Page 9

NINE

CEE CEE

I didn’t bother to use Thorne’s driver. I ran out the front of his building and found the nearest bus stop. I know the routes pretty well after all these years. As I rode, I thought of calling the police. Reporting the attack but right now, I just want to forget it all.

In the office, the dark cloud only grows as I feel the horror of my actions. Not hitting that man with a skillet. That I can live with. But I could be pregnant.

Again.

Yes. Fuck. I’m a fucking idiot when it comes to men. What the hell is wrong with me? Do I have some switch that men can use to turn off my brain?

I was a senior in high school. I felt so excited when I got asked to the spring dance by one of the popular boys. What I got was a lesson in not drinking what someone hands you at a party and not being ashamed when you realize you were in no condition to give consent.

The worst part? I found out the same my brother Phillip was shot and killed in the street by a stray bullet from a gangster’s gun that I was pregnant. My brother was everything I wasn’t. Good student, good son. Funny. Bright future. Always at my father’s side, his business protégé, ready to take the helm of the family import/export business.

Me? I couldn’t have cared less about good grades in school. I did what I needed to do, but my heart was in my books, the elegance of languages and my music. Only, I didn’t play classical piano like my parents had wanted. I went for the electric guitar and learned to play the drums. Even joined a little garage band in my sophomore year, much to my parents’ horror.

To this day, they know I speak French and English. But, they took no interest in my ability to assimilate other languages, so I stopped telling them and it just became my own little hobby. The value of which I never realized until I got older.

The baby’s father’s family did much the same thing as mine did to me. He disappeared on a sudden trip to a new boarding school. That was it.

The day I woke up doubled over with pain and called my mother collect from a payphone, she wouldn’t take my call. I sat in a curtained room in the ER while a doctor explained to me it was an early pregnancy and the loss of the baby was just Mother Nature’s way of saying something must have been wrong. The doctor’s not so veiled dig on the young, poor, single girl who clearly had no business being pregnant stung.

Yeah, well, Mother Nature is a bitch then, isn’t she, doc?

No, I didn’t say that out loud. But I thought it. Or should have, if I hadn’t been sitting in a pool of my own tears.

Now, here I am sitting at work, and even after the quick shower when I woke up, I can feel Thorne’s seed seeping into my underwear.

Seriously, what is wrong with me?

With the visit from whomever that was at the loft, the things he’d said about Thorne. Sure that guy was wacked but there is a connection there. Am I so needy I was so easily used? When I got to work, I did what every self-respecting girl does after she meets a guy.

Googled him.

Thadeus Maxum Avery.

I saw his full name on the copy of the New York Times that sat on the kitchen counter next to the donuts. So I type it in and there it is in a Detroit News article from five years ago.

Felony for manslaughter. Convicted of providing the murder weapon that was used in the murder of one and serious injury of another.

I wonder who they were; the article doesn’t give me the names. What was the last thing they said to their loved ones that day? What hopes and dreams did they have for the future?

“Cecelia.” Dr. Stinson’s gruff tone tells me he’s none too happy about my abrupt departure last night. I’m surprised he’s here on a Saturday, usually it’s only the other dentists that help out that work weekends.

“Yes?”

“The next time you walk out of here like you did last night, you won’t be coming back.” He snaps his tongue over his teeth and holds his eyebrows in a look of disappointment. “You know I take a chance even having you here. Paying you like I do. I’ve been good to you, haven’t I? Looking the other way when it comes to your status. Not asking too many questions. Hmmm? Gratitude is not out of order here, Cecelia.” He stuffs his hands down into the pockets of his lab coat and flashes a condescending smile.

“Yes. I’m sorry. It won’t happen again. And thank you.” And it won’t, because last night was a crazy, stupid, endorphin-filled binge and I’m all about the morning after right now. The ‘I’ll never do THAT again’ tag line is playing over and over in my mind. “I need this job. And also my apartment, my room, was near that explosion last night. I don’t have a place to stay. So, yes, I’m sorry, please, it won’t happen again.”

The pathetic tone in my voice only darkens my mood more. I’ve struggled for so long. There is always more week than paycheck and I’m tired. In my soul I’m tired.

The next hour rolls on as my head starts to pound. I’m in a consulting room, listening to a sweet, eighty-seven-year-old woman from Cuba trying to tell me all about the pain in her tooth.

One of the associate dentists, Dr. Robertson, comes in and I explain and translate between them. I like Dr. Robertson. She’s told me why she left private practice for this clinic, accepting rock bottom wages. She’s a good woman, in this for the right reasons, doing what she can for people less fortunate than herself. Dr. Stinson, on the other hand, doesn’t actually see patients, oh no.

I slide my stool back as Dr. Robertson starts to work, the quiver in my belly still there as I think about Thorne. His mouth on me, the way he filled me up and spoke to me in such elegant vulgarity. There is a buildup of tension immediately as I picture his face, hear the lust in his voice.

A soft knock on the exam room door and my co-worker, Sasha, peeks in.

“Hey,” I whisper, rising from my rolling stool.

“Hey, CeeCee, um, there’s a delivery here. I think it’s for you… It’s addressed to Cecelia Peabody. Is that you?” My name as far as everyone here knows is Cecelia Thompson.

My heart stops.