“Okay, girls,” I said, eager to change the subject. “I’m ready for a drink.”
In my head, I was ready for more than one. I was ready to get good and drunk for the first time. It was something else Teddy thought was wrong, and the few times I’d had a beer at a party, he’d disapproved. I once tried to talk him out of his stance, pointing out that people were constantly downing wine in the Bible.
“But it also says to obey the law and be filled with the Spirit,” he said, then explained to me that he’d gotten drunk once with friends and didn’t like the way it had made him feel. “I was filled with spirits and not the Spirit.”
I wasn’t sure what he meant exactly, and why you couldn’t be filled with both. But I admired him for it. I still did admire him, but I decided that Teddy was more than three hours away, and my college experience didn’t have to mirror his.
So I stood up, went back to our room, and made myself a cocktail from Eliza’s makeshift minibar. She was out of mixers, so I poured Smirnoff into a plastic cup, then added a scoop of Crystal Light. Not even bothering with ice from the machine at the end of the hall, I began to chug. Almost instantly, I caught a strong buzz, feeling a rush of happiness and great affection for my friends and all things Vanderbilt. I then borrowed a short, tight halter dress from Eliza, and all the girls agreed that I looked hot. Their compliments about my figure, hair, and face were sincere, wistful, and frequent. I was also aware of all the male attention that greeted us everywhere we went, and I decided that being drunk at a party was way more fun than whining to Teddy on the phone from under the covers of the top bunk. Maybe my friends were right about long-distance relationships, I remember thinking, as I flirted and danced and continuously drank, haphazardly mixing beer and liquor. At the very least, maybe Teddy and I needed to start seeing other people.
At some point, I got into a long, flirty conversation with one of Ashley’s friends from home. His name was Zach Rutherford, and he had a mop of blond hair and the cutest dimples. He was several inches shorter than I was and on the scrawny side—not my type even if I didn’t have a boyfriend—so I didn’t feel guilty talking to him, then dancing with him. When he started to get really friendly, though, I told him that I was going to head back to my dorm.
“I’ll walk you home?” he offered.
“I have a boyfriend,” I blurted out.
“Duly noted,” Zach said, laughing. “I’m not trying to hit on you, Nina—I’m just offering to walk you back.”
I hesitated, then did a sidebar with Ashley, who reassured me that Zach was a good guy, adding that he was a nationally ranked golfer and could have gone to any school in the country. “Everyone in Atlanta wanted to date him,” she said, her implication clear, even before she winked and added, “You never know!”
I shook my head and said, “He’s just walking me back.”
By then though, I’d felt my first stab of guilty attraction and intrigue over Zach. But I really did need to get back, as by then I was wasted, and I told myself I really could use a male chaperone across campus.
So off we went. Only before we got to my dorm, Zach asked if we could do a quick detour to his. He needed to get something, he said. I agreed, because I was drunkenly enjoying the walk and his company (though at that point, I would have enjoyed just about anything). When we got to his dorm, I started to wait in the lobby lounge area, but he suggested I come to his room. I went along with it. A few minutes later, we were cozied up on his futon, sharing a beer and listening to R.E.M. croon “Nightswimming.” When he tried to kiss me, I went along with that, too, pushing Teddy as far from my mind as I possibly could.
That’s pretty much the last thing I vividly remember from the night, until I woke up in a strange bed, naked, next to a naked boy. At first, I couldn’t even place that it was Zach—but then it all came back to me in a rush of horror.
“Where are we?” I said, staring up at the bottom rails of a bunk bed.
“In my room,” he mumbled.
“What happened? Did we…?” I asked, knowing we had because it hurt. A lot. In the faint fluorescent light from his closet, I could make out the blood, both on his sheets and streaked down the insides of my thighs.
“Yeah,” he mumbled, still either out of it or half asleep.
“Oh my God,” I said. “No. Nooo!”
“You wanted to,” he said, just as a flash of it came back to me. The moment he entered me. The pain. My balled fists and tears. My telling him—shouting at him—no, stop, no. It was like a bad dream, but it was real. It had happened.
The room spinning, I managed to sit up, frantically searching for my clothes, finding Eliza’s white dress, twisted up in his sheets, along with my underwear.
“You wanted to,” he said again, his eyes only half open, his voice still slurring, as I looked around in the dark for my shoes. I couldn’t find them, so I headed out the door, barefoot, as Zach remained motionless in his bed.
I ran back to my dorm, but I didn’t cry until I got to my room and discovered with relief that Eliza was still out. I checked her dress for blood, relieved that there was none. I hung it up, then stripped out of my clothes, wrapped up in a towel, put on my flip-flops, and walked to the communal bathroom. I took the hottest and longest shower of my life, sobbing the whole time, then returned to my room, where I finally forced myself to play back the four messages on the answering machine.
They were all from Teddy, as I knew they would be, his voice getting increasingly worried and agitated, asking me to call him no matter how late I got back. Ending every message with “I love you.”
I wanted to hear his voice more than anything in the world, but it was four in the morning, and I told myself he would be asleep and had an early class. I shouldn’t wake him up. But deep down, I knew the real reason was that I couldn’t bring myself to tell him what had happened any more than I could bring myself to lie to him. Instead I called Julie, waking her up in her Wake Forest dorm room, telling her everything.
Almost immediately, Julie used the word rape.
“It wasn’t rape,” I whispered, huddled under my covers. “I was kissing him….”
“It was rape,” Julie insisted, ahead of her time, or at least ahead of my 1995 views of what constituted date rape. “You need to go to the campus police. Or better yet, the Nashville police.”
I told her that was crazy. Besides, I’d already washed away all the evidence. “Nobody would believe me.”
“Yes. They will,” she said. “You were a virgin.”
I started to cry again. “I can’t go to the police,” I sobbed.
“Why not?”
Because, I told her, at the very least, I shared the blame. It was my mistake, too. My fault for leading him on. My cross to bear.
I also told her that the only fair punishment was for me to lose Teddy. I would break up with him in the morning—or after his classes and practice. I had to break up with him. It was kinder than telling him what had actually happened.
“But you’ll be punishing him, too,” she said. “Don’t do that, Nina. You have to tell him. You have to talk to him. He’ll agree with me—that you need to go to the police.”
“No. I can’t do that to him, Julie. It would ruin him. My drinking…the kissing…everything. He deserves better than me.”
“But he loves you. He wants you.”
“Not if he knew this,” I said.
“God teaches forgiveness,” she said, grasping at straws, knowing the way Teddy thought—and that I knew that was the way Teddy thought.
“No,” I cried. “Promise me, Julie. You won’t tell him, either. You won’t tell anyone. Ever.”