Out of the Blue (9 page)

“Oh, so you get to be the only one who helps people?” she said. “You get to be the hero with Bosey, and you get to intrude on the stalker issue, and I just get to let you?” She spread out in the corner of her couch, facing him, and put her arms straight out along the arm and the back, then put her legs up, crossed and straight in front of her.

“You didn’t let me in on the stalker,” he said.

“And I’m not going to unless you let me in on something,” she said. “It’s not nice to always be the powerless one.”

“Deal,” he said, feeling like he’d just bid money he didn’t have for an item he didn’t want. He wanted to take it back. Deal off. Sneak around and find the stalker without her permission, especially if it could be involved with …

Then again that possible involvement made it all the more fair to tell her …

“Fine,” he said. “You go first.”

“Fine,” she said. “I guess I have a stalker.”

He humphed. “Let me see the emails.”

“They’re at work.”

“You can’t access your work email from home? Come on Molly, you’re an engineer.”

“We both know you’ll want to see them from work.”

“It would still be nice to see them from here, get the tone of them.”

“You’re stalling,” she said. “You have more to say than me.”

Justin looked at her small living room window and its brown drapes for a moment, then stood and walked over to them. He pulled them closed, and sagged against them for a second. It’s not like telling someone was something he’d rehearsed.

“When I was little, I was adopted.”

Molly turned to face him at the window. She propped her arms on the side of the couch and her face on her arms.

“I was in the foster system.” It was coming easier than he’d thought. But it still felt that someone had lanced a huge painful boil and only a slight trickle was coming for now. He felt scared of the impending burst.

“Why?” she asked.

“My parents died,” he said. “I was four.”

He looked over at her, glad for once that her stone face showed no emotion or pity.

“What does this have to do with you leaving?”

“Look this is hard for me! Give me some freaking time!”

She sat back, eyebrows lowered.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “This was a bad idea.” He moved to the door and grabbed the handle.

“Coward,” she said. “Coward. You can’t go.”

He stopped, shoulders sagging. “Fine.”

He moved to the other couch, the smaller, and leaned forward over his legs, facing the floor. Then looked up at her.

“I got bounced from house to house,” he said. “I didn’t have relatives.” He wrung his hands. “I looked like a girl, and some people tried to treat me like one. I got in fights, I got moved.” He looked up at her face quickly, then back to the ground. “But I found a good place after a while, someone who wanted to keep me.”

“When I met her, she looked like an angel, and I thought ‘I get to live with this pretty lady?’ I thought I was walking into heaven. I was nine.”

Molly studied her hands, nervously twisting her pinky around. Justin wondered if he’d already crossed a line. TMI. Why did he do this? He felt dirty.

“I’m sorry.” He started to stand. “This was already too much, wasn’t it?” He shook his head. “It’s too dirty to even talk about.”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t know what to say. But I think you should keep going.”

“I just, how will you even look at me the same way?”

“I have a feeling I’m going to be looking at someone differently, but it’s not you.” She let out a long, harsh breath. “What happened next?”

“She moved for adoption as soon as she could. I was glad to have a family. She really looked like my mom too, with her blond hair. I felt like I had a family.”

Molly stood and came to sit by him. She put an arm awkwardly behind him on the couch. He ignored it; he was too deep to be worried about that for now.

“I thought she loved me. She touched my hair. I loved her so much. Perhaps that is the worst, that I loved her.”

Molly touched his arm and he bent forward so that tears could hit the carpet.

“She’ll never let me go,” he said. “I left at eighteen. I ran. I entered school. I thought I was safe. I thought she’d find a new boy. She’d groom him and then I’d be free. But she found me.”

He looked over at Molly. She clenched one fist in her lap. Her mouth was tensed. Her eyebrows low, eyes narrow. She saw him looking and immediately lightened her face. “That was five years ago.”

“Yes,” he said. “You can’t imagine. I didn’t want to go.”

“Justin did she—what did she do?” She put up a hand. “No, you don’t have to say. But I don’t understand.”’

“She made me her lover,” he said. “I was eleven.” She had heard most of it, she might as well hear the rest, and then he could walk out of her life again and good riddance to such a disgusting person. “When she held me, it was so tender. When I was on her lap, I felt safe. I hadn’t been touched or hugged in so long. It felt so good.”

Molly reached out and brushed his hair behind his ear. She caught a tear on her fingers. “Monster.”

He recoiled.

“No, not you Justin,” she said. “Her.”

“By the time I knew it was wrong, it’d gone too far. I didn’t want it. When she touched me there, I felt confused. I knew it was wrong.”

He pressed on his eye sockets, dimming unwanted images to blackness. “But she was all I had. What could I have done? I was a child. When I was older, I pushed her hands away. She locked me up. She offered me to friends. She said she’d offer me to male friends if I didn’t.”

“Why didn’t you tell anyone?”

“Who would believe me?” he said. “She was my adoptive mother. Men are supposed to be happy when older women want sex with them.”

“Justin what did you do after you left Utah?” she said. “After you left school? What was the plan?”

“To use what God gave me,” he said. “To please women.”

“Couldn’t you have just stayed?” she said. “She doesn’t own you anymore.”

“She’ll always own me,” he said. “You could never understand the power someone has when they groom a child. I feel like my very life is in her hands. I can’t resist her. When she finds me, I’m that terrified child again who doesn’t want to be abandoned.”

“I had a dog once,” he said. “I paid more attention to it than her. She did dirty things to that dog too.”

Molly made a retching sound.

“This is what you wanted!” he said. “That was my reality. I was an upgrade on a dog. And when I paid more attention to that dog than her she kicked it to death.” He gripped the sides of his head with his hands. “I didn’t want to know what she’d do to my friends. She’s capable of so much. I know it.”

“Justin, maybe you just convinced yourself of that because she had you when you were so vulnerable.”

“And suddenly you’re just little miss shrink? Miss reclusive virgin who suddenly understands sexual abuse?”

“It’s a common thing in manga,” she said.

“Screw your manga!” he said, feeling wild. Feeling blindly afraid. “You can’t understand.”

And then she was around him, surrounding him with bony arms that were tight like zip ties. The world stopped spinning and he breathed. Breathed in the terror of what happened and the terror of telling. The terror of looking in Molly’s eyes and seeing pity or disgust. So he pressed his face against her small shoulder. Go figure, the first time he felt shaken by a kiss and he ended up melting in her arms as a disgusting lump.

“You aren’t less of a man Justin,” she said.

“I’m not even a man Molly,” he said. “I’m a creature. Something half formed that was made to be used.” He wrapped his arms around her. “I’m not fit to kiss your boots.”

“I don’t have boots,” she said. He laughed. “And you can’t kiss them.”

Molly fought her gag reflex. Thinking of that woman. Thinking of a dog, and a little boy who watched it get kicked to death. She’d been so selfish. Justin had run for his life. Gosh, she’d been so selfish she could never atone for it. And beating herself up wasn’t something she did often. She deserved it now.

And what did she do with the fragile facts, and man, in her hands now? Why had she asked? Perhaps she had wanted something simple. Some reassurance that things with Justin would be simple and uncomplicated. She stroked his head.

“Can I get you some water?” she said. “Promise you won’t leave.”

“I don’t think I can even walk right now,” he said.

She walked to the kitchen, ran the water and sagged against the counter, willing her straight arms to prop her up so she didn’t fall. What should she say to that man out there? He was messed up. Should she tell him to leave? How could he ever be normal after that? She breathed in and let her mind go black. And then images came forward. Justin pulling Bosey away, violently punching him, saying he knew what he was doing. Justin had seen through Bosey’s lie, had known she was telling the truth about being abused. And Justin had been paranoid enough to follow her at the reunion and wanted to help with her stalker. He’d come up to a lonely friendless girl and made friends. Weren’t these all a result of that sensitivity? Ugly as it was, Justin’s past had made him the person who was her friend. Her friend that she was leaving to sit alone on the couch after a terribly vulnerable moment. She grabbed a glass and quickly filled it and brought it to the living room.

“Took you a while,” he said. “Thinking about throwing me out?”

“Thinking about asking you to move in,” she said.

His head jerked up.

“So that if that woman ever came near you again, I could kill her.”

He frowned. “Molly, I don’t need to be protected.”

“Could you hit her?” she said. “Like you hit Bosey?”

“That’s different.”

“Is it?” she said. “Would you have known what to do if that hadn’t happened to you?” She sat beside him and pushed the water towards his mouth. He took it and drank, looking at her over the rim.

“I don’t like what happened to you, but in the kitchen it occurred to me that you are who you are because of it. This sounds awful, but maybe you’d never have been my friend if it hadn’t.”

He dropped the mostly empty cup and sat back. Then sat forward, wanting to use his shirt to clean up the spill. He pulled it off, and Molly couldn’t keep back a gasp of shock. She didn’t ever see shirtless men.

He looked at her slowly, eyes widening, face pale, and she immediately slapped her hands over her mouth. “No Justin, not like that; you just surprised me.”

“Or are you just like her?” he said. “Just waiting, just watching, like I’m a meat bag.”

“No Justin.”

He reached for his zipper. “Is this what you want too?”

“No!” She reached for his hands and held them down over his zipper. When he growled she pulled back. “I’m sorry. Stop it.” She got off the couch and backed far away from him. “Is this what you want?”

He sighed, slumped back on the couch, and then pulled his shirt on. “I’m sorry Molly,” he said. “I don’t think I am ready for this.” He started to stand but she put out a hand.

“Don’t drive like this,” she said. “If you want to go I’ll take you. But why don’t you stay here with me a little longer?”

When he narrowed his eyes at her she thought quickly. “I still have a stalker you know. How can you leave me without even checking it out?”

He stopped and seemed to think about it.

“Justin, I know you don’t need me to protect you,” she said. “And the worst is over. You told me your deep dark secret. So what? You’re the same man. And now you have me to knock sense into you if she ever comes back.”

That seemed to sink in, and his face relaxed for the first time since he’d come in.

“You’re right,” he said. “That wasn’t so bad.” He looked like he was forcing the bad feelings down like a meal that kept trying to come up. “You’ll still let me help with the stalker?”

“You have to,” she said. “You promised after all.”

He laughed. “Need anything fixed around here?”

“Now that you mention it, I wouldn’t mind my DVD player working.”

He grinned, but his face still looked pale and drawn. “My pleasure.”

Chapter 6

“Y
ou’re so quiet tonight,” Nicole said, wrapping a piece of Molly’s hair around her curling iron barrel.

“I know.” Molly wondered at the difference between her frizzy natural curls and the long smooth waves Nicole was creating. “Something happened with Justin last night.”

“Ooh,” Nicole said.

“Ow!” Molly jerked away from the burning curling iron that Nicole held too close to her ear.

“Sorry,” Nicole said. “I better put this down for now. You okay?”

“Yeah it was only there for a second.”

“What do you mean something happened?”

“I can’t really say what,” Molly said. “He told me things. Things he hasn’t told anyone.”

Nicole sat across from Molly. “Why are you blushing?”

“Darn it. I wish no one could see that.”

“It’s nice,” Nicole said, touching her cheeks. “But stop dodging.”

“I can’t betray his trust,” Molly said. “If anything, I feel closer to him after it, though I should feel far away.”

Nicole’s eyebrows did a small wave and ended crunched up. “I … uh. Well.”

“We kissed.” Molly watched Nicole’s unchanging, dark eyes.

“What?” Nicole took a loud breath in and out. “What, how on—why?”

“We went on a date.”

“What?” Nicole said.

“Did I stutter?”

“Oh if you’re gonna be rude I’mma get the curling iron again.”

“I dare you.” Molly scowled then laughed. “Last night he asked me to ice cream. I don’t even know why I went. Probably feeling vulnerable because of the stalker.”

“Any messages from him today?”

“No,” she said. “Not that I could have been more disturbed by them than I was last night.”

Nicole flipped her chair around and straddled it, leaning her chin on the top of it to stare into Molly’s eyes. “So I’ve always wondered, what’s it like kissing Justin?”

Molly leaned back in her chair to be further away from Nicole’s eyes. Maybe she shouldn’t. “Would that be kissing and telling?”

“Psh,” Nicole said. “Not if it’s Justin. Come on, he’s always causing trouble for other people. You don’t have to think about him.”