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"You sure?" I asked her. It was the first time she had shown any inkling of an inclination towards wanting me around. Every other time we had spoken, she had come at me with a snarl, shutting me down and cutting me off before I could get to talk to her. I didn’t hold it against her; I knew how hard it must have been for her to put her trust in any man at all after everything she’d been through. It was a miracle she wasn’t beating against my chest and fighting me off right now, and I would take it as a win.
"Yeah," she muttered, lowering her gaze to the ground, looking ashamed.
"Sure," I replied, leaning up against the counter. I didn’t want to get too close to her, but I didn’t want to leave, not now—not when it felt like I might be getting somewhere.
"I … I'm sorry for how … I mean …," she began, haltingly, tripping over her words like she wasn’t entirely sure what she wanted to say. She swallowed heavily, forcing herself to rethink it.
"I know I’m not easy to be around," she added finally. I shrugged.
"I don’t think you’re difficult to be around," I replied, and she raised her eyebrows at me, seemingly amused by what I was saying to her.
"Really?" she remarked. "I got that complaint all the time. When I was … when I was working, I mean."
Her voice cracked again when she said that part. I could see the shame written all over her face, her eyes suddenly wet with tears.
"We don’t have to talk about that," I told her quickly, but she shook her head.
"It’s okay," she replied. "I feel like I should. I mean … it’s not like I wanted any of that. Not the way it went, anyway."
"How do you mean?" I asked, cocking my head with interest. I knew it was therapeutic, sometimes, for these girls to talk about it, put it into words, and if there was any way I could help her, I wanted to do it. I felt as though there was still so much I was making amends for, and if being here, in the middle of the night, to hear what she had to say, was part of that, I was more than happy to do it.
She hesitated for a moment before she replied, but then, she pushed herself forward. I could tell it was tough for her, but I admired the hell out of her for at least trying to see it through.
"I started off just dancing," she confessed. "At a strip club, you know? When I was eighteen. My father, he’d gotten ill, and it looked like he wasn’t going to be able to provide for us for a while. So, I thought … hey, I’m the oldest sibling out of all of us; if there’s something I can do to help, then I should do it, right?"
Eighteen. I tried not to show the shock on my face at being faced with the reality of that. It was no age at all; she could have still been in high school, though no doubt there were plenty of guys out there who loved how young she was. Loved how easy she would have been to manipulate.
"But then I got offered some more money to add in some … extras," she continued, her cheeks darkening as she spoke. She couldn’t even look me in the eye as she told me about all of this. I wished I could just convince her that none of this was anything to feel ashamed of; that she didn’t need to look as embarrassed as she did right now. I knew she wouldn’t believe me. Better for me to just keep my mouth shut and let her keep talking.
"And I told myself it was just going to be for one night," she went on, shaking her head. "But it was so much money to me back then, and I thought … well, if I can make a little more quickly, then I could get out of this faster."
She snorted with mirthless laughter at those words, as though she could see all too well how stupid they were now.
"Yeah, I think that’s how it starts for everyone," she admitted. "You think it’s just going to be something you can handle, and then you wind up hooked on drugs, working out of some asshole’s brothel because you don’t have any other way to make money."
"Are you still in touch with your family?" I asked carefully. She shook her head.
"No, I … When they found out, they were so ashamed," she replied, her voice cracking again. "And that was just the dancing. Well, that was all they knew about, anyway. I didn’t want to tell them what I had really been doing. I didn’t want them to know. And I can’t reach out now, not after all this time. They’re going to want to know what I’ve been doing with my life, and I …"
She trailed off, pressing her lips together.
"I don’t even know what I would tell them," she admitted. I took a step towards her, reaching out to put a hand on her arm. She jumped at my touch, but she didn’t pull away.
"We can get you back in touch with them," I promised her. "If that’s what you want."
She shook her head.
"It’s not a good idea," she replied with a sigh. "I know what they would think of me. I know how they would … what they would …"
She couldn’t even get the words out.
"Look at me," she muttered, smiling, though it didn’t reach her eyes. "They don’t want anything from me. They don’t want anything to do with me. I’m a fucking mess."
"No, you’re not," I told her firmly. "You’re not a mess, Selina. You’ve just … been through a lot, that’s all."
"Yeah, and it’s turned me into a wreck," she replied. "I don’t see how I can come back from that. You don’t understand, my family, they’re pretty traditional. They’re not going to want to deal with the reality of it. I don’t even think they’d know how. It’s better for me to keep my distance. I don’t want to burden them with all of it."
"You’re not a burden," I told her, and I was surprised by the certainty in my voice. I couldn’t stand hearing her talk about herself that way, maybe because it was all too familiar to me, or maybe because I could see there was so much more to her than what she gave herself credit for. She had written herself off as some kind of irredeemable wreck, but she wasn’t; she was nothing of the sort.
