Emily
She turned stiffly over in bed with a pitiful moan at a thunderous thud that went through her hungover head at the sudden movement. There was that brief, heavenly moment you get when the world stays an abstract thing. When the bed stopped spinning wildly and her mind hadn't caught up with her body. Then it hit again...boom. The blood coursing through her head seemed to contain tiny hand grenades, timed to explode in step with her pulse. Boom...Boom...Boom.
She groaned again and her throat joined in the masochism. Her voice, always husky, was virtually absent. Her mouth felt like a mouse had taken a dump in it...and what the fuck was gumming up her eye? She opened the other bleary orb, to see the passive green display of the digital alarm opposite.
06.30, it said. Thin dawn light was just peeking through the bedroom curtains and she narrowed her good eye, giving her suffering head time to adjust to the weak sun. She groaned again...fuck, what had she drunk last night...it tasted like...
Just that tiny conscious thought was enough. Memory...harsh, unforgiving memory rushed in to occupy the blank spaces in her head.
Drink...lots and lots of drink, beer, vodka...that fucking jaegermeister at the end...before...she shivered violently, preferring to concentrate on something, anything else...then pills...at least two small, yellow pills with cute little bunnies stamped on them. Lots of noise, music, the greasy smell of under-cooked supermarket burgers...and Mac...oh yeah, Mac. The attempt at memory suppression failed miserably, as she knew it would. The guy with the dreadlocks she'd teased all afternoon with her unfettered tits and sly smiles...him of the coffee coloured skin and big hands...shit.
That's when her stomach joined the dawn chorus. It roiled, like a live thing. Suddenly she knew what the foul taste in her mouth was...why her thighs were sore and stiff...why the ache between them now pulsed and stabbed like a separate pulse .
She'd fucked him...no, that wasn't at all right. He'd fucked her. Hard.
After hours of her unsubtle teasing. Sitting on his lap being fed beer and tablets, letting him cup her tits when no one was watching, rubbing her arse on his bulge...even after her so called girlfriend, whom she'd tormented relentlessly with her flirting, had pissed off with that interfering cunt Stonem, she carried on letting him think he was going to get to fuck her.
But she'd miscalculated. One too many beers, one too many ecstasy tablets. He wasn't a guy used to being led on. So when she'd left his lap sometime after nine, giggling at the dirty jokes he'd continually whispered in her ear, wobbling upstairs on legs suddenly reluctant to tread a straight line, she didn't notice him following till he slid his arms round her as she got to the top of the stairs.
She tried to reason with him, tried to pass off the flirting as nothing but innocent. She even told him she was gay...as the proverbial window in fact. But alone at the door to Naomi's bedroom, the one her estranged girlfriend now slept in because Emily refused to let her share the double bed, he wasn't listening to her protests. Not any more.
She could hear the party continuing downstairs. Girls shrieking as boys kissed and goosed them in their drunkenness. Bottles clinking against glasses, liquid being spilled on carpets, the music changing abruptly as someone got bored with Lady Gaga and replaced the CD with something harder, deeper. The bass got turned up and the house reverberated to Dizzy Rascal. A house full of virtual strangers.
He cupped her small breasts from behind, cupped and squeezed them possessively. She tried humour, tried to reason with him. She could feel his erection pushing into her arse, bigger, much bigger than thought it would be. This was no virginal JJ...compliant, passive, while she arranged things to her satisfaction. No nervous newbie for her to sit on, dictating the pace and penetration. This was a man. Older by 3 years at least. Suddenly the flirty looks, the teasing touches she had given him while her suffering girlfriend watched her play act with hollow, miserable eyes demanded payment in return. Suddenly she knew this guy wasn't going to take no for an answer.
She remembered pleading softly as he guided her firmly into Naomi's bedroom, kissing her protests away. Remembered seeing her girlfriends glasses on the bedside table where she'd left them, next to the history course books. Remembered his dark eyes, flushed with alcohol and desire, not leaving her face as he brushed her objections aside, along with the buttons of her jeans.
"Mac...Mac" she whispered, desperate to get through to him, "I'm gay...I don't want to...I can't...please...?"
But it turned out she could.
He stripped her with the efficiency of the natural seducer as she swayed, still buzzing with the drugs and alcohol. Then, kneeling over her as she lay back obediently on the single bed. He didn't hurt her, well, not at first. Didn't threaten her...just carried on relentlessly, cupping her breasts and thumbing her unresponsive nipples. Kissing her neck wetly as he fumbled with his own belt. Not stripping himself, just freeing his erection and pulling her hand between their bodies, making her stroke him.
"No more teasing Emily...you've been asking for this all night"
"Too big...Christ, no" she gasped. She was terrified he would literally split her in half. She'd never...she couldn't... Her hand barely fitted around its girth.
"No problem babe" he said quietly..."Just need to get you...wet and ….juicy for it"
When his head moved downwards, pausing just to give each of her soft nipples a cursory suck, she struggled briefly, but his big hands pinned her arms to her sides.
"Good girl" he rasped as cold fear overcame her resistance. She literally froze as he parted her thighs and then she felt the thick tendrils of his dreadlocks fall across her bare thighs. His tongue was rough and clumsy on her, not like N...not like before, with anyone else... His fingers thick and equally crude as he spread her open for his tongue to invade . As he worked on her she looked fixedly at the ceiling, willing it to be over. A single tear brimmed and fell from her eye.
But he took his time, knowing that she had surrendered to him now. When he thought she was wet enough, never mind that the lubrication was all his, he moved back up her body, pushing her legs obscenely wide.
She felt his tip at her sex and moaned in fright. Not in pleasure, but fear. She'd never had anything this big inside her, even when she and Naomi had experimented with.….toys and stuff, before...before the dead girl and the miserable abstinence that followed.
His eyes held hers as he positioned himself carefully at her entrance and started to inch inwards. She thought he would hurt her badly in there, break something, her eyes watering as he gradually sawed deeper, but her body somehow treacherously accommodated him. Painfully, reluctantly but inexorably he was eventually all the way in her. She gasped as he began to move again. He felt as big as a house in there.
He raised her thighs until he was comfortable, then closed his eyes. As he slowly thrust inside her, she closed her own in mute acceptance. The sounds of the party faded as her mind shut off. Just the squeak of the bed springs, rhythmic, relentless and his heavy breathing in her ear.
She thought maybe she could just endure it. If he was quick, if he just got off fast, then got off her, but the rising panic in her throat burst free, despite her determination to lie quietly.
"Please?" she groaned. She meant please stop...please finish...please end this, but he was beyond listening by then.
"Oh yeah...you like that, don't you" he groaned, mistaking her protest for eagerness. "Bet your skinny girlfriend doesn't get you this excited, does she?...bet she doesn't fill you up like this"
She bit her bottom lip so hard, the coppery taste of her own blood filled her mouth, but still he rode her relentlessly. As he began to speed up, the bed protesting noisily as he hammered at her, her hands came up defensively, gripping his bare sides and pushing backwards. Again, he mistook the signals, lost in her cloying heat.
"Fuck, you little bitch...you really love it don't you...not really a dyke, are you?...Just needed a nice hard cock to get you going..."
Suddenly, through the cold despair that gripped her, she saw her answer to this nightmare. If he thought she was into this, was enjoying his violation of her body...maybe this could all be over sooner.
Her mind rebelled, even as her mouth opened to encourage him.
"Yeah...thats right...fuck me Mac...make me come with your big cock...harder, faster...more"
She bucked upwards, clawing at his back and squeezing him internally, despite the pain.
He almost whined as she carried on for long seconds verbally goading him. His hips pumped faster and faster until finally she felt his back arch and spasm. Finally, she thought...it can be over.
But he had one last fantasy to fulfill. As his mouth opened to yell his release, he pulled quickly free of her body, making her jerk in pain as he left her cunt, ripping off the condom she never saw him put on, he held himself and her head in his hands, pulling her mouth closer to his glistening erection.
"Take it then..." he grunted. Her eyes widened as she realised what he was asking. Her head jerked back, away. She clamped her mouth closed a fraction of a second too late to stop some of his...stuff entering. Warmth and stickiness covered her face and lips. She coughed wretchedly as she registered the foul taste of his ejaculation. Her head stayed turned to one side, eyes and mouth squeezed shut, but he was finished anyway, dropping down panting beside her, still clutching himself. It was over.
She lay there for a few seconds, on her back, knees drawn up, stunned and already aching as he quickly pulled up his trousers beside the bed.
"Great fuck little Em" he laughed as she regarded him with empty eyes "Let me know next time you fancy a cock diet instead of muff...for a lesbian you did pretty good"
Then he was gone.
She cried bitterly then, and at first pulled the thin top sheet over herself as she heard laughing him downstairs. She couldn't hear the words, but the raucous cheer and the fleshy sounds of high fives was easily discernible. The bastard was boasting about shagging her...the little lesbian who wanted to teach her girlfriend a lesson, taught her own lesson instead.
She just had the strength to get up, wobble to the door and lock it, pulling a straight backed chair under the handle, before staggering back to bed pulling the sheet over herself again and losing consciousness.
And now it was morning...
She managed to get to the bathroom just before the contents of her stomach ejected itself noisily into the sink. She turned on the shower and, while she waited for it to run hot, scrubbed her teeth obsessively with her electric toothbrush, again and again. It was no good, even swallowing neat mouthwash didn't obliterate the taste, the memory of what she'd allowed him to do. Ten, fifteen minutes in the hot shower similarly failed to cleanse her body. She only got out when it ran ice cold. She dressed like an automaton, stiffly, uncaring what she wore, just as long as it wasn't what she had on yesterday. Those clothes she bundled up carelessly into a small ball of material. They'd have to be burned, obliterated. She walked downstairs slowly, the ache between her legs flaring again as she negotiated the abandoned bottles and glasses all around.
When she got to the hall, she gazed fearfully into each room as she passed, anxious in case anyone was left who might recognise her. But apart from the stale stench of beer and tobacco, the place was deserted. Wrecked, ruined, but deserted. She saw someone had been sick on the couch. The regurgitated alcohol smell made her gag again. Another pool of ugly vomit laid on the kitchen table among the smeared glasses and half empty spirit bottles. It felt like her house...no, Naomi's house...had been violated just as decisively as she had been.
Fresh guilt swept over her.
A sob rose in her throat, but she suppressed it. She had no right to be hurt, upset. It was all her fault. He hadn't raped her, not really...she'd led him on, made him think she was up for it. And even when he was doing it to her, it was as if she was allowing him to punish her. She had no idea what she was going to do now. Naomi had cheated on her...but not like this, not in full public view, not with a house full of strangers. Who was the bad guy in their fucked up relationship now?
Her mind drifted aimlessly as she listlessly picked up a few stray abandoned bottles and cleared a space on the one remaining clean piece of furniture, the occasional chair which Naomi had claimed as her own, back in the days when they were sailing on that delirious first love cloud, sitting night after night with her course books, trying not to stare at her while she gazed doe eyed back. That chair.
As she curled in on herself, closing her eyes, blocking out the room with all its trashed, stinking clutter, she felt a buzzing under the cushion behind her. She reached under herself and tugged out the offending object.
Cosmic. Her phone. At least it hadn't been stolen, she rationalised.
'Mandy' the caller identity blinked, together with a picture of the tall brunette. Emily swiftly blocked the connection before checking her call history. There was no way she was ready to pretend. Even if it was to someone she didn't really care about. That thought made another surge of guilt blaze through her. Another person she was leading on. Hurting.
Mandy
Mandy
Mandy
Mandy
Mandy
Mandy
Mandy
Texts and calls, for most of the hours of yesterday afternoon and last night.
The last text was an angry one.
"I've just been told you hooked up with some random guy at the party WHAT THE FUCK EMS? Apparently the whole crowd heard you shagging him upstairs. Call me NOW"
Emily grimaced, obviously the grapevine was working well. Mandy now knew her shame too. She inwardly braced herself to make a call to her pretend girlfriend...it wasn't something she relished. But in the meantime...
Not one call from the person who always checked on her. Even when she was spinning drunkenly in some club at 3am, pissed and stoned, with an ever attentive Mandy whispering suggestively in her ear about toilets and ripped knickers, she always got a call or text. Just checking she was OK. Naomi had held up her side of the bargain. She really would do anything to keep the flame alive...
But not this night.
Emily's stomach clenched tightly as she realised the one person she thought would forgive her anything...anything at all...hadn't phoned or texted. Not once.
Now she really was alone...
XXX
Naomi
At the same time as Emily was crouching guiltily on the chair, looking bleakly at her call history, Naomi was waking up in a comfortable bed. In a room it took her several seconds to recognise. She had no hangover...for the first time in months she was waking sober. It was almost surreal. The clarity of the unfogged vision and unaching head felt wrong somehow. She was used to rolling around in bed for at least an hour before daring to stretch for the water and paracetamol, hiding her head under the covers until her bleary eyes could stand the daylight.
But not today.
The memory of where she was, and why she'd got there came quickly.
The party...Emily practicing hating her some more...then flirting with some random guy...no, not flirting, more than that. All over him, eerily reminiscent of her twin, back then, when Katie was trying for slut of the year... Then there was Effy, verbally slapping down her girlfriend and finally pulling her physically away from what would have been another night of ritual humiliation. She'd got used, if thats the right word, to Emily pulling that shit with randoms at parties by now. But it had always been girls, up to today. And up to today, she'd never actually believed that Emily would go through with what she was promising to do. Not really.
But with a guy? What the fuck? Nope, couldn't happen...could it?
Then, when Effy had got her home (Effy's mother inevitably absent...this time rehab seemed to be the reason) she'd been sat down on Effy's bed, her phone confiscated (because Effy knew, and so did Naomi, that she would give in and call the redhead at some point during the night)
….and got told a few home truths. One thing Elizabeth Stonem was good at was telling perceptive and sometimes painful truths. Maybe not about herself, but she had an almost preternatural ability to distill out bullshit and get to what people were really thinking, what they really wanted.
So she 'educated' Naomi about what was actually going on in Emily's head.
"This won't get better all on its own Naoms" she said, waiting while Naomi protested pointlessly. "Bullshit" she said succinctly "This isn't about you any more, haven't you realised that yet? Emily isn't really punishing you now, although it might feel like that if tonight is anything to go on...she's punishing herself for trusting you"
Naomi blinked at her blankly, punishing herself?
"Think about it. She has an overbearing and homophobic mother who she only recently escaped. She has an overbearing and up to recently at least, homophobic sister who still has a lot of influence on her life. She's used to being the underdog, the doormat. Then you come along with those big blue eyes and 'fuck the world and everyone in it' attitude, and she falls in love...and not just falls in love, but head over heels, never be any one else to compare, love. With you"
"So she puts you on a pedestal, so fucking high you get dizzy and scared. So you do what we all do in that situation. You get vertigo, you get frightened and you do something which you think will prove to yourself that you're not hopelessly, helplessly in love with her too. You go and fuck some random"
Naomi swallowed hard and tried not to cry. There wasn't a damned word of what the brunette had just said she could disagree with, but fuck it hurt, hearing it like that.
Effy carried on relentlessly.
"But with your shit luck, the girl turns out to be a stalker and a fruitcake with her own identity issues. You deal her some powder to get her off your back and she does the one thing custom made to blow this whole thing out of the water...she offs herself in front of a hundred kids. Including you and Emily"
She paused and took a swig from the half bottle of vodka by the bed. Naomi eyed it with undisguised hunger, but Effy carefully slipped it into the bedside cabinet drawer, apologising with her eyes before speaking again.
"No babe, no more alcohol...at least not tonight"
"So Emily is abusing herself and you because she hates the fact that the goddess she put on that pedestal turned out to have feet of clay. Princess Naomi is all too human and she fucked up spectacularly by screwing some girl off a train, therefore no one is to be trusted. And thats a dangerous position to be in, right? Because if she can't trust anyone, including herself, she might as well go out in a blaze of glory. Hence the randoms, this Mandy...who isn't a threat now hun, but she might well be soon...and now this Mac guy"
"B...but she's gay Eff...she wouldn't...not with a man"
Effy shook her head firmly and Naomi's face fell even further.
"Not only would she...I suspect she has already babe. Remember JJ?"
Effy looked at her small wristwatch as if the emphasise the point that they'd been here for an hour already.
"That was different...we weren't properly together then and it was just a pity fuck, to get him to lose his virginity...that's all. Emily said it was shit" Naomi gabbled, desperate to make the distinction between then and now.
"So not the point Naoms. I think she'll find out tonight that some guys are dangerous to lead on without delivering..."
Naomi jumped to her feet, spilling the glass of water she was holding onto the bedroom carpet.
"Then we have to go back NOW...stop it...I can't just let her get..." she cried.
"Raped?" Effy said sardonically "I don't think it will come to that hun. But think about it. She's a free woman, or thats what she thinks anyway. What would happen if you rushed back there and found them at it in the bedroom...do you think she would be all welcoming arms and forgiveness?. I think the dirty deed is done Naoms, she's probably fucked him by now"
Naomi shook her head, not trusting herself to answer. She knew it was true, but her mind immediately started to conjure up the most lurid and disgusting images, even as Effy continued.
"You need to send her a message...and I don't mean desperate voice-mails and texts asking for forgiveness. You tried that, it just gets thrown back at you, right?"
Again Naomi nodded, gulping down the lump in her throat.
"Stay here for a couple of days, get yourself straight. I'll go and see her tomorrow. See how things are. Don't text or phone her. It won't make things any better. She needs to understand that making you miserable isn't helping her deal with this shit. You two belong together, at least if she can learn to forgive...but if you go on like this...it will be over, one way or another. Either she'll go off properly with this Mandy tart..." she waved away Naomi's attempt at protest "Which I don't think will happen...or she'll finally forgive you and you can both start to pick up the pieces again"
"Do you think that will happen Eff?" Naomi cried softly "I really can't see a life for myself without her...I love her so fucking much"
Effy put her cool hand over Naomi's and smiled for the first time.
"I really hope so...but lets take one day at a time yeah? Get yourself into the shower...for once I agree with Katie fucking Fitch...you really do look like microwaved shit at the moment...then come back here and we'll have a soppy girly night in, just you and me, some DVD's and sleep...I'm guessing you haven't had much of that lately?"
"Not much" Naomi admitted quietly "Too many nasty dreams"
"Well, this is now officially a dream free bedroom, so get yourself off to the bathroom now, I'll change the sheets while you're gone"
XXX
Naomi groaned as she remembered better the night before. She'd had the shower, long and hot, dressed herself in one of Effys ubiquitous long white bed tee's and snuggled up under the clean duvet while Effy had her own bath.
Half an hour later sitting side by side, with a half empty box of Thornton's stolen from Effy's mothers secret stash between them (avoiding the Russian vodka lying next to it) they watched 'Beaches' and cried like loons, passing tissues back and forth until the credits rolled.
Which was all fine and good, and therapeutic and healthy...but it didn't explain one important thing. Something which Naomi was slowly realising. She could hear the sound of soft breathing behind her as she lay on her side, looking at the curtains blowing gently in the morning breeze from the bedroom window.
It was just...why the fuck was she naked...and why was the smooth back which was pressing against her skin also uncovered.
She hadn't...had she?