Page 97 of Riding the Pine

She’s what we all should be, what sometimes we strive to be. She conducts herself with poise, patience, she shows grace when the rest of us fly off the handle. And the thought we could have lost her… shit.

I lean my elbows on the back of the sofa and drag my hands through my hair. How do I stop the whirlpool of emotions cascading through my mind and body?

Mercifully, Athena’s apartment has more than one bathroom, so I make my way back through the door to where thebedrooms are and into her guest room. I’m hoping she can’t hear me through her expensive and well-insulated walls as I grip the edges of her toilet and hurl my guts up.

It takes a good twenty minutes before I’ve emptied everything out of my stomach, and I can stand without dizziness engulfing me or my body swaying, but I can’t say I’m feeling great.

Athena’s always well prepped for guests, so I steal a disposable toothbrush and some toothpaste from under her guest sink and clean the inside of my mouth for a few more minutes.

Part of me is procrastinating. I’m not sure how I’m going to handle looking into my brother’s eyes knowing what our sister just survived. Even the thought of it makes me want to scrub my skin raw. Two men had their hands and bodies on my sister. Two men forced their dicks on my sister.

By the time I return to the living room, I’m crying, thick, heavy tears pour down my face and I don’t know how to turn them off, to make them stop. I don’t know how to make my chest not hurt anymore.

Apollo stands when he sees me coming into the room. He takes one look at me, picks up the pace, and meets me partway across the space. He’s been crying too, his eyes are red-rimmed, bloodshot, and his light grey t-shirt has wet splodges over it.

He pulls me into a massive hug, bracing me against him with both arms. I’m not sure if he thinks I need him, or he needs me, or maybe this hug is symbiotic, maybe we both need comfort and support. If it wasn’t for him holding me, I’d probably have slunk onto the floor.

“I know,” he murmurs against my shoulder. “We’ll figure it out.”

The two of us stand there for a long time, grasping each other, crying, and holding space for one another. When we eventually pull back, Ares’s name falls from my lips.

Apollo shakes his head. “It’s okay. I texted him. No answer, but the find my friend thing has him at Eloise’s place. Or at least in that direction.”

If he doesn’t want to talk to us, he won’t. He’ll come back when he’s ready to, and not a second before.

I shake my head. I don’t even know why, to dislodge the block in my brain that’s fixated on my sister’s frail and bruised body, or what, but I shake it again for good measure.

“How do we get through this?”

Apollo’s face tells me he doesn’t know any more than I do, that he’s every bit as distressed and upset as I am.

Usually, when the sky falls, we turn to Athena. But no one knows what to do when she’s the one who is in trouble.

I look at the door, then back to my brother. Neither of us wants to leave, but neither of us brought our laptops, any clothes, or provisions.

Hopefully, Athena will be out for a while or at least be in her room. She’ll know that now she’s told us, we won’t want to move.

Both Edith, and one of our trusted sophomore members of the team, each have a key to our apartments. Usually, runaround kind of work is left to the rookies on the team, but we don’t trust them not to break something, or hell, even steal something. At least by sophomore year, we know their characters a little better.

Edith would ask too many questions and undoubtedly be upset. The guys on the team will do as they’re asked, bring the bags and leave. So, Pollo sends off a quick text to one of the guys to ask them to go to our apartments and grab go-bags for Apollo and me.

We need to figure out how to navigate this, who to tell, when, and how. How to alleviate as much pressure off Athena as wepossibly can. How to keep her as level as we can. How to keep it out of the press. Which lawyers to hire.

And not least of all we need to figure out some therapists because we all need fucking therapy. Every last one of us. If any of the guys tries to wiggle out of it, I’ll put them in a damn headlock.

In less than thirty minutes, we have go-bags and laptops in hand, pho is on the way, along with a cosmic amount of summer rolls, and a couple of rice bowls. Athena loves a rice bowl, but there’s every chance she won’t be able to eat much of it, so we’re also ordering some vegetable soup and some ice cream.

Apollo also asked Penelope if she could throw together a couple of her infamous recovery protein smoothies for him. She’s bound to be curious as to the why, but she’s a good soul with a kind heart, and being part of the UCR Raccoons family often comes with strange requests.

She says she’ll bring them over in about an hour. We have all our bases covered.

Ares has made his way back to the flock, without Eloise in tow, but from how red-ringed and bloodshot his eyes are, there’s no way she doesn’t know, and I get it. If I had a partner right now, I’d probably be crying to them as well.

A burden shared and all that.

It takes about forty minutes to decide on which of our pool of lawyers we think should take on Athena’s case. We’ve made a list of therapists for each of us to reach out to, except Ares, he says he’s happy with his current guy. Apollo was in the process of changing his therapist, and I’ve never had one before, so going through their profiles and picking out ones who have expertise in trauma or sexual assault took a lot of time.

We both have a short list, three therapists each to reach out to, and by the time Penelope stops by with smoothies in hand, we’ve both emailed all three therapists on our lists.

---