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It was kind of weird at first, but then it wasn’t anymore. It felt… strange—but in a good way. Dirty, wrong, amazing. My fingers curled in the sheets, gripping the cloth tightly, and my knees shook. I was feeling things I’d never felt before. “Ah,… oh,” I gasped with pleasure and surprise and—
“Oh, shit.”
Wesley jumped away from me. He’d heard the car door slam, too. That meant my dad was home.
I pulled up my underwear and fastened my jeans quickly, but it took me a minute to find my bra. Once I was completely dressed, I flattened my hair and did my best not to look like a kid with her hand caught in the cookie jar.
“Should I leave?” Wesley asked.
“No,” I said breathlessly. I could tell he didn’t want to go back to the empty almost-mansion. “Stay a little while. It’s fine. Dad won’t care. We just can’t… do that.”
“What else is there to do?”
So, like complete losers, we played Scrabble for the next four and a half hours. There was barely enough space in the floor of my tiny room for someone as tall as Wesley to stretch out on his stomach, but he managed, and I sat across from him, the board between us as we spelled out words like quixotic and hegemony. Not exactly the most exciting Friday night, but I enjoyed it way more than I would have if I’d gone to the Nest or some lame party in Oak Hill.
Around nine, after I’d kicked his ass three times—finally, something I could beat him at!—Wesley got to his feet. “I guess I should go home,” he sighed.
“Okay.” I stood up. “I’ll walk you downstairs.”
I was in such a good mood that I’d managed to forget all about Dad… until we ran into him in the living room. I smelled the whiskey before I saw the bottle on the coffee table, and my cheeks burned with embarrassment. Please don’t notice, I thought to myself as I walked Wesley toward the front door. I guess I should’ve started worrying when he hadn’t checked upstairs to see whose Porsche was in our driveway. I mean, it wasn’t like having a car that shiny in front of our house was a common occurrence. Maybe Wesley hadn’t thought about that either. It was a Friday night, after all. Dads could drink whiskey on weekends… well, ones that weren’t recovering alcoholics, but Wesley didn’t know that side of the story. As long as my father acted normal, this might slide by as nothing out of the ordinary.
But, of course, I never had that kind of good luck.
“Bumblebee!” Dad said, and I could tell he was already smashed. Great. Just fucking fantastic. He stumbled to his feet and looked over at the front door, where Wesley and I stood. “Hey, Bumblebee. I didn’t even know you were home. Who’s this?” His eyes narrowed at Wesley. “A boy?”
“Um, Dad, this is Wesley Rush,” I said, trying to stay calm. “He’s a friend of mine.”
“A ‘friend.’… I bet.” He grabbed the whiskey bottle before taking a few unsteady steps toward us, his eyes squinting at Wesley. “Did you have fun up in my little girl’s bedroom, boy?”
“I sure did,” Wesley said, clearly trying to sound like one of those i
“Scrabble? I’m not an idiot. That must be some new code for… for oral sex!” Dad snarled.
I must have turned scarlet. How did he know? Could he see right into my mind? No, of course he couldn’t. He was just drunk and making accusations, and looking guilty would only make things worse. So I laughed as if it were ridiculous. As if it were a joke. Wesley, following my lead, did the same.
“Sure, Dad,” I said. “And intercourse is Yahtzee, right?”
“I’m not being fu
I couldn’t force the laughter any longer. “My friends aren’t slutty,” I whispered. “You’re drunk off your ass, and you don’t know what you’re saying.” With a surge of bravery, I reached forward and swiped the bottle from his hand. “You shouldn’t have any more, Dad.”
For a second, I felt good. That was what I should have done all along. Just taken things into my own hands and removed the bottle. I felt empowered. Like I could fix things.
“I should go,” Wesley said behind me.
I started to turn around and say bye, but the words never left my mouth. I felt the bottle slip from my hand and heard it smash on the floor beside me. I was knocked to the ground, but for a second I didn’t understand what had happened. Then the delayed pain in my temple stu
“See!” Dad yelled. “Boys don’t stay with whores, Bianca. They leave them. And I’m not going to let you turn into a whore. Not my daughter. This is for your own good.”
I looked up as he reached a hand down to grab my arm. I squeezed my eyes shut, waiting to feel his fingers clamp around my forearm.
But they never did.
I heard a loud thud, and Dad grunted in pain. My eyes flew open. Wesley moved away from Dad, who was massaging his jaw with a shocked look on his face. “Why you little shithead!”
“Are you all right?” Wesley asked, kneeling in front of me.
“Did you just punch my dad?” I couldn’t help but wonder if I was delirious. Had all of this really just happened? Totally bizarre.
“Yes,” Wesley admitted.
“How dare you touch me!” Dad screamed, but he was having trouble balancing enough to approach us again. “How dare you fuck my daughter, then hit me, you son of a bitch!”
I’d never heard my father swear like that before.
“Come on,” Wesley said, helping me to my feet. “Let’s get out of here. You’re coming with me.” He wrapped an arm around me, pulling me close against his warm body, and ushered me out the open door.
“Bianca!” Dad yelled behind us. “You better not get in that damn car! You better not leave this house! You hear me, you little whore!”
The ride to Wesley’s house passed in silence. Several times I saw him open his mouth like he wanted to speak, but he always shut it again. I was in too much shock to say anything. My head didn’t hurt that much. I just couldn’t wrap my head around what Dad had done. But worse was the embarrassment. Why? Why did Wesley have to see that? What did he think of me now? What did he think of Dad?
“That’s never happened before,” I said, breaking the silence when we pulled into the driveway of the almost-mansion. Wesley cut the engine and looked over at me. “Dad’s never hit me… or even yelled at me like that before.”
“All right.”
“I just want you to know that wasn’t normal for us,” I explained. “I don’t live in an abusive house or anything. I don’t want you to think my dad is some kind of psychopath.”
“I was under the impression that you didn’t care what people thought,” he said.
“About me. I don’t care what they think about me.” I didn’t know that was a lie until the words had left my mouth. “But my family and friends are different…. My dad isn’t a psychopath. He’s just having a rough time right now.” I could feel the lump rising in my throat, and I tried to gulp it down. I needed to explain. He needed to know. “My mom just filed for a divorce, and… and he just can’t handle it.”
The lump wasn’t going away. It just kept growing. All of my worries and fears had been leading up to this moment, and I couldn’t fight them back anymore. I couldn’t keep them bottled up. Tears started gushing down my cheeks, and before I knew it I was sobbing.
How had this happened? It felt like a bad dream. My father was the sweetest, nicest man I knew. He was naive and fragile. This wasn’t him. Even though I’d heard his reasons for sobriety before—even though I knew, in the back of my head, that his drinking was dangerous—it still didn’t seem real. It didn’t seem possible.