I didn’t realize that Dawson was not on the bed with me anymore. Nor did I comprehend that I was touching myself or crying.
I sat up in one frantic motion. He sat on the edge of the bed and stared at me with an expression of revulsion.
“Are you okay?”
“What did I say?” I asked, but wasn’t sure I wanted to know. I was more humiliated than I may have been in my life.
“It doesn’t matter,” he tried.
“It does matter, Dawson. Please tell me what I said.”
He ran his fingers through his short hair, and I had to coax him again to tell me.
“You wanted me to spank you. You wanted me to stick my finger in your ass, and you said you needed me to fuck your *,” he told me the things that I would say to Drew, unable to look at me while he did.
“I warned you. I told you I was fucked up,” I knew that he was seconds away from storming out of my house and my life, which was fine by me. I should have known a normal relationship wasn’t plausible for me.
“Why, Ry?”
I rolled over and lay back down, facing away from him. “You’re off the hook, Dawson. You can go.”
I was surprised when I felt him snuggle up to me and wrap me in his arms. He kissed my hair.
“I don’t want to be off the hook. You invited me to spend the night.”
I smiled, not used to the affection, but relished being in his arms. He never tried to finish what I had started and we fell asleep in each other’s arms. I woke at the beginning of a nightmare, glad that I roused before I said anything else that would make him think I was crazy, not that I wasn’t. I slid out of bed and walked out to the kitchen and onto the deck.
I didn’t hear him walk behind me because I had left the door open. I am not sure what I was thinking at the time or even if I was thinking. As soon as he spoke, asking me if I was okay, I jumped, startled. I turned to look at him and could only see his black silhouette in the night. I covered my face with my arm as he stepped closer to me.
“Ry?” he quietly said, stopping in his tracks.
I moved my arm and breathed a sigh of relief when I realized where I was or who he was.
“I’m sorry, Dawson,” I spoke.
He held me in his arms, and I wanted to cry.
Nobody had ever held me. Nobody had ever cared. I didn’t know how to be with someone who cared.
“What the hell happened to you?” he asked, rubbing my back in a comforting fashion.
I couldn’t tell him anything. I couldn’t tell him how I was raised in the poorest parts of West Virginia by two parents that should have never had kids. I couldn’t tell him that my dad had sold me to a rich twisted sex pervert. I could never tell him anything about my past.
“Let’s go back to bed,” I said, pulling away from him, taking his hand to follow me.
He pulled me close to him and I lay in his arms. I felt soothed and calm nestled close to his chest. I had never laid in Drew’s arms like that. If he did spend the night in my bed, it was because he was planning on taking care of his sick needs again before morning. I had never stayed in his bed at all and only had sex in his bed a handful of times.
The dream that I had woken from earlier in the night returned. I was back in the trailer, and it was once again winter. My mom was working the nightshift at the truck stop. My dad was, of course, at the bar. I was fifteen and Justin was three. I told him to sit on the couch and not move while I went out to get wood. He decided that he was going to help and opened the wood burner door with his bare hand. I dropped the armful of wood and ran into the house toward his terrifying screams. The skin on his hand was dripping off onto the floor. I didn’t know what to do. We didn’t have a phone, and the only place I knew to go was about a half a mile down the road to my Grandma Joyce’s. I was afraid to go there too. She was sick, and my dad warned me to leave her alone and not bug her.
I picked him up and ran his little hand under cold water. He screamed to the top of his lungs. The only kind of salve that I could find was Vaseline that I had found beside my parent’s bed. I rubbed the greasy ointment on his hand and wrapped the burn with a torn white sheet. I didn’t know much, but I knew enough to know that he needed to go to the doctor.
I was sitting on the couch when both my parents came home together, drunk. I was rocking him back and forth as he slept in my arms sucking in short puffs of air from all the crying.
“I thought you had to work,” I scolded my mother. I was there taking care of her kid while she was out getting drunk.
“What happened to him?” she asked, ignoring my statement.
“He touched the wood burner,” I said.
“Stupid kid,” my dad said and grabbed the container of Vaseline from the stand. “We might need this,” he said, pulling my mom back toward their room, laughing.
“He needs to go to the doctor,” I yelled.
“I’m sure he’s fine. I’ll look at it tomorrow,” my mother said without a care one about her son hurting at all.