She stops, her eyes are blurry from the tears falling and I have to grip my fingers into fists to stop from brushing them away. I know there’s more, and she had to get through it without me interfering.
“I didn’t even find out until a few days later that he’d somehow managed to send the link to the video to everyone at the University in Sydney as well. It didn’t take me more than one morning to know that I couldn’t be there. Not just because of the humiliation, but it wasn’t even safe. I was harassed everywhere I went. About two days in, a guidance counselor told me that they thought it’d be better if I took a semester off. To let things settle down.”
She reaches over to the side table for a tissue and locks her eyes with mine for a moment, then looks away.
“I went back to Melbourne with my tail between my legs. For three months, I didn’t leave the house. I didn’t talk to anyone except my mother. But… they still came. I don’t know where they came from, but they were everywhere?”
“Who?”
“All sorts. People who want to hire me for their porn sites, people who wanted to hurt me. People who just liked seeing my embarrassment, and people who got off on my pain. Strangers. Some acquaintances, I guess, but mostly strangers. Sick assholess who had nothing better to do in their lives than elongate my humiliation.”
I look down at her hands and they’ve shredded the damp tissue. And I feel like doing the same to the heads of the people who’d hurt her.
“I went deep and dark. I felt like I’d lost everything I’d worked for, and there was no going back. I could not see a light at the end of the tunnel, it just kept getting dark and darker. And one day, I just decided, I’d had enough. I thought it was a strong decision. For me. ”
“So, what happened?” I gently encourage her after she goes quiet, lost in her own memories for a moment.
“Nothing. I came out for dinner, listened to my mum try to make conversation with me, trying so hard, just to make me smile. And I realized I couldn’t do it to her. That until I could live for myself again, I’d live for her. Just that realization, it made me smile. Really smile, for the first time in months. And the relief in her face in that moment, changed everything for me. I will never ever say it will work for everyone. But it did for me. Every person’s story is different, but that is mine.”
She leans forward from the headboard and reaches for my hands. I grab hers as fast as I can, squeezing them, and she almost chuckles.
“Hey, it wasn’t the last time I contemplated it. But things got better, in tiny increments, every day. And it got to the point where I could consider going back to school. And I did. I got all my things together, told myself I could turn back any time. That first day back, I walked into my dorm and a crazy hippie brunette was lying under the bed, her two mismatched socked feet sticking out while she rummaged around under their for something. She was my first and almost only friend for a long time.”
“Nutso?” I can only imagine it would be her.
“Ha, yes, the one and only. Sarah.”
“What happened with Brent?” I try to ask lightly, hoping the answer involves a firing squad or a pit of live alligators.
“Nothing. Through some lawyer friend’s help, we got the websites to take down the video, but we couldn’t get those emails back and they were either ignored or forgotten by then. Brent skipped town, no one could find him. And I… I just didn’t want to waste any more of my life on him.”
“And you? What happened with you?” I want to hear her claim her victory, her success, her achievement of having survived.
“I’m here.” She smiles. It’s small but incandescent.
I pull her into my lap and she kisses me and it’s sweet like burnt caramel.
“I’m here, too. With you. And there’s nowhere else I’d rather be.”
***
Her breath is slowing down and her body retracts into a relaxed, little ball, curled up against me. Her bare shoulder, still slightly glistening with sweat, presses up against my face and I turn just a little to drop my lips in a kiss on her warm skin. She’s sweet and salty all at once. I run my tongue over my mouth to lick up every little molecule of her scent. Even now, just moments after completely giving into her, I can feel my core inflamed at the thought of being inside her again. Feeling her engulf my hardness, milking me and coaxing me to give myself all to her.
“Cadence?”
“Hmmm?” She mumbles, probably barely a breath from sleep.
“You’re sexy.”
She giggles a little at my childish compliment.
“Thanks?”
“What? You are.”
“You’re pretty sexy too there, Mr. Musician.” She turns in my arms and I’m staring down at her face, stroking the bangs falling over her eyes to the side.
She is the sight of absolute perfection. I lean over and graze the tip of her nose with my lips.
“Yeah? Well, guess what?”
She just smiles, a dimple flashing for a moment on her left cheek.
“You’re my muse.” I confess to her.
Her eyes close, her eyelashes fluttering like little brown feathers against her pale cheek, before she opens them and stares up at me.
“You’re my music,” she confesses back.
And it’s in that moment, I know my heart is lost to her forever.
CADENCE
It’s bright. Someone’s turned the light on in the world and I’m not happy about it.
I make that unhappiness known in the way of kicking my legs and grabbing the sheets and rolling around on the bed until the sheet and I are the perfect shape of a human burrito.
“Up and at ’em, Mary!” An obnoxious voice is saying. And an obnoxious hand is grabbing my burrito wrap and trying to unroll me from the comfort of my burrito cocoon.
But my feet are quick and very defensive of my right to sleep in. They kick out and I feel them connect with something. Something boney.