I sigh with something like contentment. “I like you.”
She opens her eyes to look up at me again. “I like you, too.”
“I’m sorry if I keep trying to father you. I don’t mean to be overbearing, I just worry about you.”
Grinning mischievously, she says, “Well, you are old enough to be my father.”
I squeeze her in the side. “Hey, you said I wasn’t old.”
“Just experienced,” she agrees, rising up to kiss me on the cheek before settling back in against me. “I’m only teasing you. I don’t care that you’re older than me. I don’t mind when you try to mentor me, either,” she adds. “Given the position I’m in right now, it’s clear I could probably stand to have a good influence around.”
“Ha, good influence,” I say, smiling wryly. “You’re desperately in need of some guidance, little girl.”
“I guess you better guide me, then,” she teases. “Teach me to be more like Brant.”
“Nah, you don’t need to be more like me,” I tell her. “You’re already a pretty good girl, just need a bit more fine-tuning. Step one: no more sex with married men unless they’re married to you.”
“That seems like a good rule. I think I can manage.”
“Don’t have sex with a man unless you want to, either,” I add, cocking an eyebrow at her. “That one doesn’t have anything to do with being a good person, just a good standard practice.”
“Unless there’s a scarier threat involved, sure,” she amends. “I’ve gotta be honest, though, that’s not always as simple as it sounds.”
“What do you mean?”
“Sometimes guys are really pushy,” she explains. “I didn’t really want to do anything sexual with the first guy I gave a blow job to, either. I kept telling him to knock it off but he wouldn’t listen to me, and I was worried he was going to rape me. Again, I’m always going to lessen the damage to myself if I can. If I can scrape by with just a blow job instead of having some guy make me have sex, or if I can have sex instead of getting killed… I’m going to do those things to avoid the worse alternatives. I don’t know what to tell you.”
“Say what now?” I demand, scowling at her. “What’s this kid’s name? The little fuck who tried to force you?”
Alyssa shakes her head. “I’m not telling you his name. It doesn’t matter. Most guys don’t care if you wanna do it or not. They think if they pressure you enough and don’t take no for an answer, eventually you’ll give in, and it’s extremely unpleasant, so sometimes they’re right.”
I don’t know how to argue her point considering what I did to her just last night. “Alyssa, ‘most’ guys aren’t like that. That’s not the norm.”
“And you know that from all the guys you’ve gone out with?” she demands, cocking an eyebrow. “Trust me, I’ve had to deal with slimy, asshole guys all my life. It’s most of them.”
“It’s not,” I argue, hating that she believes that. “You’ve grown up and been socialized in a cesspool, sweetheart. That’s not normal behavior.”
Either not believing me or not all that concerned, Alyssa shrugs off my words. “We’ll have to agree to disagree.”
“I can’t believe your first sexual experience wasn’t consensual, either. Shit. Have you ever had sex you actually wanted?”
Flashing me a little smile, she says, “Sure, I have—tonight.”
That’s fucking tragic. “This is the closest you’ve come to healthiness? Fucking the man who thought about killing you a night prior?”
Her smile droops hearing her reality summed up like that, and I hate how powerless it makes me feel. I wish I could walk back through her past with her, protecting her when she needed it, setting her right when she began to believe all the wrong things.
Since there was no one around to protect her when she needed it or teach her any of the things she needed to know, she grew up to be the girl who means it when she tells me, “Doesn’t sound so crazy that I want to raise my baby on my own now, huh? Single life is better. Guys are mostly jerks.”
She’s certainly encountered her share of jerks. It’s not lost on me that me and my goddamn brother-in-law account for two of ’em. I can’t do much about us, so I focus on the one I can do something about.
“You’re gonna tell me the name of that kid who made you blow him so I can pay him a visit. I want to have a talk with him about boundaries.”
“I’m not giving you his name,” she replies, adamant. “You can keep asking, but my answer won’t change.”
“Don’t protect some asshole who hurt you, Alyssa.”
“I’m not protecting him—I’m protecting you,” she informs me. “You’re protective and it’s sweet, but his uncle’s a lawyer, so you can’t show up in his room with a gun and yell at him like you did me. Obviously there’s no one around to protect me, but that’s not the case for him. He made sure to tell me that before I left that night, in case I had any ideas about saying anything bad about him.”