Chapter 9 #2
She rakes stiffened fingers through her hair, nodding absently. "It's going to be painful. But there's nothing about this that isn't." She glances at me. "I just…I'm confused."
"Did…" I wince, not wanting to ask the question for fear that the answer will be yes. "Did this—you and me, just now…did it confuse you even more?"
She barks a laugh. "Fuck yes it did, Fee. It didn't confuse me more —it's the entire reason I'm confused."
I sigh, thunking my head against the headboard. "Oh."
She looks at me, smiling. "Don't take that personally, Felix. It's not about you, it's about…everything. Me losing Dutchie. How I came into my sexuality with him after what happened with Rob." She points at me. "I'm not telling you his last name. Murdering him won't do anything for me."
I hold up my hands palms out. "Fine. No murders."
"I was…both innocent and jaded by the time I met Dutchie. Like I said, I grew up seeing sex and nudity regularly, so it wasn't some weird foreign concept to me. And I'd had sex. Which, up until he actually got inside me, was actually pretty enjoyable. The initial exploration, I mean. Kissing, touching, all that. I liked it. He was a good-looking guy, an older guy, a bad boy, tattoos, rode a motorcycle, all that."
"Everyone likes a bad boy until he does something bad," I say.
She snorts. "No shit. Learned that one the hard way. Anyway, after what happened with Rob—after he sexually assaulted me—" she trails off, staring at nothing, and I see her eyes go hazy.
"Ember?" I ask, turning toward her. "Hey. What is it?"
A shake of her head. "Just—I…I never framed it in those terms, in my mind. I guess I knew it wasn't right , but I've never, like, identified as a survivor of sexual assault. It sort of skews my whole perspective on it. On everything." She sniffles, swipes her middle fingers under her eyes. "It was traumatic. I was scarred by it. It went from being something I'd been enjoying to terrifying and painful like that—" she snaps her fingers. "And he wouldn't stop. I told him I didn't like it. I asked him to stop, to be gentle. He—" She shakes her head. "It doesn't matter."
"Have you ever spoken about it? Like, told the whole story to anyone?"
A small shake of her head. "I told Dutchie pretty much what I told you. There are details I've never…never been brave or strong enough to talk about."
"You can tell me." I face her sitting cross-legged, the quilt across my lap.
"I don't know if I can, Fee," she whispers.
"And you don't have to. But…" I rub my jaw. "When Riley got out of prison, there were things that he saw, things he had to do on the inside that really fucked him up. And until he told someone about it, like got it out of him and into the world, he was a fucking mess. He had panic attacks all the time. That’s how I knew how to help you when you had yours. Maybe a professional therapist is a better option for you. God knows I'm not one. I'm just saying, I'm here. I'll listen."
"Part of me is like, I've cried enough today. I fucking hate crying, and it feels like all I've done with you is fucking cry and be all emotional and shit." She shakes her head, running her hair through her fists. "But then, I also feel like if I don't get it out now, I never will."
“Up to you. I'm here for whatever you need."
She gives me a smile—grateful, sweet, tender. "I can't with you, Fee. You're too fucking sweet."
"Sorry. I'll try to be more of an asshole."
She looks at me with wide, bugging out eye. "I was kidding, I hope you realize that. Please don’t change, Fee."
I laugh. "I know. I couldn't intentionally be a dick to you if I tried. Which is not to say I'm not gonna do something stupid and asshole-ish on accident."
She lets out a sharp, short sigh. "I can't do it here, like this." She slips out of bed and traipses naked to my closet. "Can I borrow a shirt?"
"Of course."
She pulls open the tri-fold door, flips through my limited selection of button-downs, and selects a plain white one. She slips it on, buttons it, and rolls the sleeves to her elbows. The hem falls to just below her butt, and with the top three buttons left undone, her goddamned magnificent cleavage is on mouthwatering display.
She opens my bedroom door, pausing in the doorway. "Coming?"
"Yep." I hop out of bed and grab a pair of workout shorts from my bureau, following her out of my room.
I'd expected her to sit on the couch, or at the island in the kitchen, or on the deck. Instead, she goes out the front door, clambers up onto the flatbed—incidentally flashing her bare ass, which she doesn’t seem to notice or care about—and tugs open the sliding door of her VW. She rummages in an upper cabinet and comes back with a small leather zipper bag, a toiletries case kind of thing. She hops down, shuts the door, and breezes back into the house and out onto the back deck.
“What's in there?" I ask.
"The only way I'll get through this." She sits in one of my Adirondacks with her legs crossed and opens the case.
Inside is cannabis paraphernalia—several glass jars with dried flower, a glass pipe, rolling papers, a grinder, and several glass tubes containing pre-rolled joints.
She glances at me. "You okay with this?"
I shrug. "Sure. It's recreationally legal in Michigan.”
"But you don't use it?"
I shake my head. "No. Never got into it."
"It was obviously a common thing in my life, and Dutchie grew up outside Portland where it's been recreationally legal since like 2014, I think." She opens one of the pre-rolled joints, finds a lighter in the case, and sets the open case aside. Lights the joint, takes a long inhale. Hands it to me.
I hesitate, and then sit in the other Adirondack next to her, and take the joint. "Can't hurt, I guess."
She laughs. "Just take a hit or two. I don't want to be responsible for you greening out."
"Greening out?"
"Get so high you can't function.”
"Oh, yeah, don't want that."
"So just take a little puff, inhale it, and blow it out right away. No need to hold it—that doesn’t do anything." She watches me take a small puff, laughing when I dissolve into hacking. "Now wait a bit and see how that feels."
She takes a much longer hit, closing her eyes and exhaling the smoke in a thick, rolling cloud. She scoots down in the chair and kicks her legs out ankle over ankle, rests her head against the chair back, and takes another long hit. Passes it to me. I take another puff, and now I'm starting to feel…
Loose. A little floaty, as if my head is a balloon. Mellow.
I grin. "Not bad."
She smiles at me. "I rarely drink. This is my vice." The smile fades, the distance of memory occluding her expression. "Hard not to think of him, though."
There's nothing to say to that, so I say nothing.
She smokes in silence for a while. I wave off another hit. She puts it out about halfway through it, and puts it back in the tube, then closes her eyes and just sits in silence for a few minutes.
"It was…it was horrific." She's speaking barely above a whisper. "We kissed. Got each other naked. He fingered me—that felt good. I'd done that for myself, so I knew what that felt like. I touched him—the first time I'd touched a penis. I liked it a lot. He…" she sighs, voice shaking. Starts over. "We messed around for a few minutes. But then he…he put on a condom. I was on my back, sort of just…expecting that to be the position. But he—he flipped me onto my stomach, yanked me up by my hips, and…just—just…boom. Went for it. Right inside. No warning, no build up, just…wham. Hard . And he…he wasn't small." Her eyes go to me. Away. Close, hiding the pain of the memory. “He fucked me. Hard and fast, like I knew what I was doing, like I was used to it. It hurt. I could feel that I was bleeding. You know, from being a virgin."
"Jesus," I mutter.
She reaches out and takes my hand. "Don't interrupt, please. I have to just get it out."
I squeeze her hand in response, and she continues. "He, um…did it like that for a while. I don't know how long—It felt like hours. It hurt. I was crying. He knew, but he didn't fucking give a shit. He pulled out after a while, dragged me to the edge of the bed, bent me over it, and went at it again, standing up behind me. Even harder."
I have to grip the arm of the chair so hard my hand aches, but the fury I feel is overwhelming. I'm seeing red—murderous fury.
She squeezes my hand. “Breathe, Fee. Just…breathe with me." She inhales deeply, and I follow suit. After we exhale, she resumes. "That lasted for a while, too. Again, I couldn't track the time. I tried to…to go away in my head. And then he pulled out again, and…um." A pause, her voice shaking. "He shoved me to my knees facing him, took off the condom, and fucked my face. Like, down my throat, like I was some porn star who knew how to deep-throat. I couldn't breathe, and I kept almost barfing, but I couldn't, and…he wouldn't stop. I was sobbing, gagging, snotting, pushing at him, hitting him, but he had my hair and he was so strong, and he…he wouldn’t stop. Until he finished, which was… awful . He just tasted gross. His cum, I mean. It was nasty. And there was so much of it. When he finished, he shoved me to the floor, laughing." She wipes at her eyes. "He stood over me, buckling his jeans. And he—he said, ’Now you ain't a virgin anymore, are you, cunt?'"
Silence.
She looks at me, wiping at her eyes again. "There. That's the story I've never told anyone."
"Forget what I said before," I growl, my voice shaking with rage. "That was rape. In so many ways, that was rape. It may have started out consensual, but the minute you said anything that even hinted that you wanted to stop or slow down, it should have been over." I close my eyes and lean forward, elbows on knees, fists gripped so tight they shake—my whole body is trembling with hate, with fury, with rage. "I'm so, so, so fucking sorry you went through that, Ember."
She rests a hand on my shoulder. "Hey, it's okay now. It was hard to talk through, but I really am okay. It's just…" her voice shakes. "I never wanted to apply that word to me. Sexual Assault. Rape. Survivor. Victim. I always framed it as he went too far, that I just got more than I bargained for."
I shake my head. "Fuckers like that oughta be castrated with a dull butter knife." I hiss. "Sorry—sorry, I know the violent talk bothers you."
"Don't be angry for me, Felix. Please."
"Yeah, well, I am." I look at her, trying to swallow the hot lump in my throat. "I'm more than angry."
"Should we talk more another day?"
I shake my head. "Not unless you want to."
She shrugs. "No, I'd like to get past this." She rubs my back. "Just…try to let it go. Okay? I'm okay. I forgave him."
"How?” I ask. "How the fuck do you forgive someone who does something that evil?"
"I had to. It was eating me alive. I couldn't…I couldn’t function. I couldn't let Dutchie even kiss me. Not until I told him what happened. And he…Dutchie told me that forgiveness was the only possible path to healing."
"Fuck that."
"No. It worked. I wrote Rob this big, long letter. I dumped everything I was feeling into it. How much I hated him. All the ways I'd fantasized about hurting him for what he did—and believe me, I can be really motherfucking creative. I wrote about how it had screwed me up. Made me distrustful not just of men, but everyone. I mean, I knew Rob was a quote-unquote bad boy, but he didn't seem…all that bad. He was flirty, funny, easy to talk to. Bought me beer, and we'd smoke down together. Treated me like an adult. But then it was like a switch flipped inside him, and he just…he was someone else. A monster. And I told him about that. It must have been ten or eleven pages both sides. And I tracked him down, and I mailed him the letter. The last three words of which were 'I forgive you.' I don't know if he read it, if it found him, but it didn't matter. Telling him how I felt and writing the words that I forgave him…it sort of set me free. It wasn't magic. I wasn't okay all at once. It took Dutchie another two or three months of patient exploration before we went past second base. I kept having flashbacks when he touched me, but I…I had to work through that. I'd have Dutchie do something that gave me flashbacks, and we'd just let me go through it, and he'd hold me and the next time it wasn't as bad. Eventually, doing things with Dutchie felt good, physically and emotionally."
She lights the other half of the joint and smokes it while talking.
"But it progressed by degrees. Kissing, making out, heavy petting. Letting him see me naked—I wore baggy clothes for a long time after what happened. Letting him touch my body. Touching him—that part was easier. Rob hadn't ruined that for me. I liked making Dutchie feel good. With my hands, at least." She laughs. "I must've given him dozens of hand jobs because it was all I could handle, and I liked how he reacted. I liked seeing him lose his mind. Making him feel good made me forget. I couldn't go down on him for a long time, though, even after I was okay with sex. The way he did that—Rob, I mean. It…that really messed me up."
"I can't fucking imagine. It's kinda incredible to me that you can do that at all." I frown. "Jesus, Ember. If I'd known—"
She lunges across the space between us and claps a hand over my mouth. "Nope, nope, nope, nope. You are not doing that, Felix Crowe. You absolutely, categorically are not allowed to treat me any different because I told you that. " She keeps her hand on my mouth, eyes blazing and intense. "I…am… healed . It still hurts to remember, but it doesn't haunt me. I don’t think about it almost ever. And I never think about it during sex. Never. You wanna know what I was thinking when I was sucking your big, beautiful cock, Fee?"
I nod. "Mmmm-hmmm."
"I was thinking, 'god, his cock is amazing.'"
I snort. "Mmm-hmmm." It's a sarcastic sound, this time.
"It's true!" She protests. "Do I need to prove it?" Her smirk is teasing, but I suspect if I said yes, she would.
"Ember," I say, pulling her hand away from my mouth. "You don't have to prove anything."
"I just mean I need you to believe me. I loved every second of what we just shared, Fee. I said I'm confused and conflicted—and I am. But not because of you, or because I still have hangups about sex. I don't. My hangups are emotional—it’s about grief, not that.”
"I believe you," I say.
"Now, back then, when I first got together with Dutchie? Yeah, that's a different story. For two, almost three years after we started, having sex was sorta like walking through a minefield. Poor Dutchie—I don't know how many times we had to stop because something he did triggered something. Never a complaint. Just love and patience and understanding. But I was sick of it. I was sick of having sex ruined. So I set about trying to move past it. Oral sex was the hardest. Dutchie would have been fine had I decided to just not do it, but I didn't like that. I refused to let that shithead take anything from me, from Dutchie, or from us."
"Brave girl," I murmur.
She smiles in acknowledgment of my words. "It took a long time. Months of…practice.”
I grin. "Poor Dutchie, having to endure all that practice."
"You jest, I know, but at first it was…rough. I'd get triggered and be crying and have to stop and he'd be left halfway to orgasm with a sobbing wife. He kept asking me to stop trying, but I can be stubborn. He enjoyed it—I could tell how much he liked it when I did it for him…before I got triggered. And I was determined to stop being triggered by it. And…I won."
"Clearly,” I say.
"The fun part for Dutchie was when I was finally able to perform the whole act without being triggered, because that's when I started to practice different techniques on him. I'd pay attention to how he reacted when I did different things." She closes her eyes, smiling at the sky as she remembers, taking a long, leisurely hit of the joint. "That was a very, very fun period for us. When I was past all my sexual dysfunction and could just enjoy everything. We had so much sex, Fee. Dutchie must've gotten a blowjob every day for a fucking month, sometimes more, just because I wanted to prove to myself that I could. And also because it made me so fucking hot watching him when I did it for him."
I grab her hand and squeeze. "His love and patience were amply rewarded, I'd say."
She laughs, nodding. "Yes, I like to think so." The humor fades almost instantly. "This brings me to the reason for my emotional conflict."
“Okay."
"I fucking…" a sigh. "I don't even know where to start." She rubs her face, the joint now a roach pinched between her finger and thumb, trailing a thin plume of smoke with every gesture. "What we just did, Fee, it was… so fucking hot."
"It was, no lie, the hottest thing I’ve ever experienced,” I say. "I mean it."
"For me, too." I can barely hear her. "That's the conflict."
"Ember," I murmur. "I—"
A shake of her head. "No, I'm being honest. What I shared with Dutchie was…it was what I needed. He healed me. Took care of me. Showed me love. Taught me how to trust again. He was my home, every bit as much if not more than the bus. I loved our sex life together. I craved him all the time." A pause. "But…"
"But?"
"This is so hard to put into words, Fee."
"So don't."
"I have to." She puts the roach out and drops it into the tube. "Sometimes, I felt like I…like I wanted…more. I don't know how else to put it. I wanted…god, how to say it? Dutchie was good and sweet and gentle down to his fucking atoms. I'm not. I was raised mostly without rules. I lived among adults. I did what I wanted, said what I wanted, and answered to no one. Mom was more of a friend than a mother, especially once I was out of the young child phase. After nine or so, I was considered able to take care of myself, and I did. Mom provided for me. We had food. I had clothes. She maintained the bus. Drove us. Made sure I knew who was safe to be around and who wasn't. But I’m a wild child, Fee. And Dutchie was…"
"Too good? Too sweet?"
She nods. "Sometimes, yes." Her eyes squeeze shut, and tears trickle down. "It feels like a betrayal to say that. I loved him. I fucking loved him so much. But sometimes, I wanted more. I wanted him to…" She bares her teeth and shakes her head and growls like a she-wolf. "Fuck! I wanted him to be rough with me sometimes. To take the stigma off of that for me. That was the last piece, and he just couldn't go there."
"That's a big ask, Ember. For a naturally sweet kid who knew what you went through? Or suspected, I have to imagine, despite what you may not have told him."
"I know!" she says. "I stopped asking. I knew he couldn't. It just wasn't him. Never would be." She looks at me. "Deep down, I've always wanted to be…to have a partner who could go there with me. Lose control totally, but safely and respectfully. I…I always felt like there was more that I wanted, I just didn’t know how to say it. My sex drive was…maybe too much for Dutchie. I wanted things he wasn't comfortable with. And I wasn't about to pressure him into anything, obviously, so I let it go. Put those desires in a box and forgot about them."
"And then Dutchie passed away."
She nods. "And then Dutchie passed away. I shut down. Couldn't cry. I was a ghost. A zombie. For months. Till I met you." She looks at me, her gaze intense, emotional, tearful. "I don't know what it is about you. I mean, I guess I do. You're hot as fuck. My attraction to you is just…fucking wild , Fee. It's on a molecular level. But that doesn’t totally explain it. I trust you implicitly. Even though I don't know you. Or barely. It took me years to fully trust Dutchie with my body, and yet I trust you that way within…what, days? Hours? Why? I don't fucking get it. And not only that, I'm fucking hot for you. I dreamed about you. After we first met, before we ran into each other again, I couldn't stop thinking about you. Having dirty dreams about you that I'd wake up from and have to masturbate."
My cheeks burn. "Jesus, Ember."
“That embarrasses you?" she asks, grinning despite the watery gleam of unshed tears.
"I dunno how to respond." I roll my shoulders, not quite able to look at her.
She laughs. "Oh, Fee. You're ridiculous."
"What?"
“You wouldn't jerk off to me. You ran away from me rather than let me touch you, not once but twice. And you blush when I talk about having wet dreams about you." She gives me a hot, smoldering look. "And yet, you gave me orgasms so fucking good my legs are still shaky. You gave me a nipple orgasm, Fee. That's fucking rare."
"That’s all you, Ember. Sensitive. Responsive." I shift, feeling myself growing aroused.
She notices. Grins. "Let's call it a team effort."
"Deal."
She looks away, then. "It's hard to not think about Dutchie. It's hard to do things with you, to you, for you—things that I did with him. Things that were ours —his and mine." When I open my mouth, she silences me with a raised hand. “Let me finish, please." A tense silence. "The way I touched you, the way I went down on you—that was all stuff I learned with him. Developed or figured out or whatever—ways of making it feel as good as possible. For him. And now I'm using it with you, and…I don’t want to think about someone else when I’m with you. That's not fair to you. But I can't forget Dutchie. So…what do I do?"
I can sense she's not done, so I stay quiet.
"And to compound the whole situation…with you it was…" She closes her eyes as if to hide from the truth she's about to speak. "It was fucking hot. You gave me exactly what I've always craved. It was…so good." She covers her face with both hands, her words muffled. "It was better."
"Fuck, Ember. No wonder you're confused."
"How can it be better? I loved my husband. I'll always love him. I loved our sexual relationship. But with you—that wasn't even really sex, just…messing around. Foreplay. Whatever you wanna call it. And it was so fucking amazing I almost—I did forget…him." She looks at me with tears tracking down her cheeks, her words shaky and fraught. "I forgot about him, Felix. And—and—it was a relief." That last sentence is barely audible.
My eyes sting. "Ember, I—fuck, honey. I don't know what to say."
She shoots to her feet, shaking her head. "I can't—I can't. I…I need a minute." She pauses in the open sliding doorway to the living room. "Felix, I—"
I go to her, clasp her face in my hands and kiss her softly, sweetly, gently. "Take whatever time you need. Whatever it looks like."
"I need to get out of here. I need to be alone."
"Go get dressed," I tell her. "Meet me out front."