“What the fuck are you talking about?”
“Google it,” Mason said harshly, as he continued to bob and weave down West Holly. “Stop thinking about yourself for a fucking second and get some education about what rape actually is. And for the record, most of the time it looks exactly like what happened between you and Amber. I don’t give a shit who she’s making out with in a bar or whether she’s engaged to Daniel or not. The fact is that she told you to stop and you had sex with her anyway. That’s the definition of rape. That’s what you’re guilty of, and the fact that you won’t own up to it is why I have to get the fuck away from you. I have a daughter, man. And if some fucker did to her what you did to Amber, I’d do a lot more than punch him in the face. I’d kill him.” He paused, breathing hard, and then spoke again. “You make me sick.”
Tears pricked the backs of my eyes as Mason said these last words, and I looked away, out the passenger side window, blinking quickly to get them to disappear. Outside of Amber, Mason had become my closest friend, and hearing him tear me apart like this now, knowing that I triggered such feelings of disgust in him, made me feel like I was cracking open. Loud thoughts ricocheted inside my head, my dad’s and Mason’s voices, each vying to be heard, each telling me conflicting things. I didn’t know who to believe.
As we approached the scene of the accident, my pulse was already racing, my heart pounding like a jackhammer. We both jumped out of the rig and raced around to the back to grab our gear. I went through the motions of my job, running a line, assessing airway, breathing, and circulation. Luckily, it was only a fender bender and no one was seriously injured; I was too distracted to have handled something like that.
Mason and I got through the rest of our shift, speaking only when we had to, doing our jobs, the fat elephant of what he’d said—you make me sick—still stuck between us. Maybe he was right. Maybe my father was just a womanizing asshole, and I’d been grasping at empty, meaningless straws by asking his advice. Maybe the desire to shift blame onto Amber was the only way I could keep it from clinging to me. Maybe the only way to get my life back was to admit what I did.
But then, a shock of terror pulsed through me as I imagined what would happen next. I imagined talking to the police, being handcuffed, put into an orange jumpsuit, and locked behind bars. I thought about losing my job, losing my reputation—losing everything I had managed to build for myself over the past several years. And I knew that no matter what I’d already lost, no matter that Mason would soon disappear from my life as Amber had, I wasn’t willing to sacrifice myself. I might have doubts, I might share in some of the guilt for what happened that night, but I wasn’t the only one.
Now, as I grabbed my bag from the rig after Mason had already gone home, I headed out the door into the parking lot. It was late, after midnight, and the air was chillier than it had been when I started my shift. I tucked my hands into my coat pockets, and began to make my way across the lot. I looked toward my truck, and suddenly, I stopped short, because Amber was waiting for me. She was standing next to my truck, her hands shoved in her coat pockets, too.
“We need to talk,” she said, and like a hopeful idiot, I nodded, wanting to believe that she had changed her mind and was there to make peace. I wanted to believe this as I walked around to the driver’s side door and climbed inside. I wanted to believe this as she joined me, slamming the passenger door. We’re going to work this out, I thought, still believing that in the end, after everything, our friendship could win out. I believed she still might love me, right up until the moment when she pulled out the gun.
Amber
It’s almost dawn when Tyler and I finally arrive at the cabin. The sky is a dusky mix of lavender and gray; a few stars still twinkle above us as we walk down a path surrounded by a dense forest of snow-dusted evergreens. The roar of the river fills my head—the water is only thirty feet away. When I was young, falling asleep to that sound was something I looked forward to every year. My mother called it nature’s lullaby. It does nothing to soothe me now.
After we get inside and light a single lantern, I point the gun at Tyler and tell him to sit on the lumpy, plaid-patterned couch. The air is musty and cold; mouse traps, some of which have already done their job, litter the floor around us. I try not to look at the motionless rodents; I try to pretend that I don’t smell death.
“So, we’re here,” Tyler says, as he complies with my request. “Now what?”
I take pleasure in hearing the tremble in his voice, but the truth is that I don’t know what I should do. Getting him to the cabin was as far ahead as I had planned. I want him to confess. I need to hear the words “I raped you” coming from his mouth. But I don’t know how to make that happen. I consider holding the gun to his head and forcing him to speak the truth, asking him to recite, in detail, the way he attacked me.
“Remember the first time you came here?” I ask instead, thinking back to the summer just before my freshman year. Even though Tyler and I spent the first nine months of our friendship at different schools, we had grown close during the many fall and winter evenings he spent at our dinner table, the weekends we watched horror movies together at his house because my mom wouldn’t allow me to view them at mine. His parents’ divorce was finalized in the spring, and my mom and dad decided to invite Liz and Tyler to the cabin with us for a weeklong vacation in June. We packed up several ice chests and plastic bins full of food, stuffing both family vehicles with sleeping bags, inner tubes for floating down the river, and board games we could play. Tyler and I rode with my parents, while Liz followed behind us. They’d both been camping, but neither of them had stayed this far into the woods before.
“Of course I remember,” he says now. “You took me hiking and made me learn how to fish.”
“And I taught you how to ride the river on an inner tube.”