Bullet(64)

“Brad, what the hell kind of proof is that schnapps?” I finally asked.

“What? Why?”

I just confessed. I told him what I’d felt, what I’d seen, and I saw the look on his face as he slowly grew angrier and angrier. Brad asked, “What’d Ethan give you?”

“Nothing.”

“Bullshit.” He stood up. “You okay here by yourself?”

“What are you gonna do?”

“Find out what the f*ck he slipped you.”

“He didn’t…” But I stopped there, because Brad was right. Nothing felt real, like it should be. Something wasn’t right.

He didn’t wait for an answer, instead standing up. He was more pissed than I’d ever seen him. He opened my bedroom door and stormed down the hall to the other bedroom. All I could think was No! But I just followed him, the edges of my reality still black and fuzzy, like dark spider webs.

Brad didn’t knock. He just shoved the door open. That was a lovely sight. Ethan had her on all fours, and he was on his knees behind her, f*cking her doggy style. He still had his shirt on, and he was holding a bottle of something. He seemed even hazier than I was, hands clinging to the robe draped over my shoulders.

Ethan stopped but didn’t pull out. Kandy was pleading with him. “Fuck me. God, why won’t you just f*ck me?”

Ethan just looked at Brad. Brad asked, “What the f*ck did you give her, Ethan?” Ethan’s eyebrows were raised, but he was having a hard time finding an answer. Brad leaned over, and his voice was dangerously low. I could barely hear him over the music. “Goddammit, answer me, man, or I’ll beat it out of you.”

Kandy looked up then and acted like she was going to cry. But then she started laughing. “She’s tripping. Don’t you feel great, sweetie?”

I couldn’t focus on her, and she seemed like a dream.

Brad asked, “Acid?”

Ethan let out a breath but didn’t change position. “I guess.”

“Yeah. Now would you please either get out of here or help him f*ck me?”

Brad gritted his teeth and then asked, “What the f*ck is wrong with you, Ethan?” When Ethan didn’t answer, he said, “I should beat you anyway, just on general principle.”

Ethan took his hand off Kandy’s hips and held it and the one still holding the bottle out to his sides as if to tell Brad to go for it. I was pretty out of it, but I was starting to feel infuriated…full of anger not only because Ethan didn’t give a shit but also because he had the nerve to not stop screwing that girl in front of me. And that realization was all it took for me to lose it.

Before I could even stop it, my right hand was out of the robe and my finger was pointing at my boyfriend. “We are over, Ethan Richards.”

“Babe—”

“Go f*ck yourself.”

I turned around with what little dignity I could muster, pulling the robe back up and over my naked torso, and left the room. And the tears were falling again. Brad didn’t care about his party anymore. He just held me until the tears stopped, and I’d become sleepy. Then he laid my head on my pillow. “You gonna be okay tonight?”

I tried to smile. I really did. It was just so damned hard. “Yeah…”

He squinted his eyes. “Talk to me.”

I took a deep breath. “I feel so weird. This is scary.” And it was. I still felt like I wasn’t in my own body. What if I died? My parents would find out I’d been drinking…and that an entire crowd of people had seen my naked boobs. It was horrifying.

That was when Brad stretched out next to me and just held me in his arms until I fell asleep. And I didn’t think he’d stayed there all night, but he was there when I woke up the next morning.

I didn’t even want to see Ethan, let alone interact with him. I was wishing I’d had to work. I considered getting out of the house, but I’d eventually have to return, so I shut myself in my room and just wrote and did stuff on my computer—catching up on emails and that kind of thing. But sometime in the afternoon, he decided to knock on my door anyway. He caught me off guard because I hadn’t heard him up at all, hadn’t heard the stupid blonde girl with him. In fact, the apartment was eerily quiet.

I should have asked who was at my door, but instead I said, “Come in.” When I saw Ethan’s puppy dog face, I said, “Oh, not you. Get out.”

“Val, just hear me out.”

“No. You had your chance. Get the f*ck out.”

“Val…”

“Go.”

He turned around, his hand on the doorknob, but he didn’t open the door. He just stood there. And then he said, “I thought it was what you wanted.”

Oh…I just had to ask. “What? What was what I wanted?”

“You said it. You said you wanted to be with both of us last night.”

I took a deep breath. “What do you mean?”

“Kandy propositioned you…us…and you said yeah.”

I had? I’d wanted to have sex with Ethan and that girl? I couldn’t wrap my mind around it. I shook my head. “So…it was my idea?”

“No. But you agreed to it. Val…babe…I wouldn’t have done it if you’d said you didn’t want to.”

“Bullshit.”

“No. I mean it. I wouldn’t have.” He got brave and moved closer to the bed. “I just thought you wanted to have fun.”

I clenched my jaw and scrutinized him. “So then…why were you f*cking her after I left?”

“Christ, Val…I was f*cked up.”

“And what the hell did you give me?”

“I swear—I didn’t give you anything. Kandy gave me a hit, and I think she slipped some in your drink when you were kissing me.”

“A hit?”

“LSD.”

I considered it, and when he sat on the edge of the bed, I let him take me in his arms and hold me close. And he comforted me as the tears began to fall.

And thus began chapter three of our f*cked up relationship.

* * *

Spring is a time of renewal, and Ethan treated me better than he ever had before. He was loving, sweet, and attentive. Did Brad have something to do with that? I wasn’t sure, but I suspected, only because I caught my friend giving Ethan looks once in a while…looks not meant for my eyes.

But Ethan opened up more to me than he ever had before, and—in spite of my tiny twin bed—he started spending the night with me once in a while. One night after making love, he was holding me closely in spoon fashion, and he said, “I do love you, Val. It’s hard to admit, but there it is. I love you.”

He’d said it before, and maybe it hadn’t meant much to him because all the other times he’d said it, he’d been under the influence of something. This time he was as sober as could be. I rolled over and kissed him, just a soft, gentle kiss, but I wanted to communicate to him that those words meant a lot to me. I touched his cheek. “You know I love you too, right?”

He smiled. “Yeah.” He stroked my hair, but his eyes got a faraway look. “Everyone thinks love is so great, and I guess it is sometimes. But it hurts too. I mean…just look at my mom.”

The last time I’d seen his mother, she was happy and in love, so I had no idea what the f*ck Ethan was talking about. She was still with Jason, a man who appeared to love her back and only wanted the best for her. So I just said, “What about her?”

“My dad…he abused her for a long time, and she just took it. She laid down and took it. Over and over. Love isn’t a good thing, Val, no matter what the f*ckers tell you. It makes you vulnerable and weak.”

“It doesn’t have to be that way.”

“No, but it is. Just look at me. I’m so f*cked up, it’s not even funny. But I love you so much, Val, I’d do anything for you. Anything. I’d even take a bullet for you. And that’s f*cked up.”

I tried not to get judgmental on his ass, but his thinking was messed up. “It doesn’t have to be, Ethan. You still have your values and your own good sense. If I asked you to kill someone just because you loved me, would you?”

He just looked at me, and his eyes scared me. He would. And, yeah, that was f*cked up. So I quit talking. Instead, I rested my head against his chest, one of my favorite things in the world to do, and rubbed the smooth skin on his pec. “Val, you and me…we come from different worlds. I’d bet you never had to wonder if you were gonna get breakfast after not having dinner the night before or how the hell you were gonna hide the big bruise on your arm so your teachers wouldn’t see it. You didn’t have to dread the f*ck out of coming home one night ‘cause you got another D in class…and the very person who made sure you couldn’t study the week before was the reason you got the goddamned D in the first place.”