Dare Me

by Stella Rhys

  “Why a squid?” I finally asked Hunt that evening, because he was finally all there. He must’ve found me so annoying after awhile because I talked to him nonstop on days that he was totally sober. Most of the times, it was because I had been holding in conversation for too long and there were frequent streaks when Shanna was totally unreachable because she was going through some episode, so I had no one and nothing. Except Hunt.

  “Giant squid,” he corrected. “It’s the biggest mystery in the ocean. Like me.”

  “Do explain.”

  Hunt finished his beer. He was quiet for another minute, like he was charging up to speak another whole sentence or two. “Scientists can’t study the giant squid because it lives it fucked up waters that no one’s gonna try to dip in. You don’t know nothing about them till they’re dead and washed up on the beach. And that’s the same with me. You won’t ever know what’s going on in here.” He jabbed his finger to his head. “Only God will. You’ll just see me when I’m dead and wonder what kind of life I lived and how I got there.”

  I didn’t understand it so when he asked me a question for once – if I had any tattoos – I was happy to answer.

  “I ain’t gonna be a girl and ask for the story,” Hunt said when I lifted my shirt just enough to show him the rib with Callum’s name on it. “Christ. I definitely won’t ask,” Hunt sat back in his chair to distance himself from me when he saw that I’d started crying. Callum was twenty-two and it was the time of night that he’d probably be celebrating hard, drinking and kissing as many girls as he could till he’d fully forgotten about me.

  I sat out there with Hunt for another hour or so but when I knew my tears weren’t going to stop coming, going and coming back again, I went inside and crawled under my sheets on the grainy couch. I fell asleep with a cold puddle of tears on my pillowcase, right under my cheek. I couldn’t tell how many hours had passed by the time I stirred from my dream about Callum, to the sound of the door swinging open because Hunt was finally coming in. But he didn’t go straight to his room like I always heard him do. He shuffled over to me and before I knew it, the weight of his body was on top of mine. I gasped and opened my eyes and moved to push him off but he was just lying there on top of me. I thought he was asleep till he said, “You’re so pretty. I’m sorry for the things I do. It just feels like you’re not a real person sometimes.”

  I had no idea what he was talking about. I just froze there. I’d never heard words like that out of his mouth before. Shanna never believed me that Hunt hadn’t tried anything on me yet. He’d tried on all the “halfway decent” girls in the park. But I insisted repeatedly, no. Save for whipping out his dick while he was high off his ass, he never had. “Hunt, what are you doing?” I asked when he lifted the blanket off my body. I knew I’d officially lost my mind when my throat tightened over the way he looked at me, and the tears came back. His eyes were a darker green in the night and he didn’t look at me in a sleazy way like everyone else there did. He just looked at me with surprise and admiration and it made me think of Callum and the night he took my virginity. Hunt was nothing like Callum but of course I was thinking of him. I dreamt about him even when it wasn’t his birthday.

  I stared into space that night, letting Hunt push my shirt up past my breasts. He didn’t touch them for a good minute, just stared. “Goddamn, Lake.” I wished he wouldn’t talk. It made it impossible to pretend he was Callum.

  My stare was totally vacant as he rubbed on my body, kissed my cheeks and my neck. I felt him rock-hard on my leg but with a sudden flinch and a grunt, he was done and off to his room, and I was lying there, gazing at the ceiling, remembering how many times I’d forced Callum to do this same sleepless dance. The only difference was he probably hadn’t felt dirty or hated himself and I was glad for that. I was glad that he never did or would feel this kind of self-hatred because it was the most confounding misery. And I didn’t even know at the time that it was just the beginning.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Callum

  Lake never returned to the hotel last night.

  I called her but there was never an answer. I asked around the hotel, the front desk. No leads. But I shut off my insides the second I felt the panic. I didn’t need that shit. I was hollow for the next ten hours I looked for her. Oz held onto the suspicion that she’d gone drinking to blow off steam. He’d keep a lookout for her. He was taking Ana on a pub crawl to do damage control and get her in good enough spirits to keep our article positive.

  By sunrise, he stumbled in from wherever they’d been at all night, carrying a pair of heels and a giggling blonde on his back. But his smile fell fast when he saw me in the lobby. I don’t know how I looked. Not great, probably. I told him that I hadn’t found Lake and he immediately put the girl down. He covered his drunk eyes with his hands, dragged them hard down his face and then sobered right up. It was like a fucking magic trick. “Alright, so what’s the next step?” he asked as the blonde moaned that she couldn’t walk anymore in her heels. He tossed her the keys to his room without looking. It was at this point that Ana came in behind them with the camera crew. She looked fairly drunk but walked perfectly straight. “Where have you already looked for her?” Oz asked.

  “Everywhere. I mean it. Everywhere. I had everyone here on the lookout for me, bunch of bar and shop owners doing the same. But I don’t know when she left and we were doing the shoot for four, five hours. She could be anywhere at this point.” My voice was calm despite the fury raising hell on my insides. It ran around like a madman and clawed everything raw.

  “And she’s not answering her phone?” Whatever look I gave Oz made him hold up his hands. “I know. Obvious question. I just had to ask.”

  “I don’t know where to look anymore.”

  “Then maybe you should stop.” We both looked at Ana. Her hair was down, wavy, flipped to the side. Her eyes were bleary from the drinking but there was ease and confidence in her voice that had me irrationally annoyed. I needed a break from her so I went off to the bathroom where I thought she wouldn’t follow.

  Wrong about that.

  “I need a minute.” I was leaning against the sink when she came in.

  “Do you? I don’t see you needing this bathroom at all,” she contested playfully. “Considering your fly’s still up. Womp, womp.” I paused at her speech. It was the only other sign of her having had a few more drinks than usual.

  “Right. Well, in that vein, I see you needing this bathroom even less. Women’s is across the hall.”

  “Don’t play with me, Callum, you know why I’m here,” she rolled her eyes and fluffed her hair in the mirror. “Lake’s a grown woman. She left so let her leave. She’s finally doing you a favor.” I met her eyes through the reflection, dazed and glassy from keeping up with Oz but so certain in the words she had to say. I looked away when she reached into her neckline and pulled her tits up in her bra. “You should honestly be relieved.”

  “I’m not.”

  “You will be when you let this all go,” Ana exhaled drunkenly, kicking off her heels and leaning barefoot against the sink. I grimaced.

  “Dirty floor.”

  “Dirty girl,” she countered suggestively. I must’ve rolled my eyes because she groaned and caught me by the arm on my way out the door. “God, Callum, she’s dead weight. She. Is. Bad for you. And she made a decision tonight. Now you make one. It’s time for you to start making the right decisions again.” Ana held me in place and cast that sultry look of hers on me. With three neat snaps of her fingers, she undid the top buttons on her shirt, till I could see her round, pushed-up tits. “Do you know what to do or do I need to spell it out for you?” She undid my belt in a flash. Her hand slid into my jeans and palmed my dick till it grew reflexively hard. She pouted. “Poor baby. I know you’re stressed so I don’t mind doing all the work tonight,” she murmured, running her tongue along the contour of her parted lips. I watched it make a full, wet round before placing my hand over hers. She moaned, squee
zed a handful of my package.

  But her eyes flashed at me when I slid her touch firmly off my cock.

  “I don’t need it spelled out. But thanks for the offer.”

  I left her in the bathroom. A muscle twitched in my cheek as suddenly, and might I add, disturbingly, her image fused with that of my father’s. Christ. Fuck my memories for doing this to me. Ana obviously wasn’t him. She just had the same brand of ruthless determination and the words she’d said reminded me of the ones he had left me with on my twenty-second birthday.

  I need you to start making the right decisions.

  It played before my eyes again.

  It was my first birthday without Lake since I was six years old. I had just quit the job I’d been hired to out of my first internship. I had Logan, work friends, other friends hounding me to go out but I stayed in my apartment and chose my night’s company from all the flirty texts I’d gotten from girls. The one I picked who came over had my zipper down and her mouth open when the doorbell rang.

  My dad.

  I saw him increasingly less with every year following the divorce. Partially because he always kept trying to explain himself and his explanations always mentioned Lake. I wasn’t in the place where I was looking to hear her name, ever, and I’d never forget how cruelly he left my mom, so I gladly cut him out of my life.

  Unfortunately, Logan didn’t. Our fathers were best friends. It was the only reason I’d ever thought to befriend Logan in the first place. We were polar opposites. A thousand differences set us apart but the most relevant one that night was the fact that he worshipped his father. Didn’t make a single move in his life until it was approved by Logan Senior. I wavered between relief that I didn’t have that relationship with my dad and vague envy over never knowing the feeling of needing to repay for the warmth and support provided since childhood. There was none of that with my dad when I was growing up.

  But he made an attempt at it on that birthday. I didn’t answer his text about what my plans were, so he asked Logan’s father to ask Logan and was given the reply that I was staying home.

  “I’m sorry.” He apologized to the girl when I opened the door and he saw her. She gave a tight-lipped smile, wiped her mouth and grabbed her purse before slipping out the door. In the hall, she flashed a call me sign behind my dad before tiptoeing for the elevators. “For you,” my dad said, handing over a small, black bag from the same store that he’d been buying me three hundred dollar ties every year. I reached into it. Another tie.

  “Would you like a drink?” They were my first words to him as he walked in and looked around, feigning interest in what I’d done with the space.

  “Whatever Scotch. Neat’s fine.”

  I had no ice anyway. I drank my Scotch neat just like he did. It was no point of pride for me. I handed my dad the lowball as he took a seat on the leather couch.

  “You asked Logan where I was?”

  “The older one, yes. That friend of yours is trained like a dog by his father,” he said with, unless I was mistaken, a fond laugh.

  “That’s a good thing?”

  “Not a bad thing when your father knows what’s best for you.”

  I was about to sit on the chair next to the couch but that remark kept me on my feet. I said nothing in reply, only drank.

  “Don’t take offense, Callum. I’m here to offer you help.”

  “I don’t need your help.”

  “I beg to differ.”

  “You can feel free to.”

  His eyes were ice but he forced a smile. He cleared his throat. “There’s a position at my old company, Callum. I’ve been asking around. It just opened up and I think if we pulled some strings, you could start over. You could do well there.”

  My father worked at a hedge fund. He, his friends and all their sons did. “I’m not interested and I’m certain I’m not qualified.”

  “You’re harder-working than any of the kids you went to school with, Cal. You can do this if you put your mind to it. I know it. You can get your life back together.”

  “I’m doing that.”

  “I don’t see it.”

  “It’s a good thing I don’t do it for you to see.”

  He lost his patience all in one shot. “For Christ’s sake, Callum. Logan and all your friends from Mercer just graduated from their respective universities – business schools, Ivies. They’re getting their MBAs and you’re just sitting on your ass here in your apartment without a single direction. What happened to the son of mine who rose above everyone’s kid without trying? You’ve got the natural ability to do whatever you want. Where did that drive, that determination go?” He sat forward, stared at me with an intensity that faded into smug disbelief. “You really did let that girl ruin you.”

  My bones went brittle. I refused to show it. “I’m not going to have this conversation with you. I think it’s time for you to leave.”

  “Don’t you dare speak to me like I’m some stranger.” He hissed at me, on his feet again. “Despite what you may think because of how I may have treated your mom, I’m your father, Callum. I love you. I am all the worthy qualities you have. I look out for you from afar because Caroline isn’t going to. I have your best interests in mind while she wastes her energy on the girl.” He sniffed a bitter laugh, clearing the whisky from his glass with a sharp toss down his throat. Every word he spoke after was singed with fire. “Look at you, Callum. You sacrificed everything for a stranger who clearly didn’t think much of you anyway.” He held his arms out as if to ask where is she now? I only stared back, a storm in my chest but a vacant look on my face. “It fucking kills me. To see what you gave up. Now I could let your mother do that – she’s a grown woman and she made her choice to indulge whatever childish trauma got her so obsessed with raising a girl. That was her problem. It should have stayed her problem. It should have never become yours. I will never forgive her for how she took from you to give to that girl. Before you were born, I told her if I agreed to have a child, I was going to have a brilliant one. And you were that, Callum. You were everything I wished for. You were smarter than everyone else, you were stronger than everyone else and you took care of your mother in ways I couldn’t. I admired that. You never made a single mistake until you let that girl into your heart because she was pretty. Yeah, really pretty. But she was nothing more than that and you were.”

  “You know nothing about her,” I countered through my clenched jaw. “You were never around and when you were, you just hated that you looked at her too. You were like everyone else when it came to her. You had no power. And you had a day where you finally hung out with her from morning to night and couldn’t get enough of her. I remember. You spent the next week fucking showering her with love and affection and presents and taking her around till some asshole friend made some shitty comment and then you just shut down. Didn’t want to ruin your image.”

  “Sue me, Callum for realizing what was important to me,” my father snarled. “I enjoy my life as it is. I like my reputation among my friends. What don’t I like? Embarrassment. Scandal. Humiliation. And you know what, I’m more than happy to shut off certain needs and emotions because those don’t rise above my desire for success and admiration and power.”

  “There’s nothing powerful about living for what others think.”

  He had nothing to come back with and it sent him over the edge. “For fuck’s sake, Callum,” he growled, stalking off and sliding his empty glass across my kitchen counter. It skidded into the sink and shattered to pieces. “Enjoy cleaning that up. If only the maid’s kid were here to help you.”

  “Fuck youself.”

  “Christ, son.” He stopped and took a good look at me before walking out the door. His eyes were filled with rage and hurt. “I’ll never give up on you. I want you to know that. You can always come to me when you decide to turn it around. But I’m going to need you to start making the right decisions. I’m going to need you to let go of the girl and come back to who you were born to
be. You are and always have been worth infinitely more than her.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Lake

  I was being laid off my job at the liquor store. Seven dollars an hour, off the books and barely enough to get by but I was still devastated.

  Aggie said it was because they were closing down soon. The landlord raised the rent for the sole purpose of getting rid of her. She felt bad about it, so on my last shift, we sat in the closed store and had a drink. “They say they’re opening some nice bar here,” she said, pouring me a plastic cup of something watery brown. “So, here’s to hoping they don’t get none of those pretty girls in little shorts or you folks are gonna have a hard time next door.”

  I heaved a sigh. I couldn’t even plan to work at the new bar because it wasn’t opening for awhile and when it did, the shifts would conflict with the ones I had at the place I was already working.

  “Maybe it’s time to start stripping,” Aggie cackled. I handed her a preemptive napkin. Every time she laughed, she hacked up a lung.

  “No. I think I’d rather not.”

  For the money, I had started considering going from waitress to stripper. But I never found the nerve to merely ask anyone about it at the club. I didn’t judge the girls that did it. I had fantasies of being one of them the few times I went to strip clubs with Callum and his friends. But here, the idea of stripping lived in the same place in my heart where I was a shitty person. A fraud. It lived in a place that told me I never belonged in New York with Callum and I’d die in Sunstone. None of the people who once loved me would be happy to see me if I went home. I had already morphed into someone none of them would ever recognize. They’d feel dirty and disgusting for having ever associated with me and I’d be their burden to overcome.