Make Me Sin

by J. T. Geissinger

  “Grace,” says Kat sternly, “you warned me away from Nico at the beginning of our relationship, remember? And we turned out fine.”

  “Yes, but Nico doesn’t have a mafia don’s rap sheet and a harem of paid escorts that, if lined up, would circle the globe five times over.”

  Kat gives her a look. “Close enough.”

  “And he was crazy about you from day one. A.J. and Chloe hated each other on sight.”

  “I never hated him. I was just hurt by how much of a jerk he always was to me. And now I’m pretty sure he was doing that to keep me at arms’ length.” I finally raise my gaze and look at them. “To protect me.”

  Grace blinks. “Wait. You think all his assholeyness was because he was trying to protect you?”

  I nod.

  “From what?”

  “From him.”

  There’s a long silence as my friends process that. Finally, Grace says, “There’s a hell of a lot you’re not telling us.”

  “There’s a lot I don’t know.”

  Kat reaches across the table and takes my hand. “I know this might sound hypocritical coming from me after all I went through to be with Nico, but I’m saying it again: please be careful. I don’t want to see you get hurt.”

  “That’s the thing.” I clear my throat, give her hand a squeeze, sit back in my chair. “I’m pretty sure I will. Especially since he flat out told me he’d hurt me. But I don’t care. I still want him.”

  Grace’s stare slices a hole through my head. “This is crazy. You’re volunteering to get hurt? Do you hear yourself right now? You’re too smart to sign up for that, Chloe!”

  She’s really pissed. Her face has flushed, her eyes glitter. I know it’s because she loves me. And I know she’ll be there for me at the tail end of whatever sad story I’m about to create for myself by falling for a man who’s told me in no uncertain terms he’s bad news.

  “I love you guys,” I say softly. “And I know you love me. So what I’m going to need from you is a soft place to fall if and when this thing with A.J. goes sideways. Because I can already tell it’s going to hurt like hell.”

  Kat and Grace look at each other in silence while I finish the rest of my soup.

  When the knock comes on my front door just before ten, I’m ready. I’ve got the whole speech rehearsed.

  What I’m not prepared for is the state Eric’s in when he arrives.

  He reeks of beer. His face is grim and unshaven. His eyes are bloodshot, and the look in them is anything but friendly. My nerves instantly slam into high alert.

  Without a word, he pushes past me into the apartment. Alarmed, I watch as he paces circles around the living room. I close the door and go and stand with my arms crossed over my chest in the kitchen, watching him.

  “Eric. What are you doing?”

  “I know you’re going to tell me it’s over. I could tell by the tone of your voice on the phone.” He laughs without humor. “I already knew anyway. I knew it was over the first time that piece of shit’s name left your lips.”

  Hearing him call A.J. that makes me so angry I want to grab a plate from the cabinet and hurl it at his head. But that would be foolish, along with nonproductive. All I really want right now is for him to leave without making a scene. “I can see this isn’t going to be a mature discussion. Why don’t we just try not to say anything nasty, say our good-byes, and call it a night.”

  He stops pacing and looks at me with such burning anger, I take a step back, hand at my throat.

  “You want a mature discussion, Chloe? Okay, how about this: break it off with him and get back together with me, or I’ll make it my personal mission to ruin his life.”

  My blood turns to ice water. Stunned, I stare at him. “You don’t mean that.”

  He says slowly, “Look at my face, Chloe.”

  I am, and it’s scaring the hell out of me. Who is this man? I’ve never seen this side of Eric, and I have no idea how to handle him. I edge away from the counter, trying to put distance between us. “I told you before, I’m not together with him.”

  Eric moves closer, his gaze level, and so very dark. “You know what I used to love most about you, Chloe? You never lied. You weren’t that kind of person. But you’ve changed, and I know what made you change. I know who.”

  “I think you need to leave now.”

  “Oh, is that what you think? Because I think you should get down on your knees and do something to convince me not to make his life a living hell.” His hand drops to the fly of his trousers. A bitter little smile disfigures his mouth.

  I’m so afraid I begin to shake. Though his tone is calm, the malice and madness glittering in his eyes make him look totally unhinged. My heart pounding, I walk slowly backward, heading toward the front door. “You’re drunk. This isn’t you, Eric. I know you—”

  “This is what you’ve made me,” he hisses, following as I retreat. “I love you, Chloe. We’re good together. We fit. Until you decided to take a detour down whore alley, everything was perfect. I’m willing to forgive and forget, but you have to earn my trust back. And you’re going to start by getting down on your fucking knees and begging me to forgive you.”

  He unzips his pants and pulls out his erection.

  I don’t know where it comes from, but the outrage that blasts through my veins is like electricity, sizzling hot and blazing, lighting me up from inside. I stand up straight, walk to the front door, yank it open, turn back to Eric and shout, “Get the hell out of my house!”

  At that moment, my upstairs neighbor walks down the stairs. She’s an older woman, single, recently divorced, the one who pounds on the wall if I’m too noisy. I’ve always thought she disliked me, and she takes the opportunity to prove it.

  She takes one look at me standing in the doorway, and says, “You know, if you’re going to keep having screaming orgasms every night at two a.m., you might want to buy the rest of the building some earplugs.” She sends me an evil smile, then turns and continues on her way.

  There’s a split second before Eric reacts when I think it couldn’t possibly get any worse. Then he lunges toward me, snarling, and proves me wrong.

  He slams shut the door and wraps both hands around my neck. He pushes me against the wall and starts screaming. “You lying whore! You fucking bitch! You filthy little cunt, I’ll kill you!”

  Over and over, he bangs my head against the wall. He’s breathing alcohol fumes into my face. His lips are peeled back over his teeth, his eyes are wild, and I’m convinced I’m going to die. The room gets fuzzy. I claw at his hands, desperate for air. I can’t breathe.

  Then I jerk my leg upward, hard, and knee Eric in the balls.

  He cries out in agony and doubles over, staggering back. I fall to my knees, gasping and coughing, one hand on my burning throat, the other splayed on the floor, supporting my weight as I struggle to stay upright. Eyes watering, I crawl forward, reaching for the door handle, but Eric has recovered. He lunges at me again. He drags me to the floor, falls on top of me, and starts tearing at my clothes. When I fight him, he backhands me across the face. Pain explodes across my cheekbone.

  His class ring. That’ll leave a nasty mark. My brain is somehow removed from what’s happening to my body.

  Eric savagely rips open the front of my cardigan. Buttons pop off and clatter over the wood floor. He leans over me, panting, snarling obscenities, grabbing my breasts and squeezing them hard. My hands flail at his face, but he easily knocks them away.

  And suddenly I’m floating above myself, looking down. The strangest sensation of calm sweeps over me, like I’ve flown into the eye of a hurricane, where everything is silent and still. My mind is clear, detached, and I can think.

  I remember a newspaper article about my father that ran in the Los Angeles Times last summer, after he’d been hired to defend a famous basketball player from charges of domestic abuse. All charges were eventually dropped when my father unearthed the plot between the player’s wife and her lover t
o try to cash in on the thirty-million-dollar contract the player had just signed. Subsequently, my father filed extortion, blackmail, and conspiracy charges against the wife.

  The headline read, “Carmichael Goes for the Jugular.”

  I look at Eric’s throat, pale and vulnerable above the open collar of his shirt.

  Then I punch him in his Adam’s apple.

  He makes an awful gagging noise and clasps his hands around his neck. I get enough wiggle room to move, and shove him off me. As he coughs and retches, I stagger to my feet, run to the kitchen, rip open the junk drawer, grab the bottle of pepper spray my mother gave me when I moved in, and run back over to Eric. I spray the crap out of him, all over his face and upper body.

  He screams. Clawing at his eyes, howling and sputtering, he falls from his knees to his ass and starts rolling on the floor.

  Panting, I stagger to the door. I have to get out of here. I can’t think of anything else but get out get out get out. I run out of the apartment, leaving the door wide open. Eric’s bellowing follows me out into the hall. I fall against the wall next to the elevator, banging my fist on the call button. Blood drips from my face onto my arm. There are splatters of my own blood all over my chest, my bra, the sleeves of my sweater. My throat is on fire; it’s almost impossible to breathe. Badly shaking, I pull the sides of my torn sweater together over my chest, and start to cry.

  When the elevator doors slide open, A.J. is standing inside.

  He takes one look at me and makes a sound I’ve never heard a human make before, a guttural rumble of pure rage. Sobbing, I fall forward, collapsing into his open arms.

  “Eric, it’s Eric, he’s in my apartment he went crazy I left him inside!”

  “I’ve got you, baby.”

  I’ve got you. That makes me cry even harder.

  One of the neighbors pops his head outside his apartment door. “What’s all the screaming?” He sees me and gasps. “Oh my God. What’s going on?”

  A.J. lifts me into his arms. I cling to him, crying into his neck. He growls to the neighbor, “We need your couch.”

  There is no refusing, not if the neighbor wants to keep his head attached to his body, which he clearly understands. A.J. barges into my neighbor’s apartment, sets me gently on the hideous, plaid, cat-hair-covered sofa, kisses me on the forehead, turns to the neighbor and snaps, “Call 911. Report an assault.” He pauses for a moment. The look that comes into his eyes is murderous. “No. Report two assaults.” He turns and strides out.

  Moments later, there is more screaming from down the hall.

  On the ambulance ride to the hospital, A.J. and I don’t speak. So he can ride with me, I’ve told the paramedics he’s my husband. He sits next to me, gripping my hand as I lie on the lumpy stretcher with tears silently rolling down my cheeks.

  His knuckles are bloody. I find a perverse satisfaction in that.

  In the ER, I’m taken straight in to see a bleary-eyed female doctor, although the waiting room is full. Apparently being covered in blood puts you to the head of the line. I haven’t yet seen my face, and I don’t want to; my cheek throbs so badly I feel it in my toes. I have a CT scan, which shows a hairline fracture of the zygomatic bone, then I get fourteen stitches to close the wound torn in my skin from Eric’s ring. The doctor is concerned about the bruising around my neck; apparently swelling is a common side effect of trauma to the esophagus, and there’s a risk my air passage will swell shut.

  I’m admitted to the hospital, and kept overnight for observation. A.J. is by my side the entire time, bossing people around, grilling the doctor and intake staff, scaring the crap out of the poor nurses with his barked demands. He has a bizarre familiarity with medical terms, frequently sounding like a doctor himself. One more question to add to the queue, if he ever lets me ask.

  I refuse the pain reliever the nurse tries to give me. I want to be totally lucid when I speak to the police, who’ve arrived and are waiting outside.

  Then I tell A.J. to call my father.

  “Holy mother of God.”

  Staring at me in white-faced shock, my father stands rigidly in the doorway of my room. Even at five o’clock in the morning, called to the hospital where his injured daughter is being treated after being brutally attacked, he’s showered and clean-shaven, perfectly put together in a navy bespoke Brioni suit with coordinating tie and pocket square, looking every inch the wealthy, successful businessman he is.

  Until I see him, I’ve gotten myself pretty well under control. The moment he steps in the room, however, I revert to a frightened five-year-old who needs her father to check on the strange noise she’s heard underneath her bed.

  My face screws up, and I start to cry. I whisper, “Daddy.”

  Moving faster than I’ve seen him move in years, he runs to my bedside and takes me in his arms. He silently rocks me, letting me cry all over his beautiful custom lapel.

  When I’m a little better, I withdraw, leaning back against the pillow. He hands me his handkerchief. I blow my nose into it, conscious that I’ve just ruined a two-hundred-dollar square of Hermès silk, yet taking comfort in the knowledge that my father won’t care one bit.

  The third degree begins.

  “How do you feel? How are they treating you? Is the doctor competent? I’ve called Dr. Mendelsohn; he’ll be here in twenty minutes.”

  Dr. Mendelsohn is my family’s personal doctor, kept on retainer like an attorney for everything from annual checkups to emergency treatment. My mother is a career hypochondriac and my father can’t tolerate waiting for anything so mundane as an office appointment; hence the ridiculous luxury of a twenty-first-century house-call physician, who will travel to any location in the world to tend to his employers at the drop of a hat.

  Sometimes my parents are mortifying. Right now, I’m so grateful for them I could die.

  “They’re taking good care of me. I feel okay. My throat hurts. I think my face looks worse than it is.”

  My father’s mouth tightens. Clearly he thinks my face looks pretty bad. “Have they fed you?”

  “I got the regulation gruel half an hour ago. I’m expecting sepsis to set in any minute.”

  My lame attempt at humor takes the edge off the killer ferocity in his eyes. Now he looks merely furious.

  “How long have you been here?”

  “Since about eleven last night.”

  “And what tests have they done?”

  I tell him about all the tests, and the results. He nods, grimly satisfied. “When do they expect to release you?”

  “They haven’t said yet. There was some concern about my throat closing because of swelling, but so far that hasn’t happened . . .”

  Murder has renewed in my father’s eyes. I squeeze his hand.

  “I’m okay, Dad. It could’ve been a lot worse; I got away.” I try to be lighthearted. “Plus, I kneed Eric in the balls and got to use Mom’s pepper spray on his sorry ass, so it wasn’t a total loss.”

  We fall quiet. Because I know my father so well, I see he’s struggling with guilt over our last meeting, the awful dinner when he asked when Eric and I were going to get married. “This fine young man,” he called him. I wonder now if he’ll ever forgive himself for that miscalculation. Usually he’s even better than Grace at pegging people.

  This time it’s Grace who’s won that call.

  “What did you tell Mom?” I only ask because I know he didn’t tell her the truth. At least not the whole truth. He makes his living defending criminals, after all; the truth can be a very inconvenient roadblock to keeping people out of prison.

  “I told her I was needed at work.” The ghost of a smile lifts his lips. “And don’t give me that look. I was needed. By my baby girl.” He strokes a hand over my hair.

  Looking at each other, we share a moment of profound silence. I can see he’s carefully weighing what he’ll say next.

  Finally, his voice quiet, he asks, “Who was the man who called me?”

  “His name
is A.J. He’s here; he just went to go get some food. He’s been with me all night. He’s a friend of mine.” My face reddens. I drop my gaze to my hands, and pick at the heartbeat monitor attached to my forefinger. “He’s actually more than a friend. We’re . . . close.”

  “I see.”

  Oh God, the weight of that. The assumptions, which I know are right. My father has just figured out the whole sordid picture, without having to hear more than a few words. My embarrassment is excruciating.

  But my wonderful father bypasses any awkward conversation about the identity of the man who usurped his hoped-for son-in-law’s position in his daughter’s bed, and switches into professional-lawyer mode. “All right. Chloe, I need you to tell me everything that happened. Start at the beginning.”

  I do. I also tell him about my last few encounters with Eric, and his increasingly erratic behavior. When I’m finished, my father squeezes my hand so tightly I think he might be cutting off the circulation to my fingers. His eyes are bright and diamond hard.

  “I’d like to kill that son of a bitch. I’d like to rip his heart from his chest with my bare goddamn hands. I’d like to burn him alive. Then I’d like to slice both his Achilles tendons, dump him in the lion cage at the zoo, and throw knives at his head while they tear out his barbequed guts.”

  I’m shocked. I’ve never heard my father curse, or utter a speech so choked with hatred. I didn’t know he was capable of such violent emotion.

  He sees the expression on my face, leans forward and takes my face in his cupped hands.

  “I wasn’t always Thomas Carmichael, upstanding businessman, respectable, tax-paying citizen. Before I met your mother and turned my life around, I was Tommy Two-Time, repeat offender, biggest, baddest thug in Southie. All the other gang leaders in Boston would shit golden bricks when they heard my name. And if anyone was stupid enough to lay a finger on my family or friends, they’d lose that finger . . . and the rest of their arm.”

  My lower jaw comes unhinged, and hangs uselessly on my chest. After a moment I compose myself enough to say, “Gang leader? You’re joking! Mom never would have married a thug!”