I’d always wanted to go to the restroom with my girlfriends and fix my lip gloss.
And here I was, doing it!
Wasn’t that great?
“I love Eddie. He’s my favorite of Hector’s siblings,” I informed Jet magnanimously, turning to a mirror and digging my lip gloss out of my pocket (Indy had taught me how to go purse-less at a rock gig, lip gloss, ID, money and credit card in front pocket, cell phone in back).
“I’ll let him know.” Jet smiled at me.
“You have a beautiful smile,” I told her, “You’re really pretty but when you smile, I swear to God, you’re so beautiful, you make my heart squeeze.”
I saw Jet blink like this surprised her (and how bizarre was that, she had to know she had a beautiful smile, if she didn’t she was blind) but I was too happy to be putting on lip gloss in the restroom with my girlfriends to take too much notice.
“Eddie likes you too,” Ava told me and I saw through the mirror her eyes were on Jet.
“Aces!” I cried, excited that Eddie liked me, heck, excited that anyone would like me.
Daisy giggled her Christmas bells giggle.
Jet got closer to me. “He’s a little worried about you though.”
I finished with my lip gloss and looked at her as I shoved it back in my pocket (this was hard, my skirt was tight).
“Worried?”
“Yeah,” she replied and I realized with some surprise that she was being serious.
“Why on earth is he worried?” I asked, forgetting, for one shining moment, that my life was one devastating trauma after the other.
“He doesn’t know, can’t put his finger on it,” Jet explained. “He talked to me about it and he wanted us to make sure you’re okay.”
Daisy and Ava got closer and I looked at them. They all looked serious now and my happy buzz slipped a notch.
“You know, sugar, I been through what you been through,” Daisy told me.
My confused eyes moved to her.
“You have?”
She got closer. “Was workin’ at Smithie’s, it’s a strip joint. Marcus part-owned it back then. I didn’t know him but I saw him come in every once in awhile. After a show, one of the customers raped me behind Smithie’s. It wasn’t as bad as what you went through but it was bad.”
At this announcement, I felt my face pale as my happy buzz vaporized.
Daisy went on, “Smithie and Marcus found out and they flipped. Smithie doubled up on bouncers and made it policy that all the girls were escorted to their cars after we closed. And Marcus, well… that’s when Marcus and me got together, kind of. It wasn’t like he asked me out but, every day after it happened he sent me bouquets of daisies. Every day. For weeks. Until my house was so filled with pretty flowers that it was hard to keep my mind on ugly thoughts.”
I stared at her, my heart hurting for her then I whispered, “I knew I liked Marcus.”
She smiled at me, reached out, caught my hand and held it tight.
“When he decided the time was right, he came at me. It was tough on me and I made it tough on him but he never gave up, he kept comin’ until I gave in. And I’m glad he did.”
“You have to know,” Ava put in before I could process what Daisy said. “That what it is with these guys is different than what it is with other guys. It’s different than what it is with the kind of guy who would hurt you, either what that man did to you or how other men can tear you down. They come on strong because they are strong not because they’re jerks or anything.”
I didn’t know what to say, so I said, “Okay.”
“Hector’s a good guy,” Jet told me and I looked at her.
It hit my drunken brain what they were saying and I felt my shields go up automatically.
“I know,” I replied.
“You have to let him in.” Daisy squeezed my hand.
Oh no.
Just.
No.
They didn’t get it. They probably couldn’t. They weren’t me.
There were two sides to this coin. The one side was me and the fact that Hector was likely too good for me. The other side was life as I knew it, that I couldn’t trust anyone and that nothing worked out for me, it couldn’t, I was who I was and I deserved whatever Hector had in store for me, using me then leaving me behind.
Maybe a girl who’d had friends, whose mother hadn’t been murdered while protecting her, whose father hadn’t kept her imprisoned in a beautiful mansion her whole life, a girl who hadn’t been brutally raped, could trust, could understand.
But that girl wasn’t me.
I couldn’t tell them any of that.
I wanted to.
But I couldn’t.
Because they wouldn’t get it.
“We’re okay,” Pretend Sadie promised on a smile.
They all stared at me.
“No, really,” I said.
“You’re holdin’ somethin’ back,” Daisy accused.