Bane

“You’re going to regret it,” I hissed into the brown foam on my lips.

“So are you,” she whispered, her eyes holding mine.

I downed the whole disgusting thing without breathing through my nose once.

People burst into applause, like kernels of popcorn exploding in a microwave bag, and Jesse laughed so hard she had to brace herself against the counter. I pretended to launch at her, and she pretended to run, her shoulder brushing mine. Instead of flinching or running, she just straightened back up, wiped a happy tear off her face, and smiled at the brownish-greenish foam that clung to my upper lip.

“You’re hired,” I growled into her face.

For a second, it looked like she might just wipe the foam off with her thumb.

For a second, it looked like old Jesse would bulldoze her way into the room.

But in reality, she turned around and moved away, calling for Shadow.

That was fine by me, because even though I didn’t get the old Jesse, I’d still managed to do something monumental that day.

I’d killed The Untouchable. And for the first time in a long time, her sky wasn’t going to fall.

THAT NIGHT, I SKIPPED MY usual nighttime jog.

My head was reeling from the day. From Shadow’s upcoming blood work results. The new job. From kissing Bane on the cheek.

Habits and repetition were the only things that kept me from throwing myself off a cliff, and I still needed a physical outlet, so I went to the outside pool for a quick swim. I did a few laps then stopped in the middle of the pool, floating facedown with my arms stretched and eyes wide. I held my breath, my lungs burning with the last, deep breath I’d taken.

The only lights visible were reflecting on the water from the outdoor lamps. It looked and felt like I was floating in the atmosphere, with nothing to anchor me back home. It reminded me of the days after The Incident, when I’d contemplated suicide. I wasn’t sure how serious I’d been—deep down, the concept still seemed so crazy, but sometimes in the dead of the night, when it was really quiet, I waited for the tears to come out, and all I felt was emptiness.

I didn’t feel so empty now. Scared, yes, and very unsure. But there was excitement there, too. Roman ‘Bane’ Protsenko was a paid escort. But funnily enough, that took the pressure off. We weren’t a boy and a girl. We were two lonely, fucked-up souls. It made wanting Bane in my life acceptable. I wanted him to fix me.

To cure me.

To hold me.

To make me laugh.

To make the pain go away.

More than anything, I wanted him to lift my shirt, see the scar, kiss it better, and tell me that I was beautiful. I could almost imagine it if I tried real hard—his beard on my marred flesh. His crinkly, soothing eyes on my sore memories.

Soft.

Warm.

Good.

Breathe.

I needed to breathe.

I snapped my head up from the water and took a greedy breath, gasping for air. My arms flailed around me, and I swam in place, looking around, before paddling frantically to the edge of the pool.

Maybe that was the difference between Bane and all the others.

I didn’t want him.

I needed him to remind me how to breathe.

I liked to think of my memories as a graveyard for my thoughts.

Moments that were already dead, so I didn’t have to worry about them happening again.

I remembered a lot of things I wished I hadn’t, and maybe that was my problem. For instance, I remembered the moment Emery yanked my shirt and jerked me into that car. The moment I realized I was in danger. I remembered the first rip of fabric in my ear—that was Emery, too, who started everything before the other two followed.

I remembered the first dry thrust into me. Nolan.

The first punch to the face. Henry.

I remembered how it felt on the operation table when they sucked my fetus out of me. Those were all crisp, clear memories. Sharp like knives. But then there was the moment I couldn’t remember at all.

The one prior to Emery trying to take my virginity.

The one when I’d already lost it.

“If only I could remember.” I clutched the roots of my hair. I could feel Mayra’s soft gaze flickering on my skin. She always gaped at me with a mixture of hopelessness and pity. My therapist looked like the classic loving grandma. White cotton hair on tan skin. Deep wrinkles and big dangling jewelry.

“Remember what?” she coaxed.

“When did it happen? When did I lose my virginity?”

I worried my lower lip, my fingers twisting together. I’d been happy with Emery. And I hadn’t slept with anyone else before him. I would remember if I had. He was my first, but when we got to business, there was no blood. No pain. His shocked face hovered over mine as he’d thrust into me, his pelvic movements becoming more punishing and desperate with every second that passed. Emery’s brows furrowed as I’d grown anxious and exasperated, writhing underneath him in unwarranted remorse. I wondered if I should fake the discomfort he craved to see in my eyes.

Some girls needed to fake pleasure. With Emery, I needed to give him my pain.

Then his gaze shifted to his PlayStation device, and mine followed.

Then I noticed the camera, blinking a red dot at me.

Then I threw a fist in his face, scrambling up, wrapping my torso with his sheet.

Then I sealed my fate.

“How do you mean?” Mayra scratched her temple with her pen.

“What if I’m suppressing something? Forgetting something?” I stood up from the seat in front of her, pacing back and forth. Mayra’s office looked nothing like her so-called personality. White on beige. Pottery Barn on West Elm. Rich on prudish. It often made me wonder which one of them was fake—the office or the persona?

“Do you think you might be trying to find a reason for why such a horrid thing happened to you? Perhaps you’d like to convince yourself that there is something for you to atone. But the truth is, Emery, Nolan, and Henry are the ones who have wronged you. Not the other way around.”

“No.” I shook my head, feeling like the room wasn’t big enough to contain all my anger. “What I’m saying is…”

“You could have broken your hymen falling from a bike or inserting a tampon. Some girls are born with no hymen at all. I’m worried that looking for reasons why this has happened to you might pull you away from the road you should be taking to recovery. Acceptance and rehabilitation will come when you realize nothing bad happened before. You did nothing to invite such behavior,” she burst into my words, quiet but stern. Her eyes followed my movements, but I knew her butt would never leave the couch. I stopped in front of her window, glancing down toward the street. Something made me look for Bane’s red truck. He was probably at Café Diem, getting hit on by every person with a pulse. Pam included. I hated that he drew so much attention. I hated that he’d slept with people for money and connections. And I hated that I was secretly excited to start working for him.

Most of all, I hated that I’d been with Mayra ever since I was twelve, shortly after Pam and I had moved in with Darren, and I still counted every minute of every session, waiting for it to be over.

But Bane…he was a different story. Today I’d woken up feeling different than yesterday. Maybe I’d had time to digest everything that had happened, but I felt slightly possessive of Bane, and that was worrisome.

He made me feel normal, and that was more than I could say about most people I came across. My curiosity toward him bothered me, too. But talking to Mayra about him, or about my mom hitting on him, made me feel…weird. For one thing, Mayra was a longtime friend of Darren’s family. I couldn’t trust her not to pay it forward. Ethics codes be damned. I pressed my fingertips to the cold window glass.

“There’s a chunk of memory missing from my brain,” I gritted out. It was during the year Pam and Darren had gotten married, shortly after Dad had died. Everything had happened so fast and all at once. Mayra said it was a natural reaction. So much had happened to me in such a short time, I’d created an abyss in my memory to cope with all the changes.

“We don’t remember every single day of our lives.” I watched Mayra play with one of the many necklaces on her chest through the reflection of the window. “And that’s a good thing, Jesse.”

The clock next to Mayra’s couch chimed with glee—not the subtlest signal our session was over, I’d once pointed out, and Mayra even agreed, but never changed it—and that was our cue. We gave each other respectful nods.

“By the way, I got a job.” I dropped the bomb a second before we were done.

“Jesse!” Mayra smiled from her couch, and as always, it didn’t reach her eyes. “That’s wonderful! I want to hear all about it next week.”

Now it was my turn to grin. I sometimes did that. Dropped important stuff at the end of my meetings with Mayra just to see her shutting me down and kicking me out. It reminded me she wasn’t a friend. She was a paid ally, the worst thing a person could have, and call me paranoid, but reminding myself that she was Team Benjamins and not Team Jesse helped.

“Yeah.” I grabbed my backpack and slung it over my shoulder, one foot already on the threshold. I zipped my hoodie all the way up before I got out to face the world. “Can hardly wait.”

I once read that people often mistake infatuation with love, and that the best way to distinguish between the two is to look at the time it took you from the moment you met the person to the moment you realized you couldn’t let them go, even if you tried.

Falling in love is when you lose yourself slowly, piece by piece.

Infatuation is when you lose yourself all at once.

Love is like ivy. It wraps around you, chokes every part of you quietly. It is not patient, or kind, or gentle. It is needy, cunning, and suffocating.

When I made my way to Café Diem, I genuinely thought I was doing Bane a favor by warning him about Pam. But that’s because the ivy was only tickling my feet at that point, not yet gripping my ankles and rooting me to the ground. Bane and Pam were scheduled to meet there, and an overwhelming notion of loathing toward my own mother filled my chest. I had one friend. She’d had at least four lovers. Not only had she slept with Nolan while I was dating Emery at the beginning of my senior year—a fact Nolan enjoyed sharing with me the night when he took me against my will—but there had been others, too.