Page 59 of Rake

“Okay, I’m not interested in therapy time here…but I appreciate what you’re saying.”

“Let me know how it goes. Good luck.”

We say our goodbyes, and I stare at my phone. Sasha’s number is in my phone from when she texted me that ridiculous card last week.

Has it really only been a week?

I think about what Siobhan said and write out a message to Sasha.

I owe you an apology and an explanation. If you want to hear either, tell me when and where, and I’ll be there.

I hit send, and all I can do now is wait.

17

Sasha

What the fuck am I supposed to do with this?

I stare at Finn’s message on my phone and take a swig of shitty red wine.

Drinking a glass of wine locked up in my childhood bedroom while my father drunkenly rages about some hockey trade downstairs is the cherry on top of a real peach of a day.

But I’m mixing my fruit metaphors.

Benjamin’s at a friend’s house for the weekend, and I’m just glad he’s away from this hellscape and in a place with a decent security system at the very least.

I did a lot of research at work, and there’s absolutely nothing I can do about the Carneys’ threats. A crime hasn’t been committed, so I can’t go to the police. They have to wait for me or Benjamin to get hurt before they can follow up.

It’s not a surprise—I’ve seen enough true crime shows to know that women often take their fears to the authorities and are met with sympathy, but little else.

Unfortunately, I don’t have the resources to up and leave—first and last month’s rent alone would wipe out my savings, and I’d need to find something Benjamin and I could share. The house is in my father’s name, so even though I cover most of the mortgage I have nothing to show for it.

I could still go to the Globe, and that’s my reserve plan. With the election on Tuesday, it doesn’t make sense to stir the pot. Not yet.

So it’s waiting. And worrying. Which is where the wine comes in. It’s not as good as the glass Finn gave me last night. Jamilah told me that was a two-hundred-dollar glass of wine. I hope Finn appreciated the part of the evening where I chugged it after telling his father to fuck off.

I look at his message again. Do I want to meet him?

A wave of excitement and disgust passes through me. I can’t help but remember coming under him last night, and an echo of that pleasure moves through me. Intellectually my attraction to him is gone, but physically? Still there.

It’s hard to reconcile the pleasure with the pain of his orchestrating that second assault.

Apparently his father caught him up on our morning conversation.

Is this another setup? What’s the smart thing to do here? Even if I do hear him out, how can I believe anything he says? I couldn’t see through his lies, not at all.

I drink another glass of wine, looking around my bedroom. There are still vestiges from when I was a little girl, and it’s depressing what a small life I’m leading. I’m trapped here by my responsibility to others, just like I was trapped in Finn’s apartment. Not directly by him, but by the fear of what would happen to me and the people who rely on me if I left before he was ready for me to go.

Until now, I’d been focused on getting through to the end of the summer, but even if I manage to get Benjamin in school, then what? What’s next for me?

It’s unrealistic to think I could pick up and move to California with Benjamin. We don’t have that kind of money, and even if we did, he needs his own space to grow. As much as I hate to admit it, Finn was spot on about that. He can’t be a man if I don’t get at least partially out of the way.

I turn my phone over in my hands a few times.

Fuck it. What have I got to lose at this point, anyway?

Dunks on the corner of Broadway and Union in Everett. 9:00am. Tomorrow.

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