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“Pam is an idiot,” Bane said flatly. I couldn’t argue with that, so I just shrugged.
“I know some words, though.” I dipped the straw inside my milkshake and brought it to my lips for another taste. I never usually ate anything other than my stash of Kit Kats, so I considered it sort of a progress. A pathetic one, but still.
“Let’s hear them.”
“Suka blyat. Horosho. Kak dela. Pizdets. Privet.”
“Those were all curses and pleasantries. Your Russian family must be really fucking passive-aggressive.”
I didn’t know why it made me laugh so hard. Maybe the realization that we were just so normal together. Normal. God. I hadn’t realized how much I’d missed that feeling.
“So, tell me about Beavis and Butthead.” He slumped forward on the table.
Poof! And the normal feeling is gone.
“You mean Henry and Nolan?” I stabbed a piece of strawberry with the straw and popped it between my lips. The way his eyes lingered on them made an electric shock shoot through my body, head-to-toe. I looked away, focusing on something safe: a piece of art on the stark, white wall behind him, of Marilyn Monroe, made out of coffee beans.
“The little fuckers with the Camaro.” He cleared his throat. I took a deep breath. I’d only ever been honest and candid with Mrs. Belfort, and that didn’t really count, because she didn’t remember most things. With Mayra, I cherry-picked my words. But with Bane…who knew how I was supposed to act around him? I still hadn’t figured out whether he was an enemy or a friend.
“Well, I guess you know about the sex tape…and the orgy.” I swallowed hard. Bane’s jaw ticked under his thick beard, and he took a big gulp of his drink.
“I never agreed to what they did to me.”
“It was rape,” he said matter-of-factly, but his eyes weren’t so hard anymore.
My back stiffened. No one had called it that in…maybe ever.
Attack. Abuse. Violation. Sexual harassment. People sugarcoated the situation like I wasn’t there, like it wasn’t real. Rape. I’d been raped. I plucked a lock of hair from my ponytail and chewed it.
Bane shook his head, flattening his palm over the table. “I don’t know many people who have an orgy in an alleyway, then treat themselves to a spontaneous trip to the ER afterwards.”
I ducked my chin down. “Nolan’s dad works at the hospital. He was able to sweep my admittance under the carpet,” I confessed, wondering why the hell I was telling Bane this—why the hell was I talking to him at all?—and hating myself for every spoken word and peeled layer. “I nursed myself back to health at home. By the time I’d gotten back to school, all that was left from The Incident was the limp.” And the scars on my stomach. I still had them. A shudder rolled over my skin. New Jesse begged me: Don’t tell him. Don’t open up to him. But old Jesse pointed out: He called it rape. No one else ever did. Take a chance. I wondered since when was she talking to me?
“By the time I got back to school, people were hungry for the drama. The hushed whispers, the pitiful looks. Everyone already thought I was a slut because of that sex tape in which Emery found out I wasn’t a…” I wasn’t going to say the word ‘virgin.’ Because I had been. I’d never slept with anyone before him. But no one believed me. I hung my head down. “Anyway, that’s how I became The Untouchable. Every time people tried to touch me, I ran away, or worse. It’s like there’s the old Jesse, the girl who used to be so fun and confident and friendly, and the new Jesse, the girl who sits in front of you right now. This girl is still waiting to see when you’re going to pounce on her and rip her clothes off, just because you physically can.”
Silence fell between us like a thick blanket. He didn’t offer any condolences.
“That why you never leave your house?”
“I leave my house,” I said defensively. The place was crowded, and a trickle of sweat crawled from the nape of my neck down to my spine. The noise. The laughter. People crammed together. It bothered me, but I tried to block it.
Bane leaned even closer to me. His scent drifted into my nostrils. I leaned backward.
“Yeah? Where to?” he asked.
“My therapist.”
“That’s once a week, two at most. What else?”
I curled my knuckles, tapping them against the table, looking anywhere but him. “The maze.”
“The maze?”
I nodded triumphantly. “My neighbor has a hedge maze. It’s where I go when I don’t want to deal with Darren and Pam’s constant nagging about my getting a job and finding friends.” Like those are so easy to find.
“How old are you, Jesse?”
“I’ll be twenty in September.”
