Page 94 of Strange Lad

“Let’s go inside, please. We can take five and revisit once we calm down.” That’s Jorge, but my focus is on my brother. Or who used to be, anyway.

Phoenix steps into my space, his chest puffed up, face twisted. “I have given you endless opportunities to talk to me.Endless.You’ve ignored me for over a year, Oli. How is that fair?”

The fucking audacity. The fucking gall.

Bitterness takes over as I let out the ugly, nasty truth behind my refusal to speak to him. “Now you know how it fucking feels,” I growl and shake. “Hoping for a lifeline that never fucking comes.”

I see the knife hit its mark just as Jorge begs, “You guys, please.”

Eli must realize I’m out for blood because he squeezes Phoenix’s hand and says, “He’s right. This isn’t good, baby. Let’s just…stop for a bit.”

I’m just getting started.

They exchange a look, one that pisses me off more. He’ll listen tothataddict, but not me. Even as I think the words, I hate the way I sound. Eli has become something of a friend. We chat often in group and we text.

I’m just so blinded by pain, anger, and the burning need to stand up to my brother so he leaves Jorge alone that I simply don’t care. I’ll rip Eli to shreds, too, if it means sparing my kitten.

“Okay. Shit,” Phoenix breathes, wiping his eyes.

“Oli,” Jorge whispers, his voice both a horrible reminder of earlier and a comforting song.

If I stay here, in this state of mind, I don’t know if I can control what I say or do. I’m rubbed beyond the point of raw. My skin is ripped off, the muscle and rotten bones exposed for them all to see. This vulnerable, I’ll lash out. I know I will.

Folding my arms and hunching up, I say, “I need to go.” It’s the right move.

“Please don’t,” Jorge begs, and his voice slices at my heart. Look at what I’ve done to him. “You don’t need to go,” Phoenix says, but fuck him.

I told Jorge before that it’s my job to ensure he doesn’t get pulled into the darkness with me, and I’ve failed. Failed miserably. Glancing at him, I hate seeing his pretty brown eyes sparkle with endless tears. Those lips I was kissing not even an hour or two ago are pulled down miserably. Between the beg in his voice and his eyes, I feel myself waver.

“If I stay, I will hurt all of you. Especially you. I’m not okay, Jorge. I—”

He cuts me off instantly. “You don’t have to be okay. Just don’t go. Stay with us.Please.” Fuck.

I grind my teeth, warring with what he wants me to do and what I should do. This whole time, I’ve white-knuckled my control, not willing to give even a shred of it away for fear of it being used against me.

Do you trust him?

His plump lower lip wobbles, curls frizzy and wild from tugging at them. I can’t leave him all alone.

He will never recover.Never.

I nod once and head inside. Needing to separate myself from Phoenix immediately before I change my mind.

We are all in our corners of Jorge’s house. It’s deathly silent.

In my peripheral, I see Eli rubbing Phoenix’s thigh. They’re snuggled up on Jorge’s couch. I’m so…angry. It’s an irrational anger, one that stems from the deepest, darkest, most tainted places inside me. The one person I trusted with anything and everything abandoned me. He left me todie, literally. But he showed up for Eli. Came to his rescue.

I don’t have it in me to forgive. I don’t have it in me to forget, even if I know it’s wrong.

I’m not so blind that I can’t acknowledge the facts. Phoenix doesn’t know the truth. He doesn’t know that the first time I was brutally raped at his friend’s party, he had a friendly conversation with my rapist right outside the door I was paralyzed behind. There’s no way he could know that fact.

Yet, the resentment, the anger, feels all-consuming. I know that there is a possibility that, had I come clean, he might have believed me. Dr. Langley swears he would have.

But that’s the thing about fear—about being brutalized and ripped apart. It twists your mind against you. It blamesyou. All the therapies in the world can’t erase over a decade’s worth of toxic aspersion. It simply can’t. It was my fault that I didn’t fight. It was my fault that I didn’t immediately run to the police and reporthim.It was my fault that I was afraid of being judged. My sophomore year happened before the ‘Me Too’ movement. It happened at a time when men didn’tgetraped.

I was raised in a society where that kind of thing was just as taboo as it wasn’t talked about. And I was so fucking afraid.

I still am.

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