Equilibrium (Marauders #4.5) (6 page)

“I’ve been clean for over four years, if that’s what you were trying to ask.”

It wasn’t, I was going to ask how long he’d been doing drugs, which I realized was a pretty stupid question. And then it struck me.

“But you’re twenty-two!”

“There’s no age restriction on addiction.” He turned and laughed when he saw me. “Reality slapping you in the face there, Princess?”

“Yeah,” I admitted.

If he’d been clean since he was eighteen, he must’ve done drugs for a while before that. It didn’t seem likely that someone became an addict in a few months. At least I didn’t think so. He’d told me a little about how he grew up; that he’d been living on the streets with his sister since he was just a kid. I took a deep breath before looking at him again.

“What are you landing at?” he asked. “Am I freaking you out?”

“No. Just… I guess I’ve been pretty sheltered.”

“You think?” he laughed, and I glared at him. “That’s not a bad thing. You’re lucky.”

“Yeah. Super lucky,” I mumbled.

“Hey, Princess, none of that shit. Look at me,” he added just as he always did when he was about to say something serious. I’d asked him about that, and he’d said he needed to see my eyes to see how I was reacting. So I did. “I didn’t mean it like that, but if you narrow it down to the basics, you are lucky. You have people around you who are doing everything they can to help you, and you’ve had that your entire life. Bad shit happened to you, I know it did, and I get what it means, but you’ve got every chance to get better.”

“You don’t know what it means,” I said. “What it’s like.”

“Sure I do. Difference between you and me is that after it happened to me, I washed myself off in a public bathroom and huffed some glue to forget about it. So I definitely know a thing or two about escaping reality with the help of chemicals. And why it sometimes feels like a good solution.”

I stared at him. Had he just said that? And he didn’t even sound, like, embarrassed. Not that he should’ve, it wasn’t his fault, but still. And then I got pissed. So his story was—what?—more sad than mine, so I shouldn’t complain? I shouldn’t feel bad because it could’ve been worse?

Fuck that!

I stood up and was about halfway to the clubhouse when he cut me off.

“What?” he asked. “Don’t just run off. Talk to me.”

“So I’ve been all sheltered, and I’m lucky, so I shouldn’t wallow in pity. Is that what you’re saying?”

“Did I say that? No, I didn’t fucking say that. You need to start listening to what I’m saying.”

“Then what are you saying?”

“That I get it. I know what it’s like, and I think you’ve got every fucking shot at getting better, get good even. And that you’re lucky that you have all these people around you who are there to help you, and that you’re lucky to have had a good life.”

I was never sure if he was nice or assholey, or a combination.

“You make that sound like a bad thing. Like something I should apologies for.”

He stared at me, and then he smiled. “Damn, you’re good,” he muttered and scratched his neck.

“What?”

“No hiding anything from you. I guess I am… Not saying that you should apologize for it, but I’m jealous of what you’ve had.” He laughed a little. “And for the record, I’m usually pretty good at hiding shit, and you being all…
flimsy
before made me think you were…”

“Dense?” I asked. “People usually think that.”

“I wasn’t gonna say
dense
. A bit of an airhead maybe.”

“That’s the same thing, Roach.”

“A spoiled brat, then?” he smiled when he said it, but then his face got serious. “I’m sorry.”

We stood there for a long time. He was clearly still waiting for me to make a decision, and I was taking my time. I was thinking about what he’d actually said, and I guess that it did have a ring of jealousy in it, and even if he’d been rude about it, he’d been right. And he’d told me about himself, and I’d just…

“I’m sorry, too,” I said.

“About what?” he asked, and he looked like he honestly didn’t understand. “For having grown up sheltered? That’s hardly your fault, or something you should be sorry about.”

“No, you told me something private, and I walked out on you. Or… you know, tried to.”

“Yeah, don’t worry about it. I’ve dealt with my shit, I’m fine, so don’t worry about hurting my feelings. I can take it.”

“You’re fine?”

“More or less,” he shrugged. “But I have people to dump my shit on. Don’t worry about it.”

“Okay. I’m still sorry. And I still have to go. I have rehearsals.”

“Want a lift?”

It wasn’t that I didn’t want to be alone in a car with him, but there were other pretty embarrassing things about rehearsals. Stuff I didn’t want to tell him yet.

“Dad was going to… So…”

“Okay. I’ll see you around, Princess.”

“Sure,” I said. “See you.”

But when I finally found Dad, he was in the office with Mom and a few of the others, and they all looked pissed. Not at each other, but something had obviously gone tits up.

“What’s up, Baby Girl?” Dad asked.

“The rehearsals…” I started. “Can Roach give me a lift?”

“You okay with that, honey?” Mom asked.

“Sure. Just… have someone pick me up. Or I can call.”

“Absolutely,” Dad said. “You’ll be fine on your own?”

“Yeah.”

“You’ll call if you’re not?” he added, and I nodded.

I was pretty sure I’d be fine.

I should be fine.

It was about fucking time I was fine.

~oOo~

Roach

Eliza was really quiet on their way to the community center where she went for her drama rehearsals. She kept looking out the side window, so Roach turned on the radio. He wasn’t sure if he’d done the right thing by telling her he’d been raped, too. It honestly wasn’t a big thing for him anymore. He’d been a kid, and he’d learned how to defend himself later on. Besides, pretty much everyone he knew back then had been raped a few times. It came with the territory.

It hadn’t been meant as critique, what he’d said to Eliza, but he could see why she might’ve taken it that way. And he most definitely hadn’t felt insulted by her walking away. He’d been honest about that, and he would be honest about things, because he knew that that was what she needed more than anything.

He pulled up outside the community center and waited for Eliza to get out—which she didn’t.

“Still pissed at me?” he asked.

“No, that’s not it.” She took a deep breath. “Could you, like, follow me to the door?”

“Sure,” he answered without hesitation. He should’ve thought of that, and that was probably the real reason for why she’d been quiet. She’d been taken outside the community center, and he assumed the others followed her to the door when they gave her a lift. It might be that she’d been embarrassed to ask. “Just need to park the van first.”

He got out of the van as soon as it was parked and walked around the front. She was already outside, but she was waiting for him. As they walked over the grass, she stayed close to him, actually closer than she’d ever been to him, and it kind of dawned on him: He’d told her she’d been sheltered, which she had, but for someone so protected, what had happened was probably a worse shock. He’d more or less been waiting for it, but he was pretty sure that it had never been in her frame of mind that she was at risk.

“It’s not everywhere,” she suddenly said. “I mean, I
can
go out alone, it’s just here.”

He was pretty sure she preferred company at any other place she was, too, but he indulged her and nodded. By the front door, she hesitated again, and instead of asking, he walked inside and held the door open for her.

Eliza walked through the center, and then halted in front of a door that simply said ‘Room Four.’ With her hand on the door handle, she looked at him again.

“Do you want me to wait here or inside?” he asked instead of making her ask.

“I’m sorry. I thought… it would be fine, but…”

“Don’t be, Princess. I’ll text Brick to let him know I’m here.” He nodded towards the door. “Will they be fine with it?”

“Yeah. I’ve had someone with me before, and they know why, so it’s okay.”

There were seven other girls waiting for them inside, and after sizing him up, they greeted Eliza. They actually seemed pretty normal with her, even if he didn’t know what they usually were like, and he sat down in an armchair close to the door. He sent off a text to Brick to let him know where he was and that he’d give Eliza a lift home when she was done.

He soon stopped paying attention to them, and he was almost surprised when Eliza came over.

“What’s up?”

“We’re done,” she answered. “When do you have to be at work?”

“No work today,” he said and stood up. “Wanna hang out some more?”

“Unless you have other plans.”

“Nope, but I need to eat.”

He took her to a burger place, and she kept talking all the way through the meal. It took him about two minutes to realize why. She thought that if she kept talking, he wouldn’t notice she wasn’t eating. Once he was finished eating, and she was done hiding that she wasn’t eating, he got them a coffee each.

“If you’re not hungry, just tell me,” he said when he handed it to her.

“What?” she asked with frightened eyes, and then she blushed. “I’ll pay you back.”

“It’s not about the money, Princess,” he said when he sat down opposite her. “Just tell me you don’t want to eat. I know you don’t eat much anyway, and I’m not gonna argue about it.”

“How did you know?”

“Besides the fact that you’ve lost like twenty pounds since the first time I saw you? The throwing away perfectly good birthday cake was a hint.”

“It’s just like… I can’t swallow it down,” she whispered with her eyes on the coffee cup she was clutching between her hands. “I ate some.”

“I know.”

They sat in silence, and finally she looked at him. “You’re not gonna tell me I have to eat?”

“You know that, so what’s the point? I’ll keep buying you food if you want me to, but I’m not gonna argue with you about it. I’m not your dad. You eat what you eat.”

“Okay,” she nodded and her shoulders relaxed. “Did you watch us at all today?”

“The rehearsals?” He’d done his very best to avoid watching.
The Theater
—always pronounced with a British accent in his head—wasn’t really his thing. “Um, not really. Should I have?”

“No need. Just wondered what you thought if you had. We’re doing
A Streetcar Named Desire
. I like it.”

Roach had seen it as a movie once, late at night when he couldn’t sleep, so he knew it. “Who are you?”

“I’m just doing two of the smaller parts. I didn’t want a big one this time. I’m mostly working with the set.”

“Who’s directing?”

“All of us,” Eliza laughed. “Works sometimes, other times not at all. It’s mostly about having fun, but we’ve had a few performances, too. I was Medea. It was the first one we did, and I really liked that part.”

Roach’d had a very rudimentary schooling, to put it mildly. He could read, but not very fast or well, which was why he preferred graphic novels to actual books. So he didn’t know exactly who Medea was, but he knew it was one of those things people
should
know about. Roach wasn’t very bothered about what he
should
know, though, so he asked.

“Who was she?”

Eliza looked at him with big eyes. “You really wanna know?”

“Sure.”

“Because if I start talking, I’ll keep going. I love her.”

“Hit me,” he said and leaned back to get more comfortable.

She hadn’t been kidding. She kept talking for about an hour and didn’t stop until he pulled up outside her house.

CHAPTER FIVE

You’ll Find Out

~oOo~

IT WAS IMPOSSIBLE FOR Eliza to remember the first time she was on a bike. It had been something she’d been doing for as long as she could remember. She did, however, remember the first time she was allowed to ride bitch—sitting behind her dad instead of in front of him—and it had made her feel all grown up. It took another few rides before she dared to stretch her arms up in the air, and Brick never liked it when she did. Mitch got it, though, and he laughed as much as she did when she stretched her arms in the air, reaching for the sky, and screamed with joy.

Anything seemed possible when she was behind one of her brothers on their bike. Like she could go anywhere, do anything—be anyone.

~oOo~

Eliza

I wasn’t sure exactly what it was, or why, but I could breathe around Roach. There was no pressure at all when I was with him. Maybe it was simply that he never looked at me like he was trying to see a glimpse of the old me, or that he never looked…
pleased
when I smiled—like he had been waiting for it.

I kept asking him questions, and he kept answering them, and finally I had to ask him why he never asked me anything in return. Why he wasn’t trying to make me talk, either.

“It’s not about that, Princess,” he answered me. “You’ll talk when you’re ready. Not gonna force you, I told you that. It won’t do you any good anyway. Just means I’ll bring up shit you’re not ready to deal with.”

“Maybe it would be good to make me deal with things.”

“Yeah, but I leave that to your shrink.”

I could breathe even easier after that.

Roach mostly worked late evenings at The Booty Bank, so he had the days free. He spent most of those at the clubhouse or in the garage. Even if he wasn’t working as a grease monkey, he kept fiddling with his own bike a lot—just like they all did. That was when I liked talking to him best, because it was less intense when he was focusing on something other than me. That was when it happened, when I started talking about it—about when I was taken. Gradually, just mentioning it at first. It was as if I was testing him to see if he could take it. He could. He didn’t flinch, didn’t do any of those faces, but he was paying attention. And then he said that thing that really set me off. Not in a bad way, but it made me prepared to talk and even discuss it. We weren’t at the garage that day, so it was more private.

“Maybe you should stop calling it when you were
taken
,” he said.

We were sitting on the deck outside my house. Mom had gone grocery shopping, and Dad was off for some club business that didn’t require Roach’s presence. I’d asked him to come over, and it was actually the first time we were hanging out at my place. I wasn’t ready to take him to my room yet, but he hadn’t even suggested it.

“Why?” I asked. “Does it matter what I call it?”

“Credit where credit’s due. You didn’t survive getting
taken
. You survived a lot more than that.”

“I’m not sure I want to think about it as more than that. I mean, it’s the only sexual experience I’ve had.”

“It wasn’t sexual. A sexual experience isn’t something you have to
survive.
”

Just after it had happened, my parents had avoided touching each other in front of me. I didn’t know if it was on purpose, but they were usually all over each other, but they hadn’t then, and it had hurt a little. It was as if I’d needed to see normal, loving touch, and I’d been really relieved when they started again. So I understood what Roach meant about the difference, and I hoped it was true, but I wasn’t sure.

“Someone asked whether if I’d been… raped, I was still a virgin.” No one had actually asked that. It was something I’d thought about, and I’d googled a little. Or a lot. I cleared my throat. “Kind of. But I mean, at the same time I’m not.”

“Why not?”

“Well, I don’t have a hymen.”

“It’s not about a hymen. Some girls lose that while riding or bicycling, and they’re still virgins.”

I glared at him. “It’s not the same. I had dicks shoved into me. Several dicks, several times. I needed
surgery
afterwards.” I hadn’t planned on saying it like that, and I held my breath while I waited for his reaction, which never really came. At least not like I had expected it.

“I know it’s not the same, but my point was rather that it doesn’t have to do with a hymen. Maybe you lose your virginity when you’ve had, as you called it, a sexual experience. And you haven’t had that. At least I assume you haven’t, considering you’re wondering if you’re still a virgin.”

I thought about it while staring at the landscape in front of me. Dad had bought the house before he met Mom, so I’d lived there my entire life. It was a big house in the middle of nowhere, and I’d always liked the house even if it sometimes had annoyed me that it was so far away from everything. Since I was taken—
raped
, I corrected myself—I’d liked that it was in the middle of nowhere. I could walk right out of the house and into silence. It was nice.

“I like that answer better than the one where they say virginity has to be given and can’t be taken,” I said. “I guess it’s silly thing to think about. I’m not one of those who thinks it’s important to be a virgin when I’m married, or anything. I wasn’t really looking for
The One
or to stay a virgin forever. I was kind of looking forward to getting rid of it, to be honest.”

“It’s not silly,” Roach said.

“I think the idea of virginity being important is kind of silly.”

“Maybe, but that’s not the same as saying it’s not important how you lose it, or that it’s important that you get to decide when it happens. So to you it’s an issue because you don’t like that you have a feeling that your choice might have been taken from you.”

That made sense, and it could be what had bothered me. The act, the rapes, was of course important, but however I felt (or had felt) about my virginity, it hurt to think it might have been
taken
from me. Because no matter what anyone said about it, it didn’t feel like I was a virgin, and I hadn’t had a say when I lost it.

“Do you think I’ll ever
want
to have sex?” I asked.

“Yes,” Roach answered without hesitation.

“Because I’ll get over it? Everyone does?”

“Not everyone, but I think you will.”

“Why?”

“Because you want to get better. You’re fighting for it.”

I looked at him where he was sitting on one of the loungers. His hands were clasped over his stomach, and his eyes were closed behind the sunglasses. His coat was slung over a chair close by, so he was only wearing a t-shirt. He had unusually few tattoos for a biker, but then he was young, so he was probably just getting started. I was pretty sure he’d trimmed his hair and beard recently because it looked shorter than I remembered it being just a few days earlier.

When he asked me questions about what I’d said, or when we were talking about everyday stuff while eating or something, he still made sure I looked at him. But when I brought it up like this, just kind of thinking out loud, he gave me free range. It was okay that I wasn’t looking at him, and I usually liked it, but right then I wished he was looking at me.

“I want to get better, and I want to want sex, but I’m scared of it,” I said. “I’m not sure I’m making sense.”

“You are. You’re scared of wanting sex, because it means you might have it, and you’re scared of the idea of you having sex.”

“I… think that’s what I mean,” I said, and thought about what he’d said. “Yeah, that’s what I mean.”

That was when he finally looked at me over the rim of his sunglasses. “It’s not the same. I know you know that, but I still want to say it. It’s not the same when you have actual sex.”

“Way I’ve heard it, it can be pretty great.”

“Yeah,” he laughed. “You’ll find out. One day it’ll feel right, and you’ll find out how awesome it is.”

I always hesitated before asking private questions, but I always ended up asking them anyway, and he
always
answered them as if it wasn’t a big deal. I hesitated this time too, but I still asked.

“Did it take you long? To like it, I mean.”

“How I grew up,” he started, then hesitated, and then shrugged and continued. “Sex wasn’t a big thing, not the way it is for girls like you. We used it in ways you don’t and never would have… Probably not, at least.”

“Used it?”

“Yeah, sometimes to get money, or just to be close to someone, get some comfort. So, no, it didn’t take me long, but I wasn’t as hung up on sex and virginity as you were.”

“You think I was hung up on sex?” I asked. Then I laughed before he could answer. “Yeah, I guess I was. We called it ‘having visited Europe,’” I remembered with another laugh.

“What?”

“It’s from
The Bell Jar
.”

“Jesus fucking christ, Princess, I have absolutely no fucking idea what you’re talking about now. Bell jar?”

“It’s a book by Silvia Plath,” I explained, and he still looked confused. “It… It’s about a young woman and her decent into depression and way out of it, basically. It takes place in the Fifties, and a lot of it is about how she’s… worried that she’ll end up like all other women. Very simplified here, but anyway, she’d been in love with a guy, and then finds out he’s not a virgin.”

“And that’s a bad thing?”

“Yeah, he has sort of made her think she’s so experienced and sexy while he’s pure. So she wants to lose her virginity.”

“To get even?” He looked really confused, and I couldn’t blame him. I wasn’t describing the plot or the point of the book very well.

“Maybe. I don’t think so. I think she just wants it over with, to not have to protect it. She says that it’s the most significant divider of people: those who have and those who haven’t had sex. She thinks this huge feeling of change will come over her once she has lost it. That it would be the way she would feel if she ever visited Europe.”

Roach started at me. “If those are the kind of books you read, I’m not surprised you obsessed about sex.”

“It’s not all the book is about.”

“If you say so,” he smiled.

The first time I read
The Bell Jar
I was fifteen, and I’d loved it and had re-read it loads of times. It was also the first book I read after being taken—
raped
—and I still loved it, but somehow it was a completely different book that time. I’d noticed completely different things, and the feminist theme, that had been so vital and important to me
before
, had almost completely disappeared behind Esther’s struggles with herself and her own sanity. The book, and how it was so different to me, was kind of what had made me realize I’d become someone completely different. It had scared me, but I’d still loved the book. If possible even more than
before
. At the time, my own mind had felt like an enemy, and I’d had a growing feeling that I was losing the war with myself. So reading about it had given me a strange outside perspective of myself… or something. If nothing else, it had made me believe that
talking
could make a difference. I just hadn’t had someone it felt like I could talk to then. Then I found Doctor Flores.

And now I had Roach, too.

“You should read it,” I said to Roach.

“Don’t think so.”

“Guess I still am in a way,” I said instead of trying to persuade him. “Obsessed about sex and… what happened. It’s sort of the same, since both are really hard to talk about. Why is it so easy for you to talk about it?”

“It’s in my past. I decided that I was going to leave the past behind me. Not forget about it, but keep it there. It happened, I can’t change it, but I’m not going to let it control me.”

“You decided? Just like that?”

“Hell no. There was nothing ‘just like that’ about it. It takes work, Princess, which I think you know. Or at least are starting to find out.”

“So to really put it behind me, I’m going to have to be able to talk about it as casually as you are?”

He smiled, but it was a sad smile. “It’s not casually, and no, you don’t have to talk about it all if you don’t want to. It’s not something I run around and tell people. I’m telling you because I think it might help you. I don’t deny it if people ask me, but I tend to tell people it’s none of their business, because it’s not. Same goes for you. Not that it’s not your business what happened to me, but you can say that to people about what happened to you.”

I only had vague memories of the last couple of hours I’d been with those men. Initially, they’d made sure I was awake and more or less aware of what they were doing. When I passed out, they woke me up. Of course, I didn’t know what they did while I was passed out, but I’d had the impression that they stopped when I was gone, because there was no one… between my legs, in my mouth, or in my hands when I woke up. The second I awoke, they came back and crowded me again.