Total pages in book: 50
Estimated words: 45548 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 228(@200wpm)___ 182(@250wpm)___ 152(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 45548 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 228(@200wpm)___ 182(@250wpm)___ 152(@300wpm)
“Look at me. If you want to make this right you have to come clean with me. You owe me that much.” Her hand trembled in mine when I took it. She was scared shitless. “I will protect you no matter what, but you have to tell me.”
She took a deep breath and composed herself. I squeezed her hand and held it in mine to give her the comfort she seemed to need and the strength to go on. When it seemed like she was still too afraid to open her mouth, I started things off.
‘That first time you approached me, you seemed different. What was that about?”
“It was a dare.” She peeped out at me from beneath lowered lids with a shy half smile and a shrug.
“Go on.” She blew out a breath and sat up straight with her hand still in mine.
“I told my friends that I liked you. Back then I was a bit… reckless. I wasn’t wild or anything.” She rushed to assure me. My only answer was another squeeze of her hand.
“Anyway, I knew who you were, or knew of you anyway. I’d seen you around town a time or two and thought you were hot.” She blushed when she said that and I saw just a hint of that girl I’d first met.
“I wasn’t brave enough to approach you though, not until they dared me to. Then when you shot me down they made my life hell. They ragged me about that the whole summer, but it was nothing I couldn’t handle.” She stopped there and her hand really started to shake now.
“I pretty much put it out of my mind until…until your cousin caught me smoking pot. You have to understand back then I was terrified of my parents ever knowing I did such a thing.” She was becoming agitated, so I calmed her down.
“Finish it.” I kept my voice calm though inside I was a burning cauldron of rage.
“He said he’d tell them unless I did him a favor. I thought he just wanted me to seduce you or something. I didn’t question his motives, I just didn’t want him to tell my parents. They would’ve killed me.”
“I didn’t want to, but he kinda forced me. I had no choice.” She closed her eyes and a tear slid down her cheek. “After you rejected me the second time he got really mad. I told him I’d done what he asked but he said something like it wasn’t over. I didn’t hear from him for a few weeks after that and then one night he stopped me when I was sitting in the Dairy Queen parking lot. I think he’d been following me or something.”
“I started to tell him that you weren’t interested and it was a waste of time, but he said he wanted me to do something different this time. He just wanted me to tell my friends that we’d had sex. I didn’t think it would get us here. I mean people make up stuff like that all the time and nothing like this ever happened.”
I kept quiet and let it all sink in as the pieces fell into place. “So you told your friends, then what?”
“I don’t know. I honestly don’t know. The next thing I knew you were being arrested and my dad was livid. Someone had told him about my lie and by then it was too late. I know now that I should’ve spoken up, that I could’ve ended it all. But then I heard about the drugs and figured they’d forget all about the other. I guess I was wrong.”
“You have to believe me, I’ve been a different person since then. I stopped hanging out, stopped going to parties. I just locked myself away until I went away to college and I’ve been living this way ever since. If I could take it all back I would I promise. I’m so sorry.”
She broke down while I hung my head letting it all sink in. Until she said the words I had held out hope that the conclusions I’d drawn in the early morning hours were wrong. That there was no way the man I had grown up with and treated more like a brother than the distant cousin he was, could do such a thing.
Why? Why had he concocted such evil against me? Was it the business? Money? I couldn’t recall a time when we had been at odds except for the usual childhood run-ins over the years that had never amounted to anything more than a stupid falling out over nothing.
Nowhere in my memory was there anything that would lead me to believe this of him, but I knew it to be true. We didn’t speak for the longest time. There was much to think about, not the least being the fact that I had held her responsible for something that was not entirely her fault.