Page 75 of Refrain

I’ve never been a good storyteller. The fact must run in the family. All the words run together. It’s hard to keep it all straight. My captive audience doesn’t seem to mind though. Her eyes never leave me once.

“As it turns out, my dad wasn’t as squeaky clean as he seemed. He did stuff to Dante…” I have to suck in air as the words stick in my throat. I grit my teeth and force them out—that bastard doesn’t deserve any sugarcoating. “He used to sneak into his room when he was a kid. Touch him. Hurt him. He was a fucking pedophile.” I flick the word out the same way I flick the dead ash from a smoke. This flame continues to burn me up though. I smolder.

She doesn’t react to the minutes-long pause that comes after. She listens, and it takes me a while to hunt down the thread of the story again. I’m fishing in my pockets before I even register craving a cigarette. I’m all out though. I have to inhale the air and use the rage in my blood as fuel rather than nicotine.

“I didn’t know. All those years in that house and I didn’t know. Dante came back to keep me away from him. Every waking moment. It killed him, being near that sick fuck. It killed him. He did it for me. When I finally found out, I was sixteen. He…mydad,was drinking in the kitchen. He looked at me, the bottle in his hands. Hereallylooked at me.”

I still see him. Eyes bloodshot. Lips slick with drool. Tears drying on his fucking face. Real goddamn tears—not a single one for Dante, only for himself.

“He begged me for forgiveness. Said he was sick. Said he was sorry.” I laugh.

The sound makes her stiffen, and something in my chest tightens up.Apparently,she’s disgusted by my show-and-tell. I wait for her to flinch away. Her fingers seek mine out instead, clenching me tighter, and my entire body thrums with the latest dose of her.

“Sorry. Can you believe that?Sorry.I wasn’t sorry. All I really remember is that I grabbed a hammer from the table. He’d been fixing something, but I don’t know what. I remember the first hit, right across his mouth to shut him the fuck up. It knocked himoff his chair. It didn’t dislocate his jaw though. He was still blubbering.”

I couldn’t help it.

God, I tried…

I gotta tell him I didn’t mean to.

“I hit him again.” The story’s gone rogue. It pours out of me, broken and tactless. I can’t sprinkle in pretty words to decorate the gore. I tell her everything. “He got scared then. He begged me to stop. I hit him again. And again, but…I never blacked out. I never stopped to think about what I was doing. I didn’t have to do it.”

The admission paints the air black as coal. The only source of light is her eyes, like embers in the ashes. My ragged breathing makes them glow. Spark. Catch fire. It’s like she goads me to go on. Spit the truth out. Admit it all.

“Iwantedto do it.”

So what the hell does that make me? I had the answer inked onto my chest. I wouldn’t hide behind a lie. I would never forget what I am.

My lone audience member silently digests the end of story time. She doesn’t offer up a glowing review. She doesn’t pat my head and try to comfort me with meaningless phrases likeyou didn’t really mean it.She listens.

And that silence is more numbing than anything I could inhale. Go fucking figure.

I instinctively knowshe’s not beside me when I wake up. I’m already lurching toward the door when I spot her watching me from a seat near the kitchen table, wearing only black underwear.

She got a cigarette from somewhere and managed to light it up. My throat goes dry as she drags deep and releases a plume of smoke.

I still have the gun, I see when I glance down. I test the weight of it. It’s loaded. She had quite the night, it seems. A puddle of silk is on the floor beside me. A dress. Fancy. Expensive. Black.

“I’m sorry.” She tosses the words at me between puffs. “I didn’t mean to—”

“You don’t have to apologize to me.” I haul myself upright, clutching the wall with my free hand for balance. I tuck the gun into the waistband of my jeans. Then I join her at the table.

It’s not set up for entertaining. My sketchbook is open in the center.Apparently,she’s been flipping through it. The sketch she’s on now stares up at me. One of Dante.

“You’re good.” She flicks the ash into the ashtray in front of her and turns the page.

“It’s nothing.” I reach over and flip the book shut.

There’s nojudgmentin her gaze. No pity. None of the shit I’m used to.

“Seems like you had a rough night,” I say to change the subject.

She drags on the cigarette, making the end glow red. Whether by accident or intentional, she exhales the cloud of smoke directly into my face, and I breathe her in like a fucking addict. Smoke. Fire. Yellow.

“I just… Tell me something,” she says.

It’s a plea, not a question.

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