Lily
When Zed left my room, I let out the breath that I’d been holding for what felt like years. I couldn’t believe that I’d just let him take my virginity like that. It was like something alien and strange had come over me. Never ever in my twenty-one years had I ever been so aroused. I’d never had such a powerful orgasm as the one that Zed had forced from me. But I didn’t know that sex could be so painful, either. Between my legs felt red and throbbing. When I shifted on the bed, a sharp pain shot through my lower belly.
Hobbling to the bathroom, I sat down to pee and gasped when it stung. Jackie had always warned me about that. She had told me that if I didn’t pee after sex, I’d get a urinary tract infection, but she told me that it would be painful the first couple of times. When I wiped, there was a smear of blood on the toilet paper.
I wondered if Zed had found the coffee yet.
After I peed, I couldn’t handle the idea of being around him, so I went back to my room and got back into bed. I almost never wallowed, but this was an unusual situation all around. I felt like I was falling in love with him. There were times when I felt as though he’d developed some affection for me, but scarily, I knew that he was able to turn it all off with the flick of a switch.
Steeling myself, I got out of bed and walked with rubbery legs into the kitchen. Wrinkling my nose at the smell of coffee, I saw Zed perched on the couch. He was watching something on my laptop, and I had to cough to get him to turn around.
“Hi,” I said shyly. “Can we talk?”
Zed grunted something unintelligible at me. I sat down on the other end of the couch; there was barely enough room, and Zed didn’t move over.
“What?” He finally turned around and focused his green eyes on me. I shivered under the intensity of his gaze. It was hard to believe that twenty minutes ago we’d been locked together in a passionate embrace. I blushed thinking about it now; the way he’d touched me, the way he’d made me feel… even though I was sore, I felt myself getting aroused at the slightest memory.
“Can we talk about us?”
“Us?”
I sighed. He obviously wasn’t going to make this easy for me. “You and me,” I said slowly. “Are we going to do that again?”
Zed sighed and buried his face in his hands. I felt the slight stirring of anger in my lower belly. “I dunno, Lily,” he said in a muffled voice. “What do you want?”
I frowned. “I don’t know what I want right now,” I said carefully. “I’m not sure. I’ve never had a boyfriend before. I want to be with someone who loves me and respects me.”
Zed shook his head. “I fucked you, Lily. You’re not my girlfriend, okay? I don’t date. I don’t have girlfriends.”
“It didn’t mean anything to you?” I was horrified at the shrill sound of my voice. “How can you say that after we just did what we did?”
“It’s called adult life, Lily. Don’t act like you’ve never heard of two grown people fucking.”
I blushed. Jackie would laugh in my face if she could see me now. Then again, Zed didn’t know that my best friend was a sex worker. “I know that,” I said slowly. “But I’m not like that. I want a future with someone. I want to have a happy life, and maybe get married and have kids.”
Zed’s jaw dropped.
“Not with you,” I said quickly. “At least not right now. I’m just talking about what I want from life. It doesn’t have to be this very second; this is just what I want in the future.”
Zed raked a hand through his short crop of dark hair. “I don’t talk about the future, Lily. That’s not how I operate.”
I glared at him. “Well, I do. I want a lot of things, Zed. I want a happy relationship. I want to finish my degree in psychology, and maybe go to graduate school. I want to work with kids, and I’m not sure if I want to keep singing. I want to buy a house and move out of Detroit and raise my kids in a safer place. I want to be a good parent and share a good marriage with someone I love. And I want my husband to always love me and desire me above everyone else.” When I was finished, I looked at Zed expectantly. He glared at me.
“I don’t see what any of this has to do with me,” he finally said. “I’m just the guy who popped your cherry. I don’t have to fuckin’ marry you, or have kids with you, or watch you graduate and go onto to grad school. I was in prison, Lily. You think that jives with what you want? Don’t be so naïve.”
Tears came to my eyes and I pre-emptively wiped them with the back of my hand. Zed looked away, out the window, and suddenly I felt like the biggest fool in the world for telling him what I wanted. He was right; he didn’t owe me anything. In the real world, people had sex all the time, and with people they knew far less than I knew Zed. At least I know his last name, I thought. Some people probably can’t even say that.
I realized Zed wasn’t going to say anything else. He’d already turned his attention back to the laptop as if to signal that the discussion was over. With a heavy heart, I turned and walked back toward my room. The last thing I wanted was for him to see me cry.
***
Zed
“Wait,” I said as Lily was turning around to go back down the hallway. “I’m not through talking to you yet.”
“Really?” she spat out sarcastically, looking angry. “You sounded pretty fucking done to me!”
I recoiled. It was one of the only times I’d heard Lily curse. I sighed heavily and looked at her. Her gray eyes were narrowed, and her forehead was creased in anger. “Listen, I don’t talk about the future. Or the past, okay? That’s part of who I am. That’s my deal, Lily,” I said, with growing intensity. “I was in prison for fuck’s sake. I’m an ex-con! You don’t want me as your boyfriend; you want some guy who has a degree and doesn’t know what a shank is!”
Lily shook her head. She swallowed and opened her mouth as if to speak, but nothing came out.
I continued, “If we were together, don’t you know that you would be at risk? There are people out there who want me dead, Lily, and they’d fucking torture you in front of me just to see me in pain. Do you want to take that kind of risk? You don’t even know what you’d be in for if you stayed involved with me!”
“How can I not be involved with you?” Lily shot back. “You practically kidnapped me and appointed yourself as my guardian! I couldn’t kick you out if I wanted to! You don’t even let me go outside!”
“Because it’s dangerous,” I said through gritted teeth. I couldn’t believe how stubborn and stupid she was being! “For someone who’s going to college, you’re acting pretty fucking stupid,” I told her, rolling my eyes. “I don’t know what I have to do to make you realize how bad this shit is!”
“You could start by telling me what happened!” Lily’s gray eyes blazed with angry fire. “I don’t even know the first thing about you! I don’t even know how long you were in prison for! I don’t know anything about your family! I don’t know anything about your friends!”
“Because it’s dangerous,” I repeated, glaring at her. For once she didn’t back down or seem intimidated. I couldn’t help but admit that she was impressing me with the way she was acting, even if she was being a complete moron about the facts of life. “You’re just this naïve little girl who has no idea about the real world! That asshole at the club could have skinned you alive, and you wouldn’t have even known it was coming!”
“That’s not fair!” she shot back. “I know how to handle myself sometimes! You don’t even give me a chance, Zed. You just have to swoop in and be the big macho man who’s going to rescue me from the evil big baddies!” Lily gestured angrily with her hands and wore a mocking expression on her face. It was seemingly impossible to believe that we’d been fucking like animals not half an hour ago.
I sighed and covered my face with my hands. “You don’t get it,” I said flatly. “I don’t talk about the future. I don’t talk about the past. You’re not hearing about this. It could make things even more dangerous if I tell you because I guarantee you won’t listen to me then, either.”
Lily folded her arms over her chest. “Try me.”
I shook my head. “No-go, princess,” I snapped. “You can’t push me around like this. You’re not the one in charge here!”
Lily glared at me, then turned on her heel and stalked down the hallway. I was amazed that her little body could generate so much sound; she was stomping so hard that the glasses in the cabinets were shaking. I listened as she slammed her bedroom door and threw herself on the bed.
With Lily out of the way, I sat back down on the couch and closed my eyes. What a fucking exhausting morning. First, the little bitch had the nerve to leave the house unsupervised, and now she was trying to make me tell her about the past? Fuck. There was no way in hell she was ever going to learn about my history.
I wasn’t going to tell her about Rose, and I certainly wasn’t going to tell her about the heroin. As far as I knew, Lily thought that I’d done time for possession. I hadn’t exactly told her the truth. I did ten years for dealing heroin, lots of heroin. It was a fucking stupid mistake, but that’s what happened when you were broke and hooked on dope.
Lily wouldn’t understand. Compared to my life, hers had been a breeze. I didn’t care if she lived alone in one of the most dangerous cities in the country; she didn’t understand where I’d been, and the shit that I’d gone through. Thinking about what a cupcake she really was only hammered the decision home; there was no way she could ever know. I knew that hearing about Rose’s murder would give her nightmares for weeks alone.
Rose. Thinking about my sister made me realize that I needed to buckle down and work a lot harder if I wanted to catch this guy. As far as I’d come, I knew that I was a long ways off. I couldn’t shake the feeling that someone in the gang knew that I was looking for them.
It wasn’t that anything had happened; it was just a general sense of unease that lurked in my stomach whenever Iron Angels came up in a conversation. It was like a cat and mouse game, except I had no idea whether I was the cat or the mouse.
From the bedroom, there was a small cough, and I closed my eyes and thought about Lily again… her creamy pale skin… her enthusiastic mouth. It was almost enough to make me forget what I had to do.
But not quite.