Blue Rose (A Flowering Novel) (14 page)

29

“So, what do we need to
do to help you work through this?” Melinda asks. “Your feelings are normal, given your past, but sex is okay, Alana. I would like to see you saving it for a relationship, or at the very least for pleasure, and give up this idea of it as a weapon or as something dirty and wrong.”

“Do you think it will ever make sense?”

“Sex?”

“How I feel about it,” I explain. “How can I get so excited when Jack calls me names? How can my body enjoy being whipped or the feeling I get when he ties me up? Why do I come when I fuck a stranger?”

She pauses and thinks. “I think you’re asking several questions here. First, the physiological reaction is out of your control. Sex feels good. It’s why we have it. The guilt and shame come from the anonymous encounters, more than from your experimentation with Jack, right?”

“Mostly. I mean, I feel bad sometimes with Jack, but it
’s never stopped me from going back for more. And I guess I still know it’s play. Even when it’s mean, even when we are awful to each other, I know it’s not real. If that makes any sense?”

She nods. “I think so, but you can elaborate if you’d like.”

“It’s just… See, I guess I feel like Jack doesn’t think I’m really a whore. He has called me a whore. He’s hit me and he’s tied me up and he’s teased me. But I still see in him the boy who told me that he was okay with me saying no. I still see the boy who was truly hurt about my stupidity after Prom. And I see that it hurts him. But…” I trail off, because I don’t think I can explain it any further.

“Alana, both you and Jack have been through some extremely horrific trauma. You have a lot to work through and neither of you seems to have developed healthy coping skills. However,
sex and orgasm do trigger certain psychological effects, and through your experiments with Jack, you’ve both found a way to use the pleasure to help you through the emotional upset.”

“It’s not good for us, is it?” I ask.

She sighs. “Look, I am not here to tell you how to live your life. I want you to make your choices. I do think that you and Jack help each other tremendously, but I also think that you’re preventing one another from letting go. You cope through cutting, your pills, and sex. He copes through drinking and sex. I suppose it’s at least fortunate that, in the middle of all that, you do love each other deeply. But now, maybe it’s time for you to learn to let it all go.”

“Do you think I’m a whore?”

“What I think is irrelevant, although no, I don’t. Do
you
, though?” she asks.

I nod and the tears
are desperate this time. “I am. I
am
a whore.”

She offers me tissues, but I don’t take them. I just cry. I spend half
of the allotted session time heaving and sobbing like an idiot. I am so ashamed. I’m ashamed that I’ve had sex with so many people. I’m ashamed that my father was right and that I was the kind of person who let men use her. And I’m most ashamed that I still enjoy the act so much.

“I hate that I like it,” I tell Melinda.

“Why?”

“Why do I hate that I like it? Or why do I like it?”

“Either.”

“I hate it because I shouldn’t like it. I should hate being touched, because it’s horrible and my father didn’t have the right to do that
to me, and liking it just means that I was partly to blame.”

“No,” Melinda says. “Sex and abuse are not the same thing. Even the dirtiest sex you’ve had with Jack or with men in bars is
not
the same, Alana. There is one key element to what you have done, one piece that was missing with your father, and with the guys at Prom, and with Jerry. Do you know what that is?” I shake my head. “Choice. You have made the
choice
to do these things with Dave, with Jack, even on those anonymous afternoons.”

“I made the choice at Prom,” I argue.

“I don’t think so. I think that there is more than one way to force someone to do something against her will. Jerry was violent, your father was forceful, and those boys, well, they were manipulative. You know, you’d be surprised at how many young women I see who don’t even know that they have been sexually assaulted or abused, simply because there was no physical violence. But people like that, they get into your mind, and that can be just as effective as force, Alana.”

“I still shouldn’t like it.”

“Really? Why not?” she asks.

“It’s dirty. It corrupts people. It makes them evil. It changes them. It made my father turn into a monster. I should know better than to enjoy it so much now.”

“When did you
start
to enjoy it?”

“With Jack. I only really ever enjoyed it with Jack. Until I eventually just turned my mind off and focused on the physical. I came a few times with Dave, but not in the same way. Honestly, it’s never been the same as with Jack.”

“Okay then. Why do you like it so much with Jack?”

“Because it’s fucking awesome,” I reply.

She laughs. “Even when it’s dirty and wrong, as you say?”

“Yeah, that’s just it. It’s so good. Everything is good with him.”

“You just said it was good if you turned off your mind. Do you do that with Jack?”

“No. Never. It’s why I don’t believe him, even when he says horrible things. I hate that I can still trust him, that I can still love it so much, even when we act like that, but it’s a game. Jack would die without me.”

She smiles and waits. I don’t say anything at first, but she watches me and eventually the awkward silence is unbearable. “Yeah, I get it,” I say. “I get what I just said, but it’s still fucking abnormal.”

“Maybe you need to focus less on what’s normal, as you say, and more on what you want,” she tells me.

“I don’t know what I want,” I say.

“Well, perhaps it’s time we figure that out.”

30

The letter came in a big ass white envelope. It had a fancy little ribbon on it and everything. “Congratulations, Alana Reardon. We are pleased to inform you that you have been admitted to NYU for the upcoming academic year…” There were more words after it, but that was really all that mattered.

I sat down at the kitchen table. They were even going to pay for me to go there. It was unreal. I’d filled out the application on a whim, and here I was. But then, I remembered.
NYU wasn’t far really, but it was too far to be sure that Jack would be okay. I thought about it a lot that afternoon, but before my mother got home, I took the acceptance packet and threw it away. I didn’t tell anyone. Then, I signed up for the community college like everyone else, and I lost the two guys who were my only real friends when they left town.

The first year wasn’t so bad. Commuting was actually okay, especially since I still saw Jack a lot and also because it allowed me to continue therapy without anyone knowing. I could keep an eye on my mom, who was having a lot of trouble with her own loneliness, and I was balancing classes with my “extracurricular” activities. I knew it wasn’t healthy, but I still had some sense of it being okay. I felt a lot of shame and guilt, and it got a lot worse after midterms, when Jack and I started having more threesomes, but I was still going to school.

It was my second year that made things unbearable. I was actually supposed to graduate in the spring, but the fall semester got away from me. I started blowing off my classes and spending more and more time at the bar. I skipped classes to get laid, and I ended up failing the entire semester. I told everyone that it was hard to balance school and work, so I was going to take another three semesters and return part-time. But of course, like everything else, it was a lie, and even my fake plan failed.

I signed up for a normal course load in the spring anyway, again without saying anything, and I’d
still hoped I could finish in the winter. Then, I got to my ethics class. I suppose it’s ironic that it was ethics. Because I sat down and I took out my notebook and, when I looked up, the seat next to me was taken. By Topher.

“Alana?”

“Oh. Hi, Topher.” It had been a few years, but he didn’t look much different. His hair was longer and it looked like he’d smoke a shitload more weed, but mostly, he was the same guy. And he clearly thought that I was the same girl.

He pulled his desk closer and put his hand on my thigh. “I was pissed when I was kicked out
of school and had to start up here, but maybe it’s a positive turn of events, huh?”

“Yeah, sure.” I didn’t move away, because I didn’t feel like making a scene and really, there was only so much he could do in the middle of a classroom. However, that didn’t stop him from following me after class was over.

“Listen, Alana. I’d really love to get together if you have some time. I always liked you,” he said.

“Oh, really? Did you?” After Prom, the only interaction we
’d had was when he would grab my ass in the halls or when he’d replay the video of me sucking his dick to anyone who’d missed it. That went on for over a year.

“Sure. I mean, we had fun, right?”
he asked.

I stopped walking and faced Topher. “Let’s just get this over with. What do you want from me? Do you really want a date, or do you think I’ll fuck you?”

He laughed. “Well, I wouldn’t say no to you, that’s for sure. But we can have dinner first.”

“Do you have a car?” I asked.

“I do.”

“Okay, let’s go.”

“Where?”

“There’s a motel down the street. Let’s just call this what it is. I have three hours before my next class. I’m sure that will be plenty of time,” I told him.

It wasn’t a big production. He wasn’t playing around and we left campus, got to motel, and I let him fuck me up against the wall. He was really into saying my name. I tried to tune him out, but he was a talker.

“Oh, Jesus, Alana, I fucking love your pussy. You are such a fucking crazy slut,” he said and he pushed me harder against the wall. I thought about Jack, about Prom, about everything I’d become, but I had stopped expecting anything else. After Topher came, I waited for him to leave, thinking he’d had enough, but he was just getting started.

I didn’t finish out the semester. I tried, but being in class with Topher was too much. I went back to the motel with him several times. It was almost like a relationship, except we didn’t talk much, unless he was telling me how much he loved the taste of my cunt. I didn’t even feel bad. I didn’t really feel anything, but I just stopped being able to go to school. I never gave him my number, so that was the end of that. And it just got added to the list of secrets I’d kept from my only real friend left in the world.

31

“I chose that,” I tell Melinda.

She nods. “You’re right. You did. But no one said you have to make all the right choices. You were lonely and you had sex. It’s not the end of the world. You’re not a slut because of it.”

“But Topher? I hated him every time I looked at him.”

“Your own self-worth is where you need to focus your energy, not on things that happened or that you’ve done. You did make the choice and it probably wasn’t the best choice, but life doesn’t always follow a perfectly clear path. You know now it was a bad idea, but there’s more than Topher here. You’re not just mad that you slept with him,” she says.

“No, you’re right. I’m mad that I let sleeping with him get to me again. I’m mad that I quit school rather than face him.”

“So go back to school.” She says it with such certainty and, for a second,
I don’t have an argument. But then I remember the three and half semesters I already did.

“I obviously can’t do school. I failed at it.”

“That’s not true. You hit a speed bump. That’s not the same as a roadblock.”

“Where would I go?” I ask.

“Anywhere. Let me ask you. What’s keeping you here? Why couldn’t you reapply to NYU now?”

“Well, there’s Jack…”

“There isn’t, though. I hate to be harsh, but there isn’t Jack. He’s moving forward, and you’re just making excuses. I know that you’re scared, that you think you can never be more than people see you as, but it’s your life, Alana. They don’t get to define you. Nothing defines you, except you.”

“But all the things I’ve done-”

“Are things you’ve done,” she interrupts. “You need to take ownership of the bad choices, but you also need to assign blame to those who deserve it. You’re still young. You can still have everything you used to imagine. You just need to believe that you can.”

“No one will want me. I’m used.”

She smiles. “I don’t think that’s true. I think the right person will see past that. Maybe it’s Dave. Maybe it isn’t. But until you tell yourself that Jack is not the only person who cares for you, you won’t be able to see the others who do.”

“You’re being really motivational,” I say, smirking.

She shrugs. “It’s kind of my job.”

****

It’s too late to start at NYU in the spring, but they send me everything I need to apply for the fall. I don’t know if I’ll get in. I don’t know if my grades at the community college will wash out the grades I got in high school, but there’s an essay part and maybe I can tell them my story, too. It seems to be a trend these days.

I go to see Jack a few days before Dave is headed home. I haven’t told him all the things
that I need to tell him, but he and Lily are just starting out and I have to figure out what’s going on with Dave, and Jack and I will have forever to deal with the past. Dave’s been emailing and Skyping, and it’s weird how little time has passed and yet how much he has changed. He looks amazing, and I feel somewhat giddy every time I see him. I don’t know what will become of us, but I want a chance to apologize, to try to repair what I should have fixed ages ago.

Jack’s making a list of Christmas ideas for Lily. Of course, he has none.
I hate to dampen the holiday cheer, but I want to broach a few things before Dave gets here. Because I need to see him with some clarity.

“Dave’s going to be here soon,” I say, watching Jack scribble notes and toss papers into the bin.

“Are you nervous?” he asks.

“Can I be honest?”

He nods and puts the notepad down. “Yeah. Go ahead.”

“I never gave it a chance with him. And I want to deal with that. I don’t know if there’s still hope for a future, but I also want to go into this clear. Of us.”

“You’re my best friend, but I think us ended a long time ago.”

I nod. “I know. It took a while, but I know. And I’m okay with that, Jack. Really. I love Lily. She’s great and, if I wasn’t trying to address this huge mess in my past, I wouldn’t mind spend
ing a lot more time with both of you.”

He laughs, but he shakes his head. “I don’t… I don’t want to share.”

“That’s cute. But it’s not important anyway. The thing is, with Dave, it was over before it started. There was Prom and then there was you. Or, I don’t know, maybe there was you, and then there was Prom, and then there was still you. But whatever the case, I never gave it a real shot. And before he left, he told me that there was nothing worth fighting for with us, because I wasn’t ready to let you go.”

“Ouch.”

“Yeah. But he was right. I wasn’t.”

Jack leans back and looks me over. “I never wanted to hold you back from anything. In fact, the only thing I cared about in this entire fucking universe, until I met Lily, was not being a burden on you.”

“You’re not,” I argue.

He shakes his head. “You know how you asked
me if I’d thought about you? That night, before I…?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, I did. In fact, I thought a lot about you. It took longer than it should have because I couldn’t
stop
thinking about you. I just didn’t want to hurt you, to let you down, but it was already broken between us. I had already ruined everything.”

“What are you talking about?” I ask.

“If I had gone to Prom with you guys, if I hadn’t been so petty, none of that would have happened. I hated losing you, Alana, but I promised that I would never be that guy. I would never the person they thought I was and I would never treat you the way that they said you should be treated. You’re beautiful. Inside and out, and I fucking destroyed that. I was so hung up on not being like them, that I let you walk into that fucking mess. And after… I couldn’t bear to look at you. Even now, I hate myself most of time when I’m with you, because I could have fucking stopped it.” He looks at his hands, which are shaking. “I didn’t want to leave you, or to hurt you anymore, but I realized that I just couldn’t watch you fall apart. I couldn’t watch you realize that I had let you down. I’m just another asshole. Another fucking source of pain for you.”

“So, you thought I would rather that you were dead?” I ask. “That’s so fucking stupid, Jack.”

“Yeah, well, maybe. But the funny thing is that if I hadn’t been thinking so much about you, I would have done it earlier. And my grandma would have walked in a lot later. So, I guess, in the long run, you kinda saved my stupid mess of a life.”

“That’s fucking hilarious,” I mutter.

“Anyway, yeah. I did think about you. I do love you, Alana. But you need more than some asshole who lets you down all the time,” he says.

He’s right, of course, but I feel like what I need most
of all is to stop letting myself down.