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“And where’s your brother?”
“He’s walking Shelby Talbot home.” Rick can’t be mad at him for that. Mama always taught us it was bad manners to leave a girl stranded. Rick curls his lip and nods, seeming to accept my answer.
“You got yaself a girl?” Rick asks me, leaning to rest his arms over the weight bar.
“No sir.” I shake my head, willing for this conversation to be over.
“No, I guess you don’t.” He laughs to himself. “Get over here,” he steps back and gestures with his eyes for me to lie down on the weight bench.
“I’m kinda beat.” I try making an excuse, but Rick laughs louder. “Come on. Your mama’s always saying I don’t make no effort with ya. We’ll call it bonding.”
This kind of behavior is out of character for Rick. He must either be drunk or taunting me.
“Come on, I’ll show you how to lift.”
The thought does appeal to me, Terry runs a gym, and we’ve asked him plenty to let us use the weights. He tells us we’re too young and should practise lifting our own bodyweight first. And using the bar that we fixed up in the woodshed is boring.
I can see the advantages of using Rick’s new toy.
“Sure,” I shrug, dropping my bag off my shoulder and sliding my back onto the bench.
“You grip the bar here.” Rick takes my hands and guides them to where they should be on the bar.
“It’s gonna be heavy. Use the power from your chest to lift and extend your arms. I gotcha.”
I use all the power inside me to raise the bar. It’s way heavier than expected, and I feel the weight unbalance itself as I struggle to lift it.
“Come on, you can do better,” Rick mocks me, stepping back and watching me struggle.
“I can’t… It’s too heavy.” I blow out through my nostrils and struggle to keep the bar up.
“You really are pathetic, aren’t you?” Rick steps further away from the bench, proving he has no intention of helping me.
“I can’t hold it!” I cry out, sweat pouring down my face as my arms start to shake.
“No, you can’t, you know why? Because you're weak. I know it. You know it. Your mama knows it, and that shit for brain’s brother of yours knows it too,” he taunts, and all the tension I’ve been clinging to in my arms gives out on me.
The bar drops, crushing into my chest and stealing the air from my lungs. And while I fight for breath and struggle to push the bar off me, Rick leans over me.
“You remember this moment, how it feels, the fear, the panic.” His dark eyes root into mine sinisterly. “And you remember how weak you are. How if I wanted to, I could crush the life out of your weak, pathetic body.”
I can feel my blood, hot and pumping under my skin like it’s trapped. I choke and splutter, panic taking over all my senses and desperate to feel relief from the crushing in my chest.
And then it comes, freedom, release. I suck in a breath as Rick lifts the bar and balances it back on the rack, laughing at me as I roll off the bench and onto my hands and knees. I make long, desperate reaches for oxygen.
“No wonder your father's too ashamed to give you his name. Get to bed, you shameless piece of shit.” He kicks me hard on the ass, and I fall flat onto the porch. The pain in my chest is agonizing, and when I try to stand up, I fall back down again.
I drag myself across the floor, and Rick rewards me with another boot to the stomach when I get to the door.
I cry out in agony, unable to hold in the pain, and Rick chuckles as he watches me hold the door frame to struggle onto my feet.
Once inside, I crawl up the stairs and into my room, pulling off my shirt and assessing the damage in the mirror. There's a long red mark across my chest where the bar dropped, and I know it’ll ache in the morning even worse than it does now.
And as I stare at my reflection in the mirror, I wonder who I hate more, Rick or myself?
I move on to the free weights, but they do nothing to get the memories, or Lydia, out of my head. At least it gives me something to do with my hands that isn't fucking killing, or worse, giving in to the temptation to go back to my cabin, reach out, and fucking touch the girl.
It’s a few hours before I feel like I can go home. Lydia needs to eat. She'll need to get her strength up ready for when she leaves. When I open the door, I find her sitting at the table, a smile immediately raising her cheeks when she sees me. She stands up from her seat, and it looks like she’s about to run at me, but something stops her, and the smile fades as her eyes fall to the fucking ground.
