Shame: A Stepbrother Romance (15 page)

I quickly remind myself she is not the enemy and is in fact the only person who is probably not laughing at me or pointing a judgmental finger at my stupidity, so I rinse my mouth with some mouthwash I find in the cabinet and splash my face with water before I finally emerge from my hiding place.

Ashleigh practically carries me over back to the sofa. I’m so weak, I can’t even walk straight and I lean heavily on her thin arm. When we get back to the laptop, the screen is blank and the Internet browser is closed. Instead, set as her desktop background I see a picture of a smiling Ashleigh, hand in hand with her new husband, looking adoringly up at him while they are taking a barefoot walk on the beach. I look away.

“Who is he, Jo?” Ashleigh asks warily. “Was it someone from the wedding guests? Is it one of Sean’s friends? If so, I swear I’ll hunt the bastard down—”

“No, it wasn’t,” I barely manage to utter, “It was no one.”

With that, she tactfully figures that the subject is exhausted. She probably thinks I’m not ready to talk about it, but I know I never will be. How much worse can it possibly get if the papers ran a story titled ‘Brother and sister get it on at a wedding, porn video leaked’? No, I don’t think I will ever reveal his identity. Right now I don’t think that exposing him will help one bit and will only exponentially increase my humiliation.

“I have to go,” I blurt out and make to get up, but end up collapsing back on the sofa.

“You are not going anywhere! You are staying with me, Jo. It’s not the best idea to be by yourself right now. I’m telling you, these things blow over as fast as they start and spread. People will have forgotten all about it by next week. You just need to wait it out.”

“I don’t know. I don’t think it will ever blow over with Joe. I won’t be surprised if all of my bank accounts have been suspended. Oh God, what if I’m a beggar now, Ash?”

Everything seems to be snowballing in effect until it reaches the gravity of an avalanche, threatening to wipe me out completely.

“You are not a beggar,” Ashleigh says firmly. “Listen, it can’t be all bad. It just can’t. There are no real dead ends in life. There has to be something you can do, we just haven’t figured out what it is yet. First of all, I think we should start working on taking the nasty video down.”

“I think Joe’s been on that the minute he’s found out. He won’t have something like that associated with his name hanging around. At least he has the resources for that…”

“What about the apartment? Was it leased in your name?”

“Yes. I insisted I pay for it with my own money from the bookstore. My mom and Joe would have never agreed to finance my moving out. They’ve wanted me to live with them ever since they got married. I guess it turns out I’m not exactly perfect little family material though…”

“Jo, concentrate,” Ashleigh scolds and I’m not mad. If she doesn’t bring me back to the present, there’s a pretty good chance that I’d drift off into self-pity land and never return. In fact, all these little practical details she insists on discussing are proving a good strategy to distract me. I’m not feeling great or recovered in the least, but at least she’s taking my mind off the most painful matter. Andrew.

“I have some savings,” I say. “It’s not much but it will be enough to get me through the next couple of months in terms of rent and food. I just hope they don’t take it all away in the repo process. Can they?”

I look at her hopefully, while she’s furrowed her eyebrows, trying to dig through her legal knowledge on the subject.

Suddenly a noise comes through the apartment’s front door. I jump nervously, but Ashleigh sits me back down with a firm expression. I know it’s Sean, but I’m not in the mood to smile at anyone right now, let alone explain why the hell I’m not smiling and my make-up is all messed up from crying.

“Oh. My. God,” Sean shouts from the hallway as something heavy drops on the floor, “Did you fucking see? Your little bookworm friend is quite the porn star!”

Ashleigh looks at me, her features frozen in horror. Sean’s deep guttural laugh comes through. He is wheezing and coughing as if he’s having a fit. I feel my face go crimson with shame and my vision blurs. His words reach me as if spoken underwater and become less and less coherent with each passing second.

“I swear I was gonna die when I saw it. Tom showed me and I thought no way, but it was at our fucking
wedding
, Ash! No fucking mistake. It was her! You can even pick up a trick or two from her. I’ve always said, the quietest waters are the deepest…”

At that moment, I bolt for the door. I run straight past Sean and don’t stop to consider his startled look. He’s realized his mistake only too late and as I take the stairs down, two at a time, I hear Ashleigh’s indignant voice, hissing at her husband.

I’m finally out on the street and the wind blows icy snowflakes directly into my burning face and they bite like red-hot pins. I have no coat on. I left it upstairs. It doesn’t matter. There’s no way I’m going back up there. At least I managed to grab my purse on the way out.

I start running, blinded by the snow and sweating despite the freezing cold. My apartment is a good few blocks away, but I don’t care. I’m possessed by this unnatural strength to just keep on running, or is it just my survival instinct kicking in?

I barely see the faces of strangers walking past me. Right now it feels like they are all parting to let me through, all staring at the deranged woman, running without a coat, her bright orange hair flying in the wind behind her. Some of them probably even recognize the hair. From when my head was bobbing up and down over Andrew’s cock. How many of these people have seen the video already? To how many people I’m nothing more than a lowly whore who’s brought shame on her family?

I can’t afford to think about this right now. I start running even faster, pumping my arms as if I’m racing something, or more likely, trying to escape. I almost bump into an old man who is walking slowly with the newspaper he’s just bought spread before him, scanning today’s news.

There on the first page that I almost run into is my face and my orange hair and a censored, smudged version of Andrew from the waist down. I have a lascivious look in my squinting eyes, while my mouth is obscenely open, ready to take him in.

I scream inside and keep running until, completely out of breath, I finally reach my building and duck inside the front entrance. I lock the door to my apartment three times and slide down with my back to it, broken and exhausted.

I’m finally safe. I feel the pent-up tears finally push through to the surface and spill down my cold, white cheeks. Right now I think I’ll never
ever
leave through this door,
ever
again.

I have no way of knowing how soon I’ll need to change my mind.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

I wake up with a start. My head is all muddled from the sleeping pill I washed down with a glass of whiskey last night. Only now it seems like a bad idea, since my temples are thumping and my heart is racing. My pajamas are drenched in sweat and I feel feverish and lost.

It takes a single moment to realize that I wasn’t having a nightmare, that it was all real and that it happened to
me
. So much of what’s happened in the past couple of months has felt like I’ve been witnessing someone else’s life that I thought it would be easier to disengage myself from my ordeal, pretend it’s not real.

It doesn’t work like that. Everything crashes on top of me like I’m standing at the foot of a dam wall that’s cracking and the powerful current sweeps me away faster than I can ever hope to struggle.

The treacherous oblivion I sank into last night is now gone and I have to face my life, the little there’s left of it. I instinctively check my cell phone, which is lying by my pillow and is put in silent mode. Five missed calls. They are all from Ashleigh. I know she’ll want to apologize on Sean’s behalf and try to help me fix everything.

From where I’m standing right now, nothing seems fixable or even worth fixing. I’m not ready for any apologies. I’m not even ready to accept sympathy or help. All I feel like doing is lie in bed and wallow. The weather outside seems to agree with me. The day is gray and gloomy and I doubt the sun will find the strength to push through the clouds. Not today.

I check the time. It’s almost noon and I realize I’ve been out for more than twelve hours. Who cares? I have nowhere to be and no bookstore to open. My life is literally meaningless right now.

The thoughts come uninvited and this time I have the decency not to drown them in alcohol and pills, at least not at this early hour. I’ll save this little comfort for tonight when they haunt me into the small hours, not letting me drift off to sleep.

Andrew. Just his name brings the shame back, as intense as all the orgasms he gave me, but opposite in charge. Was I blind? Was I too stupid to see? Was it my lack of experience with men that was to blame? I rack my brain for the reason I decided to trust him in the first place and I can’t find one. I simply went with it, because it felt so otherworldly and exciting, so physically fulfilling. Looking at it this way, I completely deserve what’s happened to me.

“No!” I shout into the stifling silence in the apartment. No one deserves what happened to me! What kind of monster does this to someone? Did he hate me so much for taking away his money that he’d go through two entire months faking his attraction, his
love
for me?

Oh God, he’s good. I remember the way he decorated the bookstore for Christmas ‘just to see the smile on my face’. Fucking bullshit! I never wanted his money anyway. I would have never spent it. Didn’t he get that? And if he wanted to destroy me so badly, why wait two months if he’d had the tape as early as Ashleigh’s wedding? To make it hurt more?

I’m working myself up into a fury. I wish I could say all of this to him, but without really having to face him. I don’t think I could ever bear that. I want to ask him why he went after me when it was his father he was really mad at. Was I the easier target? The nerdy girl hungry for a bit of attention, for a bit of innocent fun.

But he said ‘I love you’ and who says that as honestly and openly as he did back then? You can’t fake that. You can’t fake love and I felt his, real love, every time we were together. Why bother with love if he could have just fucked me and I’d have fallen for it just the same? And the worst is, I’d have been grateful for it.

I’m probing deeper now. I go back to the night of the bachelorette party. Did he know then? Was our little rendezvous just an accidental one or was it part of the plan to bring me down? Did he know who I was? I remember feeling so flattered that he picked me out of all my girlfriends, that he came to talk to me, that it was
me
he took to the bathroom?

I know I’ll go crazy if I keep this up.

Just running the ugly thoughts in my head make my stomach act up again and I know I’ll be sick.

I finally swing my legs over to the cold floor and crawl to the bathroom. I barely make it to the toilet before I start heaving in violent spasms. I didn’t even eat anything last night. As I’m wiping the tears that invariably pool into my eyes every time I throw up, I decide I’m throwing out the sleeping pills and the half-empty bottle of whiskey down the drain to prevent the temptation of repeating my little routine tonight.

I feel miserable as I lie sprawled on the cool tiles of my bathroom floor. I’ve probably never looked as pathetic and I’m glad I didn’t take Ashleigh up on her offer to stay with her. Not only would I not have been able to handle Sean and his suggestive looks, I wouldn’t have bared the pity in my best friend’s eyes.

As I wash my face from all the grime of yesterday, my eyes land on my bunched up orange hair. I remember how terrified I was yesterday that someone would recognize me from my picture in the paper, so I take a quick decision. I know nothing will make me feel better right now, but at least it will be something to do instead of cry and maybe it would also give me the illusion that I’m actually doing something about my situation.

I’ll dye my hair. I’ll cut it off and dye it raven black. Good luck recognizing me then.

Plus, I don’t have anyone to be beautiful for any more. I doubt I’ll be flirting with men any time soon. Or any time in the next twenty years, so whatever comes of it, even if my new hairstyle is a disaster, it wouldn’t really matter, would it?

I only need to wait for it to get dark outside, which, since it’s December, will happen in a few short hours. I wouldn’t risk coming out of my place looking like myself.

I spend the rest of the day floating through my empty, sterile apartment like a ghost. Every once in a while, the grief overcomes me and I collapse on the floor, my whole body shaking as the tears come and go in painful fits. I have zero appetite and the only physical urges I feel are to throw up and smoke a cigarette. I’ve never smoked in my life, but I have this nagging feeling that it would make me feel better or make me take a rebellious stand against things.

Maybe it’s good that I wouldn’t dare to step outside in the daylight or I would have probably smoked half a pack on an empty stomach by now. In the meantime, I try to read a book, but fail miserably and end up bawling my eyes out. Then I try to motivate myself to put something together for a late lunch, but just the myriad of smells coming out of my fridge stuffed with leftovers is enough to send me running to the bathroom again. Eventually I’m so exhausted from all the crying and thinking, I end up taking a nap and when I wake up, it’s dark enough for me to venture out.