Throb Page 7

  I looked at the walls, at my sheets, at the desk, and everywhere around me, I saw lime green and hot pink, the sorority’s symbol of a flower looking fake and artificial instead of vibrant to my eyes, instead of popping out of the posters and prints I’d had gifted to me over the years and had put on my blotter, my calendar, my desk organizers.

  Packing my clothes was easy, seeing as I kept most of my shoes in their original boxes and I had kept my winter clothes packed, so all I really had to pack was my spring and summer clothing. My school supplies were easy to pack up too.

  Anything with the sorority’s logo, print, or symbol on it was put in another box. I didn’t want to see anything that reminded me of a system I’d been part of. Even though I’d always stayed to myself, pretending to be a gracious hostess on the outside, I was seeing Omega Mu for what it was, and even though I knew that there were other chapters out there that didn’t have these problems, that what I was experiencing and seeing others experience at OMG was not necessarily the rule but the exception, it didn’t matter. I didn’t want to have any part of my old life at Omega Mu following me.

  Unlike some of the girls in the sorority, I couldn’t afford to throw the stuff away. I knew I’d probably have to send out an email to see who wanted to buy the stuff if I wanted to get rid of it without losing

  I heard a knock at my door. “Don’t come in,” I called. “I’m busy.”

  The door was opened anyway. Standing in the doorway was Kim.

  “You can’t leave,” said Kim nervously, fidgeting with the lavaliere around her neck. I remembered how we’d purchased the plain silver foil coated plastic charms from the sorority catalog, how we’d added the stick on rhinestones that we got from a cell phone decoration kit that we’d split, and how we’d sealed them carefully on the base with transparent nail polish. Those were different times, simpler times, back when we were freshman and back before we were women. I still had my first lavaliere in a keepsake box in my desk drawer, one of the few things I wanted to keep but knew I had to let go of. I don’t think Kim still had hers. She’d upgraded as soon as she could and I’d never seen her pull it out again.

  “I can, and I will,” I said curtly, not wanting Kim to misunderstand me, because I knew I understood her all too well. My voice sounded so weird, so foreign. Was it because I was stronger today? Because after a sleepless night, even wrapped in Jason’s arms, I knew that I had to actually stand up to Kim, even if it was too late? Or was it because the room, emptied of so much of its stuff already, made my voice sound different? Maybe it was both, maybe it was neither, but even though I felt stronger than ever, my heart kept throbbing in my chest as I worried about what Kim would do. I’d seen what she’d done before, at the club, and I knew although over the last four years, I’d gone from becoming a sheltered girl from Compton to becoming a young lady who actually have half a shit about people’s feelings, she hadn’t done the same. Kim was still immature and she was more fucked up than ever.

  “No, what I mean is...I don’t know what I’m going to do if you leave,” said Kim quietly, but I still heard her. She was fidgeting with her wristlet, her keys jingling.

  I knew if I looked at her nails, they would have been bitten to nubs, the polish chipped, because Kim’s appearance was her tell, and today, she wasn’t the beautiful preppy goddess she usually tried to be.

  Neither was I, in the tank top and pajama bottoms I’d worn from Jason’s place back to the sorority, with no makeup on, with my hair a mess. I didn’t need to be beautiful to be powerful, and Kim couldn’t use her appearance as a shield forever. Being pretty didn’t mean that she got a license to use and abuse others, and I didn’t need to look fierce to have the guts to say what I had to say. I had something more important, and it wasn’t love, it was conviction, and it was regret, regret that I hadn’t said something before, when it mattered, and the belief that if I said something now, it wouldn’t be too late.

  “Whether or not I’m here stopped mattering to you a long time ago, Kim. You’re not the girl I grew up with. I knew it was a fun game for us, as freshman, to pretend that we weren’t from Compton, to pretend that the life we had was better than the life we’d had, but unlike you, I’m open and honest about that part of myself now. You know I opened up about it. You, on the other hand, just kept lying. How long are you going to be able to get away with it? Do you seriously think that the girls are always going to believe your lies? You and I both know your dad isn’t a rich businessman and your mom is not a model. We both know your dad died, and that your mom had to raise you on her own. I don’t see why you think that’s shameful. If you were open and honest about who you were, where you were from, and the life you had, I’d respect you. I don’t care how many Chanel purses you have, or how many you pretend are real. I cared about you, Kim, but you’ve made it apparent you don’t care about anyone but yourself. I can’t help you anymore, not as your social chair, and not as your friend.”

  “So what? I’ll leave, you don’t have to, Becca. I’ll resign and you can stay,” she promised, but I stopped her. Part of me wanted to take Kim to my now bare bed, sit her down, let her lean on my shoulder, cry about how hard it was for her to run the sorority because the president was so absent, but I knew that we’d reached a point where that wasn’t plausible. What happened at Club Grit wasn’t a sorority problem, it was a real life problem. She’d knowingly let a rapist near a pledge, and of course, he’d tried to strike again. I didn’t do everything in my power to stop it before, so I was just as guilty, but it wasn’t too late to give her a piece of mind and let her know why I couldn’t be part of the fucked up environment she’d created.

  “It’s not you, Kim. It’s all of this. Maybe it’s the sorority, maybe it’s this house, but I can’t stay here anymore. I’ve changed so much since coming to this college, and I never thought I’d be a sorority girl, you know that’s not what we thought we’d be, back in high school, but I’m turning into someone I don’t like. I don’t want to become like you, or like Sam, or even like Emma, and I will if I stay here any longer. Maybe I already have become like one of you, and maybe it’s already too late, but at least I’ll always know that I tried to get out once I realized how fucked up this was. At least I’ll know I tried.”

  “Please, just consider it,” she begged. She wiped the area above her cheek before looking up at the ceiling quickly, as if looking upwards to God to beg him to send her tears back down their ducts and into her body, but tears or no tears, my choice had already been made.

  “So, then what? I can be attacked? You don’t just have a standing army, you have a lying one too.” I said it louder than I’d said anything to Kim in months, since our last fight about something petty like the fact she didn’t place an order for more Keurig cups in the parlor, but this time, it mattered. I knew it was harsh, but I also knew it had to be said.

  The room was quiet except for the sounds of my books hitting the bottom of a cardboard box until Kim finally broke the silence, like she’d broken so many things over the past weeks. “What are you going to do with that stuff?” asked Kim, pointing to the box of memorabilia, which right now, had all too apt of a name, because what I was giving up wasn’t items, but the memories that I knew that I’d experience looking at them again.

  “I don’t know, I’m probably going to sell it online, or else I’ll give it away to my cousins or something. I know they’re not in the sorority but some of them like the colors or like flowers. One of my cousin’s just had a baby girl and really likes this preppy stuff,” I said with a laugh. “I guess I never really did. You know I was never into the pearls and the diamond lavalieres.”

  “I’ll buy it from you,” said Kim.

  “You don’t have to. I know that you have all this stuff.” It was true. We’d been best friends, always getting matching stuff, but this last year, as we grew more distant, the Kim I’d known had changed, even if our tastes didn’t.

  Kim blushed and turned away, chin up in the air. “It-it’
s not for me. It’s so I can resell it next year. I’ll pay you five hundred dollars for it, for all of it, and I’ll be able to resell it next year for six hundred. It’s a business thing,” she said, trying her hardest to look haughty, but of course, the fact she couldn’t do it convincingly when she needed to was the greatest irony.

  “Okay, deal,” I said, “But it doesn’t make what happened okay. There are some debts you can’t pay off with cash. Money isn’t some magical Band-Aid that fixes everything.”

  “I know that,” said Kim. Her eyes started to water and she turned away. I reached out to pull her in close, to hug her like I had when we were in high school and bullied for stupid things like our grades, but then I pulled my hand away. We weren’t those same girls anymore. We were women. We weren’t friends.

  Instead, I carried the box of books downstairs, to the foyer, before I came back up the stairs. Kim was gone, but there was a bundle of bills where the box of stuff had been. I counted them up: fifteen twenties, all crisp, sealed with rubber bands and a note: “Goodbye”.

  Chapter Eight:

  ONCE ALL MY STUFF WAS PACKED AND THE ROOM WAS EMPTY, I sat in the parlor and texted Jason. I was ready to go.

  But I also had a text from Keanne. The New York trip had been moved up and he wanted to know if I could be with him this weekend. Without thinking, I texted him “yes”, and I instantly regretted it.

  We got the bags up the stairs in only five terrible trips up five terrible flights of stairs. After we had the stacks of bags and boxes in the entrance to the apartment, Jason and I took a short break.

  Or, rather, in typical Jason fashion, he made me a cup of Lady Grey tea with two dollops of clover honey while he insisted on finishing the task at hand. I’d bought him a set of teas as a Valentine’s Day gift a few months back. “Fifty Bags of Grey” seemed witty at the time, even though at that stage, I was more interested in drinking a Long Island Iced Tea at Club Grit than hot tea with Jason in his bachelor pad.

  Before he made his cup, he insisted he just had to “clear some space”, just had to carry a few things into his room, but of course, he meant he had to take every bag for me, and refused to take my help.

  “So, what do you want to do tonight?” he asked as he hefted two boxes, stacked atop each other even as he lifted them, and placed them in the hall closet. It was no fair Jason was so strong and had barely broken a sweat. I’d become out of breath doing far less work than he had, and it was my move, not his.

  “Nothing...I’m fine, I’d rather stay in,” I said with a sigh, stirring my tea, forcing blobs of honey up into the hot tea, still too hot to drink but perfectly steeped. It teased me the way that Jason’s raw and unassuming power could, because I knew if I got too close to soon, I’d burn my tongue, but I’d tasted Jason’s fire and taken each burn with pride.

  “Are you sure? We can do whatever you want,” he insisted, walking back to the entrance to take up another set of boxes into the closet and.

  “Jason, right now? I just want to forgot,” I said, emotionally drained from the day, but not physically worn. I hadn’t wanted to be with Jason sexually since the night of Emma’s attack because I had failed to prevent it, but now, here? In the apartment, the last thing I wanted was to think about that. Like I’d said, I wanted to forget.

  “I can definitely help with that,” said Jason, a sly smirk crossing his face as he carried another set of my bags into the bedroom.

  “Thanks, hon,” I said as I sipped at the tea, the bottom of the mug still both thick and slick with hot honey, but that wasn’t what I wanted or needed inside of me right now. The thickness I needed was in the bedroom, putting away my stuff, and the slickness was growing between my legs.

  As I walked into the bedroom with the cup still in my hands, I sipped as I watched Jason load my still packed bags into his closet. I allowed a small smile to form on my face, scared I’d giggled and give away my position if I didn’t have some form of release.

  The sight of Jason bent over, his small but cute, pert ass hugged tightly by his jeans (which felt as if they cost more than mine) was more than appealing. Even though it was possibly creepy, definitely voyeuristic, I loved watching Jason’s muscles at work. His thick biceps pressed into the sleeves of his soft shirt, which had faded and thinned after so many washes, its original graphic no longer readable. Jason looked like such a man slut, with his pecs and often the nubs of his nipples poking against the almost gauzelike fabric of the shirt.

  Right now, the view from the back was more than enough to satisfy me. As he bent at the knees before unbending them to rise up and lift bags to a shelf, it was like he was a straw in a mixed drink, bouncing up and down, not sure where to remain or which way to twist. His thighs bulged through the denim...but that wasn’t the bulge I was interested in.

  Placing the now empty cup down, I went up to squeeze Jason’s ass, stifling a giggle as he continued to put away my stuff and didn’t notice me standing behind him. I squared my feet behind him, ready for him to get a shock when his ass would next bend as he reached for the next package and I reached for his, with his ass firmly pressed against my mound.

  Instead of bending down, Jason turned around, lifted me up with ease, and almost suffocated me with a long and deep kiss he was prepared for but I was not. He pulled me up so my chin was on his shoulder and I was forced to wrap my arms around his shoulders for stability. As he continued to walk with me hanging off of him like a baby animal, I wrapped my legs around his waist to feel more secure, but he pushed me off of him and onto the bed, where I lay on my back and looked up at him.

  “Looks like I forgot to take care of something,” he half said, half threatened. Although my eyes widened, so did the space between my legs, allowing our bodies even more surface area to share. He forced my legs even further apart as he got onto the bed, placing his hands on my wrists which he pushed up above my head. Jason didn’t kiss me: he just looked down at me and smirked, biting his lower lip and devouring me with his eyes before getting up, off of me and the bed.

  “I left some bags in the living room, right?” he teased. “Or...can they wait?”

  “They can, but I can’t,” I said, my voice wet with pleading.

  Jason took his shirt off with one hand, tossing it aside before he unbuttoned his jeans, his shoes and socks already off because he didn’t wear them in his apartment. In just tight black underwear, dark enough to look new and soft enough to feel old, he got back onto the bed. “Too bad, Becca. If you want this dick, you’re going to have to play by my rules,” he said as he rolled me over and pressed his hard cock into my ass crack, forcing me to feel how much he wanted me and reminding me of why I wanted him so badly in kind.

  “Babe, you need to relax,” he said calmly, “And I know just the way to force yu to.” Jason reached over me and pulled one of the pillows down and into my arms. I hugged it tight, underneath my chin, which made my back arch more. Jason sat on his knees, hovering above me but not actually sitting on me, as he slipped his hands underneath the back of the tank top and up to my shoulders.

  Jason pressed down on them hard, his firm but slim fingers exploring me through the power of touch alone. “Have you been eating enough, Becca? Your shoulder blades are very pronounced.”

  I bit my lip as I felt his palms against me, rubbing every last knot out from their hidden homes before answering him. “Maybe you’re just pressing down too hard.”

  “Do you want me to use a lighter touch?” he asked.

  “No, I like it, sorry.”

  “Never apologize for your body, Becca,” he practically purred before he took his hands off me. I heard him put something in his hands that sounded like lotion before he let out a long, low breath and pressed his hands into me again.

  His hands felt like two warm stones wrapped in mittens as he rubbed up and down my back, dipping past the tops of my shoulders to reach my collarbones, down the sides of my ribs, and then to the flanks of my hips. With every rub, the scent of the oil be
came more and more easy to decipher until I realized what it was.

  “Is that...strawberries and jasmine?” I asked, even though I knew the answer.

  “That’s right, I had it specially made...do you like it?” he asked, his voice still even, although I knew he was looking for my approval.

  “Yes, it’s amazing. You remembered? After all this time?”

  “Of course. Strawberries are your favorite fruit, jasmine is your favorite floor.”

  “But why? Why did you remember?”

  “People remember stuff about people they care about. Like their friends, or...” his voice trailed off.

  “Or what?” I asked.

  “Or their lovers,” he said quietly. We both knew what words he was really thinking of.

  Girlfriend.

  Boyfriend.

  But with that eventually came fiancé. Fiancee. Wife. Husband. Family.

  And that’s what I was scared of: not just dating a guy but risking it all, having that kind of relationship, or the kind that led up to that: a relationship that was deep and meaningful, and the kind that could hurt me the way I’d been hurt last year by the man I hadn’t been honest with Jason about.

  I wasn’t scared of Jason becoming like Keanne: I was scared of being to Jason what Keanne was to me.

  I was scared of breaking his heart.

  Keanne didn’t know my favorite foods or flowers or any of the things Jason remembered, like what my favorite mug was out of all the mugs in his novelty mug collection, or what tea I liked, or how I liked my tea, or that, even though I liked it with two spoons of honey, it was because I liked the taste of clover honey. Keanne didn’t know my parents took me on a road trip though northern California and that we’d stopped at a farm stand that sold clover honey, the kind of honey that didn’t taste like the junk from the store, or the kind that came in packets, but the kind that tasted like a farm, and nature, and the outdoors, and flowers.

  Jason was the only one that knew I wanted to try jasmine honey one day, and even though it wasn’t important to anyone but me, he didn’t care, precisely for that reason: he cared that I had that craving because it was mine, and that’s what made it special.