“I know,” I agree sadly.
“You need to tell her about this.”
I look at him, the narrow points at the edge of each eye, the heavy lids that make him constantly smolder, the creases around his thick, heart-shaped lips, the striking dark ring of brown that circles his light brown iris. “She won’t let us hang out anymore.”
He chuckles under his breath and murmurs, “Maybe that’s for the best.”
I laugh with him, not denying the fact I want more from him than I know he will give. “Promise me you won’t tell her until I do?”
“I’m not making that promise.”
Of course, he’s not. He’s too fucking loyal to her.
I groan and punch him playfully in the chest, it doesn’t bother him in the slightest. “Then can I ask a favor?”
“You already asked me about a million and I’m still working on them,” he jokes, smirking at me now in that very way that used to infuriate me.
“Can you use this last time alone with me to make your confession?”
His smile fades as I knew it would. A sad sight.
“What?”
“Your confession. I told you mine, my sister told you too, so now you tell me yours.”
He looks dumbfounded, almost terrified. Suddenly this strong, handsome man that my sister is bedding looks about nine years old, wanting to hide from monsters that don’t exist. Or perhaps they did for him.
“I don’t want to talk about that.”
“I know, and that’s exactly why you should.”
He frowns. “Why?”
“Because damaged people understand damaged people. I’m about as damaged as it gets. Lay it on me. Let me take it from you for a while. I know you want to tell somebody.”
He shakes his head. “If that’s so true why won’t your sister talk to me about what happened to her? I want to ask her about it, but I gave her my word I never would.”
“What do you want to know?” I ask, and we both sit on upturned buckets facing each other. “Ask me anything, I’ll answer if I can.”
“I’m almost scared to,” he mutters and rubs his eyes with the heels of his palms.
I wait expectantly and I can tell by the look in his browns and the way he’s biting his lips he’s really thinking hard about the questions he wants to ask.
“What happened? How did it start?”
“Are you sure you have the stomach for it, Nokosi?”
“No.”
I laugh through my nose. “Well, you better line it with lead in preparation.” I rub my hands on my thighs. “Growing up, my sister and I were good students, great daughters, good friends. We weren’t bullies or bullied, we had stable lives and a happy-ish home.”
“That’s good to know.”
“But…” I continue, smiling sadly. “We found out I was sick. I had a seizure and collapsed during a school trip, they did a brain scan and six months later I was being pumped full of medications to stop the growth of this tumor. A tumor I’ve had unknowingly since birth.”
His lips part. “I’m sorry… that sucks.”
“Yes… well… anyway. So, treatments failed, and I was told I had maybe two years left to live. The chances of me reaching my nineteenth birthday were slim then and even slimmer now.” I raise my hands to show him all I am.
“You don’t look skinny and frail like I imagined you would,” he admits softly, and I laugh.
“You’ve been imagining my body, have you, Nok?”
He rolls his eyes.
“Anyway, I decided that we needed to live a little, me and Lilith. We didn’t really party or do much other than take our bikes out, and I really didn’t want to die a virgin but not many people wanted to date the new girl with no hair.”
“I’m sure you were still beautiful.”
“What’s worse is… I lost my hair for nothing. The chemo failed to stop the tumor’s growth, so it was all pointless.” I flap my hand at him. “So, me being me I decided to make friends with all of the wrong people. I started dabbling in drugs because you only live once, right? I started drinking and partying and then finally I met this gorgeous eighteen-year-old guy. He was so fucking handsome, really preppy, rich, like Bill Gates rich.”
“Sounds like a dick.”
“He was, but he wanted to party, and I wanted to lose my virginity. He said he knew what he was doing, that he’d make it good for me. I believed him, but my sister didn’t want me to party alone. Of course, she didn’t. She never did. She followed me around, making sure I got home safe, loving me and looking after me…”
“Lilith is good like that.”
I nod slowly. “She really is. She’s amazing. So, we go to this guy’s house and he’s having a gathering with his friends, right? Just him and a few buddies, but that’s cool, they’re all snorting coke and drinking tequila, we’re all just there to have a good time.”
His back stiffens. “I don’t know if I want to hear this.”
“I’ll spare you most of it but let’s put it this way… one minute I was awake and grinding up on him, the next I’m on the ground and my head is foggy. But I hadn’t done any drugs or drank much. I wanted to be mostly sober for my deflowering.”
Nokosi buries his head in his hands for a moment, his thigh is bouncing. “I really don’t know if I want to hear this.”
“My sister, who was saving her virginity for somebody she cared about was on the floor next to me but too far for me to reach. Some asshole was peeling down her pants as another kept trying to get her to drink. She’d been saying no to their offers for drinks all night and they didn’t like that. They pushed the bottle into her mouth… it broke her tooth, her incisor. She rolled over and vomited, I saw it floating in the bile between us.”
“Fuck… what the fuck?” he breathes, looking as sick as I feel telling this story. This truth of mine that I’ve never once told anybody.
“They raped her, I watched them lift her legs, spread them in her dazed state and one by one they fucked her, coming inside of her, laughing with each other and chatting like they weren’t committing a crime. She screamed. She wasn’t one of those who lay there and just took it like I did. She screamed, and begged, and fought, and they wouldn’t stop. They didn’t care. These were not men, they were fucking animals and they took something from her that she’d never get back.”
Nokosi places his hands on mine and squeezes. “You don’t have to continue if you don’t want to.”
“I felt my sister’s pain more than I felt my own, that’s crazy right? I felt sadder for her than I did for myself.” I turn my hands over and grip his tight.
We’re bonding, sharing this moment with him is bringing us closer together, I can feel it.
“What happened to them? What happened to you?”
“Well, there wasn’t really any hiding what they’d done, we were a mess, I felt sure they were going to kill me but everybody knew where we were because the fucking idiots had posted all over social media with pictures of us partying with them.” I sigh, thinking back to that night all the while trying not to vomit and lose my mind over it.