by Hawke, Jessa
“What do you mean he hits you sometimes?” Ben said.
When they'd gotten back to his place Ben had asked her insider for a drink before she took off. He figured that he wouldn't press his luck with the whole, “Hey, baby, want to spend the night?” thing since that was just as likely to turn into a meltdown as it was to go well. Instead they had gone inside and he'd made them both drinks. Sarah had passed on smoking herb because she said that it just wasn't her thing on the weekends since it made her want to sit around and do absolutely nothing. So instead they'd had one drink. And then another. And even though Ben didn't own a TV they were both so entertained by each other that they didn't notice the dark that had set in outside the windows. It wasn't until around ten o'clock that Sarah realized, to her dismay, that she was late to see someone.
At first Ben had been quiet, but then he figured that he might as well know if there was another guy. So he asked. And she told him that there was indeed another guy, and the guy was in fact her boyfriend. Ben wasn't sure to react to the news about a boyfriend. He'd suspected that there might be another love interest in her life, but he'd never thought that the guy might be both her boyfriend and her abuser. But Sarah had made it clear.
“Yes,” she said. “He hits me sometimes. And I know it's fucked up and I want to stop it but somehow I still love him even though I know he's bad for me.”
“No kidding,” Ben said.
“But couldn't you be bad for me too, Ben? I mean, look at you, all covered in tattoos with short cropped hair. You don't exactly radiate the aura of someone that goes to church on the regular.”
Ben laughed at this, and was thankful that she was at least keeping her sense of humor about her.
“All right, all right, point taken,” Ben said. “But at the same time I'm not the one hitting you. Are you sure you're happy with this guy? I mean, if you are, maybe you could work it out? Not that what you are going through isn't a big deal and very serious, I just know couples that have worked through things like this. Although they were married, twice your age, and certainly not in college.”
Sarah looked at the floor as she spoke, as if unable to bring herself to meet Ben's gaze.
“I know, we are way to young to be having these kinds of troubles,” she said. “And to be honest we aren't technically dating right now, we are on a break and all that. But he still drinks too much pretty much every night and calls me up screaming about how I need to come back to him or I'll amount to nothing without him. Like without him, at least in his mind, I am literally nothing.”
Ben didn't know what to say, so he just sat there looking across his coffee table at her. He wasn't sure what she wanted, if she wanted him to help or just do nothing and be her friend. Or if she even wanted to be friends at all. Ben had to admit to himself that if she didn't want him to do anything at all then he probably wouldn't be able to be friends with her, he didn't like to surround himself with people that did nothing. He wanted to surround himself with people that had the courage of their convictions. He liked to think that he attracted those kind of people and repelled the rest, but maybe that just wasn't the case. And there was another option—that Sarah wasn't interested in him at all and was using him.
“So what would you like to happen?” Ben asked finally. “I mean, in a perfect world where you could have anything and everything, is there any particular outcome that you'd like?”
Sarah didn't hesitate to answer.
“I know it sounds harsh, but I want him scared. Badly. Then I want him told to leave me alone.”
Ben nodded and fell silent. There were several ways to do this. The easiest would be for him to go to wherever this guy was at and bounce his head off the concrete until he got it through his thick skull that he needed to never talk to Sarah again. The best way would most likely be the legal way, but it would be the hardest way for Sarah since she'd have to involve herself with the police, who would question her and do their best to decide if her accusations had merit or not. If the police found the accusations to have merit then the boyfriend, or ex if she was telling the truth about the break, would lose all of his rights to firearms and be arrested, charged, and later processed into the justice system.
But there was always the chance that the police would mess it up, or not care enough to do the right thing, and all of a sudden it wasn't so easy. Then Ben wouldn't be able to rough the guy up to get his message across without getting arrested because by that time the police would most assuredly know of his involvement and the abuser would be looking to cause the same legal trouble for him that Sarah had caused.
“Well, here is what I think you should do,” Ben said slowly, trying to think out each word individually before he said them. “I think you should call the cops either just plain old file domestic abuse charges, or just get a no contact order and wait for him to do something stupid like text you, then a restraining order. I know that might sound scary, and at times it will most likely be very uncomfortable, but if you go the legal route then you can just forget about him. Like it never happened, almost. But it won't be that easy, of course, as just forgetting.”
Sarah nodded.
“I just don't know if I can ruin his life, even though I think it's fair to say that he wants to ruin mine. I mean, doesn't a domestic abuse charge pretty much keep you from being a cop or anything like that? All that he wants to do is be a cop. Since he was a little kid all he's ever wanted to do is be a cop and I'm not sure if I can bring myself to take that away from him. You know? I just don't know if I'm that cold of a person.”
Ben knew it was time to bring the hard truth to bear.
“Well you'll be pretty cold when they put you in whatever casket your parents pick out after this asshole gets through with you. Because believe me when I say I know their kind. My time in the military has given me intimate knowledge of how predators work. And he's just going to keep coming back. Even if you were to change your number and really kick him to the curb he'd find a way back in. Maybe he'd start to butter you up with flowers and other stuff like that, or maybe he'd try another approach and go to therapy then show up one day to tell you how he's now magically completely cured and of course a new person altogether.”
“But isn't that possible, though?” Sarah said. “You just said that you knew people that worked it out.”
“Yeah, but he's got to want to work it out,” Ben said. “And most people in the college mind set know that everything that happens here can just be forgotten and walked away from. So while I'm sure you could both work it out I would take him admitting that he has a problem and then going to therapy with you to see a professional who can help the both of you work through your issues together—much easier said than done.”
Sarah nodded and thanked him. Shortly after they exchanged hugs and said goodbye. Ben was left with his thoughts as he smoked, thinking about all the things that could go wrong. The abuser seemed to still have some kind of hold on Sarah since she didn't want to just go to the police. He knew that was the best option, especially since the guy wanted to be a cop. What the nation didn't need was another cop who had something to prove, some sick ax to grind. Ben hoped the guy kept being the way he was so that Sarah wouldn't be manipulated. But how could he do something? As always Ben was anxious to start making a difference, and he wanted to change things for Sarah right now. He wondered if he'd be able to just talk to the guy and convince him that the best thing for him to do was walk away from the entire thing.
But that was where things could get sticky if the abuser wanted to try to back him down. The guy was probably pretty used to people being “terrified” of him when he threw his little tantrums and started to break things. There was a very good chance that he'd never had anyone fight back, and if Ben fought him he knew that he'd end up hurting the abuser pretty badly. Which might be overlooked by the police, or might not, depending on how everything shook out. If things didn't go his way though doing it himself would really come back around to bite him in the ass. What if the abuser got the up
per hand during the fight? What if the police showed up and arrested them both, or worse? And what if he was the only one that got charged with anything?
Ben decided that he would have to think long and hard before he acted. He turned in for the night hoping that by the time he woke up his decision would have materialized in his head. As he slid in between his sheets and closed his eyes he hoped that somehow sleep would bring clarity.
Ben dreamed he was on a mountain top looking over a deep abyss. It reminded him of something Poe had written, but he couldn't quite remember it. Thoughts seemed to be fleeting, and he struggled to hold on to anyone of them for longer than a few moments. It was almost if they were tangible things. His grasp of the situation was complete even if it couldn't handle the seemingly simple task of keeping thoughts lined up in his head in the correct order. For a while all he saw was fractured images projected out across the blackness as if it were a screen, then he started to feel himself wake up. He wondered if he would remember any of this, or if he would wake up and he would remember dreaming something else. As he thought about it, he formed the dream he would remember in his mind.
Ben knew exactly what he needed to do. It had all come to him the night before in a dream. It had been a vivid dream, one that he had trouble shaking off it seemed so real. He dreamed that he'd gone over to the abuser's house and roughed him up a little bit. Not a lot or anything, but just got in his face and jabbed his finger in his chest and stuff like that. But the more Ben thought about it the more it seemed like the dream had been a kind of warning, maybe a blue print of what he actually shouldn't do. Maybe that was it, he figured, as he sat over a bowl of frosted flakes and contemplated his options.
It was pretty obvious he needed to do something. As long as Sarah was romantically involved with this other guy things weren't going to go anywhere. But the whole beating the guy up thing seemed like it was played out, like the 70s and 80s action flicks had shown pretty much every possible angle of such an undertaking and it just didn't fit with how Ben wanted to stay out of jail. Ben's mind whirred as he sat and crunched his cereal. What he really needed to do was talk to the guy, sit him down, or maybe just talk to him face to face since because him down would be near impossible, and let him know what could happen if the police got involved. Really paint a picture of what life would be like after a domestic violence charge was added to the list of things his future employers would find on out about him after doing any kind of research.
Because Ben knew that most people just didn't think about it. They didn't want to realize how badly they were fucking up when the flagrantly broke the law and did fucked up things like hit a woman behind closed doors. Most people like that lived in their own little world where consequences were never really detailed out and instead existed as a kind of opaque idea that never really formed all the way. To the soon to be very much ex boyfriend what he was doing, and had done, was probably nothing much that even crossed his mind. And Ben knew that for some people the fake world they lived in where they could beat a woman and get away with it was so appealing that they never left it, and instead racked up charge after charge. This guy, though, the one Ben was getting dressed to go see, he was new at the entire thing. A little college punk, as Ben imagined in his mind, he'd probably grown up rich and come away from his childhood with the impression that he could just do whatever he likes and never have to answer for it. Ben was going to do him a favor, he told himself.
“Hello, and you are?”
The man behind the pain glass window door looked to be a little bit older, maybe in his forties.
“Are you the guy that's knocking around Sarah?”
Ben's voice was level, as if he were asking the man where he had lunch, or about his plans for the weekend.
“Uhhh . . .”
Before the man could move Ben crow hopped forward and kicked the glass door as hard as he could, sending shards to tumble to the ground as he continued moving through the newly opened space. The man didn't know what to do. Ben didn't want to talk. He forgot everything he'd planned to say anyway—something about how his life would be ruined with a domestic on his record. But when he'd realized the guy was older a few moments before, he knew the time for words was over. The man knew better than to behave poorly, and he was damn sure old enough to know that you didn't hit a woman. But the saying goes that you can't teach an old dog new tricks, but it was also written that if you spared the rod you spoiled the child. And good Lord was this child spoiled already.
As Ben pushed the man to the center of the living room, then down onto his knees, he was sure to glance around the well decorated apartment. There was thousands of dollars worth of art hanging on the walls. Ben could recognize some of the prints. The guy had good taste in art, and probably in cars and all the other things that didn't really matter. But Ben wasn't here to talk to the guy about art, or cars, or about how his furniture was hip, or how the shag carpet was cut low so that you could barely tell it was shag and Ben liked that. Instead Ben sent a well placed kick to the man's jaw. The older man, whose salt and pepper hair now carried some red, fell back and clutched at his nose.
Ben wondered what else he should do. Should he get really crazy and maybe scare the guy? Tie him up and light some of the paintings on fire while he helped himself to the wine he was sure in the fridge. Ben didn't know, but the wine seemed like a good idea to him. So he left the man sagged against his couch, holding his nose and mouth, and Ben walked to the kitchen. Along with the wine he grabbed a piece of pizza out of the fridge.
“So, do I need to keep knocking you around?” Ben asked the man when he walked back into the living room.
The man looked indignant, like he'd been caught with his hand in the cookie jar and didn't like being scolded for it. Ben didn't appreciate the look of defiance the man flickered his direction, so he spat a long stream of red wine down the man's shirt.
“Do you like it?” Ben said. “I know some guys like it. If you like it you should tell me so I stop doing it.”
“I like it,” the man responded instantly.
“Bullshit,” Ben said.
Ben didn't say anything else. He grabbed a print off the wall, tucked it under his arm, and walked out after downing the rest of the wine bottle. Before he got back in the idling car waiting for him he tossed the crust of his piece of pizza into the lawn and smiled.
“That was so awesome!” Sarah said.
Ben had called her up and told her his plans, told her how he needed someone to come with and how if it were her and the guy would never talk to her again, and wouldn't even call the cops because that meant the police would be taking an account of the abuse that Sarah would fill them in on. It was a pretty simple plan really, and that was what had sold Sarah on it. Ben was glad that she liked how he'd not talked to him at all. The original plan had included the small detail of talk.
“Sarah, I know that it was satisfying to watch what small amount of justice I could bring to bear on the situation, but maybe it isn't good to gloat.”
Sarah snorted and laughed.
“Look at you being all eloquent when you're drunk. It's cute!”
Ben decided to keep quiet the rest of the ride back to his place. Sarah had planned to drop him off and head back to her own apartment but somehow he'd managed, in the few moments her car had paused in his driveway, to get out and come inside. He found another bottle of wine he'd tucked away in back cupboard for a good time. The time seemed good enough to Ben, and to Sarah, he realized, as she snuggled up against him on the couch. He'd told her that after he'd pushed the guy back into the living room that he hadn't hurt him. It was a white lie, one that she would most likely never find out about. When Ben had left the place he'd cast one last glance over his shoulder at the man in the middle of the room still nursing his wounds. The man had looked so defeated that Ben knew he'd never try anything with Sarah ever again, and from the sounds and looks of it Sarah was already well along the process of moving on from the entire thing.
Sarah's hand massaged the top of Ben's leg, then slowly moved up to his crotch. She cupped it for a second, then giggled and undid his zipper. He moved his hips up off the couch as she slid his pants down around his knees. Ben couldn't believe this was going where it was but he wasn't going to stop it. Sarah was seriously good looking, and she was also a grown ass woman, so if she wanted to fool around he was for sure game.
“Well look at that,” Sarah said.
Ben's erection had sprung up out of his pants and stood pointing up at the ceiling. Ben was a hung, and he knew it. He never said anything about it because he thought it was lame when people talked about how big their dick was, but he knew that she was genuinely surprised.
“Do you think you can handle it?” Ben asked her.
“Oh course I can!” she replied.
Sarah stood up and stripped naked so fast that Ben didn't even realize it was happening until she was standing naked in front of him. She was so good looking, with a small red landing strip over her pussy and tits to die for. Ben made a motion to stand but Sarah stopped him. She got down on her knees in front of him and fondled his cock in her hands. With one hand she grabbed the shaft and moved her fist up and down it, and with the other hand she cupped his balls.
“Oh, fuck yeah baby,” Ben said.
He knew that she would love it if he talked dirty to her.
“Fucking right you love that big dick baby. Do you fucking love it? Do you? I know you do. Now lick it! That's a good girl. Lick it all the way up and down. Just like that. Just like that. I know that you love it when you do it just like that. Now swirl your tongue around the head of my dick while you jack me off with both hands.”
Ben couldn't believe how submissive Sarah was being. She love the way her red head bobbed up and down on his cock, and how she would take her tits and mash them together around his long shaft so he could titty fuck her while he mouth fucked her. She was game for pretty much anything, he quickly realized.
“What do you want to do, baby?” he asked her. “Do you want to bounce on my fucking dick? Are do you want me to bend you over the couch?”
