Unspoken(36)
“Did he hurt you?” What a dumbshit question, I thought. Of course he’d hurt her. But she understood that I meant physically and replied.
“No, his buddies called for him. I don’t know if he expected me to have sex with him against the wall of the Health Center or he was waiting for an invitation to my room, but I said nothing and he left.
“So he didn’t rape me. He didn’t do anything invasive. I actually feel guilty about that,” AM confessed. “Like I didn’t have a reason to be upset or fearful because nothing really happened. But after that, the whispers started. I didn’t realize it at first. I went to class, the library, and parties all fall without realizing that everyone thought I was a slut. It wasn’t until someone wrote ‘lacrosstitute’ on my door in permanent black marker. Someone had pulled the plug in the dam, and after that, I heard it all the time. I couldn’t go to a party without some guy trying to feel me up. I was like, meat, or something. Like a cup that they could just pass around.”
“Christ, AM, why didn’t you leave?”
“I couldn’t tell my mother. What would I say? Everyone thinks I’m a slut at the school where Dad’s entire family went, so I need to transfer?
“It wasn’t the losing my virginity in a drunken stupor. It wasn’t being creeped out by a laxer in the dark. It was the lies. The rumors and lies. And you can’t combat them. Every guy I spoke with thought I was an easy mark. Every girl thought I was a tramp trying to steal their man. I wasn’t good for anything or anybody.”
She was full-on sobbing now. Her words were punctuated by catches in her breath as she struggled to get out her story through her cries. I ground my molars together to stop myself from shouting in anger. I wanted to leave right then and there and go to the D-Sigs where most of the lacrosse players were and beat the ever-loving shit out of them. I’d shove their dicks so far up their assholes that they’d only be able to fuck themselves for the next four years.
My muscles were aching from holding her so carefully that she didn’t know how much I wanted to bend a steel bar in half. But I wouldn’t have let her go for anything.
Pressure points. Fuck me. Of course she knew about pressure points. To hide their shame or their own insecurities, those two lacrosse players had pressed on her weak points and everyone else’s and turned the Central campus into a house of horrors for AM.
“Do I win for most embarrassing story ever?” AM’s voice was rough from her storm of tears, but her willingness to joke about this only made her more precious to me.
“No,” I said immediately, wanting to kill any idea that she should feel ashamed about what happened. “You haven’t heard all of mine yet.” And never would, I hoped. Blood pounded in my temples when I thought about some of my high-school exploits that I hoped would never reach AM’s ears.
“Unfair,” she said, nose burrowing into my chest. Her body had lost the stiffness from earlier, and she felt almost pliant in my arms as if she did trust me. I shifted her slightly backward so she wouldn’t feel my inappropriate arousal and that made her sit up. I felt like an ass and tried to draw her back into my arms but she resisted. Looking around the car, she asked, “Tissue?”
We looked in every crevice but only found one forlorn napkin. ”Would you accept one unused but crumpled napkin?” I dabbed her face gently with it. AM allowed it for a second before taking the cloth from me and holding to her nose and sniffing like a kitten.
“I need to go inside anyway,” AM said.
Instinctively, I knew that if I let AM out of this car alone, that was it for us. Embarrassment, shame, resentment would all pile up and she’d refuse to do anything not related to our class together. Deciding that I wouldn’t let her say no, I opened the door to let her out but grabbed her purse, which was lying on the floor of the passenger side. She wasn’t going anywhere without that and, therefore I hoped, without me.
Chapter Twelve
AM
I WAS SO EMBARRASSED BY MY breakdown in the car with Bo, I couldn’t bring myself to look at him. I wanted to go into the apartment and hunker down and hide for about ten years, until everyone here had forgotten who AnnMarie West ever was. I rushed to the apartment complex entrance, but when I got to the locked door, I realized I’d left my purse in Bo’s car. I turned and bumped into his broad, immovable chest. The one I’d just spent the last twenty minutes unleashing a hurricane of tears and snot into.
“Looking for this?” Bo held up my purse. I tugged on it, but he wouldn’t let it go. “I’m seeing you upstairs.” His voice was implacable.