expletives.
“Look,” I say, feeling more than a little pissed
off. “Bryan doesn’t own me. Fucking hell. I’m single. I wanted to have a good time and I did. You’ve got nothing to be swearing about,
okay?”
“It’s not that simple.” Austin looks at me in the rear-view mirror
and his eyes are worried. “If a man
likes a woman, it doesn’t matter if they’ve consummated that situation, he
still has rights.”
“Consummated! This isn’t the middle ages,” I say. “No one has rights over me except me. No one can tell me who I can give my rights to and who I can’t.” Jason mumbles something and I look at him
crossly. “Bryan doesn’t get to pretend
to like me for years and then suddenly, when I move on and find someone who
actually does, have a fit about it.”
“He does,” Austin says. “Because we’re his brothers. He’s gonna ask us what happened and I won’t lie
to him.”
“Did I ask you to?”
“No, you didn’t.”
“Well then. If
he has a problem with it, tell him to take it up with me. How were any of us supposed to know, and why
the fuck should we care anyway?”
The twins are silent for a while. I know they’re in a difficult position. If I found out I’d slept with someone that
Abigail had liked, I’d be mortified too, even if I had no idea about her
feelings at the time. I do get what
they’re saying but it still feels shitty and wrong. This is my body. I get to choose who I let into it and who I
don’t.
As I think that last part I get a flashback of when
Austin felt my breast and went still.
My body.
My body that might be killing itself.
“Just take me home,” I say quietly. “Bryan is the least of my worries right now.”
5
The house is quiet when I open the door. It must be about 6:30am so I don’t know why I
was hoping mom would be awake. I need
her but I’m not ready to go and wake her to deliver such difficult news.
I make my way up the stairs, drop my stuff on the bed
and head to my bathroom immediately. I
wish so hard that I was in a different place mentally right now. I should be
sitting on my bed, giggling and reliving it all blow by blow. As I undress, I look at my body in the mirror
and see the evidence of what I shared with Austin and Jason; the sore tips of
my nipples and little red marks where they nibbled my thighs and stomach. Between my legs, I’m sore but not
uncomfortable. I cup my hand over the place that was the source of so much
pleasure and try to remember how amazing it all was before .
I fire up the shower and wait for it to run hot
enough. When I’m standing under the
water I gently touch the breast where the lump is. I do as Austin asked me to do and raise my
arm in the air. It’s definitely a lump.
Tears stream from my eyes and my heart races with the
knowledge that this is real. It’s real
and I’ve been ignoring it for weeks.
I wash quickly, swiping at my face and scrubbing at my
body with anger. For fuck sake, I’m only
twenty-one. This kind of shit isn’t
supposed to happen to people like me. I
haven’t done anything with my life yet. I’m
only just starting to feel like I’m living.
In the bedroom, I towel myself dry and put on some
yoga pants and a slouchy off-the-shoulder shirt that has an angry looking
graffiti tag on the front. Something to
match my mood. I hear mom flushing the
toilet and then making her way downstairs. In the mirror, my eyes look puffy but I don’t do anything to cover it
up. I want mom to ask me what’s wrong
because I don’t know how to start the conversation where I tell her.
I take a seat at the kitchen table and wait for mom to
turn from the coffee maker. As soon as
she sees me her face changes.
“What’s wrong, Kitty Kat? Is everything okay?”
I’m in tears before I can say a thing and she’s across
the kitchen and folding me