I kept my eyes closed, feeling his body pressed against mine, the stiffness of his erection straining inside his jeans. And then, out of nowhere, as suddenly as on the night we’d gone to prom, a bolt of revulsion pulsed through me. This was Tyler, my best friend. And I was engaged. This was wrong. So, so wrong. I couldn’t do this to Daniel. I couldn’t cheat on him. I needed it to stop.
“Don’t,” I said, finally opening my eyes. He answered by rolling over on top of me. “Tyler, wait!” I felt a spark of panic ignite inside my chest. I put my hands on his shoulders and tried to push him off of me, but my arms were weakened by how much I’d had to drink. He kissed me again, forcefully this time, slipping his tongue inside my mouth and rolling it around like a fat slug, the weight of him crushing me, making me feel like I couldn’t breathe.
“I’ve wanted you for so long,” he said, his own words coming out in a drunk jumble.
“Stop, Tyler! Please!” I struggled against him, but couldn’t get him off of me. With one hand, he reached down and unbuttoned his jeans.
“I don’t want to do this!” I said, turning my head to one side as tears began to roll down my cheeks. I wanted to scream, but my mind and voice couldn’t seem to make the proper connection. My stomach churned, and alcohol-soaked acid rose up and burned the back of my throat. I gagged as I swallowed it back down.
Intent on pulling his jeans off, Tyler didn’t seem to hear me. The heft of his well-muscled frame was enough to keep me held down while he pushed my skirt higher and yanked my panties down to my knees. “I love you so much,” he murmured, running his hands roughly up the curves of my hips to my waist, and then to my breasts, where with one hand he gripped me and tried to hold me still. “You feel so good.”
I froze then, biting my bottom lip as I realized that fighting was useless. I couldn’t move; my head felt like it was stuffed full of cotton. He outweighed me by more than a hundred pounds. His eyes were closed, and as he shifted his body against mine, I could feel the wiry hairs on his legs rubbing like sharp steel wool against my skin. He tilted and shifted his pelvis, trying to slip inside me without the aid of his hands. When he finally managed it, it was one fast, violent jab, with what felt like a hot, hard sword shoved into the core of me, slicing and scorching my tender flesh. He plunged into me again and again while I wept, my fingernails pressed deeply enough into my palms that they began to bleed. I tried to concentrate on that pain instead of the one between my legs. I tried to pretend it wasn’t happening at all. I lay motionless, my eyes squeezed shut, waiting for it to be over. For him to be done. He grunted and moaned as he stabbed himself inside me, not sounding like himself. This was some other man, some animal, not the boy I’d known and loved. He was a stranger violating my body, a monster taking what he wanted and not caring about the carnage left in his wake.
This was me, having led him on to the point where he thought that it was okay to keep going, even after I told him to stop.
This was me, opening my eyes and staring at the ceiling, my soul floating up above my body, trying to deny that I was being raped by my best friend.
Tyler
I know where Amber is taking me as soon as she instructs me to take the Highway 2 exit off of I-5 south in Everett. The highway runs through the smaller towns of Monroe, Sultan, and Gold Bar, past the famous Zeke’s Drive-in, where back when we were in high school, our families would sometimes stop for burgers and thick, homemade ice-cream shakes on the way to the Bryants’ cabin. Before her stay in the hospital, when she was still restricting what she ate, Amber refused to touch the meal her parents would order for her, but after her release, she would at least pick apart the burger she’d ordered, removing the bun, eating the lettuce and tomato, along with most of the cheese-covered, charbroiled meat itself. The first time she reached over, grabbed my chocolate and peanut butter shake from me, and took a long pull on the straw, I remember thinking that therapy was finally working for her. That she might actually end up staying well.
Looking at her gaunt body now, in the cab of my truck as we drive along the highway in the dark, I know whatever progress she had made with her health over the last nine years had been erased by what happened on the Fourth of July. I had made her sick again. There was no one else to blame.
“So . . . we’re going to the cabin,” I say, as I reduce my speed to thirty, per the sign on the side of the road, even though I’m tempted to slam my foot down on the gas pedal and maybe draw the attention of a cop and get pulled over. But I don’t, because I’m afraid of what Amber might do. Her small hands still cradle the gun, its muzzle aimed at me.
“You guessed it,” she says, still staring straight ahead, out the windshield. “Congratulations. Your prize is to keep driving and shut the fuck up.”
“Amber . . .” I say, desperately searching for the right words to get through to her. To make her stop whatever crazy plan she might have concocted.
“Do me a favor,” she says. “Stop saying my name. Every time you do, I want to vomit. I want to shove this gun down your throat and pull the trigger.” Her chest heaves. “Which might just give you some tiny idea of how it felt. What you did to me.”
“I thought you wanted it, too,” I said, quietly, and she laughed.
“I wanted it, huh?” she says, scornfully. “Did you think that when I told you to wait? To fucking stop? When I said I didn’t want to do it?”
I’m quiet for a moment, soaking in her questions, trying to remember everything she said to me that night and when she said it. But what I remember most is the way her lips brushed against my cheek when I came up next to her on the patio. The way we were dancing, the way she kissed me and then took my hand and led me into the house, up into a bedroom, saying she wanted to be alone with me. I remember her pushing me onto the bed. I remember feeling the heat between her legs, the sweet taste of her mouth. I remember the wanting, the way her body moved against mine, everything between us feeling so good and powerful and right. I remember thinking about my father’s words earlier that afternoon in my apartment, thinking that once Amber and I were together, he would finally know how wrong he was about me.
But that was before I woke up early the next morning, head pounding and alone in that same room, remembering how I’d pushed up Amber’s skirt and yanked down her panties—I remembered being inside her—then struggled to recall exactly what had happened next. My stomach roiled and panic fluttered in my chest, as I realized that how much I’d had to drink had caused me to pass out. I had no idea where Amber had gone or when she had left. My jeans were down around my ankles, my boxers were twisted at my knees. My mouth felt as though it had been lined in thick, wet fur.
“I was so drunk,” I say now, knowing it’s the worst kind of excuse, but it’s the only one I can offer.