by Leanne Davis
I reach back and find her hand, squeezing it. “I’m not used to talking about it.” That is one hundred percent true. I’ve never discussed my life with anyone. I just try to live each day. Go to work. Go to school. Make a meal. Buy some food. Pay for rent. Gas up the car. I don’t sit around thinking about my father, or reminiscing over my mother. I get just as freaked out by simply talking as I do thinking about the motives behind why I’m still with her.
“You don’t have to. I’m sorry I pressed.”
She didn’t press, but I don’t correct her. I glance back. She is sitting up, naked and unaware, but not shy. The predawn light seeps into the room and highlights her body. My breath catches and I can’t help staring at her. She glances down when she realizes what I’m so hung up on.
“White, huh?”
I restrain my smile. “Yes, your skin is freakishly white. Don’t you ever go out in the sun?”
“I burn or I’m white, there’s no in-between or tan for me.”
I reach out and touch the skin of her stomach. “You’re lovely.”
“For a snowflake?” she tilts her head, and her smile is teasing.
I nod. “For a snowflake.”
She tugs my arm back. “Come back to bed. Sleep some more. It’s way too early still.”
I do as she commands, curling into her. It’s amazing how easily she envelops me and holds me and wants to always touch me. I’ve never done that, to be honest. Into the shadows I say, “I’ve never done this before.”
“What?”
“I don’t know, hold a girl.”
“How did you have sex before?”
“The first time was in a car. Actually, the first few times. With one girl, we used her bed but I had to sneak in and out of her window, so no staying overnight. Another I—”
“So apparently, you’ve never been in a relationship before?”
“No. Apparently, that’s all you’ve been in. How do we figure this out?”
“Ramiro?”
“What?”
“Quit fretting. Go to sleep.” Her gentle chiding makes me smile.
I am fretting and stunned that she recognizes it. I’m worried because this is so emotional and fraught with feeling. Real. Intimate. Connected. So much more connected than I have ever experienced before. It flummoxes me. I mean, we didn’t even touch each other until yesterday and now, here we are. There was not enough time for me to grow used to the reality of this moment. I lie beside her, still stressing, but eventually, her soft, steady breathing calms me as I drift off.
I wake up to daylight flooding the room. The clock reads past eight am. I jerk upright. The bed’s empty, and so is the room. Her bag isn’t here either. I jump up and swipe the drape aside before releasing a sigh. The car is still there. I back up and drop onto the bed. Why the panic? So what if she were gone? I’m so freaked out by this crazy sexual connection we have. But the worst part is I wish it were just a sexual connection.
I shower and dress, waiting on the bed. The door bursts open and Emily comes in with coffee cups and a bakery box, which she sets down on the small table. She’s wearing running shoes and an outfit that most likely costs more than my entire wardrobe. Running clothes in black with a hot pink tank top. Sweat glistens off her skin as her hair swings in a ponytail.
“You were running,” I say, stating the obvious.
“I was running.” She smiles as she comes nearer to me and straddles me where I sit on the bed. Surprised at her move, I grip her waist. “Did you worry about me?”
“I even checked on your car to make sure you didn’t ditch me here.”
Her forehead wrinkles. “Why would I do that?”
“Changed your mind over last night?”
She kisses me. Her body is slick. But I don’t hesitate in pushing her tight sports bra aside. Her head dips back. “I should shower first…”
“You should not do that right now,” I mumble, placing her nipple in my mouth. I press her bottom harder towards my lap. She giggles and the sound of it lightens my heart. “Coffee is going to get cold.”
“You don’t drink coffee,” I say, releasing her. I tuck her breast modestly back where it belongs. She slides her leg down.
“How did you know that?”
“I don’t know. You told me at some point. But I do, and I’m starving.”
I grab the coffee and sugary pastry. Biting into it, she does the same. “So you take a run to buy bakery goods? That seems self-defeating.”
“I run almost every morning. I used to spend most of my time playing sports, remember? I’ll have to adjust my diet or I’ll gain a lot and fast,” she says while taking another huge bite of a gooey, cream-filled maple bar. It makes me laugh. I lean forward and lick some of the filling off her lower lip. She catches my mouth and kisses me back. I recoil, annoyed with myself. I’ve never engaged in silly behavior like that. Totally cloying. If I saw anyone else doing what I’m doing, I’d think it was sappy. Yet, here I am.
She finishes and wipes her hand, but not before sucking on all of her fingers. “I have to go shower now. Should we take off after that?”
No! I want to strip her down and spend the entire day here. Now that the caffeine and sugar are pumping through my blood, I brighten up. But I wait patiently. She comes out dressed and groomed, so I resist the urge to touch her.
We leave the No-Tell Motel, and set out for the house of the woman who might just be my half-sister.
NO! Oh, hell no! Why would that cross through my mind? I press my hand to my temple. I don’t give it any voice, not for real. But it whispers from somewhere. No. I can’t… I can’t even go there.
For my entire life, my father browbeat me. He was a living example of what not to be. Nice? Never once. There isn’t much good to say about him. But I always believed, deep down in my gut, that he was the hapless victim of Will Hendricks’s purposeful arson. However, I never, not even once, thought about why my father was in that building when it got torched. As I got older, I began to read about it. I heard about the tragic circumstances surrounding Jessie, but I never thought my father was involved. That would make him… a monster. A complete pervert, fiend, monster, degenerate. My head starts to pound. It’s my turn to drive today. I grow quiet as my head aches even more. I can’t be the son of a sexual predator. That would mean… maybe I am. No. I’m sure of that. My mother didn’t give birth to a child from a rapist. He can’t be guilty of that. He’s definitely to blame for my mother’s lost dreams and his own bitterness by not rising above his tragic circumstances, but rape?
No.
I have to hold tightly onto that reality because I don’t know what to do if it turns out not to be true.
Chapter Twelve
~Emily~
Ramiro grows quieter, deathly silent as we approach my sister’s house. It alarms me. Does he regret last night? Or coming here with me? Too much, too fast? Does he think I’m going to get clingy or try to turn it into something serious, more than he wants, based only on my history with Harrison? And of course, because he met me when I was wearing a wedding dress.
Every part of me tingles from being with him. But I don’t know what to do. I’m stumped with how he’s acting. I already asked the usual. Is he tired? Hungry? Should we stop? Should I drive? He mumbles terse responses to all. He’s not tired, hungry, or ready to stop or have me drive. Okay. I let it go and the silence reigns again. We pull into Natalie’s house. She lives in a suburban tract well out of San Francisco. I preferred visiting her when she and Sam still lived in the city. It was exciting for me because it was so different from the small, rural family farm where I was raised. But they moved out here after they adopted the two boys. Their house is a two-story that they remodeled. It sits on a spacious lot with a big, fenced grassy backyard and patio. The inside is very homey and welcoming, too. We receive a big greeting and a warm exchange of hugs from Natalie and Sam and the boys as we enter. They remember Ramiro, of course, and waste no time in welcoming him. I have no idea wh
at they might be thinking, but thankfully, they don’t give off any weird signals. We sit down to eat dinner and catch up. After the boys go to bed, I tell them about Harrison and why Mom wanted me to stay with them.
Natalie leans back. A police officer, her eyes glint with suspicion. “You should always listen to your mom on that subject. She’s correct. Not all men start hitting women first. For many it’s a progression. They have a starting point. A first step. It all begins somewhere, and what kind of attitude do you think they have, Emily? This kind.”
“I can’t imagine…” I reply.
Quietly, Ramiro interjects, “And what about the night before we left? When he had you immobilized and he was ready to fight me?”
Natalie’s gaze sharpens on me and alternates between us. I nod. Ramiro remains oddly quiet all evening, rarely interjecting or participating in the conversation. He only answers questions politely with the least amount of detail.
“What do you think? Is Jessie overreacting?” Sam asks.
“Kind of,” I answer.
“No, she’s not,” Natalie says gently. “I see enough of this stuff to know. It’s everywhere, Emily. Depressing, but it’s so prevalent.”
Sam nods. “You should listen to all those around you.”
Sam eventually goes to bed. And Ramiro, too. He’s sleeping on the fold-out couch in the downstairs den and I am sleeping in the guest bedroom. Natalie and I keep talking well into the night. After Ramiro disappears, Natalie nods towards the den. “So, is he why you ran?”
“No. Honestly. It’s only been since then that I’ve gotten to know him.”
She grins. “And sleep with him.”
“How can you tell?”
“Vibes, Em. Hot sparks are radiating off you two. Hate to even get between the looks he gives you.”
I flush. “It’s all very new. He’s still kind of a mystery. He’s open and easy to talk to on one hand. He makes jokes and I always laugh. Until now, he’s been even-tempered and so easy to be around. But he keeps lapsing into these strange, long silences. I can’t get him out of it. I don’t know if he regrets what happened with us. Or if it’s too much, too fast. Considering he knows how recently I was ready to get married—”
“And what did you learn from that?”
I smile at her motherly tone. “I don’t have to be married at twenty-two years old, and should never consider marriage just because it seems like the right time.” I answer, rolling my eyes.
“Exactly.”
“Might I point out that you got married when you were not much older than me?”
“Yes. And look where that went. At least, until we both grew the hell up and could handle being married.” She shakes her head. “It’s working out, but I wouldn’t recommend it.” She’s referring to the very first time I met her. I was only fourteen at the time, and had no idea she was running away from her husband, Sam. After catching him having sex with another woman, she ran off and eventually decided to meet her biological mom, and mine. It wasn’t until years later that I understood her timing and why she showed up there. I loved Sam the first time I met him. I was mad at first when I heard about the cheating. He burst my perfect bubble of a crush I had on him, but I have since gotten over it.
“Don’t worry, there is nothing like that. We’re new. So very new it could go either way or nowhere. I hope in the end, however, that we remain friends.”
“Little sis, men like that, to whom you are so attracted, can’t become your friend.”
I frown and hunch forward. “Maybe that’s what was so wrong with Harrison. We were such good friends.”
“Yes. I think it could be true. I think you did the right thing. Even if it was just a little late. Jessie says you’ve been working for Will. Doing physical labor.” She puts her fist up and nods for me to fist bump her. “That’s my girl. Show those men how to do their job, huh?”
I laugh. She’s nothing if not competitive. I know she suffered from sexism on the job as a cop. She’s strong in so many ways that go beyond my capability. I take her remark as a compliment. “It’s hard work. Harder than college ever was for me. But I’m paying back what I owe for the wedding.”
“Nothing wrong with doing that as a living either, Emily.”
I tilt my head at her. “You think I wasted four years on my major, don’t you?” I’ve never outright asked her, but I’ve often wondered. She hinted at it before. Now, she shakes her head.
“No. Of course not. I’m just a much more tangible person, you know? I need to train for a job. If I went back to school, it would have to be technical training for a specific job. Yours is ambiguous. That part is hard for me. You don’t know what your career will look like after you graduate. I trained to be a police officer, and that’s what I became. Or you could decide to become a teacher or a lawyer, I get that. It’s just that your major leaves you wide open to so many different jobs, but that’s my problem, Em, not yours. Sam was a business major and look at all the opportunities he’s had and the money he makes. That’s just how my brain works.”
“I don’t know what to do with myself,” I say, staring down. “I mean, if I moved away to a city, maybe I’d stand a chance. I could start working for a newspaper or magazine or TV or something. But where we live in Ellensburg, what the hell can I do? Report for the local newspaper? Writing about traffic accidents, the weather, how it affects local cattle drives or speakers coming to CWU? That’s about all the stuff going on there.”
“That’s important stuff, too. Community stuff.”
“I want to write Mom’s story. She said no.”
“Let’s say she said yes and you did, what do you think you could do with it? If you published it or had it syndicated, maybe even milked it into a longer article, what then, Emily? That doesn’t make a career. And now, you can move to a larger city. Anywhere you want.”
I stare at my linked fingers. “I can… but I don’t. I’m not sure I want to. I’m… it’s because of Mom and Dad and Melissa and Christina. I don’t want to leave them.” I shake my head. Embarrassed and ashamed, I just can’t seem to muster the gumption to go out and pursue what I claimed I always wanted in life.
“You don’t have to unless you want to. If you want to stay there, fine, then stay.”
“But then why didn’t I just marry Harrison? I was feeling claustrophobic imagining my life in Ellensburg forever more and now I can’t even leave? Even though there’s nothing tying me there or anchoring me?”
“Not everyone has to leave behind their entire world to prove they are following their dreams. Maybe your dreams are a little more localized than you first estimated. Maybe the problem was the person you were marrying and not the place you intended to live. And your family has influenced your life in a huge way, too. Not a bad thing. You don’t have to leave them just because you can.”
“I always thought I would though. I thought I’d move to a city, downtown somewhere and be—”
“What? Like the successful reporters you see on TV?”
“Yes.”
Her smile is amused. “It’s whatever you make it. I was raised in downtown San Francisco and I never spent a day doing anything like what you picture. Just think about all your options, not one dream you had when you were seventeen.”
Puzzled, I ask, “Would you talk to me about Mom?”
“I can try. But I can’t answer for her.”
“She has those letters. You read some.”
“I read some and stopped. You can’t read them, Emily. I don’t care if you think you are neutral and professional. You can’t. It’s too much. I read barely a page before I broke down. And don’t forget, I’ve seen all kinds of stuff like that before in my job.”
“It’s important though. What happened to her. Why won’t she share it? What if by exposing it, she stops it or helps another woman? Providing more awareness?”
“Because I think all she could ever do is survive it. I don’t think she ever considered it her responsibility to become a s
pokesperson against it. Lindsey is much more likely to do that for domestic abuse. But even she had to step back. She needed more than that in her life. She thought her anger would sustain her indefinitely, but after she found and adopted Max, she had to let it go too.”
“But if no one speaks out, and if the conversation isn’t being discussed and shared by the victims, then who can do it?”
“I deal with an awful lot of victims, Em, and most of them refuse to talk about it. You can’t judge them though because you’ve never been in their shoes. What if someone wanted to take pictures and publicize your ordeal as a runaway bride? You were humiliated, sure, but not physically or emotionally hurt. Imagine being physically hurt, brutalized, humiliated, and standing the risk of not being believed. Maybe if you can understand that, you can start to see why Jessie is so unwilling to do what you ask of her.”
“Is it hard for you?”
“You mean learning that someone with the same blood as me participated in a gang-rape? Yes. It messed with my head a lot at first. Your mom changed that, however, and she was the main reason why it didn’t continue to haunt me.”
“What if I changed her name?”
“Emily, why don’t you give it up for now? Concentrate on the here and now and do what you need to do.”
I don’t know. I don’t know why I care so much about this. I mean, all three of us sisters hated knowing about Mom’s suffering. But why am I so obsessed that I can’t imagine letting it go? I squeeze her hand with a wan smile. I almost tell her about the stupid, lame YouTube channel I set up and the few videos I posted about my experiences with Harrison’s increasing anger. But I don’t. I keep it to myself. It’s not going to do anyone any good. Nothing is going to come of it. It’s like my secret diary to help me purge and process all my feelings. Even though it sits on a public domain. No one is going to read it. “You’re right. I just get carried away sometimes.”
