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“Before the meeting was set up, the agency asked me to send them photos to make sure I was the right fit for them, ya know? Most of what they wanted was just normal stuff, but then…“ I pause, realization at my stupidity dawning like a smoggy Chernobyl sunrise. “They wanted more explicit images. And I... I sent them.”
More silence.
It's deafening, engulfing the space around me like a cloud of acrid smoke.
Then finally...
“Oh, you stupid, stupid girl.”
“W-what?”
“What were you expecting to happen when you flew out there on your own for this 'meeting'?” He barks a sinister laugh and though I know it's him I'm talking to, I don't recognize the voice of my father at all. “Everyone knows the only opportunities out there for girls like you are in the adult film industry.”
“Girls like me?”
“Silly little girls with dreams too big.”
My face is soaked with tears and snot. The viciousness of my father's words is so painful part of me thinks I must be having a nightmare. Because the man who raised me has never once spoken to me like this before. I always considered him a gentle man who treated me with nothing but warmth and kindness.
Maybe that was a mask he wore around me because I was a child who didn't need to see underneath it. Or maybe I've done something so shameful that I'm no longer deserving of his love.
“You will tell no one about this,” he says with a conviction so absolute that I don't even consider defying him. “Least of all your mother, lest you want to send her to an early grave from the shame of what you've done.”
“What about Cole?”
“What about Cole?” he repeats, wicked and cold. “Do you really think he'll want anything to do with you after this? He's a young man and there are plenty of girls in this town who haven't sullied their reputation like you have. Don't worry about him. He'll move on just fine.”
“Move on?” The thought of Cole with another woman is debilitating.
“I'll tell him you've decided to stay in LA and not to call you.”
“You think I should stay here?”
“Well, you can't come home, Althea. What would the town say?”
“I don't care about what the town says. He made me do it, Daddy. I didn't want to!”
“Was he holding a gun to your head? Did he force you to your knees, tie your hands behind your back and shove his cock into your mouth?”
His vulgarity makes me flinch. I've never heard him speak like this to anyone. Not even to Mrs. Patchouli's forty-year-old son, who once threw up on Mama's petunias and then passed out butt-naked in the middle of our front lawn.
“N-no, but he said—“
“Then he didn't make you do anything, did he? You had a choice. And you chose to suck his dick like a goddamn common whore.”
I rear back, feeling the physical blow of his words like a punch to the face. He's still talking, but I can no longer hear him. His voice is stifled by the darkness that started to fall over me the moment I didn't get the support from him that I wanted.
I needed him to tell me that I wasn't to blame. That the talent agent used authority and blackmail to take advantage of me. That I'm still his little girl and everything will be okay.
But he didn't.
Instead, he confirmed what I already thought.
Everything that happened to me today, the bruises on my skin from the man's brutal touch, the ache in my throat from being brutalized by his dick, all of it, every single action, every single second...was my fault.
“We need to talk.”
India looks down the length of her nose at me, one hand cupped around an iced latte, the other propped against her hip. The air in the shop is cold today, but she's unfazed in a mini skirt and camisole. She's not even wearing a cardigan.
