No Quarter (NOLA's Own #2) (5 page)

Jogging to the back door, I opened it and told them “Hurry your asses up!”

“How was it last night?” asked Alys as she plopped the rolls onto the island countertop.

“Oh, no! I heard you spent the night with X again. You spill first!” I demanded, laughing.

Lili smirked wickedly. “She wouldn’t say anything, except—”

Alys lightly elbowed her in the ribs. “Shh!” she hissed. “Is Phil here?”

After a quickie against the counter, Phil had returned to the basement.

“Nope, they’re all down in the music room. So?” I prompted Alys.

Alys sighed. “Oral—on me, not him. Like, for
hours
, you guys. He was a fucking machine with it, too. It was fan-fucking-tastic! I think I came five or six times. I could hardly move by the end. I was all shaky and limp.”

“Damn!” barked Lili.

“No shit,” I said. “So, what did you do for him then?”

“He just took a hand job. After that, he held me all night. I woke up, and his arm was still around me. He was grabbing my boob though, so I don’t know if that could be considered romantic.”

“Who
doesn’t
like a bit of titty in the morning?” asked Lili, her face a mask of innocence.

Alys shrugged. “What about the date? Was it nice?”

“It was wonderful,” I replied, smiling at the memory of it.

I ended up telling them everything, except for the fiasco part. An odd twinge of guilt pinched at my chest, like I was lying to them, but not even Alys sensed my omission.

“Oh, good,” said Alys. “So, hot sex in the bathroom at the restaurant, eh?”

“It was so wrong yet
so right
.” I laughed.

While cracking up, the three of us were busted by Phil and X coming through the panel door.

Lili and I couldn’t help but notice how X just lit up when he saw his woman.

His face split into an adorable smile, and he strode up to Alys before wrapping his arms around her and sneaking in a nipple tweak. “Hey, babe!” He kissed her smiling mouth.

“Hey,” she said shyly in return.

Phil dropped a kiss on top of my head. “It smells fuckin’ awesome in here. When’s it ready?”

“About fifteen minutes. How’s Jason holding up?”

“He’s been passed out for the last hour. Sheri tucked him in and hasn’t come back down. I think she’s icing his face while he sleeps.”

That’s fucking love. How can she not know that? How can
he
not know that?

“He’s going to need some good food then,” I stated.

“What about you, Pygmy? Where’s your man?” Phil’s voice rumbled out of his chest, vibrating through my back.

She gave us a real cheeky smile. “He works late. I’ll probably head over to his place when he gets off.”

Little shit. She’s been pretty tight-lipped about her relationship.

“Is it serious?” I asked her, only to have her reply with a shrug.

I refused to push her for info. That was what she wanted, so she could continue to deny me.

Twenty minutes later, Phil sent Sheri a text to let her know that dinner was ready—because walking his ass upstairs was just asking too much—and she joined us some minutes later, a smile on her face that didn’t convince me.

“How is he?” I asked her.

“He’s sleeping. I think he wore himself out today,” she said, sounding tired.

“He’s still not speaking to you?”

She shrugged and took the bowl of gumbo I’d handed her, and she headed out back.

Since the afternoon had cleared out the clouds, the early evening turned into a beautiful sunset, and we decided to eat al fresco. Not long after we all tucked in, Sheri got a text from Jason—because it really
was
asking too much for him to walk his ass downstairs—stating that he was hungry.

With a sigh of resignation, Sheri put down her spoon and stood up.

“No worries, Sher-Bear,” said Flipper, waving for her to sit back down. “I’ll bring him some food. You’ve been bustin’ your ass for him, and he’s been a little bitch to you all day.”

“He doesn’t want to eat alone,” she told him, picking up her bowl and spoon.

“That’s all right,” said Phil, getting to his feet. “We’ll go eat with him. You females take a break, yeah?”

Aw, caveman sweetness.

The guys went inside, and the four of us were left to eat our gumbo in relative peace.

“It’s not the way Grandma Betty would’ve liked it,” remarked Lili. “But it’s really good.”

“Who’s Grandma Betty?” asked Sheri.

“My grandmother,” I told her.

Alys started cracking up. “She loved Kenna’s gumbo, but only if Kenna put in enough heat to make her ass breathe fire the next day. She used to say that if it didn’t burn on its way out, she would have no idea if her plumbing was clean enough.”

We all started cracking up at that.

“She sounds like a really cool old lady,” Sheri said with a genuine smile.

“She was,” chimed Lili. “So, why is Jason being a little bitch to you?”

Lili liked to spring unsuspecting and sometimes inappropriate questions on people, hoping that if she caught them off guard, they would reply with an honest answer.

“He’s mad at me for wanting to wait until he’s more healed up before having sex with him,” Sheri replied without batting an eyelash.

“Oh. I guess having you pegged for a nympho was the wrong assumption,” drawled Lili.

“Fucking A, Lili!” I hissed venomously. “What the hell?”

“What?” she piped back. “It’s not like she’s kept her sex life with them a secret or anything. I admire her honesty. Don’t
you
?”

“That’s not the point! You don’t just say shit like that—”

“Oh, come on, Kenna. This is
Lili
we’re talking about. She
does
, in fact, just say shit like that to people,” said Alys, turning her face to Sheri. “You have to excuse Lili. We think she might have a strange form of Tourette’s—”

“I do not!” Lili huffed. “Why do I have to watch what I say with you guys? It’s never been an issue before. Sheri’s a friend, right?”

“Yes, she’s a friend, but she’s not used to you busting out in
rude
—” I said heatedly.

“It’s okay,” Sheri assured us. “I’ve had a lot of ruder things said to me than that.”

“See?” snapped Lili. “She understands.”

Sheri set her empty bowl on the patio table. “I’m not a nympho although I can understand why you would think that. I—”

“Sheri,” I said firmly.

Her gaze met mine. Inside her gray eyes, I saw fear, a healthy dose of self-loathing, and the strongest desire to be accepted that I’d ever witnessed.

“Are you sure you want to talk to us about this?”

“About what?” demanded Lili.

“I think I need to,” she replied softly. “It’s been eating away at me for so long, and I’ve only told three people about it—my grandparents and my shrink.”

“You’ve
never
told the guys what happened to you?” That was
not
a good sign.

She shook her head, her eyes filling with tears.

“What happened?” Lili whispered, looking at me.

I glared back. “I don’t know. I just know something did, all right? In any case, it’s for her to tell us. I wouldn’t tell you if she’d told me something in confidence. You know that!”

“I never want the guys to know,” she told us. “I’d rather they think I’m a loose nut than a…
victim.
”

“Oh my God,” Alys said in a hushed voice. “This is bad, isn’t it? Like, really, really bad.”

Sheri shrugged. “I was born in Lafayette, and we moved to New Orleans when the law firm my dad worked for transferred him here. I was about a year old, and my brother was three,” she said, her voice taking on a deadened monotonous ring.

“My mom used to be so beautiful. She was a pageant queen, and she had this ideal for a lifestyle, you know? Everything had to be perfect—perfect lawyer husband, perfect house, perfect kids. I guess my family
was
perfect at some point, but my dad…I’m not sure if he was always a pedophile…or if it was for some other reason.”

“Oh, holy shit,” Lili whispered.

“He started molesting me when I was four. It wasn’t all the time or, like, on a daily basis then. Just here and there. But it was scary. I loved my dad, and for him to touch me like that…I didn’t understand back then, and…

“One night, my dad came into my room, and…he touched me and put his”—she made a weird little gesture—“in my mouth.” She paused, took a sip of iced tea, and then inhaled a calming deep breath.

“When I was nine, my brother walked in on him and me. Instead of stopping, my dad made…he made my brother touch me, too. He said we should practice for when we were older and that he should watch to make sure we did it right. My brother didn’t want to. He knew it was wrong—we
both
did—but Dad was terrifying. He said that if we ever told our mom or anyone else that we were practicing, he would beat us, and whomever we told would be dead. I don’t think it would’ve mattered if we’d told Mom. She drank all the time by then. We weren’t the perfect family.”

Silently bawling my eyes out, I glanced at Alys and Lili, and I saw they were, too. A slick oily feeling coated my heart and lungs, making me feel ill on Sheri’s behalf.

This is what she feels all the time—this strange sense that she’s not right, that she’s diseased and corrupt in some way.

“I was eleven the first time he came in my mouth. He sat my brother down at the end of the bed and made him watch. I’d given him blow jobs before but nothing like what he had done that night. Mom was passed out, drunk, and he’d taken me and my brother into my room and locked the door.” She shuddered.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Lili gag. Alys pressed Lili’s glass of iced tea into her hand.

“Then, he made the two of us strip, and I had to give my brother a blow job, too. He was crying the whole time, but he was so scared. He just did what Dad told him to…and after that, Dad made him do it to me.”

“I think I’m going to be sick,” Lili whispered, placing her glass back on the table.

She reached for my hand, and I tightly squeezed her fingers. I thought I just might be sick, too.

“After that, he’d make us do this almost nightly. He kept telling us we needed to have as much practice as possible if we were going to know what to do when we grew up. It always started out with me giving
him
head. Then, he would watch us. He wouldn’t let us stop until we both…my shrink said that was his way of ensuring that we enjoyed it just enough to make us feel that maybe it wasn’t so bad or to make us feel guilty about enjoying it, so we’d be too ashamed to tell anyone.

“When I was thirteen, I started my period, and he made my mom put me on birth control. She didn’t even question him. She just took me to the gynecologist. I should have realized then what that meant.”

Alys covered her mouth with a shaking hand. “Oh, no…
Sheri
…” she whimpered.

“One month to the day of being on the pill, Dad brought my brother into my room and made him watch as my dad raped me the first time. I think he tried to be as gentle as possible, but that was because after, he wanted my brother to do the same. My dad stole my virginity, and my brother lost his inside me.” Her throat worked furiously around the lump that threatened to choke her words.

One thing I clearly understood was, her brother’s virginity was something precious to her, more so even than her own. As she’d described it as him losing it inside her…there was something powerful in her meaning.

Lili’s hand was going to crush my fingers.

“Almost every night after dinner, when my mom was passed out, drunk, he’d march us up to my room. He’d fuck me first, and then my brother would fuck me. We started anticipating it, and our love wires crossed—that’s what my shrink told me. We hated our dad, but we loved each other, and the fact that we did made it bearable when he was there, telling us what to do.

“We knew it wasn’t right, but after a while, my brother would sneak into my room at night, and it was weird because it was
okay.
We were both victims of that monster. He had
created
us. My brother…he would make love to me, not the freaky fuckery my father would force us to perform. He would hold me and cry and tell me he loved me, that it was the only way he knew how to anymore. I don’t think he could imagine having sex with anyone else because at least I was just as fucked up in the head as he was—more so, considering what my own father would do to me. As far as I know, Dad never did anything like
that
to my brother. But…my brother wanted me to be happy, and…” She swallowed hard. “I don’t know exactly when it started, but I liked it. I loved
him
. He was so strong for the both of us, and the damage had already been done…” She closed her eyes, and tears leaked out from beneath her lids.

“After a while, my dad needed more perversion. He’d make me go down on him while my brother fucked me, and the first time that happened, my brother made me come so hard that I nearly passed out. It felt so…
amazing
. I think that’s when I
really
started enjoying it.

“And that’s how my mom found us. She woke up one night and busted us. I guess Dad had forgotten to lock the door.”

She took another sip of iced tea, oblivious to the three women openly weeping and trying not to vomit on the patio. She was staring hard at her empty gumbo bowl, unable to look at us.

“She blamed me,” Sheri said after a minute, her voice so soft that it was eerie. “She beat the shit out of me any chance she got after that. My brother would try to stop her, but he wasn’t always around to help. She would try to keep us away from each other, but he would
always
sleep with me at night. And since Dad wouldn’t come near us after getting caught raping his children—and I consider what he forced my brother to do to be rape, too—we were safe from him for the time being. And yes, my brother and I were having sex with each other still. It was normal for us by then and the only way we felt comfortable anymore.

“My mom actually
forgave
my father, believing it was because she was such a terrible wife that he’d had to turn to their daughter for sex. How fucked up is that?” she scoffed. “But she kept beating me, and I felt like I was garbage…so I believed I deserved it. Then, one day, my brother stepped in to stop her from wailing on me with the broomstick. She cracked him so hard on the temple…he was dead before he hit the floor.”