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“The Heist!” she shouts excitedly. “Their menu is named afterBrooklyn 99characters! I love this place. I haven’t been since…” She hesitates, scratching her throat. “You know.” Her brows furrow as she loses herself in her thoughts. She looks like she’s about to say something else so I try to goad her.
“You can tell me whatever you want about them,” I say. “I won’t judge.”
“It’s nothing,” she smiles.
“Please. Anything is fine,” I insist. “No matter what it is, I can take it.”
“You couldn’t,” she murmurs.
“I promise you, Rose. I am not as fragile as you think I am.”
“I don’t think you’re fragile,” she defends herself. “I think you’re pretty fucking tough, actually.”
“Then tell me.”
“I just…” This time I insist with a look. She props herself on her elbow so she can face me and I do the same, making this moment even more intimate. “Sometimes, I wonder if…if maybe I should have tried harder to escape.”
“What do you mean exactly?”
“Until the day Aaron Williams helped me leave…I hadn’tfought…You know?”
“You didn’t have a choice,” I seek to reassure her. “It was your survival instinct to not fight back. That’s probably what kept you alive.”
“Yeah, but…It’s more complicated than that. Sometimes I feel like maybe it wasn’t so bad with Viktor.”
“Viktor is the one in charge, right?”
She nods.
“You can’t be blamed for how you felt when your life was at risk.” The dread of my own experience drives me to say more. “Sometimes you think you’ll fight back, that you’ll leave, but then you end up hoping things will get better. Maybe if you change, maybe if you listen and do exactly as you’re told.” I gulp. “Maybe then it won’t be so bad anymore.”
Completely unaware I’m talking about something I go through, she tries to explain her side some more.
“I get that, but what about after?”
“After?” I ask, confused. “You’re free now. You don’t have to be scared anymore.”
“I know, I know. But the way I felt while I was there…what if—I mean…Let’s say they find me, the brothers, what if I still feel the same.”
The problem with talking to Rose is that it’s always like playing two truths and a lie. You know something is off in what she says, yet you never quite know what. She is doing it right now. That thing when she tries to get help without admitting it and without wanting to tell the whole story.
“Don’t worry about them finding you,” I tell her softly. “They won’t. Sam would be on them in a split second.”
She smiles at me, like I don’t get her. Like no one can understand what she’s going through. Perhaps it’s true.
“You’re right,” she finally says, laying back down. “Tell me more of our high school memories.”
I sigh because I know she didn’t get what she needed out of me, but I let it slip. “What about that time I called after arguing with my mom because she found my collection of horror and gore films? You were throwing pebbles at my windows not even five minutes later.”
“Oh yeah…God, you’re right, Iamcheesy when it comes to you.”
“Yeah,” I giggle. “But I loved it. You climbed up to my balcony like the best Romeo I’ve ever seen.” I start caressing her hair, scratching her head like how I know she loves, and she closes her eyes. “You spent the night consoling me. Soothing me with your sweet words and reassuring me that I wasn’t a weirdo. That my mom was just stuck up.”
“Your mom is so stuck up. I’m pretty sure that broom up her ass is made of steel.”
I burst out laughing. “I think you’re right. Anyway, it was perfect. You always make me feel like I’m perfect the way I am.”
“Because you are,” she murmurs, her voice starting to sound sleepy. Rose falling asleep is when she becomes the most honest, and I love it.
