by Julia Kent
I was wrong.
Oh, so wrong.
What else was I wrong about?
16
There is no greater comfort than texting your besties and having them appear on your doorstep holding ice cream, chocolate, and fifty pounds of righteous indignation.
“What an asshole!” Fiona begins as they invade. I threw on jeans and made my bed, but I'm pretty sure my cottage reeks of sex and five years of stale stubbornness.
Victory has a scent, too, but if this is victory, it smells an awful lot like the Pyrrhic kind.
“Who's an asshole? Me or Parker?”
“Parker, of course!”
“I haven't even told you what happened.”
“Doesn't matter. We're on your side, no matter what.”
“I made a sex tape of me and Parker.”
“Another one?”
“No. The butthole one. But Parker found out and–”
“I changed my mind. You're the asshole.”
“Fiona!” Mallory gasps. “That's not supportive!”
“She made a sex tape with a guy who’s a member of Congress. Without his permission. And he found out.”
“Who would ever give permission to make a sex tape?”
Mallory blushes.
“You did not!”
“We figured it was private! Will deleted it right away!”
“Great,” Fiona says. “Now I'm the only one without a sex tape. I feel really left out.”
“No one's stopping you from making a sex tape.”
“The lack of a sex partner is kind of a problem. Who wants to watch a sex tape of me with a vibrator?”
“Um, half the audience of YouPorn and PornHub, Fi,” I inform her.
Mallory makes that shocked face that reminds me of a sex doll.
“Raul has a point about you and porn, Perky,” Fiona sighs. “Your in-depth knowledge of fetishes and sex toy trends scares me.”
“I heard AlwaysDoll is coming out with a male doll. You can pick your length and girth, and his mouth has a gyroscopic tongue,” I offer.
“She's a preschool teacher. She doesn't need a sex tape!”
“Gyroscopic tongue?” Fi asks, leaning in. “Tell me more.”
“We're here because of Perky's moral crisis,” Mallory interjects, “not to talk about our sex lives. This is all about hers!”
“My sex life is going just fine,” I say with a contented sigh. “Or, well–it was. I lost count at orgasm number twelve. But then Parker left me, and–”
“You count them? Orgasms? During sex?” Fi asks.
“Not on purpose. It just worked out that way.”
“You sound like Mallory.”
“What does that mean?” Mallory objects.
“I'll bet you have color-coded spreadsheets ranking the quality of every sex encounter you've ever had with Will,” Fiona jokes.
Mal's eyes get really wide.
“And now you'll cross-check them against your homemade sex tapes to optimize performance.”
Mallory really does look like an AlwaysDoll when her jaw drops.
Fiona snorts. She opens my cupboard and rummages around till she finds a bar of handmade chocolate from a farm in Sudbury, which she unwraps. A deep giggle bubbles out of her. “As if people actually do that.”
“Right!” Mal's voice is high and nervous. “You'd have to be pretty weird to have a color-coded spreadsheet with filters to track your sex life!”
Fi frowns. “Who said anything about filters?”
Flashing major side eye Mal's way, I slide my phone across the table. “Either of you want to watch?” I don’t tell them the truth. That I reconsidered. That I didn’t record. That my phone did something to make me think I’d recorded, but I didn’t. Almost as if some energy force stepped in and saved me from myself.
The idea of energy brings a sudden image of Jolene, barefoot on bare ground, arms up to the sky on a stormy day, making my body tingle.
“Watch you having sex?” Fiona gasps.
“EWWW!” they say in unison.
“Come on. You're not curious?”
“YES!”
“NO!”
“Are you really going to release it? I can't imagine letting anyone see my O face,” Mal muses, taking the thick chocolate bar from Fi and breaking off a chunk.
“You had a picture go viral that showed your body being spit roasted by a naked porn star and Will, with anal beads between your legs. Your O face was on display to the entire world,” I point out, not so gently.
“But that wasn't my real O face. No one wants their real O face being shown to anyone. Not even to the sex partner they're with!”
“Huh?”
“Don't you turn away when you come?” she asks, curious. The closed-off wall of Mallory suddenly cracks open.
“No!” Fiona and I exclaim.
“Really?” Mallory's face twists into something like a raccoon trying to lick its own nostril. “You want people seeing your face like that?” All her neck muscles tense suddenly, the corded tendons popping out. She turns bright red.
“You have Poop Face,” Fiona says flatly. “And I should know. I work with three- and four-year-olds, and some of those parents lie when they claim their kids are potty trained.”
“SEE?” Mallory exclaims. “People judge your O face. Who needs more judgment in their life?” She points to my phone and her face turns deadly serious. “And if you release that tape, everyone is going to judge you.”
“In more ways than one,” Fiona adds.
“What is this feeling?” I ask, alarmed. Poking at a rib over my heart, I feel tears starting. “Whenever I imagine getting back at Parker with a sex tape now, it hurts.”
“That is called a conscience,” Mallory says slowly, as if explaining to a child.
“Or it could be just acid reflux,” Fiona contributes, picking at her cuticle.
“How good was the sex?” Mallory interrupts, the diversion simultaneously welcome and... not. Because it makes my body shiver with the memory of Parker's touch. He left only half an hour ago. The residue of him is still all over me.
“Sex-amnesia good.”
“That good?”
“What is sex amnesia?”
“Where you come so hard, you forget your own name.”
“That would involve brain damage.”
“I KNOW! Isn’t that so cool?”
“You would trade cognitive ability for literally mind-blowing orgasms?”
“Who the hell wouldn’t?”
I grab my phone and press Play. “Here. See for yourself.”
Mallory peers at us between splayed fingers, her palms over her nose. She looks mortified. “Is it safe?”
“Safe?”
“To look.” As she lowers her hands, sunlight glitters on the big-ass diamond Will gave her when he proposed at the Dance and Dairy festival two months ago. Was that really only two months? Feels like two years.
“Look at what?” I grind out, suddenly consumed by jealousy that makes no sense.
“Anything! Anywhere! All I saw was your butthole on the screen. AGAIN!”
“You don't have to watch my secret politician sex tape,” I mutter, turning the screen away.
“You make it hard not to!”
“Because it's so good? I know, right? People are going to be drawn to this. The sex is so perfect, it's like it was choreographed.”
I look up from my phone to find Fiona and Mallory staring at me like I have two heads.
“What?”
“You have a really high opinion of your sexual abilities.”
I hit Play again, and point to my screen. “Can't argue with that.”
My butthole spider appears.
And then I laugh. I laugh until finally, I cry.
Gently, without a word, Fiona reaches over and hits Pause, then turns the phone over, screen down. She takes my hands in hers, big eyes framed by her pink glasses. Compassion pours from her like she's been put on Earth sole
ly for this conversation.
“You can't do this. You can't keep doing this to yourself.”
“I thought I was doing it to Parker!”
“I'm not even talking about the butthole tape at this point, Perk, though releasing that would be the worst form of self-immolation by internet I could possibly imagine. I'm talking about the last five years. You've closed yourself off because the person who understands you best in the world did something really awful to you, and you've never been able to let go.”
“And?”
“And now it's time to let him back in.”
“He left! He stormed out of here and... he left.” Tears fill my eyes, my nose, my throat, my blood.
“You finally did it,” Fiona says softly.
“Did what?”
“You drove him away.”
Mallory makes a sound of pain, a tiny whimper in the back of her throat. It undoes me, emotions unwinding like they're racing toward a conclusion before I even know what it is.
I grab my phone in a blind rage and delete the video. Searing pain rips through all my organs just as someone knocks on my front door.
I freeze.
Oh, shit, Mallory mouths to Fiona. We turn, all three of us, and stare at my door.
We all know damn well who that is.
“I'm not ready!” I tell them. “Stall.”
“Stall?”
On tiptoes, I leap out my side door. “Stall.”
Racing barefoot to the garage, my phone in hand, I find Dad's neat workbench. The ball-peen hammer is there. I pick it up and it feels solid in my hand, the wooden handle polished to something close to bone by years of Dad's sweat and oils. Before they won the lottery, Dad worked as a carpenter for a living. He got bigger and better tools, but always kept his old ones.
This is one from Before.
Right now, I need to be in touch with as much of who I am as I possibly can.
Still holding the hammer, I run back to my cottage. I come to a halt when I see the tail lights of Fiona's car driving away. Parker's rental is in the driveway.
I have to face him alone.
Turning, I walk the rest of the way to my side door.
I stop.
I drop the phone.
I crouch.
And I start smashing.
Oh, the glorious feeling of Dad's ball-peen hammer clutched in my angry grip, my shoulder socket angled back, muscles tight but strong as I pound away the past. Five years of everything pours out of me in strike after strike, blow after blow, my screen shattering, the metal phone bending and twisting like my heart, splintered and damaged until it can't be put back together.
“Persephone?” Parker appears behind me, his voice filled with understandable confusion. I ignore him, stepping over the mess of my destroyed phone, running inside and grabbing my laptop. I open my front door and fling it, cocking my arm back like a shotputter, the goal a parabola of victory.
The satisfying crunch it makes as one corner connects with the gravel driveway opens something in me. Maybe it's my heart. Maybe it's my memory.
Or maybe it's the piece of me that held me back from believing Parker.
What does foolish pride sound like when it smashes?
Because that's all I hear in my ears.
And it sounds an awful lot like a hammer demolishing a laptop. In a blink, I'm crouched over it, shoulder rolling with blow after blow, the dents and bits of hard plastic my feeble attempt to rewind time.
“What the hell are you doing?” Parker shouts at me over the bang bang bang of my smashing, the rhythm settling into a speedy version of my heartbeat.
“I'm proving I have a conscience!”
“Proving… to whom?”
“DOES IT MATTER?”
My shoulder hurts, the abrupt clench of his hand around my biceps wrenching the bones and tendons in the socket.
“Stop, Persephone. Please.”
“I deleted it, Parker. I smashed my phone. I'm destroying my computer. If it's in the cloud, I promise I'll delete it. I’ll have Fiona’s brother delete it. I promise. I promise. I–” The rest of my words are muffled by his chest. One of his shirt buttons scratches my lip, the strange sensation enough to make me nuzzle him, his scent an intoxicating balm. Strong arms cage me in, his hand on my hair, soothing me. We sink to the ground, his thighs holding me on his lap, our bodies twisted but not awkward.
He's saving me from myself.
“Shhhhhh,” he whispers. “It's okay. I'm here. I'm not going anywhere. I left in anger. Went to a park and took a walk. I got a coffee. I realized you would never actually post that. Especially,” he says, pinching the bridge of his nose, “since I’m not quite sure what that is on the video. And even if you did post it, you'd have every right. But I knew you wouldn't.”
Looking up, I peek around his arm and see my destroyed laptop, the fruit logo on top cracked, the silver cover twisted like a clam that’s been forced open. A pattern of vertical lines glows persistently on the shattered screen, refusing to go black.
“How? How did you know?”
“Because you don't view the world that way. You don't fix a wrong by doing another wrong.”
“But that's how we met! I broke the law to protest unjust labor laws!”
“That's different. You were using a higher moral principle to guide you.” He lets out a contemplative huff. “Maybe you're right. You're doing the same thing now.”
“I am?”
“I knew you wouldn't release that weird sex tape of us because you always turn toward the highest moral principle when faced with conflict, Persephone. You did it five years ago. You did it today.”
“I didn't mean to make that sex tape,” I sniffle. “I got the app and tested it out, but you said the right combination of words to voice activate the recording, and–”
He stiffens. “You installed a voice app for recording video?”
“Yes,” I confess.
“To set me up?”
“Yes.” I expect him to let me go. Instead, he tightens his hold.
“To get back at me?”
“It's stupid, it’s awful, but yes. And then today, I stopped myself. I pushed the Off button before we started. I guess I pushed something that made it beep, though. Then you walked in while I was looking at the old video. You caught me. I couldn't explain it. And then you left.”
“I felt like it was hopeless.”
“You spent five years thinking it wasn't, and finally you gave up?”
“I think my head exploded a little.”
“It's remarkable that it took that long.”
“Come with me, Persephone.”
“Where? To Texas? DC?”
“I was thinking more along the lines of my rental here in town.”
“Rental?”
“I have an Airbnb. A house on Maplecure.”
“Not Will's parents' old house?”
“No. A little closer to town.”
“You rented an entire house?”
“I wanted privacy.” Closing the distance between us, his eyes are so complex. Multi-faceted. He should hate me for what I almost did to him.
“Why are you here, Parker?”
“I've asked myself that a thousand times. I should have let you go. Once I realized you didn't believe me, it turned into a compulsion. An obsession. I tried everything to get you to see reason. To hear the truth. To see me.”
Oh, I see him all right.
“It felt like a critical organ inside you was missing. If I could just get you to hear me, you'd change your mind. If I could provide you with the exact right combination of words, I could fix this. I never sent that picture. I knew that, but you didn't. And nothing I said made a difference.”
I make a sound. I think I can feel the missing organ he's talking about assert itself, as if it's growing in my chest right now, nurtured into being by this conversation.
“You've told me, repeatedly, that you wanted to trust me but couldn't. That something holds y
ou back. I wanted so badly to let go of you, but I couldn't. Something stopped me from giving up. It's the same for both of us–there's a piece inside that is an obstacle to getting over what was done. And it was done to us both. You seem to think the only person hurt by that photo being released was you.”
“I did, and I wanted to hurt you right back.” My eyes jump to all the broken electronics around us, bearing witness to whatever we're doing right now.
“Do you remember, Persephone? Do you remember that day? The day you let me take that damn picture?”
“Of course I remember it, Parker. It’s the day…” My voice fades out. “It’s the day you broke my heart.” I frown. “Or, at least, it's the day that picture was taken. And a few days later, it was sent to – ”
“That was the day you broke mine,” he says, matching my emotion syllable for syllable, breath for breath. “When I tried to explain for the first time. And then every other time I tried to explain. Thousands of tries. Thousands of times, thousands of bruises on my heart until I just walked around with a big ache in my chest and learned to breathe through the pain.”
I close my eyes and will myself to keep breathing. We’re sharing pain. That’s what’s been missing for the last five years. Someone to share my emotions with. Someone to share the bad with.
You can sit with another person and hold their emotional truth in the air between you. You can honor who they are and what they experience. You can smile when they smile and laugh when they laugh. With Mallory and Fiona, I can cry when they cry and know that they’ll be there, too, in empathy, step by step, sob by sob.
With Parker, though, it was always different.
With Parker, there was something more.
He was an emotion inside me. If human beings have twenty-seven different emotional states, then Parker was my twenty-eighth.
He wasn’t just a mosaic of those existing emotions, either. This wasn’t a guy who took a little piece of joy and a bit of desire and a sliver of sadness and a sprinkle of sympathy and blended it all together, mixing in horny and naughty and nice.
Oh, no.
This was a man who created a completely new feeling that lived inside my heart.
The pain of having that emotion ripped out of me by his betrayal is one that I’ve had to bear alone for five years.
