Fourteen
Ben
Sadie and I have talked every single day during this first week. The band has gone all down the East Coast, starting in New York and traveling to Florida. That’s where we are tonight. All this talking isn’t enough to keep me completely sane, but I have poured all my extra time into her instead of spiraling. There were some close calls, but I focused all my energy on Sadie and therapy.
Sadie keeps me centered. It’s nice having something else to get me high. Week one is almost over, which brings me one week closer to getting back home to her. How is it possible to miss her so much? After my mother was murdered, I didn’t think I would ever be able to let someone in again. My sperm donor made it easy for me to not trust a single fucking soul.
My father’s abuse started when I was six. That was the first time I saw him hit my mother.
* * *
The smell of our house and the creak of the wooden floorboards are familiar as I pad toward the kitchen to beg for a taste of the pie my mom is baking. That’s when I hear it. Her soft, sad whimpers. I can hear the sound of skin on skin violently coming together. With fear in each step, I walk into the kitchen to find my dad slapping my mother then spitting in her face as she lies on the floor in front of him, his body towering over her.
Her favorite blue dress with flowers on it, the one she wears every Monday, is covered in blood from her nose. At first, I don’t move, afraid of what I’m witnessing. Despite my young age, I understand that my father is hurting my mother. When he lifts his fist, still unaware of my presence, I watch her close her eyes, grab the cross on her neck, and whisper, “Please, God.” Before my father brings his fist down, I scream, rounding his body faster than light.
Jumping in front of my mother, I wrap my arms around her and catch his fist right between my shoulders. I wail, the pain unlike anything I have ever felt. But I take it willingly because she is my mother, my goddamn mother. My screams mix in with hers as she hurries to grab me and shield me from his descending fist. When he catches the side of her head, she cries louder.
Here we are, mother and son, dangerously defending and protecting one another.
* * *
My entire nervous system is on overload because of the memory. After the first time, my father began to hit me more and more and her less and less, causing me to act out and find outlets like drugs and drinking at a young age—as young as fourteen. If I had to take the hits for my mother, I would do it. Shit, I’d do it all over again, except this time, I would fight back and get us out of there. No matter what, I would save us.
But I didn’t. Now I see my mother’s dark hair and the brown eyes that look like mine in my dreams. I hear her sing soft melodies to me, the vibrato in her low, sultry voice carrying through the house on days when Dad wasn’t home.
I remember running my hands through her hair to help her sleep as she cried in pain with fresh bruises. I remember the apologies she whispered and the forgiveness she begged from me for not being able to save us. My father would have killed us both before he ever let us leave, and many times he nearly did. No one saved us. Instead, we drowned, and he took my mother away from me. There I was as a young teenager, angry that I, unfortunately, survived.
Fuck. I need to get out of here. I can’t think about this any longer. I’m on the verge of ripping my hair out and tearing at my skin.
“Nick. Let’s go grab some food. I need something to eat.” Sliding out from my bunk, I search out Nick in the front of the bus.
“Let’s go. The other boys already left to go to the bar. You didn’t want to go?” He sounds surprised. He’s not the only one. I’m surprised at myself. Sure, I still drink and smoke some weed when my palms begin to shake a little too much. But as wrong as this is, Sadie’s the drug in my life right now.
“Have a little faith in me. I’m exhausted, and Sadie worked a shift at the hospital, so I want to be back in time to FaceTime her.”
Shaking his head, Nick stands, and we head out of the bus to catch an Uber.
Nick and I have known each other since I was nineteen. He was a roadie for another band when we played a festival in Portland our first year as The Roes. I was the inexperienced mess of a human I admittedly still am. After my mom died and the old man was hauled off to prison, I became a ward of the state. Out of all the families I was tossed around to, not one wanted me. When I was eighteen, I left the state’s care and slept on people’s couches—friends and friends of friends—just living for the drugs, alcohol, and women. I was an adolescent punk with an attitude and an ego bigger than myself. I was all over the place at shows, high, drunk, and forgetting lyrics left and right. One time we got booed offstage. I told the crowd to fuck off, dropped my mic, and stormed off.
There Nick was, stopping me and shaking the shit out of me, giving me a real wake-up call. One thing led to another, and we’ve been thick as thieves ever since.
I’m not totally clean, but I’ve cleaned up a lot since then. Back then, LSD, cocaine, even fentanyl was an everyday occurrence. It took me two years to clean up as much as I have now. I’m not really one to admit that I still have a lot of work to do—but I do. People can praise my growth, but it’s up to me to figure it out. I’ve never tried to forgive myself for what happened to my mother. When I met the band, we were all lost boys looking for a home but never finding one. We were alone in the wild, and soon enough it became just us four. Nobody wanted the fucked-up teenage rebels, not one single soul. Often, I find myself wondering what my life would be like if one person helped me before I got so lost. Nick could have been the one to help me, but by the time I met him, all the damage had been done.
It is what it is, and I have to cope the only way I know how, and that’s with music, fighting, and unfortunately the chemicals. Nick is the person who’s helped me rein it in. I owe this man a lot; he helped save my life.
We made it big when I turned twenty-two. That’s when we signed with Lightning Rock Records, and our first album went platinum within six weeks of its release. Time moved at record speed, and then the money came, the headlining tour hit, and I’m still only twenty-two. In less than a year, my life has turned on its axis. I didn’t think I would ever experience something that cosmic again. Until I met her.
“The shows have been going good.” Nick’s voice slices through the silent car.
“Actually, today was one of our best. I like playing daytime festivals. Much fucking nicer.”
“It was hot as fuck, though,” he responds.
“I’m used to the heat.”
“True.” I can tell he wants to ask about Sadie. He’s not making eye contact, and the gnawing on the inside of his cheek is a dead giveaway.
Shaking my head, I tap out a quick drumbeat on my thighs and go in for the kill. “We’re great—she’s great. You know you can ask me, Nick.” I have no reservations about Sadie. I’ve accepted how I feel: I’m falling for her. At least, that’s what I assume this is. I’ve never experienced something that almost feels like a birthright. Sadie belongs on my lips, grazing against the tips of my hungry fingers and cradling my damaged heart in her delicate hands.
He stiffens. “I don’t want to pry into your business.”
“You’re my best friend, man. You aren’t in my business. Besides, I would tell you to fuck off if you were.” We both laugh.
“True, you would. But still—Ben and one woman. What is it about her?” he asks, seeming a bit peeved.
“What was that?”
“Hmm?”
“You did that shit where you secretly don’t agree with me but you wear it on your face. What, you don’t like Sadie?”
“I don’t know her,” he answers and shrugs.
“Exactly, and I do, so don’t go making judgments about her. She’s different, man.” My anger begins spiking, that familiar tingle running up my spine and the hair on my neck standing, like a dog when he feels something circling whatever he is protecting.
“It’s not that, Ben. I’m not worried about you. It’s her. Sadie seems different—she’s in this for you. I saw the way she was with you on the boat.”
His words help ease out my next breath, because I was one wrong word coming out of his mouth from snapping. I didn’t tell him about the flashback I had on the bus, so he has no idea that I am on a hair trigger. Relaxing my clenched fist and closing my eyes for a second, I even out my breathing and wait for my heart rate to decline. I despise my IED—hate that I have it at all. Hate learning after the state therapist diagnosed me with it at seventeen that it came from the long line of abusers on my dad’s side. My grandpa died when I was nine, but I watched him beat his wife and hit my dad, his own son. Then the cycle bled on.
“Nick, I would fight hell for her before I ever let her go. Yes, I have some fucked-up shit to work through, but I’m feeling this. Let me have this and don’t give me shit.” I’m growing heated between thinking about my mother and defending myself in the name of wanting Sadie.
“All right, I’m sorry, you’re right. Take a breath.” Sensing I’m worked up, Nick attempts to soothe me, but it’s useless. I need to get back to the bus, light a joint, and wait like a puppy dog for Sadie to answer her phone and throw me a fucking bone.
“Get takeout and take me back.”
Knowing better than to fight me, he tells the driver to go somewhere fast, and within thirty minutes, I’m back on the bus with a blunt between my lips and my phone in my hand, waiting for it to ring. Some days are better than others, but today wasn’t one of them. Digging up old memories and hearing Nick tell me he’s worried about me being with Sadie worked against me. There are days I hyperfocus on bitterness toward the people who push me past my limits, but at the same time, I remember that the world can’t stop turning to cater to me. The eggshells around me are bound to be broken down and smashed, and I have to accept that.
Seconds later, my phone goes off, and like a beacon of light, Sadie’s picture fills the screen. I leave the bus so I can have privacy.
“Angel, look at you.” Her blond hair is tied up in a messy bun, and her blue eyes are piercing. She looks tired but still hauntingly beautiful. The angel of temptation and desire. The perfect combination of sexy and cute.
“Hey, how are you!” Her enthusiasm isn’t lost on me. It feels good knowing that she’s excited to see me, even if it’s late and on a small phone screen. That shit sobers me up.
“Could be better. I can’t stop thinking about you,” I tell her truthfully.
With a frown, she nods. “I miss you. Are you outside?”
I look around me at the empty venue parking lot and the night sky. “I am. I wanted privacy, and you know that musky bus has everything but privacy,” I tell her, and she chuckles. “You alone?” I ask, lowering my voice. I need a fix. What would she do if I told her that my addictive personality has latched on to her? That I need to feel a connection with her after the day I had? There were too many flashbacks. They consumed me and turned me inside out. Nick questioning me on what my presence in her life could do to her—once again, a hair trigger. Now I have her, and it’s a need. Not just a want but a need. One so deep that I would take a life for a second of her time spent whimpering my name.
“Kind of. Mama and Papa are downstairs, why?” She misses the way I’m focused on her. I wish I could crawl into the screen and taste a little bit of my innocent Sadie.
“What are you wearing?” I ask. She gulps with a blush and shakes her head.
“Ben, my parents are downstairs.”
“Then be a good girl and lock your door. Go to your bathroom and stand in front of your mirror. I want to have some of you. Just a fucking little, baby,” I groan.
“Then play your guitar or something, Benny,” she sasses, and I laugh with a sly grin—that’s my fucking girl.
“I want to play with my innocent Sadie. Can I have that? I’m dying for some peeks of skin.” I’m not ashamed to beg at this point. I want some of her. I crave it. Going from having women on the regular to not having one at all is one thing. But to have Sadie and not be able to get inside her is a true testament to self-control.
“Fine, but only a little.”
“I’ll take what I can get from you, angel.”
I watch as the ceiling comes into focus as she moves around her room. Seconds later, her face is in frame again and the bathroom is surrounding her. “I can’t believe I’m doing this.”
“I promise I’ll reward you so fucking good, baby.” She gulps and nods, biting her lip and whimpering. There she is. The virtue she has held onto so tightly is slipping away. All for me. We are both sacrificing parts of ourselves.
“What—what do you want to see, Ben?” The way she says my name, as if it is a blessing and a curse.
“A bit of skin. Flip the camera and show me what you’re wearing.” I lean against the bus; my cock is already hard, and I haven’t even seen anything yet.
“Okay.” When she flips it, I almost choke on my next words.
“Is that my shirt?”
“Yes, you left it here after our whipped cream fight. I washed it, and now I can’t take it off.” Her creamy, luscious thighs play peekaboo, inches away from showing me that sweet spot between her legs. I moan, looking around to see if I’m still alone in the shadows behind the bus. When I see the coast is clear, I get to work.
Reaching into my jeans, I grip my hard shaft and free it from its confines. Yup, I’m pleasuring myself outside this bus.
“Turn around,” I demand with a growl. She does, holding the phone over her shoulder and peering back at the mirror. Sadie watches the screen while I watch her.
“Lift up that shirt and let me see that ass, baby.” My cock’s warm and stiff, my veins throbbing as I stroke myself slowly, building up at record speed.
“But, um, I’m not really wearing anything sexy . . . I don’t own those kinds of panties.” Fuck me , I groan, squeezing myself tighter.
“You sound so sexy saying panties . You’re fucking fine, baby. Show your man what kind of panties you got on, don’t be shy,” I entice her, ready to see whatever she has on because she could make anything diabolically sexual.
“Please don’t laugh.” If I were there, I’d kiss those pouty lips, take them between my teeth and bite down, and make her take those words back.
“You don’t need to be shy or embarrassed around me, baby. I’m going to show you what it’s like to really be worshipped. Those books you read about worship will pale in comparison when I make you mine completely.” Her breath hitches, and her eyes widen in the mirror.
With her other hand, she reaches around her back painfully slowly, lifting the fabric to expose the ripest and most lusciously round ass that I have yet to bite. What the hell does she mean those aren’t sexy? The material curves around the top of her buttocks, exposing the bottom part to my hungry gaze.
“Fuck, I want that ass. I want you so bad, angel.” I don’t hold back as I use my pre-come as lube and start to stroke my nine inches fast and violently. “Turn around, let me see the front of those panties. Let me get a glimpse of your pretty body—show me some stomach too.”
“Like this?”
As she turns, I see the white material lying against her perfect lips. A real vision of my beautiful virgin. The grooves in her stomach, showing off her fuller figure, bring me to the brink. What the fuck has happened to me?
“Ben, are you . . .”
“Fuck yes, baby, I’m touching my cock. Want to see me come?” I stroke faster, watching her curious face debating what to do.
“Y-yes,” she stammers, and I tilt the camera, still going strong on my rock-hard shaft. I watch the spot between her legs as I chase the orgasm, but what sets me off is when I look for a split second at her sexy face and see her lip caught between her teeth.
“I’m coming, fuck, angel, I’m coming for you. Let me see it, please,” I beg, my balls drawing up. It feels like a volcano ready to set off, and fuck it does the moment she pulls her panties down and she shows me the light smattering of hair on her tight pussy.
Just like that, I see stars shining in my eyes as I come. Hot spurts shoot from my cock.
“Sadie, oh baby, fuck, Sadie!” I don’t care if I get caught.
“Ben . . .” she whimpers, and fuck me I feel that sound. She’s aroused and needs her fix.
“Go lie down on the bed. I want you to come, too, angel.” Flipping the camera back to my face, I let the last spasm leave me before cleaning myself up.
“You don’t have to do that, it’s okay.” She makes a terrible attempt at hiding her lust.
I have this desire to make her come, to feel closer to her and make her vulnerable enough to want me as badly. I love being secure with her, love the intimate way we talk and touch, the depth of our conversations.
Oh, my angel is going to feel me as if I were there, and if she lets me, I will make her touch herself for hours, spiraling into a comatose state of pleasure.