That week I hung around them every chance I got. Occasionally I got on Chloe’s nerves—but Anthony never seemed to mind. Chloe never stayed grumpy for long, either. I knew that was mostly because Anthony sneaked into her room every night.
On the last evening of their stay, though, Chloe didn’t feel good. She’d had a headache all day, and around eight P.M. she announced she was going to bed. “To sleep,” she said, with an emphasis that was only for Anthony. The message: No action tonight. I hid my smile behind my hand.
“No problem,” Anthony said easily. “Vivienne and I can have a movie marathon ’til dawn.”
Some cable channel was showing Titanic. Although I felt very grown-up, hanging out with a college boy until after midnight, mostly I was focused on the movie. In those days I had a serious crush on Leonardo DiCaprio.
Anthony kept talking to me, though. “Can’t believe you don’t have a boyfriend yet.”
“I kind of had one.” I figured Javier’s kiss at the party counted. “But not anymore.”
“How come a pretty girl like you isn’t out there breaking all the hearts?”
I was so flattered. Blushing, I said, “I don’t know. Talking to guys—it’s hard. I don’t know what to say. I don’t know what guys like.”
He laughed. “We’re not that complicated, trust me.”
It wasn’t that I had a crush on him; Anthony seemed to belong to Chloe as firmly as Ken belonged to Barbie. But nobody had ever told me I was pretty before, much less a college guy. It wasn’t even like I had on any makeup, and I wore just some old leggings and a giant T-shirt of my dad’s.
For a couple hours more, I felt beautiful. Grown-up. Ready for the world.
Then—just after midnight, in my own home, with my parents and sister asleep upstairs—Anthony raped me on the living room couch.
It happened just after Rose jumped out of the lifeboat back onto the ship. While I was still focused on the TV screen, Anthony shifted closer to me, his hands going to my waist. I was innocent enough to think he was trying to tickle me. As I laughed and tried to scoot away, Anthony pushed me down, until he was on top of me.
When he pushed up my shirt, I honestly believed it was an accident. I yelped and tried to tug it down—but Anthony put one hand over my mouth as he tugged the T-shirt up even higher, exposing my breasts completely. “Shhhh,” he said against my cheek. “You don’t want them to catch us, do you?”
Catch us. Like any of this was my idea. But he’d made me afraid. If Mom or Chloe walked in, they would think I wanted to be with Anthony. They’d see me partly naked with a boy, and that meant I’d done something wrong. No, I didn’t want them to catch us. So I didn’t say anything, even when Anthony took his hand away from my mouth and slid it into my leggings.
“You want to know how to get all the boys to like you?” he murmured as he tugged my leggings down. I’d never been naked in front of a boy before, not even close. “I’m gonna show you.”
He peeled my leggings off one leg; they dangled around my other ankle as Anthony pried my thighs apart. Only then did my stunned mind realize what was happening, and it seemed like it was too late to say anything. Why did I think that? How could I believe that it was ever too late to scream, or hit him, or just say no?
I don’t know. But I believed it.
So I lay there, paralyzed with fear and confusion, as he got between my knees. He gave me his best good-ol’-Southern-boy smile. “Good girl,” he said, and then he thrust into me.
It hurt. Not as badly as some of the girls at school had said it would, but still. My hands balled into fists at my side, hard enough that the next morning the indentations of my fingernails lingered as red marks on my palms. I started to cry. I thought when Anthony heard me he would stop. He didn’t.
At the time it seemed to last forever—Anthony on top of me, panting, heavy. He was a twenty-year-old guy; probably it didn’t take three minutes. But I felt like it was never, ever going to end. As I stared up at the living room ceiling, the fan dissolved behind a blur of tears. When the tears trickled down from the corners of my eyes, my vision would sharpen for a moment, then go liquid again.
Then Anthony started going slower, making these sounds that almost scared me—and he pulled out. I’d never seen an erect penis before, not even when he put it in me. When he came on my belly—the weird jerk and pulse of his cock, the thick white stuff spattering all over my skin—I jumped. It seemed like the grossest, most horrible thing anybody could ever do.
“There.” Anthony smiled. “See, when the guy comes on you, you can’t get pregnant. Bet you’re glad I did that, huh?”