“Stop it.” Even drunk, he was so fucking strong. She heard and felt the fabric shred as he pulled the skirt up, sudden. “Dennis, stop, STOP IT!”
For a moment he didn’t, and then he did. It was like a breath of reason, moving through a tomb. He just let her go. She pushed him away and he let her. And then he sauntered back to the coffee table, picked up his glass, and poured more vodka into it. As if nothing had happened. No one said anything for a moment, which made him feel great. She was scared; he had succeeded in that at least. It wasn’t nothing.
“I know what you did,” he finally said. “Kyle told me. That you guys were up there, in my dad’s bedroom.” Alison was as still as she could be. “And then he left. He left you up there. And then things went missing. Didn’t they. Alison.”
She didn’t answer.
“And the cops never thought of talking to you, you were long gone, everybody thought it was somebody on the catering staff. Or me! That was what my father thought. Felicia certainly thought so. But no. It was my dear friend Alison Moore. Stole jewelry worth, do you know what that stuff was worth?”
She still couldn’t speak, or look at him. Her brain was frozen with the truth of all of it.
“When Kyle told me you were up there, not having sex yet again, I thought, oh what the fuck, you know what I thought. And did you ever stop to think what happened, what happened to me? My father was furious. Whatever happened, there was no question it was my fault.” The fullness of his betrayal came back again. “I lost everything. So under the circumstances, a little friendliness on your part might not have been amiss.”
His anger frightened her into the barest attempt at an argument. “Dennis. You need to stop drinking and and and—”
“Don’t tell me what I need to do,” he warned her. The alcohol had leant a righteousness to his disgust. Laying his hands on her seemed like nothing compared to what she’d perpetrated. “I’ll tell you what you need to do, is you need to write me a check. Five thousand—who am I kidding—ten, ten thousand dollars. You have it, you can’t tell me you don’t have it.” She didn’t answer. “I’m fucking broke. But we’ll just, ten thousand and we’ll call it even.”
When he turned his gaze back to Alison, she seemed like a strange, poisonous flower. Her back against the wall, wearing that ridiculous pink gown. She was scared as shit. That wasn’t nothing.
“You don’t have a checkbook?”
“It’s in the desk.” She tipped her head. He glanced around the apartment, which was spare to the point of absurdity, truth be told. But yes, there in the corner, a tiny Ikea desk, something you might find in a dorm room.
“Go get it,” he told her.
“You step aside,” she answered.
“Oh, relax. I’m not going to rape you, Alison, although some people surely would think you deserve it.” He downed the last of the vodka, barely tasting it now. The drive toward oblivion was familiar, his old friend. But he did as he was told, and took a step back toward the couch. After a moment she eased herself out of the corner and walked across the room with as much dignity as she could muster in that pink dress.
“You make yourself look like that, and then you’re surprised that men want to fuck you?” he asked.
That one she had no answer for.
part three
twenty