7.
I stepped out of the back door into the alley, my apron stuffed into my tote bag, the smell of roasted beans and stale milk clinging to my hair.
The air was cold, a damp chill that seeped through my thin hoodie.
I walked toward the student parking structure, my keys clutched tight in my fist, a defensive habit ingrained in every girl who walks alone at night.
The garage was a concrete cavern, lit by buzzing, flickering sodium lights that cast long, jaundiced shadows across the empty spaces.
My beat-up Honda Civic was parked on the third level, a lone island in a sea of grey concrete.
My footsteps echoed loudly, the sound bouncing off the walls, making me acutely aware of how isolated I was.
I reached my car and fumbled with the key, shivering in the cold dampness.
"Sloane."
The voice came from the shadows behind a concrete pillar.
I spun around, a scream catching in my throat, my hand instinctively raising my keys like a weapon.
A figure detached itself from the darkness. It was Tyler.
He looked awful. He was wearing a dark hoodie pulled up over his head, his hands shoved deep into his pockets. He was shaking, though not from the cold. He looked like a hunted animal.
"Jesus, Tyler!" I hissed, leaning back against the cold metal of my car, my heart hammering against my ribs. "You scared the shit out of me. What are you doing here?"
"They're looking for me," he whispered, his eyes darting frantically around the empty garage. He stepped closer, grabbing my arm, his grip tight and panicked. "I couldn't go back to my apartment. I think they're watching it."
A cold spike of adrenaline shot through my veins. The low-level panic I'd been choking on for weeks suddenly turned into a cold, hard knife to the gut.
"Who?" I asked, though I already knew the answer. "The guys you owe money to?"
"The guy I gave the three hundred to," Tyler said, his voice trembling. "He wasn't the main guy. The main guy found out. He said the three hundred was an insult. He said if I don't have the full forty grand by Friday, he's going to make an example of me."
"Tyler," I breathed, feeling the blood drain from my face. "What are we going to do?"
He didn't answer. He just looked at me with wide, terrified eyes, waiting for me to fix it. He had brought the danger directly to me, seeking cover behind my apron strings.
Before I could say another word, the screech of tires echoed through the concrete structure.
A black SUV, its headlights blinding in the dim garage, rounded the ramp from the second floor. It didn't slow down to look for a spot. It accelerated, the engine roaring, heading straight for us.
"Oh god," Tyler whimpered, dropping my arm and backing away.
The SUV slammed on its brakes, coming to a screeching halt mere inches from the bumper of my Honda, effectively boxing me in against the concrete wall.
The doors flew open. Two men stepped out.
They were much too old to be students, thick-necked, wearing dark jackets. They moved with a terrifying, professional efficiency. They looked like men showing up for a shift at work.
"Tyler," the man from the driver's side said. His voice was calm, almost bored.
Tyler didn't run. He just froze, his back pressed against the side of my car, his hands raised in a pathetic gesture of surrender.
The second man, taller and wider, walked up to Tyler. He didn't say a word. He just grabbed Tyler by the front of his hoodie, hoisted him up effortlessly, and slammed him hard against the hood of my Civic. The metal groaned under the impact.
"Oof!" Tyler grunted, the wind knocked out of him. He didn't fight back. He just cowered, his hands covering his face.
I stood frozen in terror, unable to move, unable to scream.
"We told you not to run, kid," the first man said, leaning casually against the SUV. "It makes the boss think you aren't taking this seriously."
"I'm trying!" Tyler sobbed, his voice muffled against his hands. "I'm trying to get the money. I just need a few more days."
"Friday," the man said. "That's what we agreed on."
The taller man holding Tyler suddenly turned his head. He looked at me.
I shrank back against my car door, my heart pounding so hard I thought it might burst through my chest.
He let go of Tyler, leaving him slumped against the hood, and took a slow step toward me. He was close enough now that I could smell stale cigarette smoke and mint gum.
"And who's this?" he asked, his voice low and gravelly.
"Just ... just my girlfriend," Tyler whimpered from the hood. "Leave her alone."
The man ignored him. He stepped into my personal space, towering over me. I pressed myself as flat as I could against the car window, terrified.
He reached out.
His hand was large, rough, and calloused. He grabbed my jaw, his fingers digging painfully into my cheeks, forcing my face up so he could look at me under the harsh sodium light. He inspected me, his eyes cold and assessing.
He didn't stop there. His other hand dropped.
He grabbed my right breast, right through the fabric of my hoodie. He squeezed it hard and I gasped, but I didn't fight him. I was paralyzed.
"Nice," the man grunted, his thumb roughly flicking my nipple through the cotton.
I looked frantically at Tyler. He was watching. He was watching this man violate me, and he did absolutely nothing. He just huddled against the hood of the car, crying silently, too scared for his own life to defend mine.
The man let go of my breast and turned his attention back to Tyler.
"Forty grand is a lot of money for a college kid," the man said, his hand still clamped painfully on my jaw. "But a bitch like this, she could work it off quick."
My blood ran cold. The threat was explicit.
"I know a couple of guys running a house down in the valley," the man continued, squeezing my jaw tighter, addressing Tyler but staring dead into my eyes.
"They'd pay five hundred a night just to use that mouth.
We'll set her up in a motel room. Have her turning tricks until Christmas Eve. That should cover the vig."
"No," Tyler whimpered, but the word was so weak it barely registered over the hum of the SUV's engine.
The man let go of my face with a sharp shove, making my head hit the car window.
"Friday," he repeated to Tyler. "Forty grand. Or we're coming back to break your fucking legs and take your little bitch."
He turned and walked back to the SUV. The driver was already behind the wheel. They got in, the doors slamming shut. The SUV threw itself into reverse, the tires squealing on the concrete, and sped away, disappearing down the ramp, leaving the garage deafeningly quiet.
I slowly slid down the side of my car until I hit the cold concrete floor. I pulled my knees to my chest, wrapping my arms tightly around my legs, shivering violently. My jaw ached. My breast throbbed.
Tyler slowly pushed himself off the hood of the car. He looked down at me, his face pale and streaked with tears.
"Sloane," he whispered, reaching a hand out toward me. "Are you okay?"
I looked up at him. The man I had loved. The man who was supposed to make the NFL and rescue me.
He had stood there and watched another man grope me, threaten to whore me out, and he hadn't said a word or lifted a finger.
"Don't touch me," I hissed, my voice trembling with a mixture of terror and profound, undeniable disgust.
Tyler recoiled as if I had slapped him.
"I'm sorry," he sobbed, burying his face in his hands again. "I didn't know they would do that. I'm so sorry."
I didn't say anything else. I didn't have the energy. The illusion of Tyler as a protector, as a partner, was completely dead. He was a liability. He was a weight tied around my ankle, dragging me down into a dark, terrifying abyss where men in SUVs traded girls like currency.
I realized then, sitting on the dirty concrete floor of a parking garage, that I was entirely alone.
I woke up on Wednesday morning feeling like I was still trapped in the concrete parking garage.
The first thing I registered was the dull ache in my jaw, right where the man’s thick fingers had dug into the bone.
The second was a phantom, greasy hold on my right breast. I scrubbed myself raw in the shower, but I couldn't wash off the sickening feeling of being squeezed and priced like a cheap piece of meat.
The next forty-eight hours were nothing less than a total fucking nightmare.
I had to live in two worlds simultaneously.
In one world, I was a twenty-one-year-old college junior.
I sat in a lecture hall with three hundred other students taking notes on geopolitical treaties.
I stood behind the counter at The Beanery, wearing a green apron, asking people if they wanted oat milk or whole milk.
In the other world, the real world, the clock was ticking down to Friday.
Every time the bell above the coffee shop door chimed, my heart seized, expecting the two men in dark jackets to walk in. Every dark SUV that idled at a red light while I walked across campus felt like a fucking hearse.
At cheer practice on Thursday afternoon, things reached a breaking point.
I stood on the mat in my uniform—the pleated skirt, the tight shell top. Two weeks ago, it had been a symbol of athletic pride. Three days ago, after the booster party, it had felt like a fetish costume.
Now, it felt like something a streetcorner hooker would wear.
“I know guys down in the valley who would pay five hundred a night just to use her mouth.”
The thug's voice echoed in my head as Coach called out an eight-count. I looked around the gym, at the bright lights, the bouncing girls, the university logos everywhere, and I felt completely, utterly commodified.
By the college, by the Director of Athletics, by the head football coach, who all used our bodies and looks to bring in donations and taught us to keep their star players satisfied.
By my own fucking coach who pimped me out to the booster club.
By the booster club. By Richard Davies.
And last but not least, by my so-called boyfriend, Tyler the Shithead.
"Sloane, focus!" Coach snapped as I missed a beat in the routine.
I forced myself to smile, to hit my motions, while a cold sweat broke out across the back of my neck.
I knew for a certainty now that Tyler was not my way out. If he survived … if he made the draft, he’d dump me as soon as he could. He was just using me. Spinning me a lie. He was the cause of almost all my problems and I was still tied to him until this was done.
**
That night, in the apartment, the mundane reality of poverty collided with my terror. Jessica was sitting at the table, a stack of bills in front of her, crying softly over her $250 credit card minimum.
"I'm going to have to ask my dad," she wept, her face buried in her hands. "He's going to kill me. He told me not to put the Cabo trip on the card."
I sat across from her, staring at my cold coffee. I wanted to comfort her, but I felt a profound, icy detachment. Two hundred and fifty dollars. An angry phone call to her father. That was her crisis.
Mine was a little worse.
The gulf between us was unbridgeable. I couldn't tell her. I couldn't tell anyone. It was just too dark, too violent. So, I just sat there, nodding mechanically, trapped in an invisible cage of my boyfriend’s making.
And talk of the devil … my phone vibrated on the table. Tyler’s name flashed on the screen.
It was the dozenth time he had called that day. Maybe the millionth. My voicemail was full of him crying, begging me to answer, swearing he was going to fix everything. I stared at his name glowing on the cracked screen, feeling nothing but a vast, empty void.
He was dead to me. The boy I had tried to love, the future NFL star I had bet my college years on, had died against the hood of my Honda Civic when he stood by and watched another man grope me. He was a coward, and he was going to destroy me.
I flipped the phone face down. I didn't need to speak to him, not ever again.
On Thursday night, a flight response kicked in.
I pulled my cheap canvas duffel bag out from under my bed and threw it on the mattress.
I started stuffing clothes into it—jeans, t-shirts, a heavy sweater.
I was going to run. I was going to get in my grinding, dying car and drive east. Back to Ohio.
Back to my mom's cramped house. I would drop out, change my number, disappear.
I grabbed my phone to check my banking app. I needed to see how far I could get before I had to stop.
The screen loaded.
Available Balance: $43.12.
I stared at the green numbers until they blurred.
Forty-three dollars. With gas prices what they were, since that moron started a war, my entire worth wouldn't even get me out of California, let alone across the Rockies. I didn't have a credit card with any room on it. I had nothing at all.
I dropped the phone onto the pile of clothes. I slowly sank to my knees beside the bed, burying my face in the mattress.