When Zac reentered the room with the water, I was ready. “Thanks,” I got up off the bed and took the water from him.
His face went pale when he saw me, “Where are your clothes?” He motioned to the lacy black bra and underwear that covered my pale, clammy body.
“Who needs ‘em?” I laughed.
“Were you crying?” he put his hand under my chin and tilted my face up toward the light so that he could look into my eyes.
My whole body got goose bumps. He made me feel safe. I leaned in, pressing my lips softly, hopefully against his. His hands were hot when he wrapped them around my naked waist. For a moment or two, we were stuck there, moving in slow motion, like we were underwater. My head was still swimming.
It felt like I was dead. I could feel my own iciness melting against his warm body. My cold fingertips pressed into his back, my frosty lips brushed against his neck, my naked, frozen skin pressed against his hot chest. I could feel his body heat radiating through his shirt, filling me with life.
When I slid the condom I’d stolen out of the dresser drawer into his hand, he pushed me away.
“Come on, Zacky.”
“Robinson…”
“You know you want to.” I moved close to him, pressing my body into his, rubbing my cheek against his.
“Robinson-”
“Zac?” I stepped back and lay down on the bed, propping myself up on my elbows.
“Don’t,” Zac stepped back and tried to look away.
“Why not?” I got up. “Why not? I’m not drunk anymore. I know what I want, Zac,” I playfully slid off one black bra strap.
“Look at you, Robinson. You’re like a goddamn skeleton,” he started to pace the room. “Your ribs are all sticking out. And you’re…” he looked away, his hands shoved in his pockets.
“I’m what?” I got all hot and angry, jumping off the bed. “I’m pale and skinny? I dyed my hair black. Am I scary now? I’m f*cked up in the head, Zac. I’m confused and I’m lonely and I just need someone to love me.” Tears welled up in my eyes. There was a huge lump in my throat that made it hard to breathe. I wanted to collapse on the floor and cry for the rest of forever. “F*ckin, my boyfriend is a goddamn coke addict, and I’m cheating on him with your f*cking brother, who is only in the state like two f*cking weeks a year. Dammit, Zac, I just need-” I spun around went to the other side of the room, my back to him, so that he could not see the tears that I could no longer contain.
I was so pissed off… I wondered if this was how I felt when I was so drunk that I dragged a razor across my wrist. I wondered if when I swallowed so many pills and alcohol, I felt this angry, this alone, this hopeless. My eyes scanned the room for something sharp, poisonous, or dangerous. Something needed to give.
Zac’s warm hand was wrapped around my waist, and he rested his chin on my shoulder. “Robinson, it’ll be okay. I… I love you. I always have.”
His breath on my neck gave me the chills. I felt weak. So weak, in fact, that my legs actually gave way beneath me. Zac pressed his cheek to mine, holding me tighter around the waist so that I didn’t fall.
“I don’t know that I ever was going to tell you. I knew it was only going to complicate things.”
I still couldn’t speak.
“But I know as well as you do, Robinson… You and Taylor belong together. Either that or you and Dave. Neither way is it you and I. So you need to stop. You need to take this,” he placed the condom back in my hand, “put your clothes back on, and go back downstairs. I know you’re confused and upset and unhappy… and I want to help you by doing anything I can.” He turned me around so that we were face to face. No matter how hard I tried, I could not look away. “We can’t do this though. In the beginning, I thought maybe there was a chance that we could… whatever… but now I know it will never happen. I never thought I’d say no to you, Tayler, but I have to… for you, and for my brother.”
“So then really, this whole time,” I managed to choke out, despite the enormous lump in my throat that scarcely let any air in, “This whole time… you’ve been ‘in love’ with me?” Our faces were so close that my nose brushed his.
“I know it’s only going to complicate things. But after all this, I thought you needed to know. I always loved you, Tayler, and I always will.”
He placed a light, breathful kiss on the side of my neck, and let go of me. As I heard the door close behind me, I slumped to the floor, lay on my back, and stared at the ceiling as my eyes flooded with tears.
I’d made a total ass out of myself. I was happy when Dave stumbled drunkly up the stairs and hauled me into the bed, where we slept until late morning. I welcomed the fact that we were leaving. I didn’t even look around for Heidi to say goodbye to as I stepped out the door.
I couldn’t believe I’d tried to have sex with Zac. Even more so, I couldn’t believe he was in love with me. He was right. It complicated EVERYTHING, even more than it was already messed up. In the trailer, I pulled my legs up to my chin, curled up in the passenger seat next to Oscar, who was driving, and fell asleep.
I dreamed that I was pregnant. I didn’t know with whose child, though… Dave’s, Taylor’s, or Zac’s. I asked Heidi what I should do, but the Heidi I was talking to turned out to be a cardboard cutout. I decided I would cut myself open to see which one the baby looked like. In the dream, as I hauled out its little pink legs, I saw it was Jeremiah, and he said, “Run run, as fast as you can. Can’t catch me, I’m the gingerbread man.”
I woke with a start at the world’s loudest clap of thunder. Oscar was leaning forward over the steering wheel to see through the teeming rain. I was wearing shorts and one of Dave’s sweatshirts, and I shivered. “Where’s Dave?” I asked, my throat dry.
“In back,” Oscar waved, trying to concentrate closely to the road.
The combination of rain and the dinginess of the RV gave everything a damp gray hue. It was eerie, like something out of a movie when everyone died in the end. As I passed by the teensy, gross-looking bathroom, I glanced in the mirror. I looked horrible, being unshowered and greasy. The oversized clothing made my legs look particularly bony and unattractive. I held onto the rusty sink as I made my way into the back of the trailer, which held the big bed (as well as all of our equipment).
“Hey,” Dave said when I entered, puffing a cigarette.
“Hi.”
“Are you all right?” he asked as I crawled across the bed and snuggled into him, trying to suffocate myself with the smoky scent of his t-shirt.
“Mm hmm.”
He pulled my face out of his shirt and said, “This is going to be amazing. I’m so glad you’re touring with us. It’s going to f*cking rock.”
I didn’t want to talk. I just wanted to feel… or not feel. I rolled myself on top of him and shoved my mouth over his, grabbing the cigarette that he had just been about to bring to his mouth and putting it out in the headboard. I pressed myself harder into him, his arm pinned between us.
“Chill,” he laughed, pushing me away with ease.
“I don’t want to chill,” I said, numbly pulling off my clothing. “I’m tired of chilling.”
“Are you sure?” he raised his eyebrow as I nakedly fumbled with the button of his pants.
“Shut up. Don’t ask me questions. Just make it all go away.”
The RV rocked back and forth on the road as Oscar swerved blindly in the rain. Dave and I grabbed at each other on the misty grey-blue light of the dingy, trashy trailer. I wasn’t caring. I liked it. Who cared if I cheated? Who cared who hurt me and who I hurt? Not me.
Then, in a flash of squealing tires and torrential rain, the trailer made a violent and somewhat sickening swerve. All at once, Dave surged into me, farther than was at all ever intended by the human body, sending a rush of pain all the way up my spine, and we rolled off the bed, still entangled. I thwacked my head hard against the side of an amp, and blacked out.
I woke up after just a second, and Dave was on top of me, “What the f*ck?” He yanked on some pants as he yelled toward the front, “Hey, what the f*ck?!”
I couldn’t move. “Help me,” I mumbled, unable to stand.
“Jesus, Tayler, you’re bleeding!” he grabbed my hand and helped me up, throwing my underwear at me.
“Are you guys okay?” Muf came busting through the door. I had luckily just pulled a t-shirt on over my black underwear. “Damn, Tayler. Come on,” he grabbed my hand.
We all stood in a row outside the RV, which had turned over sideways in a muddy ditch at the side of the highway. Dave was holding a sock or something to the wound on my head as we climbed out of the trailer into the hammering rain.
“We’ll have to wait for a tow,” Oscar yelled through the rain that pounded deafeningly on the pavement. “Will you be all right?” he asked me, holding his hand over the bloody rag on my head so as to block the rain from hitting it.
“Mm hmm,” I nodded, crossing my arms over my chest. I was soaked by now, absolutely drenched in all parts. I squeezed my thighs together in hopes of stopping the sharp (but at the same time dull) pain that was centered right between them. I tried to stand so that the blood that was freshly trailing down my leg could be washed away by the rain.
How romantic. I shivered, trying to keep any part of me warm or dry. Here’s one for the history books. How did you lose your virginity, Tayler Mae Robinson? It was an accident.
I couldn’t look at Dave. While I sang, I focused everything on the audience, which was considerably smaller that usual. I didn’t mind, especially because of the red, throbbing wound on my head, my wet, untamed hair, and the ache between my legs.
I thought of the dream I had. Jeremiah, Dave’s sweet little baby…we weren’t that unlike one another. In the dream, he’d said to me, “Run run, as fast as you can. You can’t catch me, I’m the gingerbread man.” That’s exactly what I wanted to do. Run, run, as fast as I could. Run away from this nauseating new development that was the lost of my virginity, and the new confession of Zac’s affection for me, and most of all from the continual adoration for Taylor that just wouldn’t subside.
Run, run, as fast as you can. That’s just what I did. When the set was finished, I threw the mic down and ran for the hills. I didn’t know where I was going. I left through some creepy back alley and onto the street. I chose no particular direction… just away.
Dave caught up with me when I stopped at a red light. “Where are you going?” he huffed, putting his hand on my shoulder as he bent over to catch his breath.
“Please, leave me alone.”
“You know it was an accident, right?” he looked desperate.
I didn’t want him to touch me, and so I shrugged his hand off.
“Please, Tayler. You know it was an accident?” With every word that came from his mouth, the ache between my legs worsened.
“The bus rolling off the road?” I half-laughed almost insanely.
“I wasn’t going to… even though you said you wanted to. I know you didn’t. It didn’t have to be that way.”
“But it was.”
“It wasn’t me though, you know that, right?” he kept trying to turn me so that he could look into my face. I kept my chin firmly attached to my chest, refusing to look up or turn toward him.
“I know,” I finally muttered. “I just need to… go…”
“I understand,” he frowned.
“Thanks.”
