Sweet Seduction

by Anthology

  “Peters, Ohio?” I asked, remembering the news report.

  “How did you know?”

  “It was on the radio earlier, when you weren’t talking to me.”

  “I was talking to you!” Her face went tight with anger. “You were the one not talking to me!”

  “Whatever.”

  “No, Tyler, not ‘whatever’. Whatever means you don’t want to acknowledge I’m right.”

  “No, Maggie, ‘whatever’ means I don’t want to keep talking about this.”

  “You avoid talking about things when you get uncomfortable.”

  “Who doesn’t?”

  “Some people process their discomfort. Sit with it. Learn to coexist with it.”

  “You’ve been to a lot of therapy.”

  She was breathing hard, her face gone slack with surprise. With great intent, she caught my eyes and said, “I didn’t have a choice.”

  “Everyone has a choice.”

  “It was therapy or death.”

  “Plenty of people go through the kind of shit you’ve been through and don’t get therapy.”

  “And plenty don’t, and wind up dead from drugs, cutting, whatever.”

  “Whatever. There’s that word again.”

  “Your word, not mine.”

  How did we go from joking to angry so fast?

  And then—the telltale shift. We sprinted back to our respective bathrooms again.

  It was time to relieve ourselves of all this toxic crap inside.

  Chapter Seven

  Maggie

  We were at an impasse. It seemed impossible to have an actual conversation with this man. Ever. Even in the midst of shitting our brains out because we ate sugar free gummy bears that used a kind of sugar substitute developed by North Korea and used as a biological weapon against people addicted to online shopping.

  And sweepstakes.

  I finished in the bathroom and wondered how my body could hold so much, retrieved the half-eaten bag of gummy bears and tossed them in the trash, then returned to the car, pointedly walking to the passenger’s side. Tyler could take the next shift, and I would suffer in gut-cramp silence, waiting for this nightmare to end.

  He came back and, wordlessly, opened the driver’s side door, sat down, then came to a deeply-disturbing halt.

  “What?” I asked as he gaped at the gearshift.

  “This is a stick.”

  “Aren’t you Captain Obvious?” An alarm bell got louder in me. “Don’t tell me,” I groaned.

  He winced, his fingers wrapping around the steering wheel, shoulder and neck muscles rising like muffins in an oven.

  “I can’t drive stick.”

  “Fuck!” I shouted. “Seriously? You seriously can’t drive stick? You expect me to drive twenty-nine hours the entire way while you just ride along in luxury and call me Princess and make fun of me and—”

  “WOULD YOU JUST SHUT THE FUCK UP FOR A MINUTE!” he roared, turning to me in a kind of rageful agony that was as masterful as it was horrifying. The veins in his neck bulged, his hand whacked the dashboard, his thighs rose up off the seat as he dug his heels into the car’s floor and he went apoplectic.

  A wall of pain came right at me, as if he’d unleashed a weapon made of nothing but pure emotion. The air crackled with electricity and made my skin flare, my hair stand on end, and my body became something otherworldly. Something detonated in my core and the nanoseconds of pause between his action and my reaction collapsed into nothing as I gave it all right back.

  You do not get to dump your rage on me.

  “DON’T YOU DARE SCREAM AT ME!” I roared back, the impulse to meet him toe-to-toe kicking in before my own innate filter could catch me and make me not do it. My limbs throbbed with the race of blood to the fight, my mind completely emptied of any thought.

  I was pure instinct.

  A second wave of inner direction hit me and I scrambled out of the car, my legs pumping and taking me past the dog walking section into a thicket of woods. I stayed along the edge, blind with confusion and anger, nothing more than cortisol and adrenaline and a giant burning ball of very, very pissed off Maggie.

  The feeling was so unfamiliar.

  It felt like being reborn.

  Tyler

  See what happens when I say words? My throat thrummed and my body turned inside out, like I was nothing but road rash.

  Maggie fled, her body rushing away from me like the wind pushed her. Like it was a mother protecting its child.

  Or like I was a danger, and Maggie was carrying a newborn baby away from me to safety.

  I stared dumbly at that fucking gear shift, wondering how I hadn’t noticed it before. Stupid manual transmission. Fucking stick shift. God damned world that made things I couldn’t do or couldn’t get and fuck the world for being this way.

  Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.

  Salty spit formed where my throat pounded.

  If I didn’t know any better, I’d think it was tears.

  Except I didn’t cry.

  Here’s the thing: I was one hundred percent dependent on that woman who just went like a rainbow running a marathon into the woods, fleeing me.

  I had no control here. I had three hundred and fifty bucks and a borrowed acoustic guitar. A shirt. A pair of jeans. Two socks and two shoes. That is it. That’s all I was.

  That’s who I was.

  Tyler the Fuckup.

  And now I was sitting in a car I couldn’t drive wondering how to ask the impossible from a chick who I’d just opened up and lit into like I’d never done before.

  I hadn’t screamed at someone like that since the day I told my dad his friend did what he did to me and Dad said it was my fault.

  So why the fuck would I scream at Maggie? The spunky chick with Day-Glo blue eyes and a smile that made me feel like it was okay to be myself. Whatever that meant.

  Thank God she screamed back. She should have. The salty taste in my throat backed up and fuck—now it was in my eye. I got out of the car and took as many breaths as it took to calm down. To think. To stop this fucking assault of feelings.

  Twenty minutes later it didn’t go away. Someone put a metal band around my chest, around my head, and they were tightening the screws.

  She came around the corner, a flash of color, and disappeared into the bathroom. My chest tightened at the sight of her body, tall and curvy, tense and focused. I’d made her so angry she’d screamed back and now I wished I’d never appeared on her porch this morning. Never tried to make any of this work. Never gotten to the library and emailed Darla and pieced together this insane series of events that left me with a pain in my chest, a salty taste in my throat and a feeling like I’d just fucked up the one chance I had at having a friend. More than a friend. Someone real.

  I had nothing to offer. Not one damn thing. She had more money than me. The car. A family who supported her. There wasn’t a single thing I could give her. Why was she here? Why was she helping me? I was the jerk who turned her down the one time she did ask for something from me.

  The one time I had something to offer.

  I owed her everything. She was the only connection I had between total failure and a thin shot at making it. Everything I was—relied on her.

  I really hated her for that.

  And I really, really didn’t want to hate her.

  The whole shitting our brains out thing didn’t help, either.

  Maggie

  I stayed at the edge of the woods until the gummy bears made me go back. They excavated my upper intestines and gurgled so badly it was like a volcano was erupting inside me.

  A shit volcano.

  An apt metaphor for this road trip.

  As I scurried to the bathroom and took care of business, I realized that this was truly doomed and I needed, somehow, to get out of this mess. Could I drop Tyler off at a truck stop with a fist full of money and my cell phone? He might get to L.A. faster that way. As I thought more about it and tried to fight the growin
g sense of hysteria that bloomed in me like a Venus Flytrap plant, the idea sickened me and made me feel better.

  It was, if nothing else, an alternative.

  Having an option meant that if I didn’t choose it, at least I’d made a choice. I had some control. I wasn’t unmoored and at the mercy of forces I couldn’t see, like a pawn in a giant game of magical chess between the gods.

  The illusion of control is better than the lack of an illusion. It’s something, and when you feel like everything’s a threat and you’re not safe, then pretending becomes your only anchor.

  Except.

  Except, right now, it wasn’t Tyler who was making me feel unsafe.

  It was me.

  I’ve stood up for myself before. Taken self-defense lessons and finished more workshops on how to be assertive than anyone can teach. I’d dog-eared Brene Brown’s books on overcoming shame and I’d worked my way through The Secret and every self-help book Oprah has ever recommended. That’s a lot.

  My body started to shake, and not from the fact that my colon was tapping out a funk beat that rivaled any Bruno Mars song.

  I was shaking because I had to face my own reality.

  Which meant I had to go out there and face Tyler.

  As I walked to the car, head head held high, I saw him sitting on a park bench, hands splayed on his knees, staring toward the woods.

  I halted, uncertain what to do next.

  He looked up and immediately said, “I’m really sorry I screamed at you like that.”

  All the racing lectures, the angry retorts, the ways I was going to get him back died in my throat. I hadn’t been sure I was going to use any of them, but if I had—they were gone now.

  His eyes were so beseeching. Forgive me, they seemed to say. I’m sorry.

  But the words—oh, the words meant something, especially coming from him.

  “Thank you.” I stood, transfixed, just staring into his soulful eyes.

  He ran a hand through his short hair, mussing it in frustration. “I don’t yell at people like that. I think I’ve only ever done it to my little brother, Johnny, and once to my dad. I meant it, Maggie. I just...shit.” He frowned, clearly struggling to convey an idea to me.

  I sat next to him, on the other side of a bench that easily seated four adults. I turned and looked at him. “I get it. It doesn’t make it okay, but I get it.”

  “No. Not okay. I don’t make any excuses.” He looked down at his hands, his face a mask now.

  “That doesn’t mean you don’t have reasons.”

  His head popped up and he gave me a bemused look. “People who give you all their reasons for treating you like shit are just giving excuses. Same thing.”

  “It’s not the same thing, Tyler. Not if the apology is heartfelt.”

  He made a hmph sound. “The apology is real. Not sure I agree with you about excuses versus reasons.”

  “We don’t have to agree on everything.”

  “Like that would ever happen.”

  I laughed lightly and he gave me a loopy, tentative grin. When he smiled, he became a different person. I could see how some kind of burden etched itself in his body, his skin, in the lines of his face and the planes of muscle across his chest and shoulders. The smile took a burden off him for seconds and set him free.

  And then he went back to being Frown.

  “I just hate,” he said, taking in a shaky breath that made me lean closer, “being in this position.”

  “What position?”

  He looked up at me and his eyes shone with so much emotion I felt blinded. “Relying on you. Your kindness. I really don’t know why you’re doing this, Maggie. But I’m glad you are. I need the help. I got a shit turn of luck.”

  “Um,” I said, clearing my throat.

  Panic flashed across his features. “What?”

  “Did you really need to use the word ‘shit’? I think we’ve had enough of it for the day.”

  He laughed, relieved. I wonder what he was afraid I was about to say?

  “Yeah. Not the best word.” His gut rumbled and he closed his eyes.

  “This too shall pass.”

  He groaned. “That was bad.”

  “I know.”

  He blinked, hard, and looked up at the sky. Dusk was just starting to fall and I wasn’t going to make it twenty-nine hours straight. I had a credit card and could pay for a hotel. We couldn’t drive through the night. And Tyler couldn’t drive a stick shift at all.

  And yet I was wired. It was like someone had given me ten cups of coffee in one sip.

  “Maggie, you asked what happened to me. How this happened.” He spread his arms out.

  “I know how this happened. Darla and her damn gummy bears.”

  He was serious and didn’t laugh. A prickly feeling began in my forehead. While I was used to Tyler and his serious face, I got the sense that this was going into new territory.

  “You...have been so nice to me. For no reason.”

  “Tyler, I’m helping you. It’s what people do when they’re friends.”

  “We’re friends?”

  “We’d better be. Once you start openly talking about your bowel habits with someone you’re pretty much married.”

  He smiled. It lit up the world, a dark and smoky smile this time, one that made me bite my lower lip and laugh because you really shouldn’t look sexy and intriguing when talking about your colon.

  “What’s so funny?” he asked.

  “Us.”

  “I am never, ever eating another gummy bear again.”

  “I’m never eating anything Darla hands me again,” I replied.

  He nodded. “Fair enough. I’ll give gummy bears another chance, but give me the real sugar next time.”

  Our stomachs made mild earthquake sounds. Tyler twitched and grimaced.

  “This is the weirdest way I’ve ever bonded with someone,” I joked.

  “We’re bonding?”

  I shrugged. What was it about him that made me so acutely aware of every hair on my body, every breeze that blew by, every noise near and far? The rush of cars on the highway and the sweet song of a bird in the background we both equally important. Relevant. There.

  “I think,” he said slowly, “you bond when you trust someone.” He just narrowed his eyes and let that hang there.

  “You don’t trust me?”

  “I don’t trust anyone, Maggie,” he said with a rueful smile. It didn’t light up his face. That smile made me want to cry for whatever it was that happened in his life to make it appear.

  “Then you’re not really alive, Tyler.”

  “Pithy.”

  “You were the one quoting Thoreau from coffee mugs earlier today.”

  He tilted his head as if to concede. “Not one to talk, then,” he said sadly.

  “Tell me what happened to you this morning,” I asked. Pleaded, really. “Who stole from you? Why did they take everything?”

  His long inhale held entire worlds in it. As he blew out, he shook his head. “That was just this morning, wasn’t it?” The pale grey sky met the fading sun, leaving a streak of pink in the sky. We were still, even after after five hours on the road, not even in Junction City, Kansas. We had a long stretch of absolutely nothing ahead of us, and I was the driver.

  “Quit changing the subject.”

  “Tell me the real reason why you wanted me to fuck you two months ago.”

  A knife sliced through my heart.

  I couldn’t.

  “I’ll tell you, then, Maggie. I’ll tell you.”

  “You know me better than I know myself?”

  “No. It’s just always easier to see someone’s fear than it is to see your own.”

  “So what’s my fear?”

  “That there’s some parallel Maggie out there who was supposed to be you.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense.” And yet my body began to shake inside. He couldn’t see that. What he said felt true, though. In my marrow.

&nbs
p; “Sure it does. There’s this part of you that believes your better self got taken from you that night. Worse than anything else those guys did. They took your undamaged self, and—”

  “I’m not damaged goods!” I shrieked, the words high and loud, out before I could even think.

  “I never said you were.”

  “You just did!”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “Quit gaslighting me, Tyler.”

  “I haven’t passed gas in several—”

  “Gaslighting! Quit trying to tell me I’m not experiencing what I am experiencing!”

  “What are you talking about?” He seemed completely perplexed. My fight-or-flight response was kicking in and I worked to tamp down my massive flashpoint within.

  “You called me damaged. You did. Then you tried to claim you didn’t. Gaslighting is when you—”

  “Maggie.” He reached out and grabbed my hand. His touch was like a tight sigh in my bones. “I didn’t say you were damaged. I said those guys took your undamaged self and—”

  “And what?”

  “—broke it. There’s a difference.”

  “I’m not broken!”

  “Would you take a minute,” he said, gently squeezing my hand, “and just listen before you argue? I’m not good with words. I don’t explain things right. When I try, it’s like the hardest thing in the world. I’m not trying to be mean or say the wrong thing. I’m not playing mind games. I’m not putting you down on purpose. I’m trying to say something true and whole. I am fucking it up royally, but I’m going to say this.”

  I squeezed back. “Okay.”

  “I think you came to me that night because you needed someone damaged to be undamaged with.”

  I closed my eyes, my breath coming out hard.

  He made me less afraid because he named my fear.

  And once you name something, you can fight it.

  I wasn’t afraid of being hurt.

  I was afraid of never really living. Never really loving. Never really being loved. Real love comes with pain, my mom always said. She and Dad had been married for thirty-one years.