26. Oli
Oli
Fractured
S omeone is crawling into my hiding spot.
I duck my head into my folded arms, breaths jagged and harsh. A familiar smell rushes into my nostrils, but it isn’t his . Horrible Axe body spray and Old Spice deodorant.
No, this isn’t… him.
A rush of reality wakes me up. I blink hard.
Oh my god.
Everything comes back at lightning speed. Me and Jorge kissing, getting triggered by virtually nothing , me shoving him off and falling into a crippling episode.
I choke on my breaths, desperate to go find Jorge, but when I lift my head to start moving, I see my brother’s odd eyes. They’re damp, his dark blond lashes catching the moisture. Brown and green gaze upon me unshrouded, like he knows.
“Hey,” he whispers, offering me a weak smile.
“What are you doing here?”
Another semi-truck hits me in the chest. Fuck. Jorge called him.
“What’s going on, Oli? Did he hurt you?”
Bile rushes up my throat. Who is he talking about? Surely he doesn’t… “Move,” I bark.
Obeying, Phoenix crawls out from under the bed, and I do the same. My entire body aches like I’ve been beaten, probably from being tense for so long. Once I’m out from under the bed, I try to stand up, but my knees give out, so I slump against the side of it. Phoenix sits next to me, eyes on his lap, but I can feel his need to say something.
“You can go. I’m fine,” I whisper because I don’t want Jorge to hear. I’m sure he’s right outside the door, freaking out, regretting ever befriending me. Regretting it all.
“You’re not. I’m not fucking blind.” He takes a deep breath and looks at me. “You hid under the bed. You haven’t done that since high school.”
I flinch; those words are painful to my raw nerves. The urge to tell him it was just an episode sits heavy on my tongue, but I don’t. Phoenix doesn’t know I even have them. He knows nothing about me anymore. I used to hide under the bed when I’d wake up with nightmares of what was done to me, what was actively being done to me. Phoenix would crawl under it with me and calm me down. I’d always lie and say it was nothing.
He believed me.
Phoenix always believed me when I lied.
“So you and Jorge, huh?” he says softly like he’s trying to lighten the mood, but it comes out bitter. He’s upset.
I knew he would be. Is he judging me? Us? “That’s none of your business.”
“He’s my best friend,” he snips under his breath.
I refuse to speak about it until I can form my thoughts right.
Every time I have an episode, no matter how intense, I feel zapped of energy. Like I can’t be bothered to do anything at all. Of course, Phoenix chooses now to try and talk to me about Jorge. He’s out of his goddamn mind if he thinks I’ll cough up my secrets.
We sit in charged silence for a few minutes until the door opens. Shame and embarrassment consume me, so I keep my eyes on my lap. I am not ready to see the disgust—the rejection I know is coming.
How could it not?
The few people that have seen me freak out like that took it personally. And with how much Jorge cares, there’s no way he didn’t view it as a direct attack on him—that I hated what we did. That I saw him as a threat. I wish I could place the blame on him; it’d certainly be easier and relieve me of the toxic thoughts in my brain, but I can’t. It’s me. I’m broken.
I’m the only one who can turn such a beautiful moment black.
“Phoenix,” he rasps, voice cracking.
“I’ll be right back,” Phoenix whispers to me, and they leave me alone in the room.
What’s happening right now is what Jorge has feared for this past year. All of our lies becoming known.
Instead of following him, protecting him, and keeping him safe from Phoenix’s wrath, I’m crippled. So fucking worthless I want the floor to open up and swallow me. Jorge doesn’t deserve to face this alone.
None of this was his fault.
I’m the one who made him promise.
I’m the one who lost my shit for no reason.
I’m the one who pushed him off me like he was a monster trying to eat my heart.
“Fuck,” I whimper, holding my forehead.
The urge to numb it all comes in fast and hot. Like a metal brand scorching my chest, I jerk. I pat down my pockets like I’ll find something in there. Something to take me away from it all. All I find is my cellphone. I pull it out, click the power button, and debate calling Kristen. She’s my unofficial sponsor. I’ve never actually called her before.
I scroll up and see Jorge’s contact ID, his pretty face grinning so brightly for his special picture. The one he took just for me. If I break my sobriety, if I reject the life I’ve created for myself and fall back on my old habits, I’ll lose him for good.
Every moment of the past fifteen months will be for nothing.
“Tell me why!” I hear Phoenix’s guttural scream.
Life rushes back through my limbs, and I jump to my feet. I’m scared to death, but I can’t let Jorge do this alone. It’s not his fault, damn it. I hurry to the front door, out of breath and rigid. Yanking open the door, I am met with three pairs of eyes. The brown pair with flecks of gold smash the broken bits of me into microscopic fragments. I’ve only ever seen him this upset once before, when his grandmother died.
“It’s not his fault,” I rush out, putting my body in front of his. I want to take him into my arms and protect him from my brother, but I can’t. Not yet. Not so soon. “I made him promise me.”
Jorge’s cries are like knives digging into my back, filleting me open.
“Why didn’t you tell me, Oli? I have been waiting for you. You could have come to me with anything.”
Bullshit.
Anger swirls low in my gut as I recall all the times I tried. Sure, two of them stand out the most, but there were countless others. I tried many times. “I did,” I say, low and deadly.
“No, you didn’t. I never knew. I—”
“I did come to you.” I slash my hand through the air, knots forming in my intestines as he tries to deny it like I would lie about this shit. “I begged you to talk to me, and you didn’t.” He fucking didn’t.
The one person I trusted enough to tell, the one person who swore to always be there for me, and he left me in the dust.
“When? When?!” Phoenix yells. Denial is ugly on him.
“Eight years ago!” I yell right back. “I told you to your face I needed to tell you something important!” My chest heaves as emotions I have tried so hard to ignore come flooding to the surface.
Blinking through fresh tears, Phoenix shakes his head. Still clinging to denial. “Rosie’s funeral? Oli, I was fucking grieving!” Excuses. Endless excuses.
“So was I! Grieving the death of my goddamn soul!” Because your friend raped me. I want to say it. God, I want to fucking scream it to the heavens and beyond.
“Let’s go inside, please. We can take five and revisit once we calm down.” That’s Jorge, but my focus is on my brother. Or who used to be, anyway.
Phoenix steps into my space, his chest puffed up, face twisted. “I have given you endless opportunities to talk to me. Endless. You’ve ignored me for over a year, Oli. How is that fair?”
The fucking audacity. The fucking gall.
Bitterness takes over as I let out the ugly, nasty truth behind my refusal to speak to him. “Now you know how it fucking feels,” I growl and shake. “Hoping for a lifeline that never fucking comes.”
I see the knife hit its mark just as Jorge begs, “You guys, please.”
Eli must realize I’m out for blood because he squeezes Phoenix’s hand and says, “He’s right. This isn’t good, baby. Let’s just…stop for a bit.”
I’m just getting started.
They exchange a look, one that pisses me off more. He’ll listen to that addict, but not me. Even as I think the words, I hate the way I sound. Eli has become something of a friend. We chat often in group and we text.
I’m just so blinded by pain, anger, and the burning need to stand up to my brother so he leaves Jorge alone that I simply don’t care. I’ll rip Eli to shreds, too, if it means sparing my kitten.
“Okay. Shit,” Phoenix breathes, wiping his eyes.
“Oli,” Jorge whispers, his voice both a horrible reminder of earlier and a comforting song.
If I stay here, in this state of mind, I don’t know if I can control what I say or do. I’m rubbed beyond the point of raw. My skin is ripped off, the muscle and rotten bones exposed for them all to see. This vulnerable, I’ll lash out. I know I will.
Folding my arms and hunching up, I say, “I need to go.” It’s the right move.
“Please don’t,” Jorge begs, and his voice slices at my heart. Look at what I’ve done to him. “You don’t need to go,” Phoenix says, but fuck him.
I told Jorge before that it’s my job to ensure he doesn’t get pulled into the darkness with me, and I’ve failed. Failed miserably. Glancing at him, I hate seeing his pretty brown eyes sparkle with endless tears. Those lips I was kissing not even an hour or two ago are pulled down miserably. Between the beg in his voice and his eyes, I feel myself waver.
“If I stay, I will hurt all of you. Especially you. I’m not okay, Jorge. I—”
He cuts me off instantly. “You don’t have to be okay. Just don’t go. Stay with us. Please. ” Fuck.
I grind my teeth, warring with what he wants me to do and what I should do. This whole time, I’ve white-knuckled my control, not willing to give even a shred of it away for fear of it being used against me.
Do you trust him?
His plump lower lip wobbles, curls frizzy and wild from tugging at them. I can’t leave him all alone.
He will never recover. Never.
I nod once and head inside. Needing to separate myself from Phoenix immediately before I change my mind.
W e are all in our corners of Jorge’s house. It’s deathly silent.
In my peripheral, I see Eli rubbing Phoenix’s thigh. They’re snuggled up on Jorge’s couch. I’m so…angry. It’s an irrational anger, one that stems from the deepest, darkest, most tainted places inside me. The one person I trusted with anything and everything abandoned me. He left me to die , literally. But he showed up for Eli. Came to his rescue.
I don’t have it in me to forgive. I don’t have it in me to forget, even if I know it’s wrong.
I’m not so blind that I can’t acknowledge the facts. Phoenix doesn’t know the truth. He doesn’t know that the first time I was brutally raped at his friend’s party, he had a friendly conversation with my rapist right outside the door I was paralyzed behind. There’s no way he could know that fact.
Yet, the resentment, the anger, feels all-consuming. I know that there is a possibility that, had I come clean, he might have believed me. Dr. Langley swears he would have.
But that’s the thing about fear—about being brutalized and ripped apart. It twists your mind against you. It blames you . All the therapies in the world can’t erase over a decade’s worth of toxic aspersion. It simply can’t. It was my fault that I didn’t fight. It was my fault that I didn’t immediately run to the police and report him. It was my fault that I was afraid of being judged. My sophomore year happened before the ‘Me Too’ movement. It happened at a time when men didn’t get raped.
I was raised in a society where that kind of thing was just as taboo as it wasn’t talked about. And I was so fucking afraid.
I still am.
Jorge creeps into the kitchen, still shaking, still crying. “Oli,” he whispers.
Both Phoenix and Eli look at us, but I ignore them. Tilting my head to hold Jorge’s sad stare, I swallow hard. In the midst of my episode, I confessed to him. I hadn’t meant to say his name. I would’ve happily taken it to my grave, but it’s out now. Jorge knows.
“I’m sorry,” I croak.
His head shakes roughly. “No. Don’t apologize for anything. Nothing.”
But I feel like I have so much to be sorry for. “I didn’t mean to push you away.”
“You didn’t. I’m still here.”
God, I want to hold him. He looks so small, so miserable. Would he even let me? Can I handle it? Keeping my voice as low as possible, words meant for only his ears, I whisper, “This isn’t your fault.”
“Yes, it is.”
“It’s not. Baby, it’s not,” I rasp, my heart a rampaging beast needing to get to him.
“I didn’t mean to push. I didn’t mean to. Please forgive me,” he cries loudly, no doubt cluing in the trespassers.
“Damn it.” I shove off the counter I’ve been leaning against and hug him. He melts into me, too afraid to hold me back, but that’s alright. I curl my arms tighter, stuffing my face in his curls, and listen to him break. “You didn’t push me,” I murmur. “You did nothing wrong.”
I hear Phoenix clear his throat, my eyes flicking up to see him gazing at me with remorse. The look spears through me, pinning my metaphorical body to the wall. It’s not just remorse swirling in his odd eyes.
No. It’s empathy.
It's such a foreign emotion that I haven’t witnessed in my brother’s eyes for so long that I forgot it was even possible. And it curdles my bile. It twists my guts. It heightens my senses and sets me on edge.
Phoenix knows. He fucking knows .
My brother stands from the couch, patting Eli’s shoulder in a silent command. He stalks towards the kitchen, purpose in his gaze. A flash of hurt crosses his eyes as he glances at Jorge in my arms, and then it fades. I gently release Jorge, wanting him close in case Phoenix lays into him again. My mouth opens to tell Phoenix to leave, but he cuts me to the bone.
“I didn’t know, Oli.” His words are wobbly, fluid, and laced with emotion. “I had no fucking clue.”
I tense.
“You and I have never lied to each other. Never. Those nightmares? The monster that comes for you in your dreams? That wasn’t the truth, was it?”
Jorge’s pinky finger hooks through mine, keeping me present, keeping me from vanishing. “No,” I croak and swallow. “It wasn’t.”
“That day after school, when you came home late and said you were sick? When you could barely walk? When you held your stomach and cried? You weren’t sick, were you?” Phoenix goes on, bringing up all the signs he missed.
I shake my head, tears welling in my eyes.
He steps closer. “When you shaved your head,” he shakes now, clenching his fists and eyebrows slanting harshly, “it wasn’t because you had lice that no one else caught.”
“No,” I whisper, wetness hitting my cheeks.
“The bruises weren’t from fucking football. The puking wasn’t from bad burgers. You never got stomach problems when we went to Michael’s house. You never were in the bathroom for an hour. And you never left Michael’s party to go home. Everything you told me was a lie.”
I drop my gaze to the floor, vibrating. He’s finally seeing. Thirteen years later, he finally sees.
“Tell him, babe,” Jorge urges gently. “It’s okay.”
“Oli,” Phoenix's voice breaks. I glance at him, scared to death. “ Oli ,” he whimpers. Eli is there immediately, rubbing Phoenix’s back, and nods at me.
“Morgan raped me every chance he could my entire sophomore year.”
Phoenix drops to his knees.
He screams.
God, he screams.
His fists bang on the floor. Eli tries to comfort him. Jorge slots our fingers together as he trembles with rage, eyes vacantly glaring forward. For long minutes, we all sit with the truth I’ve kept inside me for so long.
I feel ugly, disgusting, beyond used. But I also feel relief. I feel seen.
And when I let out a scream of my own, a cloud of black explodes from my lips.