A More Deserving Blackness (18 page)

             
“- thirty-eight year old man has been arrested on multiple charges of rape and sexual abuse that span at least three states and ten counties -”

             
I turn off the TV, silencing the reporter mid-sentence. 

             
My whole body’s trembling and I feel vaguely nauseous as I drop the hand holding the remote to my side, squeezing my eyes shut.

             
It wasn’t him.

             
“Hey,” Logan says softly from somewhere to my left.  Close, but not touching.  “You okay?”

             
I say nothing, reeling.  I’d have to tell her.  I’d have to tell my mom it wasn’t him, that she still had no one to blame for the obliteration of her daughter.  She’d be heartbroken.  Again.

             
“Do you . . . know that guy?”

             
I shake my head but I don’t want to look at him, don’t want to see the questions in his eyes I won’t be able to answer, so I move immediately to get my cell phone from my room.  Without a sound, Logan follows me.

             
The message I type to my mother is just one word. 
No.
  I press send.

             
When I take a deep breath and look up at him, Logan is watching me from the doorway, his expression unreadable. 

             
Now that it’s over I feel drained and sick, and it’s all for nothing.  It wasn’t him.  It’s never him.

             
“Bree?” 

             
I blink and Logan is standing directly in front of me, and I have no idea how he got there.  Or when. 

             
“Hey,” he soothes, taking my hands and leading me to the bed, sitting down next to me on the mattress.  “Are you okay?”

             
I don’t bother hiding what he can already see.  I shake my head.

             
“Do you want to talk about it?”

             
Again I shake my head.  No.

             
Logan sounds hesitant but, “Okay,” he says, and pulls me against his chest.  I resist for just a second, just one second, before I give in.  I melt into the familiar feel of his arms, enfolded in the scent of him, and close my eyes.

             
When I wake up the sun is setting and Logan is gone, just a note left on the bed beside me. 

             
“You looked exhausted so I’m letting you sleep.  Call me if you need me.”

             
I don’t.

             
But I must’ve fallen asleep again because when I wake up for the second time it’s with a dream still licking hot tongues in my gut, pumping furiously in my veins.  And it’s raining.  I can hear it outside, not the static rush of a downpour, but that lazy, rhythmic tapping that meant it was just a slow, soaking rain. 

             
The worst kind.

             
I slip out of bed, groping in the dark for my phone.  Two-seventeen, the face reads.  His jacket is cool and heavy when I slide my arms into the sleeves.  Then I’m jogging across the road, my hands in the pockets, my shoulders hunched up around my ears.  I’m staring at the wet road as I run, at Trish’s rubber rain boots I’d yanked onto my feet, so I don’t notice the dark figure on his shadowed porch before I’m already climbing the steps.

             
I gasp loudly, stumbling backward and ripping my hands from the pockets, my butt slamming into the hard edge of the newly rebuilt railing behind me. 

             
“Hey.”

             
Logan’s voice.  He hasn’t moved, not really, except to put his hands up in front of him, palms out.  I’m breathing hard, staring at him, my ears filled with the rain.  I can feel droplets of it on my scalp, seeping, unseen, into my hair. 

             
He takes a single step toward me, measuring my reaction, and then another.  Slowly, I notice what I hadn’t seen with my chin curled down to my chest, hiding my face from the rain.  Logan had pulled two white plastic deck chairs from somewhere, and they sat next to each other on the porch.  They were plain and kind of lonely looking, plopped down by themselves in the middle of his porch like that, but it was nice.

             
Carefully, he reaches for my arms, rubbing up and down over the jacket.  “Okay?” he asks, leading me over to one of the chairs.  I sit, nodding at him, but his eyes are probing as he crouches in front of me.

             
“I need to start using the light.  But then it’s harder to see the stars.”

             
But I’m staring at the silver wash of rain past the edge of the porch and he settles himself into the chair next to mine, propping his bare feet on the railing in front of him and clasping my hand in his.  His skin is warm and dry and mine is cold and clammy. 

             
“Too many clouds,” he says under his breath, and I nod.  He wouldn’t find a shooting star tonight.

             
But when I look over at him he’s not looking at the night sky, he’s looking at me.

             
Logan stills when I push to my feet, stepping to the edge of the rail and leaning out, reaching my hand into the dark, my long hair slipping over my shoulders to spill down my front.  The drops splatter against my palm, tiny liquid tears gathering, trickling into the lines of my skin.  Cold, but harmless.

             
I hear the squeak of the plastic chair as Logan pushes to his feet and then his warmth surrounds me from behind, wrapping his arms around me and pulling me tight against his chest.  He dips his head, nuzzling his chin in my neck.

             
“Can you tell me?”

             
I shake my head, staring at the wet on my hand.  Just rain.  No spinning lights, no one is screaming.  Just the stretch of well-lit suburbia, yellow house lamps in an even row and the pattering of rain.  Just rain.

             
“Okay,” he sighs, but I can hear the disappointment in it as he gently pulls me backward, right into his lap on the chair.  He combs my hair back over my shoulders and lifts the bottom edge of his shirt away from his flat stomach, painstakingly drying my hand with the fabric.  I watch him before shifting, tucking my head where his shoulder meets his throat, inhaling deeply and pulling my knees up against the side of his waist.

             
“Comfortable?” Logan teases wryly, and I just nod.  His chest shakes with his laughter as he presses his mouth into my hair.  “Good.”

             
Without either of us ever saying it, aloud or otherwise, it becomes routine.  In the middle of the night, whenever I would wake up from a nightmare, which was more nights than not, I’d throw on some shoes and Logan’s coat and head over to his house.  If he was on the porch when I came I’d take the seat next to him and he’d grab the fleece blanket for me and we’d watch for shooting stars, even though we never found any.  Or if I knocked softly at his front door, Logan would just take my hand and lead me back to his bed, picking up his book where he’d put it down and reading out loud to me, right where he’d left off.  Occasionally, when he answered the door, his eyes were red and squinting from sleep, and I’d feel guilty before he’d shake his head at me – “Stop.  It’s fine.”  But usually not. Usually, he’d fix me one of the many varieties of tea he’d bought for me, and he’d try to slip something else in with it, gently plying me with casual offers of food.  Sometimes I’d even eat it.

             
Eventually we’d fall asleep, wrapped together with nothing but a few layers of thin clothing between us, and even though on more than one occasion I could feel his attraction to me, solid against my hip or my thigh, he never kissed me again.  In the morning Logan would whisper in my ear to wake me in time to jog back across the street and get ready for school before he came over to pick me up. 

             
And every night, he’d ask me what I dreamt about, if I wanted to talk about it, his fingers soothing through the length of my hair.  I never did, but I knew eventually I would have to tell him, and I wouldn’t be able to, and it wouldn’t be enough.

             
For the moment, though, he’d leave it at that, letting me take comfort in curling into him, his heartbeat under my hand. 

             
It felt like home.

              It’s on one of these nights that I close my eyes, safe and warm in Logan’s arms, in Logan’s bed - and open them to another man’s face above me.

             
No.

             
My stomach lurches.

             
Nonononono.

             
It’s not happening.  It’s just a dream.

             
I know it’s not real but I’m struggling beneath him, fear plummeting into despair, all the air squeezed from my lungs by his weight.  And then I’m not; I’m just frozen, the cold barrel of the gun jammed painfully into the fleshy underside of my jaw, terror metallic on my tongue.

             
No, please.

             
My stomach heaves again when I feel him touching me.

             
I cram my own dirty palms against my mouth and taste salt and mud and sugar from the elephant ear I’d finished, laughing and joking, only a few minutes earlier.  But there are horrible, inhuman sounds inside me, battering against my hands so I bite down on my own flesh, feeling the tendons of my left wrist bend and twist under the sharp points of my teeth, jagged pain shooting up my arm. 

             
Tears are streaming, silent, from my eyes, the world above me a cold black canvas marred with splotches of blinking, blurry colors.  The rain starts to fall, fat, lazy beads from overhead; bright colors oozing down in cold droplets that are trickling onto my face. 

             
When the pain tears through me, I don’t make a sound. 

             
It’s not until the agony fades into a fog of horror and revulsion that I release my grip on my wrist.  I open my mouth and rain falls on my tongue.  I take a breath, surprised when the crushing weight is suddenly gone from my chest. 

             
Then I scream.

             
“LOGAN!”

             
The sound tearing up my throat is what wakes me.  I sit straight up in bed, violently sucking air, and Logan jerks upright at my side, automatically reaching for me.

             
“Bree!”
  His hands come to my arms, twisting me so I’m facing him, his eyes wide and alarmed in the dark bedroom.  “What?  What is it?  What’s wrong?”

             
I’m shoving against him wildly, pushing at his chest, but he doesn’t budge.

             
“Bree.  Bree,
stop.
  It’s me.  Love, it’s
me
.”

             
Finally my panicked thrashing gets him to release me and I wrench away, lungs heaving, starved for air.  I tumble off the edge of the bed and lose my balance, slamming my shoulder into the wall.  My throat hurts and my stomach is tossing and I clamp my hands over my mouth as tears pour over my fingers.

             
Logan is breathing heavy and fast, still sitting on the bed, his eyes nothing but glistening black pools, fixed on me.

             
I hear a whimpering sound behind my hands and push down harder, ramming it back inside.  All of it.  Everything foul and brutal and feral that’s threatening to splinter apart, to shred me from the inside out.

             
“You talked,” Logan says, his voice low and heavy with wonder.  “That was you.  You screamed my name.”

             
I’m breathing brokenly through my nose, staring at him.  Loose strands of hair sticking to my face and neck, my hands soaked in tears.  I realize I’m shaking my head and force myself to stop.

             
Logan slowly pushes up from the bed.  He measures my reaction with each careful movement, clearly loath to frighten me.  Then he’s standing in front of me, his hands up and open in front of him.

             
“Bree . . .” he breathes.

             
I crumple.

             
Logan drops to his knees and catches me against his chest, one arm around my back and the other cradling my head, enveloping me.  “Okay,” he murmurs, his lips at my ear.  “Okay.  Shhh.  It’s okay.”

             
It’s okay.
  His voice from another time, my salvation. 
Shh.
 
It’s okay.

             
But I can feel the cracks etching over my body, webbing out from my traitorous mouth.  I’m coming apart, clinging to his shoulders and weeping brokenly.