“If you tell anyone—” He thrusts inside me one more time before I feel him take a deep breath against my back, and when he speaks again, his voice is clear. “You know what happens if you tell anyone.”
I know.
I hear his zipper and his feet walking away. His truck door opening, and the engine starting. The headlights sweep across the wall in front of me as he pulls out of the lot.
I stand against the wall for a long time. The wind is cold, biting my bare skin. At some point, I realize I’m shaking, and I don’t know how long I’ve been shaking.
Eventually, I get myself off the wall with my good hand, but my good fortune lasts about ten seconds, because when I have to bend over to get my pants, I scream in pain.
But my legs keep me upright.
Barely.
The pain in my hand is radiating up my arm into my shoulder, and I have to stop every few steps to breathe through it. My entire body hurts in a way that I can’t even describe. I’ve never felt pain like this.
The streetlights blur at the edges, and I realize that I’m crying, have been crying for a while. I wipe my face with my goodhand, and it comes back bloody.
I think the same thing I’ve been repeating in my head for the last hour. I have to get home. It’s not far now. I know this neighborhood. I’ve walked it a hundred times. Nate will make it better.
My legs stop working on Cypress Street.
I don’t remember falling. All I know is, I’m hobbling down the sidewalk, and then cold concrete is pressed against the side of my face. I try to get up, I really do. But my hand won’t let me push up on it, and for some reason, I’ve never been more tired in my entire life.
I just need a minute.
I close my eyes against the street light.
Nate, I think, with everything I have left,I’m sorry.
Now
Mike doesn’t say anything while he waits for my answer, but I can see him holding his breath. This means as much to him as it does to me.
All I know is that I love him.
I love him so much that I didn’t even know feeling this way was possible, and he’s standing in front of me asking for the one thing I don’t know if I can give him.
The look on his face tells me this is it. This is the thing that decides what we are.
I think about the cold brick. Jason. My hand. The hospital. Nate’s face when I woke up.
The year it took to stop flinching anytime someone would touch me.
Mike doesn’t know any of that. He thinks this is a pride thing. A being in the closet thing. Some sort of hang-up I have because I’m from Rosehill, and wanting to get fucked is wrong.
He has no idea.
And I can’t tell him, because if I do, he’ll look at me the way everyone looks at me these days. That careful look that makes me want to pull my hair out. He’ll never see me as me again.
Either way it goes, saying no, telling him why I can’t, I’m going to lose him. So I really only have one option.
I nod. “Okay.”
Mike blinks, almost like he didn’t expect me to say yes. “Okay?”
“Yeah. Okay.”
He hesitates, scanning my face before pushing off the counter. “Come on then.”
