Page 10 of This Might Hurt

ANDREW

I don’t quite know where I am. My mouth tastes like bile, but I can’t tell if it’s anger or fear. Time jumps forward a little too far every time I blink, like I’m drunk, and my head is pounding. The sky hangs low, the air dull and oppressive. And I’m so, so cold.

But I can see the sun right there in front of me, too bright and ever-moving. I grip the edge of the car roof, because I still feel like I might pass out, and squint at the light, wishing it would come closer.

Jude strips off his t-shirt, then hops around on one foot as he pulls his shorts off over his sneakers. “What are you doing?” That’s my voice, I think. It sounds wrecked.

Instead of answering, he dives into the driver’s seat and reaches across to push open my door, almost knocking me over backwards.

He is, in fact, completely naked except for a pair of gray plaid boxers with a fraying waistband.

It doesn’t seem to bother him. His skin sports deep tan lines across his thighs and down his shoulders.

“Come on. You have to undress or you’ll never get dry. ”

“No.” The wet denim clinging to my thighs as I lower myself into the passenger seat makes me nauseous, but I grit my teeth and stare straight ahead at the swollen river and ugly trees drooping under the weight of the rain.

One mistake. Years of working up to it, and all I had to do was drive past that service station.

If I had pissed faster this morning when I got up, or driven one mile an hour slower, or passed one more car, Archie wouldn’t have called just before the exit and I would be…

I don’t know. Whatever comes after this.

There was a line, and I didn’t follow it, which I think means I’m stranded somewhere in the universe.

Now I’m staring at my knees and trying to breathe through the uncontrollable shaking, water in my eyes, snot on my upper lip.

I’m going home after all, and the blond freak who told me I wasn’t allowed to die won’t be there to see what he doomed me to.

“Let’s see,” Jude announces solemnly, tapping the start button and watching indicator lights spread across the dashboard as the engine rumbles to life.

He should be almost as shell-shocked as me, I suppose, but I haven’t been able to nail down a single one of his emotions since we met.

They’re all off, unbalanced, like the strangeness behind his warm, honey-colored eyes when he smiles.

He moves to prop his pistol in the cupholder, like some kind of deadly Stanley cup, then hesitates.

“Hey.” He’s talked this way all day—gentle but demanding, the way you call to a dog.

I’m worth six billion dollars, not counting the rest of my family’s wealth.

No one has ever spoken to me like that. And yet I look every time.

I watch dully as he ejects the magazine and holds it up, waving it around to demonstrate the lack of bullets.

Then he pulls back the slide and shows me the empty chamber.

I thought he was bluffing when he told me it wasn’t loaded.

What kind of brass balls do you need to rob someone with an empty gun?

“See?” he prompts, raising his wet eyebrows at me. “Nothing for you here.”

He drops it carelessly in the center console, then clips his phone in the dashboard mount and pulls up the navigation.

It says we’ll be driving for two hours, but I don’t know where, in what direction, or why.

I can’t make myself give a shit. If this man wants to kidnap and murder me, he’s more than welcome.

He’s not used to the power of the acceleration or sensitivity of the brakes, so we lurch backwards a few painful feet at a time down the gravel road to a turning point a quarter of a mile down.

I try not to let my face smash into the dashboard as he mumbles incoherent apologies, then does the exact same stupid thing again.

Finally, with aching relief, I find myself sliding back into the survival strategy that held me together for twenty-five years—look at nothing, don’t move, and remember all pain ends eventually.

But it’s not true. The cold refuses to end.

All the vents pumping out hot air aren’t enough to dry off the layers of drenched denim and cotton.

After ten minutes of creeping down the highway in a downpour with our lights on, I cave and take my seatbelt off so I can strip.

It’s a miserable fucking production, getting tangled up in my t-shirt and peeling the jeans off my skin an inch at a time with my legs trapped under the dashboard.

I can feel Jude watching me struggle, listening to me groan and huff while he steers casually with one hand and a knee.

Even though my seat is wet, it’s such a relief to feel the warm air finally hit my skin.

I look down at my black boxer briefs with Tom Ford printed on the waistband.

This is the pathetic body that was saved—sculpted and smooth from a perfect diet and skincare but weak, because I lost the will to work out a long time ago.

It can’t do anything, and no one has ever wanted it, not even me.

It just holds me to this earth like a rusty anchor sunk in the dark at the bottom of the sea.

I lean my seat back and watch the pattern of rivulets crisscrossing over themselves on my window.

Maybe it’s not that I needed to be dead, but that I needed to be something other than this, anything else, and death was the easiest answer.

If I could be one of those drops of water, tracing my easy, predetermined path through the world and then disappearing, that would be alright too.

Jude turns on the radio and flips through all the stations three or four times in a row.

When I’m about to snap at him to cut it out, he stops on some talk show where a woman with a very soothing voice is teaching someone how to make a soup from her native Kazakhstan.

As I half listen, half drift in an exhausted twilight haze, they draw a lot of very confusing analogies between soup ingredients and the immigrant experience, all in service of promoting her upcoming book.

It’s always about money in the end, whether you’re a lady making soup, a billionaire exploiting the earth, or a kid with an empty gun in a gas station.

After some vague amount of time the rain eases and the clouds break apart like tattered banners to let through a sulfur-yellow sunset.

Jude keeps to the slow lane and lets all the other drivers vent their frustration at the delay by tearing past at a hundred miles an hour in big fountains of water that spray across our windows.

I’ve been staring at the streak of dirt Jude left on the light tan leather of the glove box for almost an hour before it sinks in.

I slowly push myself upright and spit on my thumb so I can wipe it away.

It smears out, a dark scar on the pale detailing that’s impossible to miss.

My throat spasms tight, like I’m going to choke.

“Shit.” I thought I’d never see my uncle again.

Now he’s going to come home and find his car filthy, a cigarette butt rolling around in the door, the seats water-damaged and smelling like smoke.

“No, no—” I grab the first piece of clothing I can find, Jude’s wet t-shirt, and scrub the stain harder.

It doesn’t make any difference. Nothing I do ever makes any difference.

I’m my uncle’s prey, watching helplessly as he decides what part of me to kill next. I’m a useless trophy, sold to a man I know nothing about. I’m a body by the river, alone, unable to regret anything.

“No.” I punch the dashboard so hard that my vision fades to white.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck.” I hit it harder with my shredded hand, dizzy and blind.

My uncles made me learn boxing when I was seventeen, to toughen me up.

I stumbled around the ring like a drunk deer while they took turns beating the shit out of me.

This is the first punch I’ve ever landed.

Since I can’t feel my arm anymore, I throw myself back and slam the heel of my boot into the dash, over and over until I finally hear it crack over the ringing in my ears. “Fucking hurt me now, bastard,” I yell, my raw voice torn to pieces.

My shoulder bangs the door as the car slaloms and skids to a stop on the gravel shoulder. Fingers grip my arm. Archie’s here, he came to do exactly what I asked. My wrecked fist slams into someone’s face, a hard curve of bone like an eye socket.

Jude.

He had really nice eyes.

I fumble, trying to hit him again, trying to get my fingers around his neck. There’s so much pain and I can’t hold it all. I’m disintegrating. I need to give some of it to him.

“This is your fucking fault,” I sob. “Why did you stop me? What the fuck right did you have, you piece of shit?”

His heavy, wiry body, all soft skin and elbows and warmth, settles on top of me.

I can’t see, but I can hear his voice very close.

“Hit me again,” he pants, his nose in my ear.

It’s a relief to slam my wrecked fist into something that gives way, that coughs and shudders.

I freeze, caught halfway between the shock of hurting another person and the desperate need to release the pressure tearing my insides apart.

“It’s okay.” He shoves his forehead against my temple, breathing deep. “You’re still mad. Get it out.”

I don’t really want to, but he’s the only one here, and I’m going to be angry every single day for the rest of my life and not able to do a single thing about it. So I ball my fist up, not sure if the thumb is supposed to go inside or out, and drive it up into his ribs again. Once, twice.

His elbows land on either side of my head, the full weight of his bare chest against mine as he gasps and retches into the seat. “Good.”