Never Me (11 page)

“What are you thinking about?” I asked seductively before I noticed his frown.

He looked around and saw that the girls were talking amongst themselves and whispered to me, “My dad. I’ve tried calling twice and he won’t pick up.”

“Why would he not be okay?” I whispered back, looking around and seeing that I couldn’t have been sleeping long. Amy was a camel and her new bottled water was still full. “Why are you so worried?”

“He’s a really nasty drunk, Nadine,” he said, looking at his phone as if it would ring at any moment.

“Oh.” I didn’t know what to say, so I said nothing.

“That’s why you surprised me the other night when you said taking care of people is second nature to me.” He dialed again on his phone, got no answer and cursed in frustration.

Spencer kept his next confession low, for only me to hear, as Rory and Ellie talked about what they wanted to do in New Orleans. “I take care of him by picking up the pieces of his fucking nightmarish aftermath. He’s a failed musician, or at least he thinks so. He’s the best I’ve ever seen. He’s a pianist and watching him is unreal. He can actually play fourteen instruments, but he’s a master at piano. He thinks he’s punishing himself with his drinking, but he actually punishes everyone around him.”

I felt a tug in my chest as I saw the sadness in his eyes.

“So let him deal with his own demons. He’ll just weigh you down. You’re twenty-five, right?” He nodded. “Don’t you think it’s time to fly the coop?”

“He got worse this year when he discovered my bitch of a mother was having an affair. Like most musicians, he’s passionate and he was always very clear where his passion lies: his music, me, my mother. If you could have only seen him when he was young, so full of life, so much charisma, he could keep an entire room entertained.” I smiled because that is exactly what Spencer could do to a room. I knew this about him and had only known him for a few days.

“Call him again,” I said, nudging him with the side of my body, hoping it seemed encouraging.

“I don’t know why I’m telling you this.” He looked panicked, almost desperate.

“You’re worried, and you know enough about me. Call him.”

He flipped his phone and dialed. He put his hand on my thigh, rubbing it with his fingertips. He looked at me while holding the phone to his ear and gave me a worried look, as if to ask me if it was alright his hand was there. I gave him a little nod. He began to rub further up, moving my sundress, and I shook my head quickly, bringing it down as he revealed his dimples and his eyes lit up. I didn’t know whether it was me or the fact that he finally got an answer on the other end.

“Dad. Damn it, Dad, I told you to answer the phone every time I called!”

I heard his father’s voice slightly on the other end and Spencer cracked up at his reply.

“Well, now that’s an excuse. Put Mom on the phone.” There was a short silence and when Spencer spoke again his tone had changed.

“You are keeping your promise?” I saw his face flare in anger. “Kind of hard to trust you, Mom. I am trying. I can’t do much if I have to worry. I know he’s your husband. Fine. Please pick up when I call.” He flipped the phone shut and looked at me as if he had just broken free. I saw a weight come off his shoulders I hadn’t noticed was there, which was unlike me. He brushed his lips over mine and whispered a low, “Thank You.” I shrugged, gave him an ‘I didn’t do anything face.’ I saw the difference speaking to his father made and knew then that he loved him deeply. His mother, however, he had a huge distaste for. That we had in common.

“So you hate your mother?” I had to ask. This was too damn coincidental. It seemed we both adored our asshole self-absorbed fathers and hated our mothers.

“No, I love her. I guess I hate her as a person.”

“I’m not fond of my mother, either.”

“That’s an understatement,” Rory said, turning to give us her undivided attention.

“I hate my mother because she hates me,” I defended. “I was a burden to her. She was always bitching she ‘never had time for her man because she had to take care of a brat.’” I laced her statement with a hint of her accent. “My father hated her, too. It’s open and shut. She was a horrible and selfish woman. Still is as far as I know. My father stopped bringing me to her when I was ten.”

“My mother is the same way. If her agenda doesn’t fit whatever you are doing, it’s not an option for her, even when things are important. I guess we both have selfish mothers.”

“And fathers,” I added. “Could have been worse,” I muttered, bored with the conversation.

“Doesn’t bother me, either,” he said, as if reading my mind.

“You are both screwed in the head, and I’m the stripper,” Rory commented matter-of-factly, turning around in her seat to face the front. Spencer and I burst out laughing and I thumped Rory’s earlobe with my fingers. I saw her grin on the side of her cheek.

God, how I loved Rory. Every time I bitched about my parents I felt bad about bringing it up in front of her. Out of everyone I knew, she got it the worst. Her father had killed her mother right in front of her. He came home for dinner, pulled out the gun, shot her in the head and turned it on Rory as she sat at the dinner table. Rory said she only said one thing to her father when he aimed it at her. She told me she had thought about screaming and crying, begging for her life, and she almost did. Instead, she didn’t make a sound. She simply stood up from the table and walked toward her father who was holding the gun, pointing directly at her. She was only nine years old and knew she was going to die. So she said what she had always wanted to say to him. “I didn’t ask you for anything.”

He stood there holding the gun to her head, not saying a word. He turned it on himself at the last minute, leaving Rory orphaned or ‘better off,’ as Rory put it. The shit she must have gone through. The things she saw. The fact that her father had screamed at her and her mother every night for years about the fact that he had to support them. It was a nightmare she only spoke of twice since I had known her. Rory, so full of life, so optimistic, was my hero. I had nothing like that happen to me and I felt jaded by the world already. I knew having her around would somehow rub off on me. And to an extent it had.

I became an optimist right along with her, except when it came to matters of the heart. I had to shake my thoughts of her standing there with a gun to her head away from me. I felt an uncontrollable shiver run down my spine accompanied by an involuntary shake.

“You have a ghost moving through you, Nadine?” Spencer said, the corners of his lips turning up into an amused grin.

“What?” I asked, slightly dazed.

“You know, when you shiver like that. It’s an old wives’ tale that a ghost is running through you. By the way you were moving it looked like the ghost of James Brown.”

“Who is James Brown?”

“Oh, oh you’re kidding, right?” Spencer asked hopefully.

“No, no clue.” He did sound kind of familiar.

“She’s nineteen, Spencer,” Ellie reminded him.

“Tragedy, just when I forget how young you really are.” He shook his head back and forth.

“Okay, so are you going to tell me? And I turn twenty in a matter of days, you ass.”

“No, I will not. If you want to listen to nothing but the music of the 80’s, 90’s and up, that’s you poisoning your own brain.”

“Fine, I will figure it out.”

Ellie and Rory giggled in front of us, obviously knowing who Mr. Brown was. I needed to know who this James Brown was and fast. No one was making a damn fool out of me.

Amy and Jack fought over the music again as we all talked nonstop about what we wanted to do and see in New Orleans. Amy made Jack listen to Mariah Carey and Luther Vandross sing
Endless Love
on repeat as punishment. Apparently it was their prom song. We laughed the first two times and started groaning when it became unbearable, threatening to jump ship. Amy laughed and laughed as Jack winced when she turned it up at the most powerful point and sang at the top of her lungs.

“Diana Ross and Lionel Richie’s version is way better,” Spencer said to me.

“Friends can listen to
Endless Love
in the dark.” I giggled.

Spencer looked surprised at my knowledge of the song and then realization hit him that I was quoting a movie. I listened to Spencer speak the entire scene from
Happy Gilmore
that I had just quoted and I sat there in awe until he finished.

“Movies, too?” I said amazed.

“And books. It helped me prepare for law school.”

“You are a total freak, Spencer Diamond.”

“And you are a nerd, Nadine Rhodes,” he countered playfully.

Conversation drifted from movies to food to our first sexual encounter. Jack told everyone to describe their first time in one word. We all laughed at Rory’s two word reply, “hairy ass.” Some of us protesting the picture forming in our heads as she spoke in great length. When it was my turn, I opened my mouth to say the word I had carefully thought of. “Normal,” I said then paused.

“I guess normal?” I looked at Spencer for reassurance and he gave me an inquisitive look.

“Define normal,” Spencer said, urging me on. Jack was pulling off the highway to a restaurant we had all decided on a few miles back. I saw him eye me in the rearview mirror.

“Do tell, Nadine,” Jack said curiously.

“We dated for a month or two and when I had just turned sixteen. He was nineteen and I felt I needed to impress him, so I dressed the part. I put on a pink teddy and set my bedroom up in candles. He came in, ripped my teddy off and took me.” I was too embarrassed to admit it was my father’s room and mine was actually a horrible couch I had outgrown years before.

“Ripped your teddy off?” Spencer said, his face turning pale.

“Not like that. He just didn’t stop to appreciate it. I guess he didn’t like it or something. Anyway, he climbed on top and you know the rest.”

“No, we don’t,” Rory said, turning her full attention on me. “You never told me this.” I gave Rory the wide ‘shut up’ eyes and I continued.

“I wanted him to say he loved me. You know I was young and stupid and thought it mattered. So I said it to him and he just… I don’t know, ignored me. He ordered me to lay down and you know.” I got lost in thinking of the details and completely forgot I was in a car filled with people. “He had on this long shirt. I remember thinking it was the length of a nightgown. I wanted to make fun of him for it, but it was almost as if he was angry. He wouldn’t kiss me or touch me like he did when he took me out. He wouldn’t even take off his clothes. He looked at me like I was stupid when I told him I loved him. If you want the truth, he looked at me like he hated me and I was a waste of time.

“I didn’t want to keep going, but I was already there and naked so I just let it happen. He climbed on top of me and I remember feeling ripped. Ripping—it was if he wanted to hurt me. I realized as he was grunting over me, I didn’t like him at all. He was sweating so badly it was dripping all over me. It wasn’t fun. I never heard from him again and I was glad. I’m assuming most girls’ first time is like that. Awkward, uncomfortable and … bad.”

“No,” Rory said, her eyes filling with tears, “not like that, Nadine.”

I looked up and the whole SUV was staring at me. Ellie’s eyes were wide and she looked to Spencer who I studied next. “No, Nadine. That’s not
normal,”
he said quietly.

“Oh, no, no, no. Hell no. You guys stop looking at me like that. It wasn’t rape and I am not so damn stupid I wouldn’t know the difference. I know what the definition is, okay. I dressed up for it and I knew what I was doing. I never said the word no. Get those looks off your faces. Let’s go eat. This is way too serious—too heavy. My first time was with a complete asshole. It’s not news.”

“You heard her, let’s go.” Jack beckoned and everyone followed, climbing out of the SUV though they were quiet.

I turned to Spencer whose eyes were way too loaded with questions. He wasn’t moving from his seat to let me out.

“Smart people can reason their way out of anything,” he said, opening the door to let the air in. “Tell me about the last guy you were with. What was that like?” he asked softly.

“Um, no.”

“Try to tell me something.” He looked at me with sadness in his eyes.

“Jace… He was good.”

“Normal?”

“Yes, Spencer, normal. God, if you’re going to make a big deal out of this—”

“Give me the details.”

I climbed into his lap and straddled him. “Forget it. It’s not a big deal.”

“Okay, so if it’s not give me details about Jace,” he said, pulling my arms from around his neck. He wasn’t going to let me deflect.

I opened my mouth to speak but couldn’t think of one thing to tell him. I turned my head to the side and went completely blank. My anger began to swell and with it came my words.

“Don’t shrink me, Spencer.” It was a warning I hoped he would adhere to.

“You can’t remember, can you? You don’t want to remember. Don’t you think that’s a little odd?”

“Time to eat, Spencer.” I felt the bile in my throat. God, how could I be so damn stupid to tell everyone that story?

“You can remember every detail of the day that asshole ripped your virginity from you years ago, but not the details of a guy you slept with a few days ago?”

“Yes, counselor. Two nights before I met you, if that’s your question. I am not hiding anything.”

“Are you safe with them? The guys you sleep with?”

“I always use a condom and … I can’t have children.”

“What?” he asked, cupping my chin and bringing my eyes to his. I met his with no emotion. It didn’t bother me and I wanted him to see it.

“I can’t have kids. My first gynecologist trip confirmed I couldn’t. There was tissue from damage and other stuff.”

“Jesus Christ.”

“Look, it wasn’t all that bad. He didn’t hit me or demand I give it to him. He was rough—too rough. I just assumed that’s how it was. He was just uncaring and rough, okay? It was consensual. I invited him.”

“He intimidated you to make sure you would give it up. It’s not okay, Nadine. It fucked you up.”