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“Going down to the hospital in the middle of the night seems above and beyond.”
“Well, like you said, boundaries are for pussies,” she said.
“Whoa, shit, did you just say pussy?”
“Shut up.” She laughed and smacked his arm. “Anyway, I’m glad I went. No one should be alone after something like that.”
“What happened if you don’t mind my asking?”
Peyton sat silent for a few breaths, and Ryan wondered if she was going to answer. Finally, she spoke. “She was sexually assaulted.”
“Jesus,” he muttered.
“Yeah, it was pretty brutal.” She paused. “She’d gone to this party after the big rivalry basketball game at her school and, umm… a few of the guys on the opposing team decided that’s how they wanted to celebrate.”
“Are you fucking kidding me?”
“I wish I was.”
“Wait, you said the opposing team? Why was she partying with them?”
“From what I gather, the guys on the other team were cute and asked her and a few of her friends to come to a party. The girls had never been to a party on that side of town, so…” She sighed. “I don’t know. Apparently, a girl from the wrong side of the tracks was disposable to them and a whole lot less valuable than they are and that somehow justified them treating her worse than garbage.”
“Fuck.” Ryan stopped at the light and looked over at Peyton. “That’s fucked up, Peyton. I’m really sorry.”
“Me too.”
How could a group of teenage boys do something like that? Shouldn’t at least one of them have tried to stop it? What the fuck was wrong with these kids? “What are the police going to do?”
“Too soon to tell how it will all play out, but we all know money talks. She doesn’t have any and they do.” Peyton flicked off the seat warmer. “Sorry, this is kind of a depressing conversation. Are you sure you want to hear this?”
“You don’t have anything to be sorry for.” When the light turned green, he continued toward his house. He was glad he needed to focus on driving. It forced him to detach slightly from the conversation. He couldn’t imagine what that must be like for Peyton to sit through that and support someone. “Is she going to be okay?”
“I think so, yeah.” Peyton shifted on her seat. The sound of her body moving against the leather seemed so loud in the heavy atmosphere in the car. “She had to have surgery last night, and then this morning we did the statement to the police. So, I spent the day at the hospital. Police still hadn’t reached her mom when I left, but she’ll be in the hospital for a few days. I’ll go check on her tomorrow afternoon.”
“Holy shit, I had no idea you had to deal with that kind of thing in your job.”
“Who’d of thunk, huh? Sadly, my social work degree gets put to very good use running the program. Thankfully, I don’t deal with this kind of thing too often, but it happens.”
“Are you sure you want to come back to my place? I’d completely understand if you didn’t.”
Peyton reached out and squeezed his thigh. “I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t want to be, Ryan. As awful as this situation was, it isn’t my trauma, and I can’t let it be or I’d be useless at my job.”
“I guess. I just don’t know how you do it.” How could she see such a horrific side of life and not get sucked into a black hole when she realized how much she couldn’t change?
“Some days it’s definitely easier than others.” She reached over and squeezed his thigh.
“I can’t even imagine.” He glanced over at her. The more he learned about Peyton, the more he realized his original impression of her had been so far from reality.
He pulled his car up to his driveway and tapped the screen on the dash to open the gate.
“Wow, fancy,” Peyton said as they waited for the gate to open fully so he could head up the driveway.
“It’s just a gate, Peyton. It’s no big deal.”
“Only someone who owns a house with a gate would say that.” She leaned forward in her seat and stared down the driveway with wide eyes. “Holy cow, you live here by yourself?”
He chuckled. “Who else would live here?”
