Find Me
1.They were at it again. This time sounded a lot more violent than the last. “Bobby, why the fuck can’t you keep your hands to yourself! I saw you hugging that bitch at the grocery store.” The fights were always punctuated by Bobby’s absolute refusal to defend himself verbally or physically. “Answer me!” A slapping noise, not as hard as the last.
“It was a fan.” Bobby said simply, sounding like he was going to start crying but was keeping every ounce of control over his emotions that he could. “She wanted an autograph.”
“So you can be bought for an autograph and big tits! No wonder you stayed married to that air-head for so long!” The scuffling noises grew more pronounced and I heard the metallic smack of someone, probably Bobby, hitting their bed...hard. Instead of screaming, like any sane person would have, Bobby just whimpered.
I should have gotten involved, but the sleeping pills the hospital had prescribed decided that now was the time to force me to close my eyes. I took a painful breath, and slipped into a realm where hearing what Ryan was doing to Bobby was not a distinct possibility.
But even sleeping pills don’t guarantee a dreamless sleep.“Oooh look, it’s a glamor boy.” The man had been walking in front of me for a while, bragging to his friend about how he got girls to put out on the first date, a tried and true combination of threatening to tell all of the girl’s friends that she’d done it anyway and a bit of physical persuasion. Now he was turned and looking at me. I tried to put on a facade of toughness, but I really didn’t need this right now, Paige had said we needed to meet to discuss some things and I had a feeling that I knew what they were. I’d been in enough self-destructing relationships to know.
“Can I please go through?” I asked...why the fuck was I begging? Maybe it was because he looked like he could snap me in two with no problems, and he was pretty short. Not that height really became an advantage for me until I let it. It’d been too long since I’d gotten in a fight, and I didn’t particularly want to here.
“Can I please get through?” his friend imitated, his rotting teeth all but falling out at the touch of his tongue. It was a struggle to maintain any kind of composure. I could have run, I suppose. I should have run. “No, you can’t.” They both stepped forward, pinning me against the wall.
I wish that I could remember what happened afterwards, but it was all a flash of getting my head kicked and the first man pulling out a knife. I’d never wanted to know what feeling blood pouring out of my stomach felt like.
“Jay, shh, it’s okay.” A voice above me that didn’t sound like he wanted to hurt me. I latched on immediately, not caring how hard I was holding him. He held back, avoiding the bandages and taking care to hold me gently. “It’s all over.”“Why me?” I whispered into his shoulder. The comforting hands stroking my back in a swirling motion slowed a bit.
“Don’t worry about that. You know they were both crazy. What’s important is that you’re going to be okay.” My breath eased and I slowly let go, wondering who it was. Bobby. He looked at me for a moment, the dark hiding any evidence of what Ryan was capable of, then shifted his glance to the floor. “Are you going to be okay?” he asked hesitantly. “Do you need me to get you anything?”
“No...I think I’ll be okay... I guess they just don’t make sleeping pills strong enough.” I laughed softly, trying to pretend that it wasn’t threatening to turn into tears.
Bobby nodded. “It’s true, they don’t.” He patted me on the shoulder. “Do you want me to stay for a while?”
I shook my head. Who knew what Ryan would think? The last thing I wanted to be partially responsible for was Bobby getting beaten up yet again. “I’ll be okay, really.” I smiled weakly.
“If you ever want to talk about it, I’m willing to listen.” he said softly, leaving and closing the door behind himself.
Ryan was obnoxiously happy in the morning. “C’mon, I made a really great breakfast!” he said, grinning until I swore that I could see his molars. Unfortunately, breakfast wasn’t a word that I wanted to hear right now. Sometime during the night I’d gotten all turned around and slept on the stitches. Pain did not even begin to describe the agony my side was in. He started to help me get up and get dressed, as he was supposed to and I let him, preferring to be benign than provoking anything. Ryan usually was extremely happy around me. I’d heard him tell Bobby once that he thought I’d get better faster if everyone acted happy. All it did was make me want to strangle him even more.“I’m not really that hungry.”
“Well, just come and keep Bobby and me company, okay?”
“Are you still fighting?”
He blushed. “You heard that last night? I’m so sorry. He was getting out of line and I had to remind him of a few rules.” I stared at him incredulously. “I was just goofing off, he takes it so seriously though.”
I didn’t say anything. It sounded so much like Paige, and yet not. My feet were shaky on the floor, it’d been a long time since I had been able to walk on my own. Ryan helped me to the kitchen and sat me down. Bobby wasn’t anywhere around.
“Eat something to keep your strength up...here’s some scrambled eggs.” he said, plopping them down in front of me. Somehow the basic skill of breaking an egg without getting shell in wherever it was going had eluded him. Little bits of shell stuck out from the wasteland of the white and yellow mass. What I really wanted was some more painkillers, but that had to wait until after I had something in my stomach, even if it was bile.
I picked at them and ate one bite before looking at him in anticipation. He noticed my gaze and sighed, heading back upstairs to get the pills from their little home above the sink. I took the opportunity to hobble over to the trash can and dump out the eggs.
“You should really eat, you know.” Bobby said from the doorway. “You’re only going to have to deal with insanely happy Ryan for longer if you don’t.” I looked up at the vision in a black hoodie. It hid whatever Ryan had done to him, plus whatever expression he had on his face. Judging from previous experience, he probably would have done the same if he had been in my position.
“I like my food completely edible.” He snorted.
“You could have toast. Or would that be too much?”
“Toast would be fine.” He gestured for me to sit down, apparently he thought that I would be able to trust him to operate a toaster. “It’s a little dark to be wearing a hood, isn’t it?”
He jerked it down and sneered at me. “Well, the alternative is worse.” I hadn’t thought that he’d hit his face on the bed, but judging by the markings all over the left side of his face, he had. His left eye was swallowed in a quagmire of purple and brown bruises, and his cheek was swollen where someone or something had hit especially hard.
“Did...” I trailed off as I realized that it would only get him upset.
“I fell off the bed.” He laughed ruefully. “Sometimes he plays a little bit too hard.”
I decided not to mention the finger nail shaped cuts on his hands.
The toast popped up and he put it on a plate and handed it to me. “What do you want on it?”
“Um...it doesn’t really matter, I’ll eat it plain.” I doubted I could handle much more than that.
He slid into the seat across from me and played around with the twist tie on the loaf of bread. “Jay...can I ask you something?”
“Sure...”
“Did Paige ever...um...hit you?” Brown eyes slid up to look at mine and then flicked away.
I sighed heavily. “Once. When he was through yelling at me. You know he’s not the nicest guy.” I mean, how callous was dumping me right after I’d gotten out of surgery and was too doped up to notice much more than his floating face above mine whispering that he did love me, but he wasn’t “in love” anymore? Then the letter later, when I could actually stay awake long enough to read, the very long impassioned “Dear John” that basically blamed me for provoking the attack. I don’t think I’d realized how much crying hurt until then.
“What happened? Um, if you want to talk about it.” He leaned forward a little.
“He couldn’t find one of his rings, he thought I’d hidden it somewhere to tease him...He had to be somewhere in ten minutes and he absolutely needed it. I told him I didn’t know where it was and he just hit me, hard, on the jaw. And he didn’t apologize either. I figured it was easier to let things go as they were.” I sighed and started scraping crumbs onto the plate. One bite of each seemed to be all my stomach wanted this morning. Maybe it was because the burnt bits rearranged looked a lot like Paige’s hair.
He patted me on the shoulder. “It’s okay, it’s over.” I hadn’t realized that I was crying.
Ryan came into the room then, bursting with pills of almost every hue. Bobby let his arm slide off of my shoulder and back into his lap. “This’ll make you feel better.” A handful of pills spattered onto the plate. I took them silently, thanking whoever had made gel-caps. “Do you guys want to go out and do something later? Paige wanted to meet for...” Ryan trailed off and looked nervous. I stared straight ahead and pretended that I wasn’t going to bite my cheek in two. “Oh, sorry, I forgot.”
“You can go with him. I’ll stay here.” I said softly, trying desperately not to let the strain show. “You don’t have to avoid him just because he dumped me.”
“I’ll stay with him.” Bobby volunteered. “Paige doesn’t want to see me anyway.”
“Okay.” Ryan said brightly, as if that had been his intention all along.
“Why do you let Ryan do that to you?” I asked.Bobby looked uncomfortable and his teeth worried at his lip. “I don’t know. In some weird kind of way it’s just...it’s...” His fingers played with the seam on his shirt. “It’s all I can expect. All I should expect. All I’ve grown to expect. It’s his way of showing me that he realizes that I’m still alive.”
“There are better people than Ryan, trust me.”
“I know you mean well, but I don’t see it getting any better.” He sighed. “He’s said that he’s doing this for my own good, and I know that that’s the wrong way to put it, but it’s...” His bad eye twitched for a moment. “I don’t know how to get out.”
“If you need anything...I’m willing to help.” I offered, knowing he wouldn’t and couldn’t accept.
“Thanks...I’ll keep that in mind.” We both managed weak smiles.
That night I heard the thumping again, not as pronounced...maybe Ryan had learned to...with a shudder I realized that they were having sex. I reached for my CD player almost without thought. This was rapidly turning into one of the many mistakes of my life. Something started thumping against the wall right behind my bed...they must be on the floor then, because their bed was on the other side of their room. I turned the music louder, hoping to drown out Ryan’s idea of sex talk. Which mainly consisted of getting Bobby to whimper about how huge he was, and Ryan snarling that Bobby was way too tight. I put the pillow over my head, but that didn’t do much good. I considered banging on the wall, but who knew what Ryan would do to Bobby then? So I suffered in silence, praying that eventually Ryan would come and Bobby would stop sighing.Too much like Paige and I had been. Except Paige liked asphyxiation and I didn’t. Of course, Paige’s way was law...if I didn’t do what he said he figured he could leave me. I guess getting attacked was outside of the norm, and so it didn’t matter if he dumped me. That’s what I kept on telling myself. There were times that he had been nice, one of the best feelings in the world was actually having someone to sleep with who I could hold if I really wanted to. Usually he’d push me away, but sometimes I could catch him unawares and...that was better than the sex. His hands, sleepily surrounding me and pulling me closer, the way that his skin smelled, a vague mixture of soap and cigarettes.
Finally it sounded like Ryan came. Ryan growled and Bobby whimpered Ryan’s name weakly. Silence. No after sex talk, just shuffling and the assumption that perhaps they’d gone back to bed.
I slid off to sleep. Only to be startled awake as someone crept into the bed and burrowed into a space by my back. Before I had a chance to protest, arms were around me, gentle on the stitches, and a warm head laid against my back. I knew it was Bobby. I felt his leather wristband through my T-shirt. “What are you..?” I began.
“Shh...just go to sleep. I’ll be gone in the morning.” That seemed okay enough, so I let him stay. Damp spread through the fibers of my shirt as he cried himself to sleep.