Ten Years Ago – Blaire
I catch myself watching him again. Michael Bennett.
Captain of the debate team, the tallest person in the junior class by a significant margin, owner of exactly five hoodies that he rotates with the loyalty of someone who has decided comfort wins.
Today, it's my favorite gray one that says ‘Ew People.’ Baggy jeans.
His hair does whatever it wants, which is apparently the only policy he has about it.
Jessica Fullerton has been hovering at his locker for ten minutes.
He doesn't seem to notice, which is somehow both oblivious and magnetic at the same time.
He has this quality — a quiet confidence, and it attracts a certain kind of girl.
The kind who can tell the difference between someone who is cool and someone who simply doesn't care about being cool and finds the second thing infinitely more interesting.
I've noticed it since freshman year.
I've spoken maybe thirty words to him total, and most of those were strategic — keeping him at a safe enough distance that Colt's jealousy never had reason to fully land on him.
Colt notices everything. Who I talk to, who talks to me, who looks too long at anything he considers his.
Keeping Michael Bennett at arm's length has been less about disinterest and more about protection, which is a thing I've never said out loud.
The first time we actually spoke was at the assembly sophomore year. He sat next to me in the auditorium and looked over and said, with complete sincerity, You have a really pretty collarbone.
I looked at him with a wide smile. He looked back, entirely unapologetic, like he'd said something completely normal.
Thanks, I said. I think.
It's definitely a compliment. He considered it. Your elbows are a close second. But the collarbone is the winner.
I laughed out loud before I could even think about containing it, and it was the first mistake because Colt's eyes found us from three rows over like a heat-seeking system, and I watched his jaw set from across the auditorium.
Michael had no idea. He looked pleased with himself.
I tried to warn him off, told him I'd catch him later, but Colt was already moving — up the stairs, through the kids sitting between us, zeroing in.
What the fuck are you talking to my girl about?
Michael didn't miss a beat. Skeletal systems. Mostly collarbones and elbows. For anatomy class.
I pressed my lips together so hard it hurt. Colt stared at him for a long moment and then moved on, apparently satisfied, and Michael turned back to the front like nothing had happened. I spent the rest of the assembly looking straight ahead.
Again, that was the first mistake.
The second was AP Chemistry.
I asked Colt's permission first — I didn't have a choice; that's just how things worked, that's how they'd worked for four years, and I'd stopped examining it because examining it was its own kind of cost.
My family couldn't afford a tutor. I needed the grade. Michael Bennett ran the curve without seeming to try, and asking him to help me study was purely practical.
At least, that's what I told myself.
Except the more time I spent with him in that library — his handwriting in the margins of my notes, the way he explained things three different ways until one of them clicked — the more my original draw to him grew into something I couldn't keep calling practical.
I wrote about him in my diary almost every day of high school.
What he wore, what he ate for lunch, if he looked my way.
I checked his social media more than I'd ever admit.
Got quietly irritated watching Jessica Fullerton hover at his locker every day.
None of it made sense given everything else in my life, and all of it made complete sense in the way that feelings tend to ignore your circumstances entirely.
He wasn't the most popular. That hadn't mattered to me since the assembly.
The problem was everything else.
My social status, my cheer captaincy, my whole life at Lee High existed inside my relationship with Colt Monroe, and it didn't take much for Colt to remind me of that.
One wrong move and all of it collapsed. I'd watched him dismantle other girls for less.
I knew exactly what the architecture of my high school life was built on, and I wasn't na?ve enough to pretend otherwise.
So I kept Michael at a careful distance and wrote about him at night and showed up to study sessions pretending it was just chemistry.
It was never just chemistry.
"What is this?"
I looked up from my notes, and my heart left my chest and hit the floor.
Colt was standing at my desk. Holding my open diary.
I was across the room before I'd decided to move. "That's personal, Colt—" I reached for it and he held it above my head, turning away, still reading, like I wasn't there.
There was no personal when it came to Colt's claim on me. I'd known that for years. I just kept forgetting to stop hoping otherwise.
Michael looked so handsome today. He has a five o’clock shadow that makes his jawline so fucking sexy.
I want to feel it rub between my thighs.
We watched Spaceballs last night, and I woke up asleep on his chest. I love the way he smells.
I pretended to stay asleep, so I didn’t have to move away from his arms.
I sat horrified as he read one of the entries. I was vibrating with fear. “It’s just a story, Colt. I promise.” My voice was pleading as my heart pounded in my ears.
"The debate geek?" He asked it slowly, through his teeth, turning to look at me with the expression I'd learned to dread. "You have a stupid fucking crush on the debate geek who's been tutoring you."
My eyes started burning. "No. It's not a crush; I don't like him like that. I was just writing stuff, it doesn't mean anything—"
"Oh, yeah?" He dropped the diary on the floor, and I watched it land and thought about every page in it and felt sick. He walked toward me slowly. I stepped backward until my shoulders hit the wall, and there was nowhere else to go. He planted one hand beside my head. "Then it won't be a problem."
I didn't say anything.
"Invite him to the party at my house this weekend." His voice had gone soft, which was always worse than loud. "We'll play a little trick on him. Since you don't have a crush on him." His eyes held mine. "Since it doesn't mean anything."
The wall was cold against my back.
"Colt—"
"Or I can just go find him myself." He tilted his head. "Your choice, baby."
I looked at him, and I looked at my diary on the floor, and I thought about my sweet Michael Bennett. Though he was never mine, and never could be. I thought about what Colt meant by find him myself. This was safer. Colt would hurt him in ways I could never live with.
"Okay," I said.
Agreeing to it made bile rise in my throat.
"There she is." He smiled and pushed off the wall, and picked up his keys from my desk. "Invite him. Be convincing, tell him you want him to be your boyfriend for all I fucking care. I'll handle the rest."
He left.
I slid down the wall and sat on the floor next to my diary and stared at the ceiling, and thought about how I was going to look Michael Bennett in the eyes on Monday and pretend.
I thought about it all weekend. I never found an answer.
***
"Are you sure nobody saw us come in here?"
I've been sick to my stomach since last week when I walked up to Michael’s locker and asked him to come to this party, watching his face light up in a way that made me want to cry right there in the hallway.
He has no idea. He followed me through the noise and the heat of this party and down to the poolhouse with his hand in mine like it was the easiest thing in the world, like he trusted me completely and without question, and that trust is sitting in my chest right now like a stone I can't dislodge.
Colt's orders were simple. Bring Michael to the poolhouse at eight.
Get him wound up enough to come in his pants.
He wants proof that I meant what I said — that Michael is nothing to me, just a study partner, just a transaction — and this is how he's decided to collect it.
He wants to punish me for every word in that diary, and he wants to punish Michael for being worth writing about, except Michael doesn't know any of that.
Michael is sitting in this room thinking tonight is the beginning of something.
It is. Just not the something he thinks.
I keep moving against him, keep my voice light.
"I'm sure, Mikey." I press my lips to his neck, his jaw, and feel him exhale slowly like he's been holding his breath since we walked in here.
His hands find my waist and hold on and the warmth of them moves through me, a current that starts at his palms and travels everywhere, and I hate myself for feeling it because I don't get to feel it, I don't get to have this.
I pull back and look at him in the dark, and the sight of his face does something to me that I can't afford right now.
I wish I could tell him that I'm sorry for what's coming. That I've loved him since an assembly sophomore year when he told me I had a pretty collarbone and looked so genuinely proud of himself when I smiled. That I'm going to spend a very long time not forgiving myself for tonight.
His eyes move over my face in the dark, so patient and soft.
Then he reaches up and takes one of my braids between his fingers, slips the rubber band loose, and slowly unravels it.
Then the other. His fingers move through my hair and spread it around my shoulders, and he looks at me the way he always looks at me — like I'm something worth looking at, like he can't quite believe I'm here. Nobody has ever looked at me that way.
"You're so fucking beautiful, Blaire Alexander."
My eyes burn so fast it catches me off guard, and I crash my mouth into his before he can see it, before I have to sit inside the softness of him for one more second.
Michael bucks up against me and I gasp into his mouth. "Michael—"
"I love how you feel on top of me."
"You feel so good." I kiss him again, and somewhere in the rhythm of it, I stop being able to hold the line I've been trying to hold. The heat builds and builds, and I can feel it cresting up my spine.
No, no, not this. I can’t come. Please don’t let this happen...
"Oh, my god—" My moan comes out broken against his mouth as the orgasm moves through me and I'm trembling on his lap.
My hands grip his hair, and I hear him groan into my neck as he starts shuddering beneath me.
For just a moment, the whole world narrows down to this — his arms, his warmth, the heavy rain starting on the poolhouse roof.
Then the lights come on.
Colt and several guys from his team. Several girls from my squad. They were all there, watching the whole thing.
"Told you she could do it." Colt holds his hand out to the guys behind him, grinning. "Pay up."
The laughter is deafening. I want to cry, but I can’t.
I can’t let Colt see that in my eyes. I slide off Michael's lap.
He stands slowly and looks around the room.
I watch the understanding move across his face, and I want to die.
I want to walk through the wall behind me and disappear into the earth.
The pointing starts.
There's a wet spot on the front of his tan cargo pants, and I know — I know — that some of that is from my own orgasm. But the comments come fast and cruel, layered on top of each other, and Michael still hasn't said a word. He just stands there, absorbing it. I am standing three feet away, and I can’t help him. I can’t stop this.
I can’t look at him, but I can’t look away, either.
Did you think the head cheerleader was actually into you?
Fucking pathetic.
Say cheese for the camera, wet wipe.
The comments get crueler by the second. Michael still hasn’t said anything.
Colt decides to put the final nail in the coffin.
He crosses the room towards me, and I brace myself.
He takes a handful of my ass, practically showing it to everyone in the room.
He kisses me with his tongue in my mouth, his eyes open and aimed directly at Michael over my shoulder.
He holds it until the door opens, and Michael is gone.
“Everybody out.” Colt says. The room empties in under a minute. I stand in the middle of it with my arms folded across my chest
When the last person leaves the pool house, Colt grabs a handful of my hair.
“Fucking whore. You liked that, didn’t you? Him playing in your fucking hair. Did you come on his lap like a goddamn slut?” He spits as he drags me toward the bedroom.
I stumble trying to keep pace, my hands going to his wrist, my voice going up.
"Colt, you're hurting me—" but it doesn't matter; it never matters.
When he lets go, I scramble to get my footing, but his fist connects with my cheek before I can get steady.
I fly back onto the bed and the ceiling spins.
He lays his weight down on top of me.
"You're lucky you're the hottest girl in school." He says it almost gently. "Or I'd have been done with you a long time ago." He reaches between us to unbuckle his belt and pants. “Now you’re going to be a good whore for me. I fucking own you, Blaire. Don’t you ever fucking forget it.”
I turn my face toward the wall.
I think about Michael walking out into the rain.
I think I'm sorry and I keep thinking it while the rain gets harder on the roof and Colt takes what he's decided he's owed. I go somewhere else inside my head, somewhere far from this room, and I don't come back until it's over.
***
The next morning, Michael Bennett's social media accounts were gone. He never returned to class, and by the end of the week, he'd been withdrawn from Lee High. I never saw him again.
Three weeks later, I became Blaire Monroe.
I told myself it was what I deserved.