Filthy English (36 page)

Panic drove me.

Any minute he could come back in here and do it again.

My hand shook as I pushed 911 but froze when the nasally voice of the operator came on.

“You’ve reached 911. Do you have an emergency?”

Shame. Guilt. Remorse.
Truth
.

Had I asked for it?

Was this my fault?

I panted, the throbbing between my legs reminding me of my sin.

“Hello? Do you have an emergency? Do you need assistance?” The voice was more insistent.

“No,” I croaked and ended the call.

I gazed down at my ruined dress. Who’d believe a girl whose father was in prison—if he even was my father—versus the wealthy son of a senator? I was white trash, a small town girl lucky enough to get a scholarship at the prep school down the road.

Nausea rose again, more violently this time, until the contents of my stomach spewed out everywhere.

The smell of alcohol made me sicker.

Mocking me. Telling me the cold hard truth. I’d had a part to play in this scenario.

I clutched my chest, my heart hurting. Broken.

My muscles screamed.

My head banged.

I was done. Dead. Cold. Even my skin wanted to crawl away.

The sun crept up in the sky, the rays curling in through the dirty curtains. Dawn, a new day, but I’d never look at the sunrise the same.

Clarity happens to all of us when our heart jumps ship, and mine was no different.

Something dark slithered around inside me, crawling into the crevices of my soul and suffocating it. Everything I’d believed about myself . . . about who I was . . . about
love
. . . unraveled, turning into something dark. Dirty.

Love is a knife that cuts out your heart piece by piece, feeding it to the boy you love.

Broken in more ways than one, I vowed to never fall again.

My body caved in on itself as I wept.

Elizabeth

Two years later

Sweat dripped down my neck as I tucked blond hair behind my ears and groaned in the hot sun. It was Friday afternoon in Raleigh, North Carolina, and the only day I had to move into my new apartment before junior year started on Monday. “Welcome back to Whitman University,” I muttered as I pulled yet another box out of the trunk of my beat up Camry.

For only being twenty years old, I’d accumulated a lot of stuff.

Most of it consisted of jewelry making supplies and books except for my furnishings, which I’d inherited from Granny Bennett when she’d passed this summer. A beige and green plaid couch, a kitchen table with ducks painted on the top, an old bedroom suite, and a collection of crocheted doilies in various colors was my inheritance from her. Not exactly Ethan Allen, but it had a certain style.

“Your apartment looks like an eighty-year-old cat lady lives here,” Shelley called down to me as she popped her head out of my apartment to peer down over the railing at me. My bestie since prep school, she was a privileged rich girl, a sharp contrast to my own wrong-side-of-the-tracks upbringing, but she’d been there for me through everything. Even Colby. Her red hair had gotten fuzzy in the humidly, but it didn’t detract from her prettiness. She pinched her nose and made a scrunchy face. “And it kinda stinks.”

“Stop your complaining and get your butt down here to help. I’m melting in this heat,” I said.

She snorted and made her way down the metal stairway. “You and your fair skin. If you’d get out of the house now and then, you might get some color. But no . . . all you do is study and work at the bookstore. You probably have more colors of highlighters than you have dating prospects. Not to mention, you go to the library so much people think you work there.”

I grinned. “I’m not that bad. I see people in class. I even talk to them sometimes.”

She lowered her head at me. “Get real. If it wasn’t for me forcing you to go out with me—like tonight—you’d hole up here and eat ramen noodles for the rest of your college career.”

“Meh, sometimes I eat pizza.”

She sent me a smirk and grabbed one of the boxes at my feet. We waddled back up the staircase and came to a stop at apartment 2B on the second floor. A two-bedroom with a balcony and a bathroom, it felt like a mansion compared to the dorm room I’d lived in all last year. I was on the corner and facing the setting sun, and I only had one neighbor on my left, 2A.

As if on cue, the thump of loud rap music blasted from next door.

I listened. Was that Eminem?

“That’s loud and obnoxious,” Shelley said. “Maybe it won’t be as quiet here as you think.”

I tried to be optimistic. “So? It’s two in the afternoon, not two in the morning.”

“They’re just moving in, too,” she noted, nudging her head at the pile of boxes sitting outside the neighbor’s door, which I noticed was slightly cracked. She indicated the pile of books in one. “Looks like a nerd. Yuck. And here I was hoping you’d win the jackpot with a hot neighbor.”

Making sure the new neighbor was nowhere in sight, I leaned over and hurriedly rifled through some of the titles:
The Great Gatsby
,
Wuthering Heights
. “Hmm, someone likes the classics. English major, maybe?”

She rolled her eyes. “Boring. What you need is a sexy neighbor who likes to have great monkey sex.”

I shook my head at her. “See, you say ‘monkey sex’ and all I can think of are hairy animals in bed. Gross.”

She huffed in a teasing kind of way. “Whatever. It’s like every time you see a hot guy, you have FUCK OFF tattooed on your head.”

Colby had been a hot guy and look what that had gotten me.

I shrugged, swallowing down those memories. “So? I don’t want to fall for anyone. Ever. Love hurts. Remember?”

“Yeah.” She nibbled on her lips, a hard look growing on her normally smiling face. She was remembering the hotel and the devastation that had followed. She’d been the one to pick me up that morning and take me home. The kind of girl who fell in love at least once a month, she was under the impression that if I could just meet the right one, then all would be well and I’d have my happily ever after. Crock of shit.

“Don’t worry about me, Shelley. I’m good, okay? I don’t need a guy in my life to make me happy. All I need is you and Blake—and the occasional hookup.” Blake was my other best friend from Oakmont Prep who’d come to Whitman as well.

She smirked. “Your sex rules again?”

I nodded.

Here’s the thing. I’d had sex since Colby. Plenty of times. The events of that night didn’t ruin my sexuality, only my trust in men. So a year after Colby, I halfheartedly propositioned a guy from my science class and asked him to come back to my room. Connor had been his name, and I’d seen him checking me out more than once when we had a lab together. That day, he’d looked at me like I’d suddenly grown two heads—me having a reputation as a bit of a bitch when it came to guys flirting with me—but he’d been eager. We’d walked back to my dorm room, and while the sex had been horrible, a furtive and awkward encounter, it proved that Colby had not won.

He was
not
the last person to touch me.

My body was my own.

So was my heart, and I planned to keep it that way.

After that, sex got easy—as long as I was in control. Over the past year, I’d made it into a game with strict rules. Pick an average guy who wasn’t popular or rich or too good-looking. Make sure he wasn’t taken. Make sure he didn’t drink or do drugs. Make sure he wasn’t an escapee from the local insane asylum. Have sex. Never speak to him again. End of story.

It was about control. My choice. My rules.

I had to initiate the first move, and I had to be on top. Most importantly, I had to be in my own bed and around my own things. Sex with me was tame by most standards, I suppose, based on some of the crazy stories Shelley had told me about her adventures. But I didn’t care. If they wanted me, then they’d follow my lead.

“Maybe I’ll join a nunnery.”

She grinned. “You don’t look good in black.”

“True.”

“And you aren’t even Catholic, goofball.”

“Again, true.” I smiled back widely. I didn’t mind her teasing me. It was better than pity.

I moved past her and we went back into my apartment to unpack. I pulled out a picture of me with Granny on her front porch the day I left for Whitman freshman year. Most days, it hurt to look at that photo, to see the skinny girl in the picture with the saggy jeans and wrapped wrists. But it was the last picture I had of Granny and me together, and that was worth something to me no matter how hard it was to be reminded of my foolish mistake with Colby. I set it on the coffee table.

We finished putting the dishes in the kitchen cabinets and then moved to the bedroom where she helped me arrange my closets. Later, we ventured into the extra bedroom, which was more like a tiny storage room. This was university housing and the apartments were notoriously small, but I managed to fit my jewelry supplies and a twin bed in there.

But I hadn’t made any jewelry in two years. The metals I’d once loved to shape and mold had become a metaphor for my own stupidity in love.

Shelley fiddled with one of my drawing pads, a pensive look on her face. She darted her eyes at me and then back at the boxes against the wall.

I steeled myself for her questions.

“When are you going to get serious about your jewelry? What are you going to do when you graduate in two years?” She opened the book and flipped through the pages. “Besides, I really need a new necklace. Something with a butterfly. Or a heart.” Her face softened as she looked up at me. “Remember the little friendship medallions you made us when we were fifteen—”

“Shelley, I’m not talking about this. I can’t make jack right now.”

She cocked her head. “Are you just going to give up on your dreams because you made a ring for Colby? It’s been two years, yet he’s still dictating your future. It’s fucked up. At one time
this
was all you wanted to do—design and create. Do you honestly think you’d be happy in some job where you can’t make something beautiful?” She sighed, a resigned look on her face. “I mean, you use sex with guys to say you’re past him, but you’re not. Not really. You’re still punishing yourself for something that’s not even your fault.”

It was my fault. I’d been drunk. I’d taken his drugs. Willingly.

The familiar shame settled in my gut. I blinked rapidly. “You weren’t in that hotel room. You know nothing.”

She bit her lip. Nodded. “You’re right, I wasn’t, but I saw you afterward. I took you home and took care of you until your mom got back from Vegas. I know how wrecked you were. I—I just love you, that’s all.”

I exhaled and paced around the room, setting things out, arranging them. We’d gotten too serious. “Besides, butterflies and hearts are worse than tramp stamps.
If
I made you a piece, it would stand for something big.”

She grinned. “Like what?”

“Maybe your phone number on something since you give it out so much to guys.”

She pretended to be pissed but then giggled. “God, that is so true. I’m a slut.”

We laughed. “Come on, let’s go get the rest of my stuff.” We made our way back outside my apartment and stood in the breezeway. I sighed as I looked out over the parking lot. I still had several more boxes to bring up before I could even think about relaxing.

She poked me in the arm. “Hey, I have an idea. Let’s go meet your neighbor.”

I shook my head. “No, it’s move-in day, and I’m sure they’re just as busy as we are.”

She ignored me and tiptoed over to the door. Instead of knocking, she pushed the cracked door open and peeked inside the darkened apartment. “I don’t see anyone. Maybe they’re in the back on the balcony.” A grin crossed her face. “Which gives us plenty of time to be nosy.” She bent down and riffled through the boxes outside, pulling out a cap with a Union Jack flag on it, a pair of men’s athletic underwear, a pair of men’s black Chucks. She went a bit crazy, pulling out fingerless boxing gloves—
that was interesting
—and a collection of postcards from London.

“Oh, your neighbor is definitely a guy. And hung.” She held up a box of condoms. Super-sized and ribbed. Triumph gleamed in her eyes. “Magnums, baby. Score,” she sang out.

My eyes scanned the door to make sure no one saw us. “Put that stuff back before they come out here. Are you insane?”

“Yes.”

I groaned at her obvious disinterest in being caught, but I couldn’t help venturing closer. I did want to know more about my neighbor who read the classics and listened to rap music.

She tapped her chin, eyes coasting over the contents. “Even with the musty books, he’s not a terrible combo. I’d do him.”

“You’d do Manson.”

She laughed.

I snapped the postcards out of her hand and tossed them back where she’d gotten them. “Step away from the box, or I won’t go to the Tau party with you tonight or wear that silly dress you spent an hour hemming last night.” Shelley was a fashion major and took all sewing projects serious. I was her number one model.

She sent the box a forlorn look and pouted. “Fine, you win. Party pooper.”

“Huh. You need me to keep you in line. You never would have survived freshman English if I hadn’t been yelling in your ear every morning to get up.”