Mercy

Adrienne sits underneath our favorite maple tree in the park, knees pulled to her chest as she steadily rocks her body back and forth. At first, I think she’s screaming, and the volume at which the shriek pierces my mind compels panic to ravage my body more successfully than the drunks had. I draw nearer to her, setting my guitar case carefully upon the ground, only to find her lips pursed tightly together without the slightest aftershock of a scream drawn anywhere along the worry lines of her face. Still the sound persists. It’s deafening. It drills deep into me with the intensity of a sledgehammer to the skull. I’m far too worked up over the attack in the bar to realize right away that her terror has been internalized. The cries I hear are coming directly from her mind. She’s concentrating so hard on keeping them inside that she doesn’t see me approach her, and with trembling fingers she anxiously rips a leaf she’d been holding against her chest to shreds. The pieces fall from her fingertips and float around her like black, morbid confetti as she begins to wonder if I’d been killed.

It’s been nearly two hours, she thinks. He’s a goner.

She cries for me. She cries for Jason. She cries for her unborn child she assumes is now fatherless. My eyes remain dry as I silently watch her, numb to everything but degradation. I still feel each and every one of their hands on my body. My groin burns where they dug their filthy fingernails into my tender skin. I want to turn around and flee. I can’t face her like this. I’m supposed to be her man now, her rock, but all I want is to disappear. Adrienne thinks I’m dead, anyways. I won’t be missed any more than I already am.

I back away from her only to misstep seconds into my retreat. My arms flail ineffectually as I attempt to regain my balance, and for the second time tonight, I topple to the ground. A pain, sharp and unforgiving, tears into my twisted left ankle. I groan, and as my eyes roll back into my skull, I hear Adrienne’s scattered thoughts immediately silence. She hears me. She knows I’m here. Looks like I’m not running away from her any time soon. Fuck, with this twisted ankle, I’m not running anywhere. So much for surviving through this night and getting the fuck out of Black Leaf Falls.

“Billie?” she whispers, tentative in her advances in case I turned out to be one of the drunks.

“Yeah,” I grunt, “it’s me.” I’m so overwhelmed I hardly notice the moisture building in my previously dry eyes.

Adrienne’s on top of me in seconds, effortlessly scooping my deflowered body into her arms as if I’m nothing more than a life-size ragdoll. I go completely limp in her arms. I’m anxious of the way she’s touching me. There’s an underlying tenderness about it that makes my stomach churn. I feel like vomiting, but there’s nothing but humiliation and booze gurgling in my gut. I turn my head away from her and scream, but it only compels her to pull me closer and persist in her familiar, steady motion of rocking back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. My stomach lurches, and what’s left of my liquid dinner pours from my mouth onto Adie’s work apron. The vomit misses her blouse by inches.

“Baby, what’d they do to you?” she sobs.

I refuse to answer. I give her a command instead.

“Kill me.”

“I can’t do that, Billie. I need you,” she whimpers, absentmindedly bringing an arm out from under me to clutch at what would soon be a baby bump. I internally cringe, reminded of a responsibility I’d only recently become aware of, and I hate myself even more. I only fucked her because I was drunk, and Jason disappeared with Gray Eyes for a whole weekend without a word to anyone. I was lonely. Adrienne was there. You do the math.

“That night was a mistake,” I tell her. The hand caressing her stomach recoils immediately and slithers around my waist once more. She buries her face in my neck, weeping, yet I’m unmoved by her sorrow. She knows damn well what a mistake it was hitching her wagon to me, but she was too wrapped up in claiming my love for a night before Jason could return to steal it all away from her. Unfortunately, that one night we shared got her hopelessly addicted to me, and though I haven’t slept with her since, she’s naïve enough to believe I’ll touch her again.

If she gets me drunk enough, I probably will. I’m shit at properly handling loneliness.

Just look at how easily I jumped right into the gray-eyed boy’s lap.

“Don’t say that,” Adrienne moans. “Don’t you dare say that.”

I try to bite my tongue to keep from offending the one person who still gives a rat’s ass about me, but I fail miserably. My pain loosens my lips and transforms me into a spiteful clone of any one of the local yokels from the bar. It’s the only way I can think of to protect myself from the guilt I should feel for taking advantage of this girl.

“But y’know it’s true, Adie. I’m gay. I only fucked you ‘cause…‘cause Jay wasn’t there,” I say, voice devoid of emotion, face stoic save for the tears leaking from the corners of my eyes.

She cringes before hissing, “You’re a whore.”

I don’t have the energy to deny it.

“I know,” I sigh.

“He had a boyfriend,” she adds. I can tell she’s attempting to sound venomous, but she’s too in love with me to feign any form of dissatisfaction. In her mind, I can do no wrong.

“I know,” I repeat, “but I was screwin’ ‘im long ‘fore Gray Eyes came ‘round.”

“So you should know exactly what you’re doing to me. You should know exactly how it feels,” Adrienne declares, distancing herself from me just enough to look me in the eye. She doesn’t like my indifferent gaze, yet she doesn’t look away.

“How what feels?” I ask, fishing around in my pockets for another cigarette and my lighter. I light one and take a drag but am slightly disappointed by the lack of release it’s giving me. I won’t make it through the night on cigarettes alone. I need booze.

I suppose that won’t matter much once the barflies find me, though. Either way, I won’t survive.

“How it feels to be rejected. To be in love alone.”

I scowl at her. She’s wrong. Jason did love me. He never looked at the gray-eyed boy the way he looked at me. He didn’t sleep curled up at the gray-eyed boy’s side every night. He didn’t beg the gray-eyed boy to make love to him at three in the morning after night terrors had gotten the best of him. I was number one whether Jason was ever willing to admit it or not. Gray Eyes didn’t have shit on me.

But for the sake of her fragile heart, I agree with her.

“I s’pose I do know a thing or two ‘bout rejection,” I murmur reflectively. Adrienne nods in approval of my response.

“So we’re in the same damned boat, B.” Her casual use of Jason’s nickname for me turns my blood to ice, and by her horrified expression upon realizing her choice of words, she knows she crossed a line. She searches her mind for some sort of adequate apology but finds none. The words don’t connect in her mind because, deep down, she’s not sorry.

Without looking at her, I say, “We should get outta here.”

Raising an incredulous eyebrow, she demands, “How?”