Blue Rose (A Flowering Novel) Read online

  So I’m flustered when I get to the club, and I’m worried I’m late, but Jack’s band isn’t on for a while. The opening band is still warming up and I get a drink. I don’t see Jack or the guys anywhere, but it’s probably better. I still have some anxiety to work through before he comes out. It’s too much to dump on him with all of his misery about that girl.

  I take out a cigarette – force of habit, since the club is nonsmoking – and lean against the bar. A few guys are checking me out, but I’m not in the mood tonight. I haven’t been in the mood much lately. Of course, as I think it, I see Lily, and that changes things.

  I don’t go for girls normally. And she’s Jack’s girl, or at least he wishes she was. But she’s pretty and remembering her and him and the feeling of his hands on me, a lot of things come rushing back. One of those things is the unnatural desire I have when he’s around me. For all of my issues with sex, I have never been uncomfortable with Jack, and my body responds to Lily as if she is his proxy. Damn it. Of course, she looks hot and I have to stop myself from saying or doing something stupid. She’s here, but I don’t know where things stand with Jack. And I’m trying to be better, to be different. To stop being everyone’s slut. But when Lily smiles, it’s so sweet and nervous that I’m both protective of her and desperate to touch her. Well, I suppose I’m not totally broken.

  “Hey. Does Jack know you’re here?” I ask her.

  She shakes her head. “No. Is he going to be mad?”

  I can’t say much, because the opening band starts warming up. I grab Lily’s hand and lead her outside. I need a damn cigarette anyway. Fucking feelings. Melinda is going to have so much fun sorting this one out.

  “So, he’s been kind of… well, a mess. He told me a little about what happened. Something about a boyfriend,” I tell her. It’s cold outside, but neither of us mentions it. She looks so vulnerable standing here, leaning against the wall and biting her nails. This girl has no clue just how much power she has, but I guess that’s why I liked her instinctively. I know Jack is suffering because of her, but I don’t get the impression that she’s malicious. Fuck, you are just a regular kind soul lately, aren’t you? I think. Maybe I need to start seeing someone else for therapy. All this cathartic shit is making me a bit of a sap.

  “It’s over now,” she tells me. “I ended it that night.”

  “But you disappeared,” I remind her. If there is one thing Jack and I know well, it’s disappearing. I get the impression Lily is still too naïve to understand abandonment in the same way.

  “It wasn’t fair. If I went running to Jack immediately after, it wasn’t real, you know? I was just hiding with him. He needs someone who doesn’t need to hide,” she says.

  “And you’re found now?” I certainly hope she is, because when he sees her tonight, she needs to be sure.

  “Ish?” she says and she smiles weakly at me.

  I focus on the ground and take a drag from the cigarette. I am not cut out for the mentor thing. I’m as much of a mess as Jack and far weaker. But with Lily, I need to make things okay. I need to make him okay. “I warned you, you know,” I say. “I told you not to fall for him.”

  When I look back at her, her eyes have grown wide. “How long have you been in love with him?”

  Well, shit. I look across the street. There’s no traffic since we’re on the opposite side of the club entrance. I don’t even check to see if she follows before I cross the street. There’s a bus bench on the other side, but the buses aren’t running at this hour. I sit down, light another cigarette, and hand one to Lily. She sits and I smoke for a while before I answer her question.

  “Is it that obvious?”

  She shakes her head. “No. I didn’t know at first, but I recognize that look when you say his name. I feel the exact same way.”

  I want to hate her for saying that. I want to be angry, but I realize in this moment that this is right. This is what needs to be. It’s about time I face the layer I’ve avoided, which I’ve now taken to calling the Dave layer in therapy, and it’s definitely time for Jack to be happy. I love him, but it’s becoming clearer that, together, we are nothing but a cataclysm.

  I tell Lily about Jack, about our past, about the relationship, and even about what it meant to me to sleep with him. She fidgets a little and I know she’s uncomfortable. It’s sort of ironic, since we are both so nervous about discussing fucking Jack, when we each slept with him in the same night while we were together. Hell, I have touched Lily and tasted her and she’s made me come. Somehow, though, things are different now. Love just isn’t the same as sex.

  As I explain about Dave, the pain and the confusion come flooding back, and there is a lengthy silence before I can continue. Strangely, Lily might be the best thing that’s ever happened to both me and Jack. I look at her and I feel so much for this girl, the one who is taking away the love of my life, and it suddenly makes so much sense. For five years, I couldn’t understand the idea of love. How can you love two people so much that your life is incomplete without either of them? And what does it say about you that you do?

  Maybe if I was a different girl, with a different history, the things other kids said, about my being a whore, about being passed back and forth between Dave and Jack, about fucking anyone I met, and about how little self-respect I clearly had, maybe those things wouldn’t have bothered me. Maybe at night, in the darkest hours alone in my room, I wouldn’t have told myself there was some switch in me that was flipped, that it was abnormal to feel the way I did about them both. I had always convinced myself that it was an either/or situation, but as Lily fidgets and as I try to find the words, I realize that maybe it isn’t about cutting someone off, but about making room for someone new.

  “It’s hard,” I say to Lily. “When your first love is so important to you, when he’s someone you still see, it’s hard to let go. But I let go of hoping when I started seeing Dave. I love Jack. I really do. And at the end of it all, Jack is my best friend. I can’t let go of him, but I have no claim to him, either. I want you to work. I want you to be what he’s missing. There are so many things wrong in his life, Lily. He deserves something right.”

  “I love him,” she says and there is no doubt in me that she’s telling the truth. She does. It’s evident in the way she smiles reflexively when she says his name, and in the way I can see how desperately she wants to make things okay with me before she goes to him. She pauses and looks away. “Have you slept with him? Since that night?”

  If Owen acting like a second chance dad is a cosmic joke, my answer to Lily is a cosmic gift. Would things be the same if I had slept with Jack again? Perhaps. But the fact that I can say no, the fact that he has not touched anyone, the fact that he has done nothing but try to prove he’s good enough for her, it’s exactly what she needs to hear, and I love that I don’t have to lie.

  “No. He wouldn’t even let me touch him. He just couldn’t stop saying that he wanted to be whole, that he wanted to be worth it to someone.”

  She starts to cry. “He is. He is worth it.”

  I take Lily’s hand again, because Jack’s show is about to start. I feel grateful to her for loving Jack, but I also feel terrified about how much is changing and how unsure the future is.

  28

  After Dave left and after the summer, when Jack and I began sleeping together again, the fall was unbearable. He left for school and I couldn’t handle it. I wanted to prove I didn’t need him, but I also wanted to hurt him. Nothing seemed to affect him anymore, not since he’d tried to kill himself, and even when we had sex, it had become dirty and rough. It was fun, sure, but Jack didn’t tell me I was beautiful anymore. We called each other names and we experimented. When he came back for the first weekend after he’d left for school, that was when things got really messed up between us.

  I waited for him all night on Friday, but he didn’t call when he got back. I texted and called and left messages, but the first I heard wasn’t until nearly three am. He was obl
iterated drunk and he was angry. I don’t even know why he was angry. It was incoherent, but he was demanding and he wanted me to come over.

  “You’re drunk,” I said.

  “So?”

  “You made me wait all night and now you just want me to come over so we can fuck,” I snapped at him. I was hurting. I didn’t understand why he was pulling away from me. I had started school, too, but it was no different than high school and I hated it. I knew he liked his classes, but the rage in him was growing and he let it all out that night.

  “Yeah, obviously, Alana. Obviously I want to fuck you. I mean, that’s sorta your thing.”

  “What do you mean it’s my thing?”

  He laughed, a cruel and harsh laugh. “You fuck anyone who asks you. Don’t get me wrong. I love it about you, but it’s not like I expected you to come by to play cards.”

  I hung up on him. That night, I cried for hours, and when he called me the next afternoon, he never even mentioned the conversation. He just asked if I wanted to go to the bar. We did, but I was still mad. The problem is, I didn’t know how to tell him that he’d hurt me. Things had been fucked up for over a year and, even though we were friends again and we were sleeping together, we were just as bad for each other as we were good for each other. It was dysfunctional and broken, as it had always been and always would be, but that first year, when he first went to college, it was horrible. But he was right, as was everyone. Because my way of being mad was to go to the bar with him and then invite someone else back to his house with us. Jack had some sense at least, and we ended up at a motel. But it was the first time that we crossed that line, and it was probably the point we couldn’t come back from.

  She was older than us. Maybe almost thirty. But she was drunk and hitting on the guys playing pool. I could tell she would be up for it, because I recognized the look of desperation in her eyes. I had the same look when I did the same thing during the week when Jack was at school. I’d mentioned it a few times, but I don’t think he really understood until that night.

  “Do you have a name?” I asked her once the three of us had made it into the motel room.

  “Call me Mary,” she said.

  “Is that your name?”

  “It could be,” she replied.

  “Works for me,” Jack said. His eyes met mine and there was something in them, a question maybe or a momentary hesitation, but I looked away and sat down on the bed.

  I pulled my shirt off and unclasped my bra. Both Mary and Jack watched as I finished undressing. My body and my mind were fighting, but I was excited by the idea of this. I loved sex with Jack. Even though it had become fucking rather than making love, I loved feeling him on top of me, feeling his hands on my body, feeling him inside of me. I also couldn’t deny that I enjoyed the nature of it. I liked sex in general, even though it was complicated and made me feel bad after. During my afternoons with strangers, my body was satisfied. I came almost every time, but later, when I was alone, all I felt was shame and guilt. It confused me, but I wanted to hurt Jack, to show him that I didn’t need him, that there was nothing between us except the physical. I wanted him to feel the chasm between us and to miss me like I missed him.

  So, even though my mind was angry, my body wanted to experience a woman. Mary was first and she started with her tongue. She apparently wasn’t new to this, because she made me come easily, and while I was having my orgasm, Jack watched. I laughed at him, looking unsure, and then I made things worse.

  “Why don’t you fuck me, Jack? Since that’s all I’m good for?”

  He almost left. I could see him considering it and, when he stood, he started toward the door. I pushed Mary aside, though, and ran to him. He said nothing as I undid his pants and sucked his dick while he debated walking away. He let me bring him to orgasm and then, because we were both angry and stupid and stubborn and desperate, I watched for the first time as he fucked someone else. I hated it. I hated seeing her come, but I especially hated watching him enjoy it. I understood it, because I knew that the guilt came later, but I hated him that night. He fucked me several times, and we were aggressive and mean and vulgar. I called him an asshole and he called me a whore. I don’t think Jack ever told me he loved me again during sex.

  29

  “So, what do we need to do to help you work through this?” Melinda asks. “Your feelings are normal, given your past, but sex is okay, Alana. I would like to see you saving it for a relationship, or at the very least for pleasure, and give up this idea of it as a weapon or as something dirty and wrong.”

  “Do you think it will ever make sense?”

  “Sex?”

  “How I feel about it,” I explain. “How can I get so excited when Jack calls me names? How can my body enjoy being whipped or the feeling I get when he ties me up? Why do I come when I fuck a stranger?”

  She pauses and thinks. “I think you’re asking several questions here. First, the physiological reaction is out of your control. Sex feels good. It’s why we have it. The guilt and shame come from the anonymous encounters, more than from your experimentation with Jack, right?”

  “Mostly. I mean, I feel bad sometimes with Jack, but it’s never stopped me from going back for more. And I guess I still know it’s play. Even when it’s mean, even when we are awful to each other, I know it’s not real. If that makes any sense?”

  She nods. “I think so, but you can elaborate if you’d like.”

  “It’s just… See, I guess I feel like Jack doesn’t think I’m really a whore. He has called me a whore. He’s hit me and he’s tied me up and he’s teased me. But I still see in him the boy who told me that he was okay with me saying no. I still see the boy who was truly hurt about my stupidity after Prom. And I see that it hurts him. But…” I trail off, because I don’t think I can explain it any further.

  “Alana, both you and Jack have been through some extremely horrific trauma. You have a lot to work through and neither of you seems to have developed healthy coping skills. However, sex and orgasm do trigger certain psychological effects, and through your experiments with Jack, you’ve both found a way to use the pleasure to help you through the emotional upset.”

  “It’s not good for us, is it?” I ask.

  She sighs. “Look, I am not here to tell you how to live your life. I want you to make your choices. I do think that you and Jack help each other tremendously, but I also think that you’re preventing one another from letting go. You cope through cutting, your pills, and sex. He copes through drinking and sex. I suppose it’s at least fortunate that, in the middle of all that, you do love each other deeply. But now, maybe it’s time for you to learn to let it all go.”

  “Do you think I’m a whore?”

  “What I think is irrelevant, although no, I don’t. Do you, though?” she asks.

  I nod and the tears are desperate this time. “I am. I am a whore.”

  She offers me tissues, but I don’t take them. I just cry. I spend half of the allotted session time heaving and sobbing like an idiot. I am so ashamed. I’m ashamed that I’ve had sex with so many people. I’m ashamed that my father was right and that I was the kind of person who let men use her. And I’m most ashamed that I still enjoy the act so much.

  “I hate that I like it,” I tell Melinda.

  “Why?”

  “Why do I hate that I like it? Or why do I like it?”

  “Either.”

  “I hate it because I shouldn’t like it. I should hate being touched, because it’s horrible and my father didn’t have the right to do that to me, and liking it just means that I was partly to blame.”

  “No,” Melinda says. “Sex and abuse are not the same thing. Even the dirtiest sex you’ve had with Jack or with men in bars is not the same, Alana. There is one key element to what you have done, one piece that was missing with your father, and with the guys at Prom, and with Jerry. Do you know what that is?” I shake my head. “Choice. You have made the choice to do these things with Dave, with Jack, eve
n on those anonymous afternoons.”

  “I made the choice at Prom,” I argue.

  “I don’t think so. I think that there is more than one way to force someone to do something against her will. Jerry was violent, your father was forceful, and those boys, well, they were manipulative. You know, you’d be surprised at how many young women I see who don’t even know that they have been sexually assaulted or abused, simply because there was no physical violence. But people like that, they get into your mind, and that can be just as effective as force, Alana.”

  “I still shouldn’t like it.”

  “Really? Why not?” she asks.

  “It’s dirty. It corrupts people. It makes them evil. It changes them. It made my father turn into a monster. I should know better than to enjoy it so much now.”

  “When did you start to enjoy it?”

  “With Jack. I only really ever enjoyed it with Jack. Until I eventually just turned my mind off and focused on the physical. I came a few times with Dave, but not in the same way. Honestly, it’s never been the same as with Jack.”

  “Okay then. Why do you like it so much with Jack?”

  “Because it’s fucking awesome,” I reply.

  She laughs. “Even when it’s dirty and wrong, as you say?”

  “Yeah, that’s just it. It’s so good. Everything is good with him.”

  “You just said it was good if you turned off your mind. Do you do that with Jack?”