I think these things, but I know I can’t do them, not in my current state. I’d bleed out before I got over the hill and back on the highway. “I can’t do it . . . on my own,” I tell her. “Can you find the hemostatic gauze? I need you . . . to wrap the shit . . . out of my shoulder.”
She nods her head again, picks up the kit, carrying it with her to come kneel next to me. We don’t speak, though I can’t help crying out a few times as she tears my shirtsleeve away and shifts me around in order to tend to the wound. When she’s finished, she leans back to sit on her heels, puts her face in her hands, and begins to cry.
“Why did you do it, Tyler?” she asks, and there is so much raw, naked sorrow in her voice, it reaches inside me and claws at my heart. She drops her hands and stares at me. “You were my best friend. You’re the one person I always thought I could count on, someone who would always believe in me, no matter what. And you just tore me up. I didn’t know what to do. What to say. I needed my best friend and I couldn’t talk to him because he was the one who hurt me.” She pauses to wipe her eyes with a stray corner of gauze. “You destroyed me, Tyler. Everything I believed about myself, about my life, disappeared that night. I don’t know who I am anymore. I don’t know who I am without you there to help me figure it out.”
I open my mouth, about to speak, but she shakes her head. “No, don’t,” she says. “There’s nothing you can say. Nothing to fix us. But you can admit what you did. You can never do this to anyone else again. Please, Tyler. Tell the truth.”
I stare at her, pressing my lips together as she says the same words Mason had said to me just a couple of months before. And I can’t help but think that if Amber had been pushed this far—desperate enough to shoot me—what I did to her in that bed was worse. I know all too well that it’s the wounds no one can see that cause the bloodiest, messiest pain—secret injuries that, no matter the years that pass, never quite heal. I think about the pills I’d taken to try to help manage my guilt, and then, the way I allowed myself to be comforted by the same logic I’d watched my father use to justify his poor treatment of women over the years—the treatment I’d always abhorred. I suddenly feel sick, not just because I’ve been shot, but because I realize that I’d let his criticism of me the afternoon of the party drive my behavior that night. I’d behaved like him long before that even, if I am really being honest with myself. I used Whitney for sex for months, maybe even coerced her that first time on my couch, not giving a second thought to her youth or vulnerability. I’d wanted Amber so much that I didn’t listen when she told me to stop. All I heard in that moment was my father’s voice in my head, telling me a girl like her would never want someone like me, and wanting to prove him wrong. I could rationalize it however I wanted, but if, in fact, Mason was right and the definition of rape is performing a sexual act without the other person’s consent, then I was a rapist. Amber had given consent for everything up until that moment when I lay on top of her on the bed; she’d even instigated it. But she’d also told me to wait . . . to stop. I held her down and had sex with her anyway. And all I’d done since then was try to escape my guilt. All I’d wanted was to blame her so I didn’t have to take it upon myself.
So instead of speaking, I simply close my eyes and shake my head, and begin to cry, too. I cry in a way I haven’t for years. I cry because I know I am guilty, and the only thing I can do to right this wrong is turn myself in. I cry because I know that, even if I do this, I’ve still lost Amber forever. I’ll lose my job, too. I might even go to jail. I’ll be branded a rapist for the rest of my life, and though I still might not be able to reconcile that word with the man I thought I was, as Mason said to me the morning after he drove Amber home, we’d seen it on the job a hundred times—normal, everyday people are capable of doing horrendous things. Drunk drivers who kill another person are still murderers, even if that hadn’t been their intent when they got behind the wheel. In that case, and now, in mine, intent doesn’t matter. What matters is the result.
“I’m sorry,” I say, my entire body shaking from my tears and the pain that throbs in my shoulder. “I’m so, so sorry. I’ll tell the truth, I promise. I’ll tell them what I did. I wish I could take it back. All I’ve ever wanted is for you to be happy and I fucked it all up.”
“Yeah,” she says, darkly. “You did.” She wipes her eyes as she stands up, and then helps me do the same. She looks up at me with confusion and hurt and fear littered across her face. “Say it to me now,” she says, and I know exactly what she means. She wants me to prove to her that I’ll follow through on my promise, that I’ll actually go to the authorities and admit what I did.
And even though every cell in my brain is screaming at me to clamp my mouth shut, even though I still long to hide behind all my manufactured justifications—I can’t live another minute carrying this soul-choking suffering around. The pain in my shoulder is nothing compared to the one in my heart as I look at Amber and finally speak the truth.
“I raped you,” I whisper, feeling my insides begin to crumble, and I know that everything in my life is about to collapse, that the world I’ve known is as good as gone.
Amber
I couldn’t believe that I’d actually pulled the trigger. That moment, the entire night, had taken on a dreamlike quality, viewed through blurry eyes and filled with strange and shadowy scenes. When I’d left Vanessa’s office that day back in September, trying to think of a way to make Tyler pay other than reporting him to the police and hoping for the best, I never believed that this was where I’d end up. I’d thought that the threat of the weapon would be enough to get him to confess; I never imagined that I’d have to shoot him.
But even now, after watching him bleed and cry, after hearing the words I’d hoped would help ease my pain, nothing had changed. My body still felt his assault and my mind was still an exhausted mess of confusion, anger, and grief. I looked at him and saw not only my attacker, but the boy who’d held my hand while I lay in a hospital bed, fighting for my life. I saw the awkward teenager who’d grown into a strong and capable man; I saw someone for whom I felt as much love as I did hate. That, I realized, was the crux of my despair; this connection between rapist and friend, two labels that described Tyler—two words that would forever ring discordant in my ears.