Touching Scars(11)

I don’t remember his hands being on my hips as he ground into me, leaving behind purple bruises. I don’t remember his large hand coming up to my neck and squeezing, slowly cutting off the only thing that was keeping me alive in that moment. Those long fingers that I had watched throw winning touchdown passes or make a basket in the last seconds before the buzzer were now killing me. I do remember the sudden burning in my lungs as my body began to struggle on its own accord to live. I do remember Adam’s grip growing tighter and I knew he was getting off on my sudden effort to breathe. And I do remember his final thrust before he pulled out of me, and I felt his semen coating my leg.

He had let go of me and I collapsed on the ground in a heap, totally naked. I was coughing over and over again, gulping air, and blinking back tears. Adam tucked himself back into his pants and left me there. I couldn’t tell you how long I sat on the tiled floor of the locker room. I just know that it was long enough to watch the water turn from red to clear, and hot to cold.

I never spoke about that afternoon with anyone. He told me he’d be watching me, and he’d know where I was. Adam graduated that year and went off to college. However, he still made sure to let me know he wasn’t gone. I’d get the occasional text message from him describing what he wanted to do to me when he saw me again. I lived my last two years of high school in a constant state of fear.

When I was done with school, my life didn’t return to normal. I never went to college to ‘further my education’ as my grandpa liked to say. I just wanted to leave Bay City and get away from the memories that followed me at every turn. My Uncle Roger, my mom’s brother, worked at an oil field in Port O’Connor and invited me to come down and stay with him while I sorted out the mess that I called my life.

I think my family thought I’d take a break for maybe a year and then come back and go to school at Sam Houston University. They had no idea what had been done to me — they just thought I was going through a horrid moody teenager phase and that I would eventually snap out of. That was never in the cards for me. I wanted to find a small corner of the world and work until I couldn’t anymore. I crossed my fingers, hoping that my worst nightmare had stopped following me. Even after changing my number, he still found me.

Two months into my stay with Uncle Roger, I ended up finding a bartending job at The Hole. At first they didn’t want to hire me because I was underage and legally couldn’t serve. Lucky for me, my uncle was best friends with the whole Port O’Connor Police Department (all four of them.) It didn’t take much convincing for them to overlook my being eighteen. They understood that when I came to work I didn’t consume any alcohol and did the job that was required of me. I hardly ever drank. It held too many bad memories. I was certain that I had smelled liquor on Adam’s breath that day.

I worked six days a week. Sundays, of course, the bar was closed. I cherished Sundays. I liked to go out to the beach and sunbathe while reading a good romance novel. Well, more like read and reread the same book. It was called Emerge by author S.E. Hall. I was fascinated by the love triangle that the main character, Laney Walker, was in. She was a simple hometown girl with two great options — the bad boy that she loved at first sight, and the sweet, gentle boy she’d known her entire life. Just thinking about it made me happy and sad at the same time. Not long ago I dreamed of being a Laney. I wanted to have love. Shit, I would have been over the moon if I had eve two options. Now I was cynical when it came to love, and I considered myself damaged goods. My new love was the sun, water, and reading. I was aware that I’d never be the person I once was and I’d come to terms with it. My life was the bar and my beloved Sundays. Oh, and Ed.

Ed was the owner of The Hole. He was an older man whose wife, Rose, had passed away a few years before I showed up. I think he was lonely and I was just the company he was looking for. I liked talking with him every night as we closed up. He talked about Rose and what it was like being in love in the old days. They had one of those once in a lifetime love stories. He’d seen her from his Navy boat in New York City when they were tying up in port. He said he got off the boat as fast as he could and tracked her down. He insisted that he was in love with her from one glance. He said at first she thought he was crazy, but after he’d gotten down on his knees in front of his entire crew she let him take her to dinner. They were inseparable from then on. Even my cold heart swooned a bit at his story.

It was a few weeks after I’d started working that Ed told me that he’d been doing some repairs on the upstairs apartment and he wanted me to move in. He said he’d give it to me at a discounted rate. Honestly, I was barely paying a dime to live there. Our agreement was one hundred dollars a month and I helped him paint the small space, as well as some of the walls in the bar where the paint was chipping. He said if I told him no, he’d fire me, old bastard. But I loved him. He wanted me to be able to live on my own and put money away. Much like my grandfather, he wanted me to go to school someday. If I ever did, I’d do it for Ed. He loved me like the daughter he never had. He made me feel safe. He shared so much of his life with me. I knew he wouldn’t hurt me.