“Dash—”
“Just let me get through it.” She doesn’t speak again, and I can’t look at her. I look down at the shingles. “I guess I needed that, to feel like someone cared. I had a hard time going to sleep sometimes. She would…she’d do different things than other girls did. She taught me all sorts of different things, one of them drinking to sleep.”
Amelia’s eyes widen. I quickly look back down.
“She gave me vodka. Said it’s normal if you can’t sleep, just drink it and then if she could, she would come over. Of course, she never could. But it felt like she gave a fuck. When I was with her, I would always drink. She would have me walk over and we’d get in her car and we’d go driving in the country. I was remembering…” I take a deep breath. Let it out. “That’s why I had you pull over,” I say simply.
“Anyway, it went bad pretty fucking fast. I wasn’t fucking anyone from school. I didn’t really want Amanda, but I wanted her to want me…I think.” I scrub a hand back through my hair. “The worst thing is how much I wanted you. You were amazing that whole fucking year. I thought about you all the time, and that would be the only time I’d really feel the depth of how bad I should feel about what we were doing. Amanda had this long list of the women your dad had been with—”
Ammy’s jaw drops, and I hold a hand up. “He hadn’t. I found out later that he hadn’t. Am—I told your dad what happened. I told him in 2014. I flew in from my job and sat him down and told him. I couldn’t keep it to myself. I was going crazy.”
“Fuck.”
“So…I don’t know. It ended when she started getting weird and…jealous. She would see me taking you and Lex to school and… I shouldn’t— She was jealous. Of you, of other girls she thought—” I shake my head and grit my teeth so I don’t break down, this time out of anger. “She started blackmailing me. If I didn’t do what she wanted, she would say that I’d come onto her. If I didn’t…perform the way she wanted, she would say I raped her.”
Ammy starts toward me. I move so fast, I almost fall off the damn roof.
I hold out my hand, because I don’t want her to touch me. I just need to finish. “I didn’t. Rape her.”
“Jesus, Dash, I know that.”
“It was all a game to her, and when it ended, even when it did, she didn’t want to let me go. She got enjoyment out of fucking with me. She would taunt me, text me. She would use your dad and get me scared of that. I found out she had…moved on, with someone new. She would still send me pictures…of herself. And if I didn’t text back soon enough, if I wasn’t interested enough to satisfy her, even though she had moved on, she would make threats.”
“Like what?”
“Like I would get arrested.”
I stop to breathe, and Ammy shuts her eyes. I see a tear roll down her cheek.
“By the time that school year ended, yeah…I wished that I was dead. The weirdest thing is, I felt like I had been the one that was raped.” The word sticks in my throat. I turn away so I can keep on talking. Now that I’ve started, I can’t stop.
“I had been with her. I had been a game to her. I had been waiting for you. I had this fantasy that you would come get in my bed and—yeah, no fucking fantasies for me. I know, it’s all fucked up but…by that summer, I was trying to forget her—and you. I went out as often as I could and got fucked up. Used whatever I could get my hands on, drank as much as I could.” I let out a long breath. “Then I would come home and there were you and Lexie, watching movies. Like, there’s nothing simpler than that. I would come upstairs and see you. Just pretend that I was normal. You would sit there, right beside me, and I’d want to touch you. I wanted to tell you about it, you specifically.” I laugh. “All the people, and I wanted to tell you.”
“I wish you would have,” she says from behind me. “It was fucked up, but you were a victim. Even though I hate this, I can still see that.”
“I found a lawyer once, when she was texting all the time, and I was sick all day from drinking all the time. I paid to meet with her—I couldn’t face a man, so I went to a female attorney—and she said…” I laugh. “She said don’t worry, no one gets arrested on those charges. You look like a nice boy, how old is she? For the sake of secrecy, I told her I was twenty and ‘she’ had just turned sixteen, and she said, ‘Well that’s not a problem.’ That’s how I knew that I had to go. Just move away.”
“Jesus.”
“So I did. I didn’t want to leave. I would have gone to art school in Savannah, I had people there I knew, your dad’s connections, like I fucking deserved that… But I went to Providence to get away from her. And then she found me there. She came and harassed me. So yeah, I knew I couldn’t write to you or call that first year, my freshman year. There was no way.”
I turn around and find tears streaming down her face.
“There was no way I could have any contact with you, but I didn’t stick to that too well.”
Amelia wraps her arms around me, and I shut my eyes. It feels wrong to let her touch me…but I can’t move away. I never can.
“Dash…” She presses herself against me, and I wrap an arm around her as I blink up at a bird, a raven flying over us.
“Do you hate me?” I ask hoarsely.
“No. Of course I don’t.” I can feel her body shaking.
“What?” I whisper.
“Well, I want to murder Manda. I want this…to not be true.” She starts to cry, and I feel like the worst scum. I let go of her, but Ammy grabs me tighter. “Don’t.” The word is muffled by her mouth against my shirt. “Dash, do you love me?”
She looks up at me with wide, wet eyes.
“Of course. I love you, Am. I love you more than anything.” I press my lips together, shut my eyes so I don’t have to see the hurt on her face.
“Manda walked over to my house that morning. The one where I left you after…the night at the lake. She was waiting here for me. She’d heard that I went to that party. She knew you were out. And she suspected. She had known the whole time, I think. When I thought about it…after, I think that she knew. And that…”
“Say it,” she whispers.
“Maybe that was why.”
“That’s why she went for you specifically.” The words are rushed out, like they burn her tongue. “I know it is,” she sobs, “and that’s what I hate most! Dash, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I can’t stand to think this! That this even happened!”
“It’s okay…” I pull her tighter up against me.
“No it’s not.” Ammy’s cheek pushes against my chest. “She ruined your life…and mine, too, sort of.”
I let out a long sigh. “I’m sorry I never told you, Ammy. You deserved the truth.”