Текст книги "Deeper"

Автор книги: Robin York

Соавторы: Robin York,Robin York
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Текущая страница: 16 (всего у книги 20 страниц)

Jesus. Jesus.

I put my hand on the back of her head, and she giggles, tucked into the hollow between my shoulder and my neck. “That was an interesting noise.”

“Shut up.”

“Like you were dying.”

“Swear to God.”

“It didn’t sound pleasant.”

“It was pleasant. Never doubt it.”

She’s shaking against my chest, my arms wrapped tight around her.

“We’ll do you in a minute.” I sound like I’m under water. “Then we’ll see who’s laughing.”

That sets her off again, and I watch her, smiling, because we’re ridiculous.

Ridiculous and happy.

Me and Caroline.

After I catch my breath, it starts to sink in that I’m a dickhead.

Like, literally. I just let the head of my dick call the shots. Genius.

I rub my hand up and down Caroline’s back. She’s tense, her muscles twitching and tight.

“How close were you?”

She breathes a little laugh. “Um, close?”

If I was her, I’d be annoyed. First she gives me an ultimatum and I ignore her for three weeks, then I wake her up, coax her back to my apartment, and don’t even get her off?

“I suck.”

She props herself up on my chest and smiles. “I don’t know, I was kind of enjoying how completely useless you got there at the end.”

“I bet.”

“No, seriously. You’re always so in charge. You’ve made me come, like, a million times, and I’ve only …” She gets bashful, looks away.

“I like making you come.”

Caroline shifts to the side and gives my chest a shy smile. She strokes her hand over my chest, down my stomach. “I like making you come, too. A lot.”

“You sound surprised.”

“I didn’t always like it. Before.”

I’d guessed as much.

“It wasn’t—it wasn’t bad, really. It just wasn’t …”

“Like this.”

“Yeah.”

Her fingers find the button on my jeans. “So I said a minute ago that I’d, uh, clean you up.”

“You don’t have to.”

“But if I want to.”

“If you want to, knock yourself out.” I catch her chin, tip up her face so I can see her eyes. “But if you don’t want to—tonight, or if you’re still coming around next week or in a month, and you don’t want to then, either—that’s fine. I mean, I know you love lists and schedules and all that shit, but there’s not, like, a list of stuff we have to do or some timetable we have to do it on. Where we are now … it’s good.”

I laugh at myself. Good. “Okay, it’s fucking awesome.”

She pushes her nose into my neck and kisses me there. Not the kind of thing I ever would’ve thought I wanted a girl to do, but Caroline can do it all night long if she wants. It’s nice. Like when Frankie used to wake up in the middle of the night and crawl into my bed, all warm and soft. Comfortable.

“Thanks,” she says.

“Don’t thank me. We already established that I’m a dick.”

Her arm tightens around me. “You’re not. You’re great. I mean, you’re kind of also a dick. But mostly great.”

She’s quiet for a minute, and I’m thinking about how right I feel with her and how I’ve never had this with anyone else. Never let any girl this close.

I’m glad it’s the same for her. I know that makes me a jerk, because it means everything that happened to her with Nate had to be kind of shitty in order for her to come to me and think what we’ve got is anything different—anything special at all.

But I’m glad anyway.

I want everything with Caroline to be special.

After a while, her hand starts meandering down my stomach, and she unbuttons my slacks and lowers the zipper. I lift my hips to help her peel them off. She slips the pad of one finger underneath the waistband of my briefs and follows it across my stomach, which makes me suck in a breath.

I could go again. Soon.

“Take these off,” I say, grabbing a fistful of her pajama pants.

She does, while I take off my briefs. She’s a little shy about it, and she leaves her panties on. They’re purple, with dark purple lace at the top.

“Nice,” I tell her.

That makes her smile. She shoots a nervous look at my crotch and starts to maneuver her way down there, but I grab hold of her armpit and haul her back up so I can kiss her. She’s pressed against me, skin to skin, nothing but a tiny scrap of panties separating us. I kiss her slow and lazy, knowing how lucky I am and wanting to soak in it for a good long time.

When she finally pulls her mouth away, I’m hard again, and she’s squirmy, pressing herself into me.

She starts to kiss her way down my chest.

“Let me get you off,” I say.

“I promised.”

I can only see the top of her head, and I can’t tell if she means that funny or serious.

“You don’t have to,” I remind her.

“Shh.” She takes her time getting down there, and the way she does it … Jesus. All those shy glances, somehow I got thinking she didn’t know what she was doing, but by the time she puts her tongue on my cock, one quick swirl around the head, I’m already half dead.

“Tease,” I choke out.

She grins. Sticks out that pointed pink tongue of hers. Licks me clean.

I keep my hands fisted in the blankets so I won’t put them in her hair. Caroline and me have messed around a lot, but tonight’s different, and I don’t want to fuck it up. Traumatize her or whatever. She can do whatever she wants to me, but I’m not going to push her.

It’s fucking hard, though. To keep still. To keep from showing her exactly what I want her to do to me. She wraps her fingers around the base of my cock, and there’s this spot where she could put pressure and doesn’t. She licks and sucks the underside where I’m so sensitive, but she flicks right over the place beneath the head that makes me insane.

I give up on the blankets and rub my hands over her shoulders, up her neck, into her hair. Not clutching at her, though it takes a monumental effort not to. Just touching her.

She cups my balls, but her fingers are so gentle, her mouth so … polite. It’s nice.

It’s good.

She lifts up her head. Crawls up until she’s a couple of inches from my face. “Hey.”

“What?”

“You don’t come with a guidebook. Tell me what you want.”

“You’re doing great.”

I jerk off the bed before I understand why. She pinched my nipple, twisted it. Not in a cute way.

“The fuck? That hurt!”

“Tell me what you want.”

Her eyes are intent, her mouth set in this no-nonsense line. She looks like classroom Caroline, sure of herself, ticked at me for keeping her from completing this lesson to her satisfaction.

I love her like this.

“Suck me,” I say. “Hard.”

She smiles this little smile. Totally satisfied with herself. “Thank you.” Her head drops down again. “Now, keep talking to me, or I’m going to drive home and you’ll be all alone with your right hand. Or is it your left, since you’re left-handed?”

I don’t think I’m supposed to answer the question. Not when she’s crawling down my body, ass in the air. I want my hands on that ass. Get her turned around, pussy in my face, dripping all over me while she sucks me off.

I’ve said shit like that to her on the phone, when I was too far gone to stop myself, safe because I was a couple thousand miles from her. But it’s different to think about saying it to her face. Does she like that, or does she just put up with it? Where do girls like Caroline draw the line?

When she wraps her hand around me, I reach down, show her where to pull the skin tight. “Here.”

She takes over. Then she’s licking me again, flicking her tongue over the head, sucking me into her mouth. Sucking hard.

“Jesus fucking Christ.”

She pops me out of her mouth long enough to say, “That’s more like it.”

There are no girls like Caroline. Just Caroline.

She’s more than enough.

She sucks me, licks me, tongues me in the spot I show her until I’m lifting off the bed, my legs stiff, my dick so hard I can’t possibly last. When she goes for my balls this time, I show her where to stroke behind them, where to press—oh, fuck, she’s a quick study.

“Turn around,” I say, but I’m not sure she understands me. Not sure I can make words that actually come out sounding like English.

“Caroline. I—can you—gnuh.”

“Eh?” she teases.

I sit up, grab under her arms, haul her up my body. Her lips are shining, wet, and I kiss her, get my tongue inside her, get my hand in her panties and my fingers into her slickness. She’s slippery, soaking. God damn.

She moans into my mouth. “West.”

“Turn around,” I tell her.

“What?”

“Turn around. Get your hips up here”—I tug her toward my face—“and your mouth back down there.”

“That’s … Can’t we just have sex now?”

For a second I’m dumbfounded. When I manage to gather a few brain cells together, I say, “Honey, we are having sex.”

Her cheeks are already pink, but now they turn red. Which is hilarious. I mean, I’ve got my fingers inside her, she’s riding my hand, still moving in this soft up-and-down even as we’re talking, hair all loose around her shoulders, fucking beautiful—and now she’s going to get shy on me?

“What did you think this was?” I ask.

“I know. I mean, yes, I’ve heard Quinn’s sex-doesn’t-have-to-include-a-dick lecture, too. But I meant, you know, were we going to have sex sex. Penis-in-vagina sex. Sex.”

I raise an eyebrow. “Penis-in-vagina sex?”

“Shut up.”

“No, I mean, that’s romantic. That’s probably the most romantic proposition I’ve ever heard.”

She’s laughing. “Shut up.”

I move my fingers and push her onto her back. Look deep into her eyes. Say, real serious, “Caro, I would love to have penis-in-vagina sex with you.”

She smacks my arm, and then I kiss her, and then … damn. It’s like we’ve been playing around and now we’re not. At all. The kiss gets intense, fast, her hands are everywhere, grabbing at me, positioning my hips where she wants me, where I’m grinding against her. Her panties are in my way, and I’ve had enough of that. I yank them down, pull them off her ankles, push her knees apart and lick between her legs until she’s making these quiet, helpless sounds that I fucking love.

“West,” she says.

Yeah. I know. She wants me inside her, and if I don’t get there in the next thirty seconds, the world might as well end.

“Hold on. Don’t move. Not one inch.”

I get up, grab a condom from the desk, rip it open, and roll it on with my eyes on Caroline on my bed, legs spread open, wet and ready, her body, her mouth, her smile, her eyes.

“I’m getting cold.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

Then I’m back over her, my dick sliding over her warm, soft pussy, our mouths meeting, her arms around me. “You sure?”

“I’m sure.”

I reach down. Find the right spot, the right angle.

I ease into her. Inch by inch. Slow, because I don’t want to hurt her, because it’s been a while for both of us, because I don’t want to embarrass myself and come before we’re even hardly started.

Slow, because I want to watch her face, and, fuck, it is romantic. It is special.

It’s Caroline.

When I’m all the way in, her knees spread wide, her eyes right with me, I kiss her. I just stay there, not moving, because I’ve wanted to be here, with her, for so long, but I didn’t think I ever would.

It’s torture. The worst best torture of my life.

This is what deeper feels like.

This is what sex feels like, if you’re doing it right.

If you’re in love.

It’s incredible.

I frame her face between my palms, smooth her hair off her forehead. “You okay?”

I thought this couldn’t get better, but it does when she smiles. And when she moves, rocking her hips experimentally into me, then back away—Christ Jesus. I suck in a breath and close my eyes.

“I’m great.”

“Good.”

I’m not ready to move yet. I’ve been told I have amazing stamina, but it’s obvious now that this is only true when I don’t give a shit. With Caroline, I’m going to have to work hard just to not be the king of the premature ejaculators.

“West?”

She rocks again.

“Hunh?”

“Are you going to fuck me or what?”

“I ever tell you I don’t like bossy women?”

She slithers away beneath me, then thrusts up. Her mouth falls open in a soft O. Then she smiles and looks at me, like, I’m such a genius.

She does it again. “You—oh—like me, though—oh my God.”

Whatever tiny piece of control I was holding on to, I lose it. I start to move, and she’s right with me. I suck her tits, kiss her neck, behind her ear, everyplace she likes. I drive into her, savoring every stroke, the tight clasp of her cunt, the way she moans, the slide of our bodies, the sex stink better than any perfume, the taste of sweat at her throat.

“Can you come like this?” I ask.

“I don’t … know.”

I get a hand under her ass, angle her up. She squeaks.

“Better?”

“Oh, wow.” After a few seconds, she says, “Harder.”

Music to my ears.

I speed up, stop banking my thrusts, let her have more of my need, more of my greed, and she takes it. She wants it. She gets her legs around me, digs her heels into me on every stroke, lifts up into me, and says, “West, yeah, oh, God.” I didn’t think she’d be like this, this open, this loud, but she is and I love it.

“This gonna work?”

I don’t have to ask, though. She’s tossing her head, heels back on the bed, digging in, getting restless and desperate. “Please,” she says. “Please.”

She always begs me when she’s about to come. I love that, too. I love making her so crazy that she loses her pride and just begs.

“So fucking sexy.”

Then we’re moving fast and frantic, and I don’t have any way to describe it that’s worth anything. I push into her until there’s nowhere to get to, until I’ve already got there, and there’s no her or me, just us, our bodies, our heat, this gathering pleasure white-hot and dangerous, too dangerous, but I don’t care. I can’t think.

I can only move with Caroline, deep, deeper, all the way toward the center of something bigger than either of us.

She tightens. I groan. She grips me. I kiss her.

She moans and her voice breaks, a beautiful cracked-open sound. My balls tighten, the joy searing through me, her eyes closing, her arms clenching, my heart open as I watch her light up with pleasure.

MARCH
Caroline

We got five weeks.

I’d teased West for counting the days of our separation, even though I spent them dragging around, doubting myself, wrecked with missing him. But when we were together—the last two weeks of February, the first three weeks of March—it was so good that every day felt like an anniversary. Every day felt special, worth pressing into a scrapbook, sealing in amber, tucking away.

Nights at the bakery. Showers at the apartment, a snack in the quiet kitchen, trying not to wake Krishna, laughing behind my hand. Mornings in West’s bed, hands and mouths and the slow, beautiful rhythm of his body rocking into mine.

The way he moves has always made me crazy, but there is nothing like the way he moves inside me. Nothing.

I didn’t know it could be like that. So dirty and so good. So gorgeous and perfect.

For five weeks, we were always together. I went back to my vampire schedule, napping in the afternoons, waking up in the middle of the night and meeting him at the bakery for his shifts. I studied at the library when he was working there, set myself up in a carrel on the fourth floor and waited in the quiet for him to find a cart of journals that needed shelving. I pushed my fingers into his hair when he dropped to his knees beneath my chair, bit my thumb to keep from crying out, came against his fingers and his tongue, scandalous and forbidden and happy.

He kissed me in the dining hall. I took his hand when we walked across the quad. We raced each other down the train tracks, one on each rail, balancing with our arms out, pushing at each other’s hands to see who could stay on the longest, who would fall off, who would win.

Those were the best weeks. In the dead of February, the frozen cold, I had West, and we were beautiful and bright, friends and lovers, laughing all the time. Laughing until my cheeks ached and my stomach hurt and I had to ask him to stop, because it was so good, it hurt.

I loved him.

I didn’t tell him, but it was obvious. Obvious to me, obvious to West.

Obvious to anyone who was paying attention.

West is sitting on the edge of the mattress, bent over his phone. He’s got an eight o’clock. I don’t have to be up for another hour, but I’m up anyway. West had ideas.

Or, okay, West’s penis had ideas. I woke up to his mouth on my neck, his hand heavy and hot against my stomach, his erection pressing against my ass.

“Good morning?” I said. Because I wasn’t all that sure. That it was good, or that it was even morning.

“Mmm.”

That was pretty much all it took to convince me. He has this way of humming under his breath, this low, delicious sound that vibrates right up against my clit. It’s so sexy. It’s so West. One mmm, and I’m in.

I mean, what’s there to complain about when you’re with a guy who’s gorgeous and nice and who wakes you up with the slow, inexorable press of his fingers into your panties, parting your folds, sliding over your clit and inside you?

Nothing.

He got me breathing heavy, flipped me over, eased a pillow under my stomach, and moved into me from behind, his hand at my clit, kissing my neck, my shoulders, until I came so hard I saw stars.

After he was done collapsing on top of me like a giant slug-man, he took a shower, so now he smells like soap, wet hair, West. I’m still all snuggly and sex-relaxed, and he’s whistling, rubbing my bare leg, scrolling through a bunch of texts.

“Who wrote to you?”

“Franks.”

“What’s she up to?”

“She got on Mom’s phone and sent me a whole bunch of selfies.”

“Let me see.”

I crawl half onto his lap, and he shows me. “She’s so cute.”

She looks a lot like him—West with round cheeks and a sharp chin, eye makeup, and a sparkly shirt. She’s in love with taking selfies, too. I’ve seen probably thirty of them in the past three weeks, because West has been as open as he promised to be. He told me all about Frankie, about his mom and Bo, about his dad.

There are some things he’s holding back, I think. Something about sex, about that money I dropped in his lap. But I know enough. I don’t need to know absolutely everything to understand what makes West tick.

Sometimes I think about what life gave me compared to what it’s given him, how hard he works, and I get so angry. He doesn’t like to talk about fairness and unfairness, though, or to dwell on the gap between how we grew up.

“It is what it is,” he said last time I brought it up. “You hungry?”

He says now, “She’s got all that crap on her eyes.”

“It’s called eye makeup.” I peer at the phone. “Actually, that’s a good nighttime eye. I can never get my eyeliner to look that awesome.”

“You don’t wear that stuff.”

“Not for everyday, but sometimes if there’s a party or whatever.”

He frowns at the pictures. “She’s too young.”

“She’s just trying it out. I was the same at her age. In a big hurry for bras and lipstick, all that stuff.”

“Yeah, but I doubt you had anybody sniffing after you in Ankeny. It’s different with Franks. She’s got to be smart, or some useless jag-off will get her knocked up before she’s even old enough to know what she wants yet.”

I watch him type out a text. Wash that shit off your eyes. You’re pretty enough without it.

“Heartwarming.”

“I’m her brother, not her boyfriend.”

He’s more like her father, though, I think. The closest thing she has to one.

Standing up, West stretches and drops his phone on the desk. “Can you hand me mine?” I ask. “I need to see if Bridge is going to breakfast before class.”

He does, then pulls on a pair of jeans and a T-shirt. I watch his bare chest and stomach disappear from view, sad as always to see them go.

West is smiling when I glance at his face. “What?”

“You. You look like you’re ready to go another round.”

I swipe my finger over the screen of the phone. “I was barely awake for round one.”

“Oh, I don’t know. You woke up pretty good by the end. I thought I was gonna have to shove a pillow over your head, keep you from waking up Krish.”

“You’d probably accidentally suffocate me, you were so busy back there doing your business.”

“Doing my business?” He sounds offended. I love offending him.

“You know.” I stare at my phone, flapping a hand at him. “That man-business. Thrust thrust, pant pant. I swear, sometimes I’m not sure why I put up with it.”

I barely see him coming before he’s grabbing my ankle and yanking me down the bed. I’m all tangled up in the covers, thrashing and laughing, when he crawls on top of me and braces his arms on either side of my head. “Thrust thrust, pant pant? I should spank your ass for that.”

“I’d like to see you try.”

His eyes are blazing. “So would I. But I’m gonna be late for class.” He dips his head and kisses me. “You coming to the library later?”

“Yeah, but I have a group-project thing after lunch, so I’ll be downstairs.”

“Come up after.”

He means the fourth floor. Our floor.

I swear, we’re going to get caught, and then he’ll get fired.

He says it’ll be worth it.

“Sure.”

One more kiss, with tongue, a bump against my hip that’s a hint and a promise, and then he’s moving away. He shoulders his bag as I navigate from texts to missed calls.

I’ve got a bunch. I had the ringer off last night, my phone deep in my bag, and I didn’t realize.

They’re all from my dad.

“See you later, babe.”

One at nine o’clock last night. One at nine-thirty. One at ten. Ten-fifteen. Eleven-thirty. Six o’clock this morning.

My stomach sinks like a rock.

“What’s a guy have to do to get his woman to say goodbye around here?”

I look up. West is leaning in the doorway, hand braced against the jamb.

“My dad called six times last night.”

“That’s—that sounds excessive.”

“Yeah.”

Bad news, cunt, the Internet Asshats whisper.

I’d almost forgotten about them. I’d let myself forget. Let myself pretend.

Not ready to listen to Dad’s voice mail, I switch to email. Fifty new messages. I scroll through the list, seeing strange email addresses and threatening subject lines.

Seeing my dad’s name. Call Me. Urgent Matter.

An email from my sister Janelle. I NEED TO TALK TO YOU.

I don’t click on any of them.

I open the web browser and type in my name.

Caroline Piasecki. Advanced search. Limit to last twenty-four hours.

So many hits. All the worst sites. All the same pictures, all over again.

This isn’t supposed to be happening, but it is.

West is behind me, hands on my shoulders. The phone’s hidden from view by the fall of my hair, and I wish I had something better to hide behind. Some place, some world where I could take him, where everything wasn’t already being ruined.

“It’s bad,” he says.

It’s not a question. He can feel it. He knows.

“Yeah. It’s bad.”

But after that, it only gets worse.

I walk in to my dad’s office armed to the teeth.

West stays in the car, parked all the way down at the end of the driveway. I feel shitty about that, but he said I can only fight one battle at a time, and he’s got a point. Probably the day to reintroduce West to my dad and fess up to his being my boyfriend is not Sex-Picture Day.

Still. Just knowing West is out there, waiting. Knowing he’s on my side. It helps.

We both skipped class this morning. He called in sick to the library. I don’t think he’s skipped class all year, and he’s definitely never missed work, so I appreciate the gesture. Plus, I need him. He’s not much good with computers, but he’s good with me. He sat next to me for hours while I pulled up my spreadsheets, Google-searched until my eyes itched, ranted and raved as I uncovered layer after layer of Nate’s assault.

It’s worse this time. Way worse than before.

The pictures are everywhere, of course, freshly posted at all the meat-market sites along with my name, my school—yeah, yeah. I’ve long since lost the ability to find them shocking.

What’s shocking is all the other stuff.

Hateful posts on my Facebook wall. Personal notes to my school email from strangers who want to rape me, fuck me, punch me in the cunt. My Twitter account is sending out spam messages with links to my vulva. And somehow, God, my professors all must have been contacted, because I’ve gotten concerned-sounding email from three of them and a phone message from the Student Affairs office requesting that I set up an interview as soon as possible.

In six hours, I’ve cycled through hurt and anger, disgust and fear, resignation and fury. I’m a hundred-pound bag of flailing feelings. I’m sad. I’m mad. I’m a wreck.

But West is with me.

More than West: After her eight o’clock, Bridget showed up with Quinn. They called Krishna, who pulled his laptop, mine, and Quinn’s into a temporary network on the living-room coffee table. Within an hour, he was directing a search-and-record-keeping operation with Quinn and Bridget. They’re doing screenshots of everything, calling in favors with a MathLab geek friend of Krishna’s who has crazy computer skills, combing through the student handbook to figure out what kind of rules Nate’s breaking and what can be done about it.

I’m a wreck, but they’re all on my side, and that helps. So much.

Krishna’s friend is the one who figured out what started it all. Tucked away on one of those unmoderated sites where bros like to hang out and be dickheads together, there’s a thread about me. A link to the pictures, a standard complaint about what a frigid, evil whore I am, and then a call to arms: What can we do to teach this bitch a lesson?

Dozens of them took up their weapons. While I was at the bakery with West, sleeping in his arms, having sex with him—all that time, I was being attacked. By strangers. For no reason at all.

If this had happened to me seven months ago, I think I would have crumpled under the weight. Knowing my professors have been sent those links, that my sister and my aunts and maybe even my grandparents have been Facebook-spammed with naked pictures of me—it sucks. It hurts. It makes me want to cry if I dwell on it, if I think too hard about what it means for my future, what it says about the shape of the rest of my life.

But it also makes me so, so mad.

I’m ready to fight. I have a stack of printouts in my arms, a bag with my laptop in it weighing down my shoulder. I have West at the end of the driveway.

In front of me, my father sits in the maroon leather recliner by the window, his own laptop open on his thigh, his glasses pushed up into his thick gray hair, ruffling his otherwise dignified appearance. I study his familiar face—thick eyebrows, that dumpling nose Janelle inherited but I didn’t, his jawline jowlier than I remembered. He’s putting on weight. Too many drive-through cheeseburgers.

He called me home, and I came.

My palms are sweaty when I sit down in the other chair in his corner. It’s deep and tall, and my feet just barely reach the floor. All of my memories of being punished as a girl begin here, with the helpless weight of my swinging feet. I know the number of brass studs anchoring the upholstery onto the end of his chair’s arms. Nine around the arch. Twelve more down each side. I’ve studied each pucker in the leather and memorized the geometrical arches and whorls in his abstract office carpet in order to avoid having to look him in the eye.

Today, I sit with my spine straight, damp palms clasped in my lap. I pulled up my hair into a ponytail and wore jeans and the sweater he paid for at Christmas, pale-blue-green cashmere the color of West’s eyes. My armor.

I sit quietly and wait, because Janelle is the one who sucks up to him, and Alison is the one who cries. I am the daughter who comes to him armed with counterarguments, clever defenses, tricky maneuvers.

I am the daughter who fights.

For months now, I’ve been too scared to fight. I’ve been trying to live in a bubble that Nate popped way back in August. I didn’t want to believe it. I told myself I could fix it. Throw some patches on there, paint over the cracks, avert my eyes, and pretend everything was fine.

Everything’s not fine.

The bubble is well and truly fucked.

But outside the bubble, I’ve found rugby parties and new friends who don’t care about my stupid sex pictures. Outside the bubble, there are nights at the bakery, phone sex, and long naps in the middle of the afternoon with my arms wrapped around a boy who smells like fresh bread and soap, and who makes me feel like I matter, no matter what I look like, what I’ve done, what’s been done to me.

The world hasn’t changed. It’s full of men who hate women. It’s stuffed to the gills with assholes who will mount an attack on a stranger just because she’s female and they’re small-minded monkey-boys with an inferiority complex.

The world hasn’t changed, but I have.

Outside the bubble is life. West.

I like it out here. I’m staying.

Dad clicks on something, closes the lid of his laptop, and looks at me. “Caroline,” he says.

Just my name, for a moment.

Just my name, because you begin by identifying the accused.

“I received a call last night from your aunt Margaret. She’d seen something distressing on your Facebook page, and she wanted to know if I was aware of it.”

His eyes are my eyes, dark brown and full of sympathy. His manner is reasonable. His diction is clear and measured. He doesn’t yell in the office. He judges. We come to him like criminals, and he passes sentence on us, calmly and rationally.

“When I told her I didn’t know what she was referring to, she sent me the link, and I checked it out for myself. The link took me to a website where …”

He clears his throat—the first sign that any of this is disturbing to him.

“… where I found several pictures of you unclothed. Some of them compromising. Sexually compromising. Although it wasn’t possible to positively identify each of the pictures as you, there were certain …”

He looks away from me for a second.

This is not your fault, I tell myself. You didn’t do this. Nate did.

Dad clears his throat again. “There’s no question that at least one, if not more, of the sexually explicit photographs is of you. I followed a second link to much the same thing, and I can only assume that the additional links were also to these photos.”

There’s a long pause, and I wonder if I’m supposed to say something. But what can I say?

Yes, that’s me.

That’s me, giving Nate a blow job.

That’s my vagina, my hand between my legs, stroking my clit.

Yes, that’s me riding Nate’s cock. My face with his semen on it.

Yes.

That’s your baby girl. Your pride and joy.

I sit silent. I knew this would be hard, but it’s harder than I expected. I’d thought about his judgment, feared his disgust, but I’d never thought about his grief.