I swipe at my face only to bring back blood-stained fingers. The sight sets my pulse to lightening, makes the skyline ahead of me blur. "Motherfucker."
Meanwhile, she scrambles out from under me. She's stumbling on her heels now, hissing through those sharp teeth, and there's a scarlet trickle of blood smeared across her chin. "You're one to talk," she snaps. "You touch me again and I swear, I swear—"
"What, you'll tear another chunk out of me?" I step toward her, still clutching at my mouth; she moves back like we're warring magnets. "That all you got?"
"I hurt you." There's a distant, shivering quality to her voice, as if she's talking to herself. She studies me with big black button eyes, brings her thumb up and drags it slowly through the blood on her skin. Her gaze drops to appraise the damage.
"Go on," I urge.
She shakes her head, still staring at her sticky thumb.
"Leo."
"No." Her lower lip trembles. She wants to run—the air prickles with it—but that rough thread ties us together. "No."
Silence.
I bring my fingers to my bleeding mouth, push them in. Taste. She watches.
Come on, baby.
A scrape of her heels, a soft curse...and then she turns from me. But too late.
I see her hand come up to graze her jawline. And I see her pink tongue cut a pale path through the red.
Heady. Expensive. Addictive as opium.
Leo, what have you done?
FIFTEEN YEARS AGO
Home
Aged 17
My junior year is so nearly fucked that it's teetering on the precipice.
I sway with it. Back and forth. I don't remember the last time I cried like this, not since things got better.
My mother marches up and down the hall outside my bedroom, and though my door is closed, I can feel her rage. I hear it in the sharp swipe of each footstep, the moaning creak of the floorboards, and the breath that hisses between her clenched teeth.
All the while, I curl further into myself. Press my hands over tear-sodden cheeks. It's warm outside, but no summer can heat the prickly chill of blood at my wrists or the shivers that claw at my shoulders.
"You've really outdone yourself this time!" she calls, still pacing. "Here was me thinking that you'd learned what was good for you, and then you fuck up so majestically that I have to wonder if you even have ears!"
Nothing. I say nothing.
"Do you have any idea how much money I've had to pay that girl's parents? How much it has cost us to make this go away?"
I take slow breaths. Feel each one climb down my ribs, then up again.
"Because your college fund's looking anorexic right now. Just so you're aware. What the hell were you thinking? She's fifteen, Aeron."
I know. I can count.
"Fifteen! Which is the number of years you'd be going away for if I didn't bail out your sorry ass." She pauses, grunts, laughs so coldly that I cringe. "And is probably the number of years she'll be in therapy. Which I'm now paying for, by the way."
We have money. We've always had money. I don't even know why she's complaining; it isn't what really bothers her about all this. There's never been a situation we couldn't manipulate ourselves out of.
"I'm cutting off the internet. Maybe you've been watching some twisted shit on there, I don't know. Jesus, couldn't you have done something normal? Couldn't you just have raped her, Aeron? Because we could have at least argued with that."
I wipe my eyes with the sleeve of my red football jersey. "She wanted it." My voice is barely audible. I'm talking to myself. "She did."
"Where did you even get the idea for...oh, jeez. I don't want to know. She had better not talk, not now we've paid her. We'll get some gossip going about where she's gone. Rehab. Rehab will work."
Rachel lay there and took it. I only teased her, really; it was part of our game. Every muscle in my body aches with the consequence of being told otherwise.
Still, I feel the stickiness of her on my fingers. Can smell the sugary undernotes in her sweat. Desire is a weight on my back, always crushing, pleading, oozing between vertebrae.
"Are you listening to me?" Mom yells.
I eye the door through my hands. Pray that she'll stay on the other side. The seam of my shorts grates against a scar on the inside of my thigh; I shift about, almost enjoying it.
"If you can't control yourself around girls, just stay the hell away from them." As if this is my biggest failure. "And stop fucking about with the younger ones. The sentences are longer, we've been through this..."
Just like that, the muffled thump of my own heartbeat drowns out her lecture. I'm alone in semi-darkness, in the greyest of summers. More than ever, I wish that Dad were here. He'd be disgusted, though the normalcy of that would balm my shivers.
My mother is only pissed that I got caught.
#5
Manipulate (verb): to tempt a lesser human being with mutually exclusive choices, then sit back to watch while the shit hits the fan
It's near enough 1AM when I rap on Tuija's hotel room door. Downstairs, the Suicide Ball is wrapping up, and I've had to dodge the dregs in the lobby as I crept up here. A timid-looking waitress gave me an ice pack; if anyone asks, I had an incident with a drink.
After being photographed with Leo on my arm, if I'm caught hanging around outside my 'girlfriend's' hotel room—complete with an injury—it will not look good. I knock again, harder.
Finally, she appears in the doorway, hiccupping. It takes a moment for her to register the ice pack pressed across my jaw, but she stands aside and gestures for me to enter.
"Who'd you piss off now?" she asks, walking back to her drinks counter.
The hotel suite is lit only by a single lamp, but even then, I can see she looks wasted. Which is against my rules. "What the fuck have I told you about drinking?"
"I was networking," she says plainly. "I ask for water and everyone thinks I'm pregnant. You wouldn't want that kind of rumour flying around now, would you?" She holds a tumbler up to check for watermarks, pours whiskey in soft glugs. Adds ice from a bucket. Then she strides over and hands it to me. "Just thinking ahead."
"No more for you." I swipe the glass away. She has a point about potential rumours, but it would help if I could trust her to have a single glass of wine. I don't socialize with Tuija; I babysit her. It's getting on my last nerve.
"Okay, okay. No more booze pour moi." She kicks her heels off. Beckons for me to join her on the curved taupe sofa. "Now tell me what happened to your face."
Ah, fuck it. Not like she'll remember tomorrow.
I sit beside her and peel the ice pack away, revealing the swollen mess of my lower lip. "I sexually assaulted Leo." The words sound perverse and beautiful aloud.
Don't think me ignorant of my sin, sports fans. Don't make that mistake, not here.
Tuija sighs. "No, really."
"I assaulted her. She fought me off."
"Sounds like foreplay." Tuija lets out a warbling laugh, the kind that grates on my ears. "Dirty boy."
It wasn't foreplay! I want to shout. Because it was more than that. It was inappropriate and intimidating and illegal, and the beast in me wants credit. Recognition. All I get is don't be silly, dear. Boys will be boys.
"Come here." She shifts over to me and takes the glass from my hand, putting it on the sofa. "Let me see." She tips my chin up, nudges my mouth open. Prods at the painful flesh. "She actually bit you?"
"Get off." The stench of alcohol coming off her is almost as bad as the wild, disorientated look in her eyes as she tries to focus on my injury.
"Fine, fine." She climbs away. "You're lucky there, big boy. She only tore the skin on the inside. You'll have a hell of a bruise when it all goes down, but it could be a lot worse." Then she leans on her stomach to reach her purse, and pulls out her phone.
"What are you doing?"
"Calling your doctor. You're gonna need stitches."
"The bleeding already stopped," I mutter. But she's right. I sip the whiskey, enjoying the hard sting of it, and allow her to make the call.
"He'll be here in half an hour," she says, hanging up.