me when they could do a bunch of better things.”

  My voice breaks, and I put a hand over my face. “I’m sorry, give me just a minute.”

  “Dash—”

  “Just let me get through it.” She doesn’t speak again, and I can’t look at her. I look down at the shingles. “I guess I needed that, to feel like someone cared. I had a hard time going to sleep sometimes. She would…she’d do different things than other girls did. She taught me all sorts of different things, one of them drinking to sleep.”

  Amelia’s eyes widen. I quickly look back down.

  “She gave me vodka. Said it’s normal if you can’t sleep, just drink it and then if she could, she would come over. Of course, she never could. But it felt like she gave a fuck. When I was with her, I would always drink. She would have me walk over and we’d get in her car and we’d go driving in the country. I was remembering…” I take a deep breath. Let it out. “That’s why I had you pull over,” I say simply.

  “Anyway, it went bad pretty fucking fast. I wasn’t fucking anyone from school. I didn’t really want Amanda, but I wanted her to want me…I think.” I scrub a hand back through my hair. “The worst thing is how much I wanted you. You were amazing that whole fucking year. I thought about you all the time, and that would be the only time I’d really feel the depth of how bad I should feel about what we were doing. Amanda had this long list of the women your dad had been with—”

  Ammy’s jaw drops, and I hold a hand up. “He hadn’t. I found out later that he hadn’t. Am—I told your dad what happened. I told him in 2014. I flew in from my job and sat him down and told him. I couldn’t keep it to myself. I was going crazy.”

  “Fuck.”

  “So…I don’t know. It ended when she started getting weird and…jealous. She would see me taking you and Lex to school and… I shouldn’t— She was jealous. Of you, of other girls she thought—” I shake my head and grit my teeth so I don’t break down, this time out of ang
er. “She started blackmailing me. If I didn’t do what she wanted, she would say that I’d come onto her. If I didn’t…perform the way she wanted, she would say I raped her.”

  Ammy starts toward me. I move so fast, I almost fall off the damn roof.

  I hold out my hand, because I don’t want her to touch me. I just need to finish. “I didn’t. Rape her.”

  “Jesus, Dash, I know that.”

  “It was all a game to her, and when it ended, even when it did, she didn’t want to let me go. She got enjoyment out of fucking with me. She would taunt me, text me. She would use your dad and get me scared of that. I found out she had…moved on, with someone new. She would still send me pictures…of herself. And if I didn’t text back soon enough, if I wasn’t interested enough to satisfy her, even though she had moved on, she would make threats.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like I would get arrested.”

  I stop to breathe, and Ammy shuts her eyes. I see a tear roll down her cheek.

  “By the time that school year ended, yeah…I wished that I was dead. The weirdest thing is, I felt like I had been the one that was raped.” The word sticks in my throat. I turn away so I can keep on talking. Now that I’ve started, I can’t stop.

  “I had been with her. I had been a game to her. I had been waiting for you. I had this fantasy that you would come get in my bed and—yeah, no fucking fantasies for me. I know, it’s all fucked up but…by that summer, I was trying to forget her—and you. I went out as often as I could and got fucked up. Used whatever I could get my hands on, drank as much as I could.” I let out a long breath. “Then I would come home and there were you and Lexie, watching movies. Like, there’s nothing simpler than that. I would come upstairs and see you. Just pretend that I was normal. You would sit there, right beside me, and I’d want to touch you. I wanted to tell you about it, you specifically.” I laugh. “All the people, and I wanted to tell you.”

  “I wish you would have,” she says from behind me. “It was fucked up, but you were a victim. Even though I hate this, I can still see that.”

  “I found a lawyer once, when she was texting all the time, and I was sick all day from drinking all the time. I paid to meet with her—I couldn’t face a man, so I went to a female attorney—and she said…” I laugh. “She said don’t worry, no one gets arrested on those charges. You look like a nice boy, how old is she? For the sake of secrecy, I told her I was twenty and ‘she’ had just turned sixteen, and she said, ‘Well that’s not a problem.’ That’s how I knew that I had to go. Just move away.”

  “Jesus.”

  “So I did. I didn’t want to leave. I would have gone to art school in Savannah, I had people there I knew, your dad’s connections, like I fucking deserved that… But I went to Providence to get away from her. And then she found me there. She came and harassed me. So yeah, I knew I couldn’t write to you or call that first year, my freshman year. There was no way.”

  I turn around and find tears streaming down her face.

  “There was no way I could have any contact with you, but I didn’t stick to that too well.”

  Amelia wraps her arms around me, and I shut my eyes. It feels wrong to let her touch me…but I can’t move away. I never can.

  “Dash…” She presses herself against me, and I wrap an arm around her as I blink up at a bird, a raven flying over us.

  “Do you hate me?” I ask hoarsely.

  “No. Of course I don’t.” I can feel her body shaking.

  “What?” I whisper.

  “Well, I want to murder Manda. I want this…to not be true.” She starts to cry, and I feel like the worst scum. I let go of her, but Ammy grabs me tighter. “Don’t.” The word is muffled by her mouth against my shirt. “Dash, do you love me?”

  She looks up at me with wide, wet eyes.

  “Of course. I love you, Am. I love you more than anything.” I press my lips together, shut my eyes so I don’t have to see the hurt on her face.

  “Manda walked over to my house that morning. The one where I left you after…the night at the lake. She was waiting here for me. She’d heard that I went to that party. She knew you were out. And she suspected. She had known the whole time, I think. When I thought about it…after, I think that she knew. And that…”

  “Say it,” she whispers.

  “Maybe that was why.”

  “That’s why she went for you specifically.” The words are rushed out, like they burn her tongue. “I know it is,” she sobs, “and that’s what I hate most! Dash, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I can’t stand to think this! That this even happened!”

  “It’s okay…” I pull her tighter up against me.

  “No it’s not.” Ammy’s cheek pushes against my chest. “She ruined your life…and mine, too, sort of.”

  I let out a long sigh. “I’m sorry I never told you, Ammy. You deserved the truth.”

  She pulls slightly away, so I can see her face. “You’re right—I did. But I get it, why you didn’t tell me. Dash, it’s awful, but I do see why.” Her brows are pulled together. She looks troubled.

  “I know girls this happened to, and they were innocent, just like you were. You were young and you were fooled by Manda. Let me tell you something: I had diaries.” Tears gather in her eyes again. “I would always write about you in them. I am sure she read them. Once I even found her reading one.” Her lips are pressed together, like she’s trying to hold sobs in.

  “It’s okay.” I stroke Am’s hair out of her sticky face. “Ammy, never feel bad. Never. You were not involved. It’s not your fault. You had nothing to do with it at all, it’s all on me.”

  “It’s all on Manda! She’s a psycho.”

  “She has problems. I can understand it more now that I’m older.”

  God. I shut my eyes. I can’t believe I told her this, and Ammy’s arms are still around me. I feel slightly dizzy.

  “It’s okay,” she whispers. “It’s a shit show, but it’s still going to be okay.”

  I pull her closer, press my cheek against her soft hair. “Why do you do this to me?” I ask her hoarsely.

  “Do what, baby?”

  “Why do you…make me need you?” I ask, ragged.

  “I don’t know.” She hugs me tighter.

  “I wish I didn’t, Am. I would have stayed the fuck away and never bothered you again.”

  “Are you kidding me?” she laughs. “I threw a pencil down in front of you and pretty much wore a giant ‘fuck me’ sign, something that I’ve never done for anybody else, by the way. I used to stalk you on the internet.”

  “I don’t know why,” I whisper. I tilt my head back, toward empty, indigo sky.

  “Don’t say that,” Am murmurs. She grabs my face, so that our gazes meet. “Don’t say you don’t know why. It makes me sad.”

  “I know I don’t deserve it. I know you used to be my fantasy, and then I loved you and I couldn’t help it. Even if I wanted to—and I’m fucked up, so I never did—I couldn’t help but love you. Those glasses and your pretty hair that always smelled so good.” I run my hand over it now. “I loved your snail backpack and those awful Jar Jar Binks slippers you used to wear over.”

  “Why did you love them?” she asks, and I can’t read her face.

  I answer honestly. “Because they were you. You know how I feel about Jar Jar Binks, but they were silly. Funny. They were just Amelia.”

  “That’s why this doesn’t really matter, Dash. With Manda. It doesn’t matter, not really, because I love you the same way. I love you because you’re Dash. I have this memory of you hitting me on the back, beside the pool that day when I was so little. I loved the way your hand hit me. As soon as you stopped hitting me, you were hugging me. I loved you way back then, before Manda. I still beat her to it.”

  “Fuck, Amelia…”

  “You were always mine. Not hers.” She holds me tightly, and I let her. I stand still and let her hug me, and it doesn’t seem quite real.

  “Lexie
knew about it, didn’t she?” she whispers.

  My fucking eyes burn. “Yeah.”

  “She backed you, of course, and of course, she couldn’t tell me.”

  I try to swallow, but I can’t.

  “It makes sense.”

  “When Amanda came to Burbank last year, Lex came down and stayed with me.”

  “Manda came to Burbank?” Ammy’s eyes stretch wide.

  I nod. “Wanted to move in with me.”

  “Holy shit. What did you tell her?”

  “Threatened to take her to court. I probably couldn’t do it, but I think it scared her off.”

  Am hugs me again, and my legs feel kind of shaky. I don’t want to knock us off the roof, so I say, “Let’s go in.”

  “Can I come?”

  “No, you have to live out here from now on.”

  She smiles a little, and we make our way in silence back to Lexie’s window. I crawl into her room, and it hits me that she’s gone. Lexie is gone. I feel like I can’t breathe. I make it to her bed and manage to lie down—facing the wall.

  “Can I get up here with you?” Ammy whispers, several moments later.

  I need her... Damn, I really do. And so I nod.

  Twenty-Five

  Amelia

  I scoot up behind him and I wrap my arm around his waist. I press my head against his back and shut my eyes and feel his chest move underneath my arm.

  God. Poor Dash.

  I can’t believe all that shit happened, and I didn’t have a clue. I could tell he was unhappy that year. That I do remember. I remember he was vague that night we sat out on the roof—the night before he left. He wouldn’t really say why he was going all the way to Rhode Island.

  I squeeze my eyes shut, and more tears seep out. It makes me sad to know he’s dealt with this for all these years and I had no idea. I was just mad at him. Confused and mad.

  And I was clueless.