Page 110 of Live for Me

He closed his eyes and breathed in deeply while Utah made his way back into the kitchen. Jersey nodded to him and stood up. He squeezed me against his side and kissed the top of my head another time.

“I won’t bring it up as long as you can promise to come to me if you need me to do something about it, Memphis.”

“Deal.”

He and Utah stared at one another for a couple seconds longer before Jersey left the kitchen again.

Walking out to that truck with Utah was the most unpleasant feeling I’d experienced in a long time. Every emotion under the sun seemed to be trapped in that moment with me, swirling around my head like a tornado on cocaine. I felt like an asshole to realize that keeping this from Utah had hurt and upset him. I felt disgusting that this man, who I’d only recently started sleeping with, was suddenly aware thatallof my sexual experience came at the hands of several men I didn’t even know. I was horrified that the flyer he’d given me opened my eyes to some things I hadn’t actually considered before just because I refused to think about that part of my life in too much detail. My whole fucking heart hurt to have to think so much about Em. And while the logical part of me could accept and acknowledge that it was completely absurd to feel shame about the things I’d lived through, it was still there. It wasalwaysthere.

Without any words spoken between us, Utah parked the truck in the same place in that field where he’d managed to give so much back to me, without ever realizing that’s what he was doing at the time. I wondered if he was aware of it now; if he was replaying that night in his head like I was. He was so patient, so gentle. He was everything I needed him to be, without me ever even telling him why I needed those things from him.

He put his hands under my arms to lift me until he could sit me right at the edge of the tailgate before hopping up next to me. He’d gone out of his way to leave space between us the last time we were here. This time, he made sure every inch of my side was against him.

I wondered what he expected me to say.

Was he waiting for me to apologize for keeping it from him?

Did he need me to tell him why I preferred never to venture back to that part of me?

Was he expecting me to rattle off the history of those days like I was reading it from a textbook?

Would he care if I just sat here and continued to cry, instead of successfully doing any of those other things?

Would it ruin whatever we’d started between us if I wasn’t able to tell him everything?

He’d given me pieces of himself. Did I owe him these pieces of me in return?

“I love you, angel. I don’t really care if I haven’t known you long enough to say that. I don’t care if it doesn’t seem possible to already feel that way about someone. Nothing changes that now. There’s nothing you could say or do that will make me feel differently.”

Did he think he was helping?

Was I supposed to be able to function better after that?

Because in addition to everything else, I suddenly couldn’t breathe, either.

“I don’t know what you want me to say, Utah. I don’t know what I’msupposedto say.”

He chuckled and put his arm around my shoulders to squeeze me.

“Don’t say anything becauseIwant you to,” he said quietly. “Tell me anythingyouneed to if you think it’ll help you understand this moment. Or what we need to do next.”

I looked down at the missing persons flyer that was still folded in my hands.

Think about it from the perspective of what needs to be done next.

Easier said than done.

But necessary all the same.

“Why was there a flyer at all?” I asked out loud, but really only meant it for myself. “What did they tell people? And why bother?”

I crumpled the flyer in my hands until they were both balled into fists.

“I guess, if you’re going to sell your kids for profit and freedom, you probably have to convince schools and police that they weretakenfrom you,” I said quietly. “They left us at a mall. The guys who picked us up knew our names, our parents, our school. Then we spent two hundred and seventy-one nights waking up to be reminded the next day that if our parents had wanted us, they wouldn’t have gone through with leaving us at that mall. It was a choice they made, and they had several opportunities to back out along the way. They wouldn’t have taken the money. They would’ve reached out about getting us back. But it hadn’t gone that way.”

“Memphis,” Utah urged quietly. “Think about someone else telling you this story.”

“What?”

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