“No.”
Deadpan.
Period.
No emoji.
Once Dog Mom takes her exit, Wilder takes both of our glasses from the table and walks them to the kitchen. “I told you she’s mean, Camilla.”
“Wild, don’t start your shit.” Talent sits back on the couch and pours himself another finger of whiskey. Shoulders forward and knees parted, Talent’s thick eyebrows are relaxed, and his eyes reflect a lushy shine.
“I’m not mean,” Lydia insists. I assume she’s going to sit next to Talent, but she stops in front of me with my half-smile on her lips. “Didn’t I tell you not to make friends with the neighbors? What that lady needs is a good dick in her life.”
“Maybe you should hire her,” I reply playfully. Liquor makes me brave and shreds my filter into pieces. “Maybe she can take Benny Cros off my hands.”
Talent laughs into his glass, but Wilder slams the bottle of Johnnie Walker onto the counter. And I think I like it when he’s jealous.
“I’ve heard rumors about him.” To everyone’s surprise, Lydia pushes me down onto the couch and straddles my waist. She takes my hands and puts them on her hips, and then gently brushes a strand of hair away from my face. “I heard he’s hard to fuck.”
Plenty of men have seen Lydia Montgomery naked. They heard her moans, touched her in intimate places, and had their way with her. But there was no soul. It lacked passion. She may have been pinned underneath their bodies, but she was far, far away.
She looks down on me with a small smile on her lips and golden playfulness in her eyes, and I don’t doubt that she’s right here with me.
“The problem with men like Benny Cros is he doesn’t respect women.” Lydia starts to slowly circle her hips, and a dense silence falls over the apartment.
Sucking in a sharp breath, a pricking heat brings sensation back to my lips, to the tips of my fingers, and it floods my stomach with warmth.
“Pleasuring a woman never crosses his mind.” Lydia slides her hands over mine and squeezes her hips until I feel how they swing back and forth like the letter M. “As far as he’s concerned, we’re the lucky ones.”
I press my fingers into her, studying the sway in which she moves, memorizing how seamless and fluid she is above me.
“His lovers take it because they’re desperate, and we take it because we’re paid to. So the bastard goes unchecked.” She guides my hands up her sides, holding them so that I feel her ribcage move with the motion at her belly. Her heart is under there, slow and beating steady. “He abuses our bodies and pats himself on the back after because he can’t imagine a world where he isn’t king. But fuck him.”
My lips spread into a smile, and I whisper, “Fuck him.”
She arches an eyebrow, and the half-grin just for me spreads into a smile as wide as my own. Lydia throws her head back, shaking her long hair back and forth like a goddess. She strokes harder and deeper, pinching her thighs around my waist. “The next time you’re with him, show that motherfucker what he’ll never have, and then take it away.”
Lowering herself over me, Lydia pinches my bottom lip between her thumb and forefinger. With her mouth right above my ear, she whispers, “Don’t you ever let these men make you feel like you have anything to be ashamed of again. Not Benny. Not Wilder. Not anyone. Find the goddamned light.”
Sitting in the hallway closet during the day was uncomfortable.
The wood floor was hard under my bottom, and as I grew taller, the space got smaller and more cramped. But during the day, light from the rest of the house shone under the door and kept me from being in complete darkness. Sometimes I’d press my face right against the door gap to capture as much light as I could, praying the entire time I’d be let out before the sun set. Other times, I’d make shadow figures on the wall, or I snapped buttons off our winter coats and played with them like dolls.
Sitting in the hallway closet during the night was lurid.
The mind plays dirty tricks in the dark. Suddenly, the closet wasn’t a small square space, but an infinite inky abyss. Walls ceased to exist. No beginning. No end. Just blackness. I’d push myself into the corner where I knew for certain the ground was solid beneath me, but if I so much as moved, something might have reached out of oblivion and taken me. Our jackets took on the form of monsters, and every noise or movement of air was the boogeyman.
It got dark enough that I couldn’t tell if my eyes were open or closed. Daddy wouldn’t let me out if I cried, and I couldn’t hear the monsters over the sound of my own heavy breathing if I panicked. So, I taught myself to be completely still and quiet until my dad opened the closet door. He’d pull a short metal chain, illuminating a low-watt light bulb hanging from the ceiling.
I hated that light bulb.
“Did you pray for guidance?”Daddy was a silhouette until my eyes adjusted to the abrupt brilliance. The bulb would swing back and forth above his head, teasing me.“The way of the wicked is like deep darkness. Find what makes you stumble.”
By the time I was tall enough to reach the chain myself, I already had the candles.
Lydia knows not to turn on my bedroom light if I wake up crying during the night, unable to tell if my eyes are open or closed. It only extends the part of the nightmare where my dad is a shadow and the bulb at the top of the closet sways out of reach.
I hear my bedroom door open, but I’m paralyzed with fear, afraid to move in case this isn’t a nightmare and I’m still in the closet with the monsters.
