“Jules?” Emma croaked at her friend, who was still staring at the door like she was expecting it to burst open again. “Do you think your dad would be willing to make a home—dorm—visit?”
Looking relieved to be given something to do, Julia snatched her phone off the desk, biting her mangled nails as the phone rang.
“Dad?” she said. “I need you to get out of bed and get to my dorm ASAP. Emma’s hurt and she won’t go to a hospital. Will you come?” Julia said, sounding like a formality because she knew he would. That’s what a father was meant to be, someone his daughter would never have to wonder if he was going to come when she needed him.
Julia nodded. “See you soon. Love you, too,” she added, glancing our way as she tossed the phone back across the desk. “He’ll be here as soon as he can, but he’s way up in San Fran, so it will take him awhile to get here.”
“Thanks, Jules,” Emma said, sighing. “You’ve done your good deed for the year.”
“And on that note,” she replied, sliding a drawer open, “I need a cigarette. A pack of them.” She waved her hand at Emma when she opened her mouth. “Yeah, yeah, I know I said I was going to quit, but today was not a good day to quit smoking.”
Flinging the door open, she jabbed a finger in my chest. “Patrick, I’m leaving her in your care. You okay?” she asked, glancing at Emma and having to glance away. “You got this?” she asked because she didn’t—she couldn’t do it.
Few people could stomach the reminders of the fragile nature of the human condition bloodied across Emma’s face, but I was one of them.
“I’ve got this,” I answered, nodding my head at the door. “Get some fresh air, Jules. You did a good job. I can take it from here.”
“Thank you,” she mouthed at me, looking ashamed and relieved at the same time.
“All right, beautiful,” I said, situating myself beside her. “I’ve got to get you cleaned up before the good doc gets here.” Given Julia’s oddities, I expected a Dr. Jekyll type to show up, but any doctor was better than no doctor at this point.
“Let me know if this hurts anywhere,” I said, sliding my arms beneath her and lifting her as gently as I could.
She lifted an arm to my neck, smiling up at me. “You know, I’ve had daydreams of this. Although you were shirtless, and I didn’t look like I was a post-op facelift patient.”
“You’ve seen too many romance novel covers,” I said, steering her through the door, trying to glide with as little bounce in my motion as I could. “But I’d be happy to recreate any and all daydreams you can muster up.”
“Deal,” she said, her voice breaking.
“Which way to the woman’s restroom?” I asked, looking up and down the hall.
“Right,” she answered. “The last door on the left.”
It took me awhile to get there, moving like I was gliding on thin ice, but I didn’t mind the journey with Emma in my arms.
Putting my ear near the door, I listened for the tell tale signs of bathroom use. Hearing none, I kicked the door open and slid inside. I locked the door, not in the mood to explain why I was in here and in even less of a mood for lookie loos wanting to catch a peek of the poor battered girl so they could cluck their tongues and be thankful they weren’t weak enough to end up in that kind of a relationship. If a girl of Emma’s character could find herself trapped in an abusive relationship, no one was exempt.
“This would be incredibly suspect right now,” Emma said, pointing her eyes at the locked door, “if I wasn’t certain you couldn’t be attracted to me in any way in my present state.”
I smirked down at her, steering towards the shower stalls in the back. “I am attracted to you fifty ways to Sunday, Emma Scarlett.”
A mangled giggle erupted into the quiet surrounding us. “You’re too much of a sweet talker for my own good.”
“Guilty,” I said, lowering her to her feet, but I kept the bulk of her weight in my arms. “Do you think you can stand?”
“I made it back to my dorm after . . .” she began, catching herself. “I think I can manage to stand in a shower.”
Freeing more of her weight, I tested her strength to see if she was right. Her legs weren’t wobbling, her knees didn’t look like they were ready to fold under her, so I let the rest of her weight go. She didn’t even flinch. Cracked open by a pair of unrelenting fists and the woman was standing like a pillar of strength.
Twisting the shower on, I tested the water until it was warm, but not hot. Warm would hurt, but hot would be unbearable running over all those raw wounds.
I slid the curtain open for her, motioning it was all set for her, then I turned my back to her. Turning away from the woman I loved as she was about to step into a shower was a hard thing to do, but it appeared that that weekend promise to be a gentlemen had been extended.
The water ran undisturbed, and I could detect no trace of movement coming from the woman behind me.
“Em?”
“I can’t get my clothes off,” she said, her voice embarrassed. “My arms . . . I can’t move them very much.”
My lids fell over my eyes before I could tell if that curtain of color seeping into them was a familiar color. I gripped the wall beside me for relief.
“Do you think you could help me a little?” she asked, her voice small. “Unless it makes you uncomfortable.”
“It doesn’t make me uncomfortable,” I lied, turning around.
Everything about this situation made me uncomfortable, but unlike what she’d assumed, it wasn’t because I was about to strip my girlfriend of her clothes. It was because of why I was having to do it.
She turned to me, like she was shy, although I couldn’t tell since her eyes had been punched shut. “Just tug it up and over and toss it in the garbage. Even if the stains come out, I don’t want to look at it and remember what happened.”
I hitched my hands over my hips, forcing a deep inhale and a clearing exhale before I could proceed.
Damn Ty Steel straight to hell for forcing me to do this, for putting her in this helpless position. She was clearly uneasy, and whether it was embarrassment, self-consciousness, or awkwardness, it didn’t matter. I only had one solution to relieving discomfort and it had something to do with my dazzling sense of humor. I wasn’t sure if it could cut through a situation this heavy, but I was going to take a hack at it.
“You’re my girlfriend for one day and you’re already begging me to take off your clothes,” I said, lifting my homerun grin into position. It hadn’t failed me to date. “I must be doing something right.”
It was working, attacking the heavy with the light. The muscles in her body took a combined exhale as she mimicked my smile. “Or something very wrong.”
“You’re scandalous, woman,” I said, letting out a low whistle as I figured out how best to remove Emma’s previously lavender, now dark crimson, dress.
My past was dotted and crossed with kissing women, I was what one might consider a kissing pro, but freeing women of their dresses was new territory for me. Sure, I’d slipped a button or two free, tugged a strap from a shoulder, slid a skirt an inch or two towards the heavens, but full-on removal?
I was in unchartered territory.
I slapped myself across the face, then I slapped myself again on the other side.
I wasn’t being seduced, I was being sequestered because her best friend didn’t have the stomach for it and her brothers were, at present, practicing their swing.
“So just, eh, undo these few buttons right here above the . . . eh”—my hands were fumbling worse than my words—so much for the incorrigible charmer I used to be—“around the northerly, eh, region . . . here, the”—I cleared my throat to fill in the blank—“area.”
“Boobs,” Emma provided. “The boob area.”
Damn skippy they were.
“Bosoms,” I corrected, shifting a smile down at her.
Just fleshy mounds of mammary glands and fat, I repeated when my heart started tryin
g to bust out of my chest.
The unbuttoning accomplished, I moved to Step B of the dress removal handbook. “So now we just slide these thinger-majiggers off,” I said, biting my lip in concentration as I decided what would be the least painful way to get them off her arms.
I pulled on the neckline, trying to get it over her shoulder, but it wouldn’t stretch far enough. Emma shrugged her shoulder in, attempting to curl her elbow up, but her face blanched white with pain.
“Now what?” I asked, trying to stretch it over the other shoulder with about as much success.
“Just rip it off,” she said through gritted teeth.
Where was a good morphine drip when you needed one? Or a brother who kept one in his medical kit at all times. It would have been a godsend had teleportation ran in the family.
“Rip it?” I asked, not because I couldn’t tear through the cloth like a sheet of vellum, but because it seemed like I shouldn’t.
“Rip it,” she repeated. “Just pretend your ravaging me or something.”
“Emma, I appreciate the innuendos, the parallels, all of it,” I said, letting out a sigh that was all exasperation. “I really do, but right now I’m having a tough time staying upright over here. A little help please?”
“Fine,” she said. “No more foreplay for you then.”
“You cheeky little thing,” I said, giving the neckline a sharp tear down the arm. One more on the other side, and the dress fluttered to the ground. It didn’t fall, it didn’t collapse, I swear with my hand to my chest it fluttered.
And then Emma was standing in front of me naked except for a couple scraps of fabric, or at least I assumed she was because I couldn’t look at her right away. One, because I’d suddenly picked up on this elusive trait that had avoided me at every turn—also known as shyness—and it seemed to be the major influencer right now, and two, because I was scared to see what else Ty had done to her. If he’d been half as attentive to what was below the neck as he had to what was above it, I knew it would be gruesome.
“So how bad is it?” she asked. “Is it pretty ghastly or really heinous?”
Washing my hands over my face, I made myself look.
Her body was speckled with varying degrees of bruising, some bursting bright red on the surface, others going deeper in putrid shades of burgundy. Bruises that were weeks old took up more real estate on her upper arms and legs than undamaged skin did. Blood had crested a roadmap of highways, twisting and turning down her body. It wasn’t half as bad as her face—it was more.
Ending at her eyes, I said, “Neither. You’re beautiful.”
She let out a sharp, raspy laugh. “Says the man in shock.”
I shook my head. “Says the man who knows beauty when he sees it.”
Stepping forward, I rested my arm around her back. “Come on, let’s get you cleaned up.” I followed her in the shower, angling the head so it would hit low. Water blasting over that face would feel like she was experiencing the beating all over again.
“What are you doing?” she asked when she noticed me closing the curtain behind us. “You’ll get drenched.”
I lifted my arms and did a spin. “I am drenched. At least now I’ll be drenched with warm water, not cold rain water.”
“I don’t know,” she said, stepping backwards into the stream. “I seem to remember that rain water being pretty incredible stuff.”
I wrestled out of the suit jacket and began fighting with the vest. “I seem to recall that too.” Throwing two of the three pieces of my favorite suit into the garbage can just outside the shower, I rolled up my sleeves as Emma continued turning a slow rotation under the shower.
The bra and panties I’d assumed were a deep red were lightening with each spin, revealing patches of ivory smattered beneath.
“Emma,” I said, having no other words as I watched the trails of blood scurry down her, disappearing down the drain, it taking a piece of her into it.
“I always knew I’d have to paint myself red and get naked to get your attention,” she said, pausing in front of me.
I didn’t know how she was able to make jokes in the midst of this, when someone like myself—the one man comedy show himself—couldn’t. Maybe it was a coping mechanism she’d learned when this all started, or maybe she just didn’t know what else to say. Whatever it was, I needed a moment alone and she needed some shampoo.
“I’ll be right back. Will you be okay for a minute?”
She gave me a thumbs up. “I think I can manage.”
Ducking through the curtain, I headed for a row of cubbies containing shower baskets full of perfumey goodies and every other item of a bathroom relevance in existence.
Selecting a couple bottles of shampoo and conditioner, I gave myself an internal pep talk. Telling myself to be the man she needed me to be right now, to set aside my anger and guilt, my rage and remorse, and be whatever she needed.
The bruises dotting her body like a damn Dalmatian had gotten to me, reminding me that I’d failed her. It wasn’t something I was going to do again.
Shaking a few shower basket-caddy-thingys, I heard the familiar rattling I was searching for. Twisting off the cap, I removed two of the not-so-much over the counter pain killers, dropped the shampoo bottles in my pockets, and swiped a couple fresh towels from some unsuspecting co-ed’s locker.
“Here, take these.” I handed Emma the pills as I slid behind the curtain. “Those should tame the pain down to a dull ache.”
She didn’t ask what they were or whose they were, she just took them. She had every reason not to trust another human being after what she’d been exposed to, and here she was, trusting me.
“So I’m not exactly Paul Mitchell, but I can give a not-too-shabby shampoo.” I pulled the bottle from my slacks and presented it like a sommelier holding a vintage bottle of wine.
She looked between me and the bottle a few times, and then she laughed. Billowing laughter that echoed through the empty corners of the bathroom.
To say I was perplexed would have been a bit rhetorical given the situation.
“Look at us,” she said between bursts of laughter. “I look like I was at the epicenter of a rugby squirmish—in my underwear—and you’re in what’s left of a three piece suit, all wet, sexy, and brooding, looking like you’re about to shoot a shampoo ad. A shampoo, by the way, every girl would buy just so they could think of you while they were lathering their hair.” She was laughing so hard by now, she could have been crying.
“You are mad, you know that right?” I said, incapable of not smiling when she was laughing like it was the best one she’d had in awhile.
“Of course I do,” she replied, attempting and failing to gain some composure. “But I’ve seen some strange things, and this,”—she motioned between the two of us—“is the oddest one of them all. I feel like I just stepped into some goth, slasher, romantic comedy movie or something.”
“Since you’ve seen so many of those,” I said, squeezing a gob of coconut scented goop into my palm.
“I consider myself an expert on that particular genre of movie,” she teased, letting her head fall back to get her hair wet. Another bright burst of red floated toward the drain.
“Em? Don’t take this the wrong way, but you’re kind of freaking me out,” I said, focusing on lathering the shampoo in my hands. “I don’t know whether to be relieved you’re smiling and laughing and making jokes an hour after you were beat within an inch of your life or to be seriously concerned.”
Her laughter died, but her smile stayed securely in place. “Contrary to what you might think due to recent events,” she explained with a sweeping gaze down her body, “today has been the hands down best day of my life.”
Staring at her broken face, I wanted to cry just then, so I stepped around her so I wouldn’t have to look at what the best day of her life had done to her.
“I’m going to need a serious explanation for that,” I said, clearing my throat. “Like a detailed outline, fol
lowed by a thesis the size of the San Francisco Bay area phone book.” I gathered her hair on top of her head and began sudsing away. The shampoo froth almost immediately took on a pinkish hue.
“For the first time in six years, actually, for the first time since I met him,” Emma began, trying to look over her shoulder at me. She didn’t make it very far before her jaw clenched in pain. “I stood up to Ty. I gave him a piece of my mind with no buffers or filters. I got in his face and made sure he heard me. For the very first time,” she said.
“That worked out magically for you,” I said under my breath, rinsing away part of the outcome of her standing up to him.
“It could have been worse,” she said with a barely there shrug. “I never really imagined my life winding down into old age and a gentle passing into the hereafter. I, somewhere deep in the places I didn’t want to acknowledge, but recognized them just the same, expected I’d pass from this life into the next at the end of a fist.”
The shampoo bottle I was gripping in my hand burst open. I hadn’t realized I’d been squeezing it to death.
“How long has this been going on?” I asked, needing to know, and she’d opened the door to getting all the dark flushed out early.
“The first year he was so good to me, too good to be true,” she said. “And two days after our one year anniversary, I found out too good to be true was exactly that. I remember each beating, each fit of rage, most ignited because I’d been talking to another guy, some just because he didn’t like what I was wearing or a certain look I gave him. After awhile, he didn’t need an excuse. This past year I expected the backside of his hand just as readily as a hug.”
It was like putting an open flame to my flesh, but I had to keep going. I had to know everything because I had to know all of her. “Why didn’t you just leave him?”
Her head swayed side to side. “For a bunch of reasons that seem really trivial now that he’s finally out of my life,” she said. “Ty was all I knew, the only guy I’d ever dated, ever loved, ever imagined my life with. I clung to the hope that he’d change back into the man he was the first year we were together. I believed so little in myself that no one else would ever want me, and I was messed up enough in the head to believe that anyone was better than no one.” She paused, taking in a few breaths. I’d been massaging the same area of her head for I don’t know how long.