Slut (12 page)

CHAPTER TWELVE

I found Rosa and shoved my keys in her hands. “Drive.”

“Where are we going?”

“I don’t care. Away from here.”

“What did he do?”

“Can we just go.” It wasn’t a question.

Rosa followed me to my car and slid into the driver’s seat and we roared down the drive and to the highway. She didn’t head back to the city. Instead she drove farther away from Kansas City. She drove until we hit St. Louis.

That was when I cried.

I cried big, ugly nasty tears. The kind when you have snot bubbles bursting out of your nose and down your shirt.

And I didn’t care.

Rosa was uncomfortable and at a loss, but to her credit, she just put an arm around me and let me bawl in the zoo parking lot. I sobbed for all the hope he’d dared to sow in me, for all those green shoots of the new woman I wanted to be that died, for the future I’d dared imagine.

And for the death of something beautiful that lived for a single day.

When my forehead was numb, my eyes swollen, and I could finally take a steadying breath, I spoke. “Why did you bring me to the zoo? In St. Louis?”

Rosa laughed. “My mother. She used to bring us here when I was little and we had a bad day. The animals always made me smile. It was all I could think of.”

“God, my face hurts.” It was like a balloon had been blown up inside my skull. I wished it would just pop.

“Are you ready to tell me what happened?”

“No. I don’t want to talk about it. Let’s get a hotel room and get fucked up. How about it?”

“Chocolate, mani/pedis and no men?”

“No fucking men,” I agreed.

We checked into a nice hotel and I ordered massages, champagne, strawberries, and in-room spa services all courtesy of Daddy’s credit card. That was my favorite way to solve problems. Throw money at it until I felt better. Sometimes it worked. Most of the time, it worked.

Although when they brought the strawberries, I was reminded of that night at the Avalon and if I’d had any tears left to cry, they would have erupted from my face in some stupid angst volcano.

“Will you tell me now?”

“Are we there yet?” I sniffed, mocking the way she kept asking. I knew she cared, but talking about it would bring it to life. Not that I thought it wasn’t real, but there was something so final about breathing it out loud.

“No. Not until you tell me. You’ll feel better if you talk about it.”

“We broke up.”

“I gathered that.”

I didn’t want to tell her about Brendan. I didn’t want to admit everything about fat camp, about my utter humiliation. I’d shared all of that with Thornton and he still turned his back on me. Not that I thought Rosa was going to turn her back on me, but I’d never confided this much of myself in another person besides Thornton. I didn’t want to invest. If I invested, there was a loss ratio—depreciation… I started thinking about the things my father taught me about business.

Inside, I knew I couldn’t treat personal relationships like a business. Feelings had no place in business. Yet, it seemed the safest, wisest option. Only, as I’d realized before, the way I was doing things hadn’t gotten me anywhere.

This new way of doing things had gotten me somewhere I didn’t want to be, but I supposed it was better than stagnating, sitting and rotting in the same old self-hate.

That’s really what it was: self- hate. I didn’t trust people because I didn’t trust myself. I knew all of this, it was obvious. But it had never been demonstrated so clearly before. I’d always been able to hide from it, but there was no hiding anymore.

Maybe that’s what I resented Thornton for the most—because of him, of the change he wrought in me, the change he made me want to make in myself, I couldn’t hide from any of it anymore.

I took a deep breath. “I used to be fat.”

“Like that’s a sin.” She rolled her eyes.

“Don’t get me wrong. You’re beautiful. Claire is beautiful. But I… I wasn’t. Or if I was, I couldn’t see it.” This was the first time I’d been able to acknowledge that maybe being who I was before I was plastic wasn’t the worst thing that could happen to me.

I took a deep breath and continued. “My father paid for fat camp, paid for counseling, paid for lap band, and plastic surgery. I used to have his nose, but as a surprise he had that fixed for me while I was out.”

“Oh god. That’s… horrible,” Rosa gasped. “What a violation. Like, it wasn’t your body. I’d have killed him. Legitimately.”

I gave her a half laugh. “Yeah, well, that was just my life. I knew Brendan at fat camp when I was a kid. He’d got handed some community service and he chose to parse it out at fat camp for rich kids.”

“Oh no. I feel like I’m watching two cars on a collision course. I want to look away, I know what’s coming, but I feel like you need to tell me anyway.” Rosa took my hand.

“I ended up paying him to kiss me because I didn’t think I’d have my first kiss otherwise. He told everyone about it. He used to call me Butterball Bex. Everyone did.”

Rosa narrowed her eyes. “Next time I see him, I’m kicking him square in his bitch box.”

I sniffed another half laugh. I’d pay to see that. “It gets better. Or worse, depending on how you want to look at it.”

She was right. It did help to talk about it. I already knew what happened, but telling her seemed to validate my feelings about it. Because underneath it all, I wondered if I was wrong. If I’d overreacted, if I’d done something to invite that kind of attention from Brendan. There had to be some reason he thought it was okay to act like that. That I wanted him to.

Or maybe it was just because I gave it to everyone else so he thought he should have it too. Or if I said no, no one would believe me or care. I was Sexy Bexy, after all.

“Then I found out that he’s Thornton’s best friend. I tried to let the past go. He saved Thornton’s life when they were kids. He couldn’t be all bad, right?” I took another deep, fortifying breath. “Then when Thornton was out with my dad, Brendan caught me alone in his room and he said that I was just a piece of ass that Thornton’s family was forcing him to marry. Then he tried to kiss me. He did kiss me. It was like a dead slug trying to crawl into my mouth.” I shuddered.

“That’s when Thornton walked in, right?” Rosa filled in the rest.

I nodded. “And he didn’t ask me about it. He didn’t… he just told me to go. He spent all his time trying to tell me that I was more than a hole for his dick and then treated me no better.”

“Fuck him too. If he can’t see what an amazing woman you are, if he’s not smart enough to know that Brendan is a lying ass bastard, then you don’t want him.”

“I know that’s the ‘right answer’ but it doesn’t make it hurt any less. He’s the only one I’ve ever let myself have feelings for. I knew it would break me and here I am, breaking.”

“You know, my favorite poet is Rumi. Claire got me into his stuff. One of the things he said is that you have to keep breaking your heart until it opens.”

“Like a fucking egg and all my yolk all over the floor. That’s the problem, once it’s broken, there’s no putting it back together. There’s no stuffing the insides back when they’re on the outside.”

Rosa pulled me into a tight hug. “Maybe you’re not supposed to. Maybe your insides are supposed to be on the outside.”

I leaned into her and let her hug me. She smelled like flowers and it reminded me of my mother—who always smelled like vanilla and lavender. Rosa leaned back, pulling me against her, my cheek on her breast.

For a moment, I thought she was going to make a move on me and I knew that I wouldn’t say no. Touch was my coping mechanism.

“I’m going to teach you something I think that maybe you don’t know.”

I giggled through the sniffles. “I’ve been with a woman before.”

“That’s just the thing,
amiga
.” She smoothed my hair from my face. “I thought you knew this, I thought that you were this powerful woman in charge of your own sexuality. I think you want to be, I think you can be. No, I think you
will
be. But you need this in your arsenal first.”

“What?” Now, I was scared. It was stupid, when I thought she wanted in my pants, I was okay with that. When I thought she wanted in my feelings, I wanted to run screaming. “If this is about my feelings, I’d really rather just make out.”

Rosa laughed. “No, you wouldn’t. Now, be still and listen to me.” She kept petting my hair, my forehead, her fingers cool and soft.

I didn’t want to like it, I didn’t want to be soothed by it.

I was afraid. Terrified.

“It’s okay to want the comfort of touch without sex. My family, my culture, we’re very physical with each other. We hug, we touch, there is no real sense of personal space. Like this right here? It feels nice, doesn’t it? Safe.”

It reminded me that Thornton told me I was safe too, but I wasn’t. He’d lied—worse, he’d failed me. He wasn’t the kind who failed at anything and if he couldn’t be what he promised, it made me doubt anyone could.

“I know exactly where your mind went. Fuck him. No, don’t fuck him. Not ever again. You are safe with me. I will comfort you and protect you just like a friend should do. And when I’m bawling in my beer, you will do that same.”

“I will?” I found another laugh.

“Yes.” She said it with such authority and certainty that I believed her.

Her soothing petting reminded me again of my mother and how much I missed her. How much I needed her.

“I miss my mother,” I confessed, choking on it.

“I know.” She kept petting me. “Let it out and let it go.”

She held me and I let her. This was like what happened with Thornton, but better. Rosa didn’t have any end game, she wasn’t trying to change me. To make me be anything I didn’t want to be. This wasn’t for her, and I got the impression that with Thornton, it had been about him in a weird way.

Not that I thought he was… I don’t know what I thought. Thornton wasn’t a bad guy. I couldn’t blame all of this on him, no matter how I felt right at this moment.

I tightened my arms around her and I allowed myself to be comforted. I allowed myself to let my full weight rest on her, rather than holding back. She was soft and solid at the same time—a physical representation of the woman herself. Rosa had a kind, generous heart, but she was strong too. Strong in a way that I wished I was.

And maybe, in a way that I could be.

This was friendship. This was sisterhood. This was real.

It was a connection with another person I hadn’t had since I was a child.

Even though I’d had so much sex, so much touch, I’d not gleaned from it what I got from this.

“I think I snotted on your shirt.”

“Whatever. It’ll wash.” She squeezed me reassuringly.

I was embarrassed suddenly at how much I liked this, how much I needed it and when that would’ve made me pull away, she said, “Nope. Not done yet.”

“Why not?”

“Because now you want to hide because you admitted that you felt something. None of that. This is what friends do. This is what people who care for each other do and by damn, you’re going to get that in your head.”

I laughed again. “What if I told you that your boobs are giving me lady boner?” I teased.

“You’re making it sexual so you can distance yourself.” Then she shrugged. “Or not. I have
great
boobs. And you
should
have lady boner because they’re that awesome.”

She wasn’t going to let me go no matter what I said and I didn’t really want her to.

“Why are you my friend?”

“Because you buy me mani/pedis,
obviously
.” I could hear the eye roll in her voice.

Just like that, all of the tension in my body fled and took with it the fear, the shame and all the badness that had festered inside of me. I still hurt, but I could see that there was a light at the end of the tunnel and someday, I’d reach it.

We stay like that for a long time; Rosa petting my hair and me with my arms around her waist.

“I love you,” I told her. And I meant it with all my heart. Saying it was hard for me, like carving out a piece of my soul, but I was pretty sure it needed pruning anyway. I’d told Claire I loved her and it hadn’t killed me. This wouldn’t either.

“Forever and always, girly.” She smooched the top of my head with a loud kiss.

It was odd how gruff she was, but how warm. How open.

How brave.

Her stomach grumbled. “You better be feeling the love. I’m starving. I put down a chocolate covered strawberry for you.”

I laughed. “I am. So much love, it’s gross. I mean, my teeth are rotting out.”

“Well, I guess I better let you save your teeth.” She released me and grabbed the strawberry.

“We can get real food.”

“Actually, I already feel bad you spent so much money on me.”

“It’s just a number on a screen. It’s not real.”