Zampsa1975: Thanks for reading. Thanksgiving will be bittersweet.
JustSkipIt: THey will remain apart for awhile, so that feeling of worry about them apart may stay.
Cyteach: thanks for the support and reading.
Vampyregirl: THanks for the feedback, this situation is far more common than I'd hope.
SMGOVAN: Sorry it took so long.
I am sorry that this update is so tardy. For some reason, I have found this chapter VERY hard to write. I know where I want this story to go, and for some reason this chapter has caused a major bump in the road. Hopefully, I’ll be writing more loyally from now on.
WARNING: This chapter is primarily about abuse, if this type of thing bothers you, don’t read it, I will provide the gist in chapter 59.
Part 58
“So are we going to talk about the elephant in the living room?” asked Tara. She had arrived at the bus station near dinner time. Joyce had taken them out to dinner and they returned to the house and watched a movie. She and Willow had held hands during the movie, but there was an awkward vibe in the air. After the movie, they had both had feigned fatigue. Joyce had issued her familiar reminder of the rules, and they had gone to Willow’s room. After putting on their night clothes, and doing their evening ablutions, they were laying in the bed.
“Huh?” asked Willow, trying to be dense.
“The big pink elephant? I think she said her name was Josie” retorted Tara.
“I know we have to, but I don’t want to.” Willow tried to put her best pouty face on.
“Your pouty face is not going to work. We don’t have to talk about her, but I have a feeling that if we don’t, she’s going to be staring at us every time we decide to get cuddly, and possibly blow a peanut at us when we least expect it.
“But she is so cute, maybe she won’t choose to blow peanuts at us….”
“Willow,” said Tara rather sternly.
“What?” she said feigning innocence again.
Tara moved so she was sitting in front of Willow. Willow in a very uncharacteristic move looked down and refused to look into Tara’s deep blue eyes.
“Is it that scary?”
Willow screwed up her face and began to think. “Um…scary?....not really, just embarrassing….” Her voice trailed off.
“Why not get it over with?”
“Can’t we just forget it?” said Willow hopefully.
“Well, if you don’t trust me, I guess…” Tara knew what she was doing was unfair, but she knew that her girlfriend couldn’t resist this kind of dare.
“No I trust you….” said Willow emphatically. “I trust you completely…it’s not that…it is just that it isn’t something that I’ve told people a lot about…you’ll see what a stupid kid I was.
“The important word, KID…what ever happened must have happened when you were a kid, right? Does it have something to do with Carly?”
Willow nodded almost inperceptively.
“What did she do to you?”
Willow got a far off look on her face. A look that Tara was very familiar with, Willow was going into the zone. Tara wondered to herself what Willow’s disassociation would look like…An absence of babbling, a quiet Willow? Or would she just start babbling uncontrollably and Tara would have trouble telling what she was saying. Tara knew not to touch someone in that state, so she just sat there quietly.
“Well, I have told you some of it. Carly was one of the softball coaches. I was on this traveling team. I played second base. Not that that is important…Well, it started with Carly picking me to share her room under the guise of keeping an eye on the youngest player so that she wouldn’t get corrupted by the older girls. My parents thought she was so responsible…It kind of came to a head one weekend. We’d been flirting a lot, or what I now know is flirting…we…were put in a room with just one bed for the two of us. She claimed that there weren’t any cots available. It had been an exhausting game, and all I wanted to do was take a shower and go to bed. When I got out of the shower, I found that she had invited several of the other coaches over to our room. One of them offered me a beer, I know I shouldn’t have taken it, but I wanted to seem cool. Well, the next thing I knew, I was in bed and Carly was all over me. She was not gentle, and it was nothing like I’d hoped or expected my first, sort of consensual sexual experience to be. She told me that if I told anyone, I’d be kicked off the team and nobody would believe me. Well it got worse over time, and anytime I said anything about it hurting, or not liking what she was asking me to do, she’d remind me that with one word she could get me off the team and how my parents and the rest of the team would never believe me. I was the one with the history of lying…Before all this had happened; she’d seemed like a supportive adult and had listened to me about what was going on at home. She used a lot of what I said against me.”
“What you are describing is called grooming. My therapist said that it is how perpetrators get their victims. “
“She wasn’t a perpetrator; I wasn’t a victim. I was a willing participant….most of the time.”
“It doesn’t matter, you were under age, she was over 18 right?”
“Um…yeah….but…I was flirting with her.”
“It doesn’t matter. You could have been walking around naked in front of her, you were a kid, she was an adult…the expectation of propriety is totally on her.”
“I don’t think so…”
“I know it is hard to get your mind around. There are a couple of girls in my sexual abuse group that have similar stories. They all are about guys, but it seems like it is the same thing. Is there more you want to tell me about?”
“No.”
“Is there more you should tell me about?”
“Probably.”
“You don’t have to right now if you don’t want to. I don’t want you to think I am pressuring you. Have you told anyone else about this?”
“Our shrink at the program…but I didn’t give her much details… It is not something that I want to talk about. I’ve tried not to think about it…but then….” Willow became silent.
“Then what sweetie?”
“You are going to think it is stupid.”
“No I won’t. I promise.”
“Well…um…when we were, you know…um…about to…you were about to…”
“Make love to you.”
“Yeah…um…I kinda felt like I was back there…back the last time..when…it was awful…I think she had put something in my beer…she said…I deserved it. It is what I got for lying…”
“Sweetie…you are not talking in sentences.”
Willow shook her head…The scene coming back again like a flash.
“I let myself into her house. There were a bunch of other people…they all were laughing at me and how Carly was talking about me…she was threatening to break up with me ‘cause I was so young…so I…it was my fault…I shouldn’t have done it…”
“What shouldn’t you have done?”
“Took the beer…there must have been something in it. I woke up…naked…in bed with a girl actually a woman… I think her name was Cindy…Carly was there she was…she was… doing it with…another woman…I think her name was Joan. I freaked out…and she started yelling at me…telling me how bad I was at oral sex so she had to get it somewhere else and how ugly I was, and how nobody would ever want to be with me… that I was a hideous scarecrow.”
Willow began to shake and rock. Tara sat with her for a few minutes, but when Willow didn’t come out of the fugue and was still rocking and crying, Tara didn’t feel that she could handle it herself. She was sort of afraid that maybe Willow was having a nervous breakdown. Shit I should never have pushed her.
Willow didn’t even notice when Tara left. Tara walked to Joyce’s room and knocked on the door. She heard a tired, “what” come from the room followed by “come in”.
Joyce flipped on the light and saw that Tara was obviously upset.
“What is wrong? Is Willow Ok?”
“No. It is Willow. We were talking about” OK how do explain it without telling her what happened before “her past and she sort of went into something like a trance, kinda disassociation, maybe a flashback…she is just crying and rocking and she won’t stop. I am sorry to wake you up, but I don’t know what to do…maybe she’ll respond to you.”
Joyce went to the room and found Willow curled up on the bed in the fetal position crying. She began to rub her back and gradually Willow came back.
“What happened?” asked Joyce.
Willow looked at Tara and nodded, and Tara began to tell the sanitized version. “Um…did Sheila and Ira ever tell you about Willow and her softball coach?”
Joyce seemed to be thinking for a moment. “Um…I think I remember them telling me that she’d accused some coach of being her girlfriend, but that it wasn’t true, it was all in her imagination.”
“It WAS true, Joyce. Nobody believed her. But it was true. Willow was telling me about it and she kind of freaked out. This woman abused Willow, Joyce.”
“Sweetie. Why didn’t you tell me? I would have pushed it…” replied Joyce.
“It was my fault.”
“And your parents did not believe you?”
Willow nodded. Joyce looked from girl to girl. Willow was sitting up, looking exhausted by ok. Tara continued to look concerned, but was not as pale as she’d been when she’d woken Joyce up.
“Do I want to know why you girls were talking about this tonight?”
Willow and Tara looked at each other.
“No?”
“Ok, well why don’t you two go to sleep now, and maybe things will look better in the morning, and if it doesn’t we can address it with clear heads. I will have the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade on the TV in the kitchen and I’ll need your help to prep some of dinner, so we all need our sleep. Ok?” Joyce kissed both of the girls on the forehead and turned off the light as she left the room.
“Good night.” Said Joyce
“Good night” both girls answered.
“Damn elephant. No more peanuts for you….good night Tara.”
“Good Night, sweetheart.”
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