“Can I talk to you?” He steps onto the bottom row of metal seats like he’s going to work his way up to me.
“Raj is driving me home. I don’t want to keep him waiting.”
I back up, almost tripping on myself. Stepping onto the fifth row. Then the sixth.
“Rerun will wait.”
His commanding voice. I go back to that night. Drink it. Follow me. Upstairs. With Sean Nessel comes instruction. He steps onto another bleacher, getting closer to me, and my heart pounds wildly, like I might fall down.
He’s on the second row now. I’m on the sixth row still, edging to the end.
“I’ve been wanting to apologize to you,” he says. “I wasn’t myself that night. You know, that night we were together.”
He wasn’t himself. This is the only thing that he wants to say to me. That he wasn’t himself.
I had all sorts of revenge scenarios planned, but when you’re stuck in the moment like I am now, it’s very hard to get your mouth open. It’s hard to say anything when you’re shaking. It’s hard to say anything when you feel like you might die.
“I got carried away,” he says.
“Carried away?”
“Yeah, that’s right.”
“When you put your hand over my mouth, is that what you mean by ‘carried away’?”
“Holy fuck,” he says. “You’re going to keep going on with this?”
I want to punch him. And if he wasn’t almost twice the size of me—I mean, his neck is like easily the size of a tire—I would pummel him.
My voice trembles with all the words I want to say, and they tumble out of my mouth with little management by me. It’s a seething power that comes over me, and I almost want to get physical with him. Grab his shirt, twist it really hard, and pull him close to me. Or just push him down into the metal bleachers. I want to see his head gush with blood.
I feel like an alien invaded my body. I never thought I’d talk to him ever—let alone talk to him like this. Just a few months ago I was obsessed with him. Now I feel like this empty package. Dumped and crumbled. I feel like a stupid cliché. After all, what did I expect? That he was going to all of a sudden become my boyfriend after hooking up with me one night?
He got carried away.
But something stirs in me. I take a step forward instead.
“You didn’t expect me to accuse you of rape, did you?”
“Yo, I didn’t rape you.”
“Yo?” I say. “Yo?”
His face reddens. His whole body tenses. His face. His eyes. His eyes plow into me. He’s angry now. I’ve made him very angry. “That’s not the way it went.”
I remember vividly how strong he was that night, how his arm held my shoulder down so I couldn’t hit him, or push him off me. I almost feel like he might grab me now. We’re standing only a foot apart.
I run across the bleachers to get away, crossing past him, the metal clanging as I leap over each bench. I don’t know if he’ll chase me. I don’t care. There are too many people around. Not his style. Sean Nessel only forces the issue with too much alcohol in his system and in a dark room. In sober daylight, he’s the do-gooder-all-American boy.
I turn around, and he’s walking after me, calling my name. I jump off the bleachers into a pile of small pebbles. I could stone him just like in that story, “The Lottery.” I could chase him with rocks, aiming for the back of his head. I could get him right between the eyes and maybe he could bleed to death. Or maim him so that his beautiful face could never, ever entice another girl into a bedroom again.
His feet stomp over the metal bleachers, and he jumps down, following me.
“Ali,” he says, marching quickly after me. “You can’t just use that—that word, Ali.”
“Oh, why not?”
I turn around and see his face. Red and contorted. Like he’s about to reach out to me. But I keep walking. If I don’t stop walking, I have to face him. If I don’t stop walking, I’m going to cry.
No, I’m not. I’m not going to cry at all.
I feel his arm wrap around the back of my arm, and I want to scream out, screech and moan, like a crazy person. I want to smack him. But I don’t. Because I want to be in control. I want to be in charge.
“Let go of my arm,” I say. And my face must have contorted because it reminds me of everything from that night. The way he held me down. I want to shake it out of my head because I want to make him pay right here. I don’t want to back down.
He drops his hand.
“You and I got drunk together and things got out of hand.”
“I yelled stop, and you put your hand over my mouth and held me down,” I say. There are the words. They come out of my mouth. My mouth.
“You wanted to go upstairs. I didn’t force you to do that.”
“But you put your hand over my mouth?” Again. I’m two separate people. Someone else answering for me. “You were hurting me,” I say. “That’s what I was saying to you. I screamed it. I had a bruise on my shoulder. I bled all over your jacket. I was a virgin!”
Sean Nessel might not remember it at all. Isn’t this the side Blythe was trying to convince me of? Sean Nessel is a nice guy. He made a mistake. He was drunk. We were both drunk. Of course, it’s entirely possible that Sean Nessel is a nice guy. But I’ll never get to know him that way—or ever. Because he pinned me down in a bedroom with blood streaming down my legs, and that’s the only memory I’m ever going to have.
Raj finally reaches us.
“What’s up?” His jaw is clenched.
“She’s got the wrong idea in her head, Rerun.”
“Why don’t you just step back,” Raj says. “You’re standing too close.”
“I’m trying to apologize to her, dude, so we can just get this behind us.”
Sean Nessel will have no problem putting this behind him. He’ll erase it from his mind. He’ll convince himself that I’m some annoying junior who he thought was cute and who cried rape. Girls are idiots. What, do I need a consent form next time I fuck some chick?
I run off toward Raj’s car in the parking lot. If I can just get to the car, everything will be okay.
Raj calls out, but all I hear are echoes—something familiar—my name. I feel like someone different now, and though hardly anything has changed—everything has changed.
* * *
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