pain while he slept in satisfaction, or turning the bathwater pink with blood, I refused to see it as rape.
If what Mark did to me was rape, then I’d lose all the validation I’d received from it. Straight guys could give blowjobs. I knew that from personal experience. I’d had sex , real life anal penetration with all the fixings.
All the pain would be for nothing if I’d just gone and gotten myself raped.
Now I was almost glad she’d been killed. How could someone go back to normal after that? I could visualize her, that vacant expression that had filled my face after the first time, eyes dead in the mirror while he snored obliviously. Regular sex had fucked me up royally; I could only imagine the kind of shenanigans she’d be up to if she’d survived.
“He did a number of things to her, Vincent. I’ll say this much, he deserved what he got.” Frank sounded like he was miles away. He’d clenched his fists.
“That’s what happened to your friend, huh? What he did to the little girl?”
He went visibly pale, his eyes haunted. “I had a bad feeling. It was too late.”
“I am so sorry.”
“She’s fine,” he said, a finality in his voice that meant we needed to stop talking about it. “She’s tougher than she looks. A lot like you.”
“That’s why we get along. Because you look tougher than you are.”
“Be good,” Frank warned, but it did get a slight smile out of him. “We should get going. It’ll be dark out now.”
I glanced down at the man’s body. He looked fake, like a prop in a house of horrors at the county fair. When the nightmares came that night, it would be of him alive. “I was really scared.”
Frank hugged me against him. “This is my fault. I never should’ve put you in this position.”
“No it isn’t. It’s not,” I said, and I thought about the pain on his face, the guilt he suffered for even lying about ending my life. “Frank, please don’t…you’re not responsible for Charlie. Obviously his parents were really fucked up, probably first cousins, or even brother and sis—”
“Shh.” He gently put his hand against my mouth. “Put on your shoes.”
As I left that room for what would be the last time, Frank behind me compulsively not touching anything, the snow was coming down harder than it had been the night I arrived. It was the kind of night I would sit in front of the warm glow of the TV, pretending it was a fireplace, with infomercials for grills instead of roasted marshmallows.
But tonight I’d get my fire, sitting safely in a BMW that was worth more than my trailer park, but less than my life, with heated seats that smelled even newer as they warmed up, wearing Frank’s leather jacket and a pastel pink shirt.
The room door opened and Frank came out, backlit by a flaming mattress, and he handed me my room key one final time as he got in the car, like it was a souvenir to remind me of the weeks of my life I would never forget. “Let’s go home,” he said.
I smiled and closed my eyes. It had been so long since home had any semblance of a meaning to me that the power of what he’d said was enough to make me tremble; the unexpected familiarity between us, how protective he was of me and how safe I felt with him.
Snow was blowing ferociously outside his cozy car, and visibility was next to nothing, but I felt like I’d never seen so clearly. It didn’t matter where he brought me. I would’ve followed him anywhere. He was my home.
It took a long time to get back to Frank’s hotel. I wasn’t even sure if we were in Chicago anymore. If we were, it was the kind of neighborhood the locals would warn you about.
Frank led me in by the hand, switching on the lights and taking my coat like a gentleman.Compared to this place, Charlie had been staying at the Ritz. Every object in the room had something wrong with it; missing knobs on the dresser, a lamp that looked like it
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