The Bond That Built Us

by KK Bauer

  I held Aubrey’s hand the whole way. She needed it. She still does. We both have nightmares almost every night, and every time we do, we call the other to talk through it. Needless to say, I haven’t gotten a good night’s sleep in way too long.

  We went back to our parents’ houses for a while and the distance between us killed me. It was torture because since the day I met her we spent all day, every day together and then suddenly we were states away. I had to go back to school. I went against my parents’ wishes to postpone my last semester until the fall and started classes a week late. I talked to my coach and he OK’d me to play ball. Practice starts in a week.

  Aubrey showed up on campus a day after me. We were bombarded on campus the first few days, but just like the reporters they lost interest quickly. Now most of the students just stare at us, though, which is just as uncomfortable as the questions.

  Now that we are back, I spend as much time with her as I can. I go to her apartment and sleep with her every night and we help each other through our nightmares. Mine aren’t as frequent as hers and I suspect she has PTSD but I’m afraid to bring it up to her. It turns out I don’t need to.

  “I think I need to go to therapy,” Aubrey says to me one Sunday morning, as we lay there in her bed refusing to leave the comfort of the sheets. We are both lying on our backs and staring at the ceiling. That night was extremely bad for Aubrey and I had to hold her for a whole hour while she calmed down. “My mom suggested it the other day and I think I need it. What do you think?” She turns her head to the side to gauge my reaction. Her eyes look so sad.

  “Yeah, it might help.”

  “Do you think I’m crazy?” She asks seriously.

  “No, of course not. Why, did anyone call you that?” I will punch whoever said that. I feel around under the sheet for her hand. When I find it, I lace our fingers together and rub my thumb over the top of her hand in small circles.

  She lets out a big breath and chews on her bottom lip. “Not directly. But no one in my classes will go near me or talk to me, like they’re afraid of me. When I say something in class, they look at me like I’m going to start screaming and run down the aisle naked or something. It’s unnerving.”

  “Let’s go see someone and see what they have to say about it.”

  “You’ll go with me?” She licks her lips and I see her chin quiver slightly.

  “Absolutely. I won’t let you go without me,” I assure her. If I am not touching her when she is sleeping she freaks out and claws at me in her sleep, subconsciously afraid I will leave her. I could never leave her, though.

  We sit in the waiting room of the doctor who specializes in post traumatic stress disorders. The walls are an orangey brown and clash with the green carpet. The chairs are cushioned but I can still feel the hard seat underneath. The wood arms are slick under my fingers and I dig my thumbnail into the grain, leaving a fissure in the wearing sealant.

  Aubrey is looking at a magazine but all she is doing is staring at the pictures and flipping to the next page. Her foot is bouncing a mile a minute and she hasn’t stopped chewing her bottom lip since we got here.

  “Mister McCabe? Miss James? Doctor Flowers will see you now,” the young woman behind the glass partition calls to us. “The door to the left here will take you to the end of the hall and there is another waiting room. Doctor Flowers should be there waiting for you.”

  I thank the receptionist and grab Aubrey’s hand and we walk down the long hall together. We pass about ten doors on each side until we reach the last door which is wide open to another room. A short stout woman with graying brown curly hair and a black book clutched in her hands is in the middle of the room.

  “Hello, Aubrey,” she says and shakes Aubrey’s hand and turns to me, “Kellan, hi. I’m Liz, please come with me.” She leads us down a different hallway and into a small office. There is a desk pushed against the corner with papers scattered on top of it. I see a computer screen but the papers seem to hide the keyboard.

  Aubrey walks in and peruses the walls, looking intently on the plaques and diplomas that are framed and hung perfectly. She stops at the soft couch and takes a seat. I fall down beside her and grab her hand again and squeeze.

  Liz sits down in a big leather rolling chair and positions the black book on her lap. “First, let me give you my condolences on the traumatizing misfortune you two experienced. When I saw you on the news, my heart broke.” Her hand shoots to her chest and she fumbles with the gold cross necklace around her neck.

  “Thank you,” Aubrey says robotically. It’s a reflex we’ve learned through the weeks.

  Liz eyes our clenched hands and I see the twinkle in her eye and the miniscule smile on her lips. “Yes, well… I hate that you have to see me, but I am here for you. I want to help you through this hard time and, with some hard work, hopefully we can heal you so you can move on and live your life happy.”

  What a bunch of shit. I am already not looking forward to this. What does this hag know about us? Other than what she saw on the news, that’s all she has. But I shove my pessimism to the side and focus on Aubrey.

  “Do you feel comfortable with telling me what happened?”

  I sit there and listen for the hundredth time while Aubrey goes through the motions and details of that week. When she gets to the part where they rape her, her emotions finally punch through. It doesn’t matter how many times she tells the story, that part gets both of us going, though with different feelings. Aubrey gets upset and cries, and I get pissed and want to hit something or someone.

  Liz asks how we are handling it now and we tell her of the nightmares and how we avoid the aisle in the supermarket that has boxed macaroni and cheese. Aubrey confesses to making herself vomit when she thinks about what happened. I didn’t know she did that.

  The hour moves quickly and when Liz feels she understands us well enough, she gives us our first piece of advice. “I want you to look at yourself in the mirror and tell yourself that you are not in danger anymore. They can’t hurt you anymore. Try it tonight before you go to bed. Repeat it a couple times and try to believe it. Okay? Go ahead and do this for the next few days and when we meet up next week I want you to tell me how you felt after you said it.”

  She hugs Aubrey and whispers something in her ear, then turns and lifts on her toes to give me a small hug. “Thank you for stopping in and seeing me. I know it is difficult to talk about but there is no judgment here. You can say anything you want or feel you need to say. See you next week.”

  We walk down the long hallways and stop at the receptionist’s desk to set up another appointment. We don’t say anything until we reach my car.

  “So, what do you think?” I ask her.

  “It’s just the first day; it’s going to take time, right? Ask me again in a month,” she says with a smirk. “But she seems nice and I think she can help. I hope she can help.”

  Aubrey’s phone chimes, alerting her of a text message. She pulls her phone out of her purse and glances at the screen, grunts, and shoves it back into the pocket with vigor. She huffs in frustration and the forced air out of her mouth blows her bangs out of her face.

  “MJ again?” I ask, though I already know. MJ has been trying to talk to Aubrey since we made it back to campus. I’m not sure why Aubrey won’t talk to her. I thought that was what she wanted, why she went on that trip.

  “How’d you guess?” she asks sarcastically.

  I flip on my blinker and make the turn out of the parking lot and onto the street. Traffic is nonexistent at the moment, which is rare considering the time of day. We make it back to her apartment in record time.

  Her place is the main floor of a house that is divided into her apartment and the basement. Two gay guys live below in the basement and they are never home. They go to school during the day and work at night, coming home in the wee hours of the morning.

  Her living room is massive and so is her bedroom, but everything else is fairly small. It is an older home and
the appliances are out-dated but they were top of the line back in the day. Her master bath has an antique claw-foot bathtub, which she told me was the reason she rented this place. There is another bedroom but she’s never had a roommate. She uses it as a “guest” room and office, which means there is a bed and dresser in one corner and all her old schoolwork piled on a desk in the other corner.

  The first thing Aubrey does when we step inside is pluck her shoes off and kick them into the corner. Then she falls onto the couch, her purse thrown on the floor beside her. One leg is propped on the armrest while the other is dangling over the side of the couch. I can see her underwear under her skirt and I fight the urge to jump her at that moment.

  Other than PG stuff like kissing and holding hands, we haven’t done anything since Mexico. I’m afraid to do something that will freak her out, and I think she’s afraid she will have a meltdown and run me off.

  I lift her legs up and sit down, reposition her legs over my lap, and lightly trail my fingers over her skin. Her eyes close immediately she sighs. “What do you want to do?” I ask.

  “This,” she mutters, then lifts her head to look at me. “What do you want to do?”

  I shrug and look away. “Coach wants me to start working out again. Practice starts on Monday and I’ve gotten a little out of shape. Next week is going to kill me. I think I am going to hit the gym. If you don’t want to go with me, I’ll call Josh. He’s probably already there, actually,” I say with a laugh.

  “Call Josh, I feel bad that you haven’t hung out with him in a while. Anyway, I have laundry to do.” She stands and disappears into the hallway behind me and comes back out with a laundry basket filled with dark clothes. She walks through the living room, dining room and kitchen to get to the laundry room. I can hear the water start to gush out into the washer and soon the boom of the lid shutting, followed by Aubrey’s feet shuffling across the wood floor. She is yawning and stretching her arms over her head when she enters the room. I see a strip of her stomach and her boobs are pressed against her shirt.

  She stops in her tracks when she sees me still on the couch. “What did Josh say?”

  “I haven’t called him yet. I want to ask you something first.”

  She drags her feet and drops to sit beside me. “Okie dokie.” She props her foot under her other knee and I see her underwear again.

  “Promise you won’t get mad or offended or anything?”

  “Nope. Can’t promise that. What’s up?”

  I look down at my hands then up at her, making eye contact. “Do you… want me to touch you? I want to so bad but I’m worried you need more time. I just don’t want you to think I’m not attracted to you or anything. I’ll wait until you’re ready,” I ramble nervously.

  “Kellan, I want you to. I really do. But I can’t get them out of my head and I don’t want them to ruin anything. You know?” She apprehensively shrugs. “Maybe we can, I don’t know, ease into it? If it gets too much, I’ll let you know.”

  “Do you want to start now? Because you’ve been showing me your underwear since we got back and it’s killing me,” I half joke. She throws her head back and laughs heartily and my heart jumps at the sound. I haven’t heard her laugh genuinely in a long time. I didn’t realize how much I missed it.

  “So my plan worked?”

  “What! You’re doing that on purpose?” I point to her skirt and feign annoyance. She laughs some more and it propels me to grab her and swing her over so she is lying over my lap. Her giggles have stopped but her eyes are still smiling and little wrinkles are still on the creases of her eyes.

  I bend down and kiss her, softly at first. I don’t plan on pushing her today… that is unless she wants me to.

  17

  Aubrey

  Kissing Kellan makes me feel weightless. Like I’m hovering over everything that brings me down to reality. Like the oxygen is being sucked from my lungs but I don’t need it to stay alive, just him. Like if I open my eyes I will wake up and everything perfect about that moment will melt away into the shit that my life has become.

  I focus on his lips on mine, his tongue caressing mine, and his hand on my hip. This is as far as we have gone since we escaped. Both of us are waiting for the other to cross that line because we are too chickenshit to be the one to do it first.

  I feel his fingertips trail down my hip and press into the back of my thigh and up again, bringing my skirt with him. He repositions so his weight is to the side and when his hand comes around to the band of my underwear and slips inside I force the images of Carlos and Andres doing the same out of my head. I can’t let them spoil the time I have with Kellan.

  I compel my mind to focus on that night at the club with Kellan. This time is no different, other than the complete lack of people around us. Except something happened between that night and today. Something that is drowning me and keeping me under. Something that nobody should ever go through, but unfortunately happens more than I know.

  “Are you okay?” Kellan breathes. His eyes are dilated and he is trying hard to contain his breathing. His fingers have stopped and are frozen in place. I want him to keep going but I feel the tears running down my temples and soaking into my hair. I can’t ask him to continue because my mind and heart just isn’t in it right now.

  I shake my head because I am not okay. I am fucked up and don’t know when I will be fixed. Or if I can even be fixed.

  Kellan lowers his head into the crook of my neck. I feel his breath on my skin and it causes goose bumps to encompass my body. “I’m sorry. I wish I wasn’t so fucked up,” I whisper.

  He shoots his head up and looks me in the eye. “There’s nothing wrong with you. We will work it out together, okay?”

  “But you’d be so much happier if you were with someone-“

  “Hey!” He cuts me off. He kisses me lightly and says against my lips, “I’m not going anywhere. You’re stuck with me. We’ve been through too much together to just give up.” He kisses me once more.

  I want to ask him what we are to each other but fear the answer. I’m not really sure what I want the answer to be. I always refer to him as ‘my friend’ and I’m sure he does the same, but that word is such an understatement. We are so much more than that. Even though we’ve spent every day together since we left our parents’ houses a few weeks ago, we still haven’t been on a date. I guess we’ve gone to restaurants together but it never felt like a date. Granted the last time I had been on one I was a whole year younger, but I should still know the difference between a date and a friendly dinner.

  So we aren’t dating, but we’re not friends either. I hate the term ‘lovers’ and, technically, we aren’t that either. We are stuck in this limbo and I think the only way out is to talk about it. Now I completely understand the ‘it’s complicated’ relationship status on Facebook.

  I’m supposed to be “letting him go” but I just want to be with him for a little bit longer. Once I can breathe clearly and sleep alone for one night, I’ll do it. I’ll set him free.

  He kisses the tip of my nose and hops off the couch to call Josh. I cover my face with my arm and grumble nonsense until I hear him come back into the living room. I lean up on my elbows as he has the phone in his hand at his side and he looks at me like he’s afraid to tell me something.

  “What?” I blurt out.

  He visibly gulps and sighs nervously. “I guess somebody interviewed Cara.”

  That is all he needs to say. Nothing good could come out of this story. Cara hates me and has been doing anything and everything to prove that to me since high school. But even though I don’t want to hear about it, I probably need to know and his demeanor just substantiates this.

  “And?”

  “She, um… she said that you left that day irrational and you told her you wanted to get back at me for what I did to you.” His face is pale and he prepares for how I’m going to react.

  “Well, she’s right about one thing. I was irrational. I was pissed and hu
rt and wasn’t thinking clearly at all. But I didn’t tell her anything,” I am a little upset but Kellan isn’t telling me something because he wouldn’t be acting this way over just that. “There’s something else, isn’t there?”

  “Yeah.”

  I sit up and place my hands on my knees, breathing deeply. In and out. In and out. I nod, giving him the okay to tell me.

  “She also said that you willingly went into their van.”

  “What?!” I shriek. I jump up to my feet and kick my purse across the room. The contents scatter across the floor and my lipgloss rolls back toward me only to stop when it hits the rug. “She wasn’t there! Nobody will believe her.”

  “She’s lying and everybody knows it. She just wants the spotlight on her.”

  “She can fucking have it, I never wanted it,” I retort. I’m snapping at him when he didn’t do anything but Cara isn’t here so he is my punching bag at the moment. He knows this so he lets me vent. “God, I don’t know what she wants from me! I didn’t do anything and she acts like I ruined her life or something.”

  “She’s just a vindictive person, that’s all. It’s nothing you did.” We stand there for what feels like ten minutes while I calm down. “Do you want me to stay?” Kellan asks finally.

  “No. You go. I’ll be fine,” I say, not looking up from the floor. He comes to me and wraps his arms around me. He kisses my temple and he leaves before I can snap out of it.

  Liz smiles at us from across her office. I smile back, though I don’t feel like it. I tried what she said, and I haven’t felt any different. I still wake up frantic every night and I still jump at every little thing. When I tell her this, she just smiles at me and says “these things take time.” I just wish therapists would start off with their ace, their winning hand, instead of prolonging the process and charging more money.