Pulse (Contemporary new adult/college romance) (Club Grit Trilogy) (9 page)

I heard the lace of my hipster style panties rip but they still chafed as they were pulled over my skin hard. I’d never had a guy do anything like this to me before. Even though I got drunk all the time, got fucked up  beyond belief, I’d never been raped. I’d always consented in the past, and although I’d had regrets, I’d never felt violated or hurt or raped. This was the last thing that Los Angeles could take from me: my naivety, the only thing that kept me from becoming cynical. I found myself secretly wishing I’d taken more pills, gotten more fucked up, because I felt like if I couldn’t remember this like the girl in the closet, it would have counted less to me, personally, that if I couldn’t remember, I couldn’t feel the pain, but I knew that wasn’t how the real world worked now, the same way that to some people, people that were barely even people, that wasn’t how consent worked. Because to them, “no” didn’t.

I heard the unzipping of his pants and the unbuttoning of the buttons. I felt the fabric shift down as he kept me pressed down with his big barrel like arms.

The door opened and I heard Kim say, “You can’t go in there!” Somebody grabbed me and pulled me out though, my panties still around my ankles and my skirt hiked up. I slipped out of them and threw them in the gutter, I didn’t want them anymore, and pulled down my skirt, covering my exposed breasts with my arms because the top part wasn’t salvageable.

I was shaking but the only person to hold me was Skylar. He’d been dragged out of the car by the owner who made Skylar stop beating the shit out of DeAndre. Twice in one night must be a record.

The owner from before was out again too. “You, you, you. You’re all banned from Club Grit. You bring people like that asshole in here? That’s not okay. You need to press charges,” he said to me. “And I’d suggest finding friends that don’t hook you up with known rapists. But the rest of you and your sorority are all fucking banned.” This was directed to Kim. “You’ve caused more trouble for my club than we’ve had in years, and I’m not letting the club become a haven for rapists. This club is for people to relax and have fun, but rapists? Their pleasure doesn’t fucking matter to us. Get yourselves and your scumbag friends out of here.”

I went back into the limo but Kim pushed me out and shook her head, passing me the clutch with my cards, phone, and keys put back inside. None of the other girls would look at me, and whether it was out of disgust, embarrassment, or what I feared was maybe shame, I’d never have the chance to find out, but Kim was glaring and shaking her head back and forth:
no. no. no.
DeAndre still sat in the car, and the girls had made him an ice bag for his eye, which was already swelling from the punch, from what was left of the minibar confessions. Typical.

“Find your own way home,” was what I expected Kim to say.

I didn’t expect for her to just have the limo driver drive off and leave me with the two nightclub guys. Fuck.

“Make sure she gets home okay,” insisted the owner. “You’ve got the rest of the night off, paid, Skylar. But make this little problem here disappear. It’s bad for business and bad for my heart.”

“Yes sir.” Seeing Skylar in his professional setting was so much different than when he was with me. Was I really that bad of an influence around him? Skylar wasn’t this protective of people usually. He did his job, and nothing more. That’s why he’d taken the girl out to the alley to throw up that first night. But technically? I wasn’t on club property when the attempted rape happened, but he’d still gone to save me and I didn’t know why. How did he know my SOS, that simple cry for help so desperate, was serious, that it wasn’t another game that I was playing to get his attention?

Although I didn’t Skylar, and didn’t know if I ever would, in that moment, I knew that I would never play a mind game with him again. Although he and the owner looked different in many ways, the look their eyes was the same. They’d seen too much too often, and their eyes were dull instead of shiny and bright, that innocence rubbed away by the sandpaper of reality, their worldview becoming clearer and dimmer at the same time.

“Take two cab vouchers from the bar, they’ll have them ready. But wow. Fuck this. Just fuck it. I need to make some phone calls. You know what to do.” The owner put his hands in the air before pushing them to his head. Two of the modelesque women he always had hanging on tried to hold onto him as if it’d make him happier somehow, erase the memory of what he’d seen, their eyes sad and smiles gentle, but he brushed them off. They still followed as he walked away, a man who had seen too much too often.

He went back into the club and Skylar followed but made a B line for the bar where he got two vouchers, as promised, and we headed out where he got a cab faster that I think I would have. But this time, he gave the cab directions I didn’t recognize. As we sat in the back, his plain black hoodie with white cords zipped to keep my breasts private and to keep me warm, he held me in his arms and his face was stoic, the kind of stoic my dad got when he’d learned that a boy in the neighborhood had pushed me off my bike and called me a slut when I was thirteen and growing breasts but didn’t have a training bra yet because we couldn’t afford one and my sister’s were the wrong band size. It was the kind of stoic that a problem was going to be dealt with. Permanently. It was a look that scared me because it made me worry about who would be the target of his wrath, but unlike DeAndre, I knew that the raw power that Skylar contained wasn’t something that he’d ever use against me, but instead, to defend me. Still, he kept his arm wrapped around me, and every few minutes, he let out a sigh and closed his eyes, shaking his head as if he was trying to get some terrible memory out of his head.

“Are we going back to the Omega House?” I asked, already knowing the answer.

“No, not yet.” He tried to give me a soft smile but his eyes were dead as if he’d lost all faith in his gender based on DeAndre’s heinous actions. I had no idea where we were going but I trusted Skylar, his arm wrapped around me and holding me tight even though I was dirty now, soiled, ruined.

Maybe that was my mistake.

S
KYLAR TOOK ME TO THE POLICE. I don’t want to get into but long story short, I had to give them a report about what happened with DeAndre. Skylar gave his version too and there were witnesses: the club owner and obviously, DeAndre and the girls of Omega House, who would defend him to their dying days. Because DeAndre hadn’t actually penetrated me, there was no way for them to get evidence of what he’d done and it became a he-said, she-said sort of ordeal. DeAndre had the kind of parents that could afford him the security of getting away with it and I didn’t want to tell my parents what had happened, but I knew I had to, even though it would be one of the most embarrassing, shameful conversations of my life. I’d let myself get drunk. I’d let him feel me up before. I’d drawn an arbitrary line in the sand, right? It was complicated by the fact I’d had sex with him just a day before I’d said no, and the fact that we were both fucked up each time, just like my whole fucking life now. A fucking fucked up mess.

But after I gave my report, I didn’t want to go home yet, not yet, so Skylar took me to the one place he knew I’d be safe.

A two bedroom apartment, he shared it with a roommate who was already asleep. He told me ahead of time so I’d stay quiet. That didn’t stop him from making us a pile of grilled cheese sandwiches, made with cheap yellow cheese and cheaper white bread, the kind of stuff that’d been a staple at home, at least before we won that fucking lottery and that was replaced with trips and travel and eating at the finest places. He cooked while I showered and he lay out a clean package of plain white cotton underwear he’d picked up for me from a CVS on the way home, along with a pair of his pajama pants and a tank top.

The hot melted triangles didn’t taste like the food at the sorority either, where a chef prepared every meal to perfection and special dishes were served for girls with dietary restriction. This was the kind of bad for you homemade food that warmed the heart in more than one way. Guys had never cooked for me before. There were guys that had taken me to dinner before they felt me up in movie theaters, and back home, my first boyfriend and I had always stolen Slurpees from the 7 Eleven until my mom found out and threatened to beat me black and blue if I didn’t stop, even though it was an empty threat: she’d never laid a hand to me in her life but I’d never expected her to find out about the thefts either. She made me save up to pay the store owner back, who laughed about it (seeing as he was my boyfriend’s dad! and it wasn’t really theft, he’d just forgotten to tell the new high school student attending the convenience store that the two kids that came in all the time were his son and his son’s girlfriend, so to let them take whatever they wanted but to make a note of what it was so he could refill the register, #tldr) but accepted the payment anyway.

I’d never had a guy actually give a shit about me. I also knew there was only one reason a guy like Skylar would help a girl like me. Girls like me weren’t the ones that guys like him dated: we’re the ones they fucked. And honestly, that was fine. Unlike with DeAndre, I wanted Skylar. I wanted to snuggled close in his arms and I wanted to him to hold me. I wanted him to fuck the pain away.

That’s why I leaned in to kiss him.

So why did he pull away?

And why did he take my arms and press them against my side and not his?

“No, stop it,” he ordered, pinning my arms to my sides firmly. I tried to struggle loose but he kept his hold until I stopped trying to get closer to him.

“You saved me, Skylar. Why?” I had to have an answer, to this, because Skylar wasn’t like other guys. The way that he’d texted me when he kicked DeAndre out, when I was leaving the club, and the way he’d come to my rescue? Other guys didn’t do that. Other guys weren’t Skylar, and this was what made him different: the fact that he had saved me even though we weren’t dating and he had no reason to after the way I’d treated him, a way I vowed I never would again.

“You don’t understand...you never have.”

“Then why don’t you explain, for once?”

“As you’ve said so many times before, you’re Emma Nelson. You’re defined by who you are, what you’ve made of yourself, not what your parents won. You had everything I ever wanted, the one thing I ever wanted: freedom. I can’t have that, but I can make damn sure you don’t waste it.”

“Skylar, don’t you want to fuck me?” I felt like a rapist. Fuck. How the tables had turned. But since the beginning, this game of cat and mouse had always been clear cut. I was the cat. He was the mouse. Fuck if he wasn’t the sexiest mouse I’d ever seen, though. Fuck if I didn’t keep chasing.

“Yeah, I’m not a rapist, if you haven’t noticed,”

“But I want it!”

“You don’t know what I want,”

“What, because I’m eighteen? Because I’m a girl?” My voice was starting to get shrill, accusatory as if that strategy would work.

“No, because you’re fucking wasted, and I have no idea what else you’ve had, but you’re not right. You’re...you’re not like you were on our date.” I bit my lip. How would he feel if he knew I was intoxicated then, too? On uppers and study meds?

“What do you mean?”

“When you’re not with your sorority friends? When you’re not being a fucking asshole and taking shots and pills? You’re actually an okay person, Emma.” A person. Not a girl, not a woman, not a sister, and definitely not a slut or a bitch, but a person. I hadn’t been a person in a long time.

“Emma, it’s going to be okay. I just...I know it’s not my place. I do. But you and your friends are now banned from Club Grit and that takes a lot. You’re only eighteen. Don’t let yourself get stuck in a vicious cycle, in a never ending loop of pain.”

“And what would you know about that?”

Skylar pulled out his arm. It was still covered in tattoos, as usual. “What am I looking for?”

“Feel it. Now.” His words were shorter than usual.

And so I did, closing my eyes too. His arm was firm, but I already knew that. What I didn’t know was that there was a covering of lines that ran horizontally across his arms making long, thin x’s in some places, v’s in others, and even a few other letters. He had an alphabet on his arm made of cuts I knew could only come from one place. There was only one kind of animal that could cause those marks: a human being, to itself.

“Self-harm scars.” I whispered it and bit my lip, not yet opening my eyes.

“That’s right. Things were getting bad at home so what I did was I started to cut to cope. It wasn’t good for me, obviously. My parents were fighting all the time because my dad was an addict and we weren’t exactly rich, so my mom was mad he was spending money on drugs instead of on the family and I ended up cutting. The pain helped me get the sounds of their screams out of my head, at least until I went to the hospital. The last thing we could afford was that bill. My dad started using more after that and I started to write songs to cope instead.”

“Oh.”

“I got this sleeve to cover them up. I know that I shouldn’t be ashamed of my scars and I’m not, but what I want is for people to learn about my past on my terms only. I don’t want anyone to know about me and judge me without my permission. I know it’s fucked up, but sometimes, the fucked up things are what keeps us grounded. Obviously, that’s not how it is with you though. You might need a less fucked up life, not one that’s more fucked up, Emma.” He got up from the couch and went to the television. Skylar popped in a movie. “You probably haven’t seen this before,” he said, but as the familiar tune of “Mad World” played, I asked, “Is this
Donnie Darko
?”

He looked at me with surprise. “Wow, you know what
Donnie Darko
is? I took you for more of a
Legally Blonde
type.”

“What else do you have?” I asked, but I got up from the couch before he could answer. Although this was a surprisingly neat bedroom for a musician cum bouncer, the DVDs weren’t in any type of order and many still had their sale price (five bucks, two for seven, etc.) on the front blocking out titles and faces, but I saw one that I’d never think I’d find in his collection. I smiled to myself and popped it into the player and got back on the couch.