He got the feeling she was digging for a specific answer, and he was growing too uncomfortable to beat around the bush. “What do you mean, Willow?”
She was quiet for a second, then she said all at once, like she might chicken out if she didn’t say it fast, “I mean, is it always—is it always rape?”
Jesus Christ.
He didn’t realize he had said it aloud until she abruptly apologized and said she had to go.
“No, wait, Willow.” Fuck. Roughly passing his hand over his mouth, he exhaled and then before he could think better of it, admitted, “No, not always.”
The line went silent.
He pulled back the phone to see if she hung up, but she was still there.
He didn’t prompt her that time. He wasn’t sure he had given her the right answer, and if he did, he wasn’t sure how it was the right answer. Logically he could only come up with one reason for her to ask that, and that was that she was having them, too. Whether that made his answer better or worse, he had no fucking clue.
She was quiet for another few seconds, then she said, “Yeah, same here. I thought that might be weird.”
It might be, for all he knew, but he wasn’t going to tell her that.
“Feel whatever you’re feeling,” he said instead. “Don’t worry if it’s weird or not.”
“Is that what you’re doing?”
His dark eyebrows shot upward, somehow surprised by that question. “No,” he answered honestly. “But I’m not the victim here.”
“I don’t like that word,” she stated.
“Sorry.”
“I feel like…I keep pushing away everyone who loves me because I just want to be left alone, but when I’m alone…a lot of times I find myself thinking about you.”
Since she had just described his daily routine exactly, he knew how she felt.
He was surprised that she was in the same place though. Her thoughts were probably a lot different than his.
“Really?” he asked.
“Yeah,” she murmured. “I know, that’s probably weird.”
“Probably,” he allowed, nodding even though she couldn’t see it. “But I’m going through the same thing, so… I’m not really one to judge.”
“Really? You think about me?”
The way she asked that made him second-guess his honesty.
Maybe he shouldn’t be encouraging further contact. He had no idea how to help her and she was a young, fatherless girl in a fucked up situation. At the end of the day, despite their shared experience, he didn’t know her.
Clearing his throat, he said, “I think about what happened, of course. Like I said, I have a daughter.”
Another pause. “How old’s your daughter?”
“Eight.”
“How old are you?”
“Me? I’m 32. An old fogey,” he added, in some ill-fated attempt at levity that only caused him to cringe at how stupid he sounded.
But she laughed. Just a little. “Nobody uses that word.”