Ritual - Palm South University
Because down Greek Row, there’s a girl who carried my child inside her.
A girl who never let that child be born.
“I will say this,” Skyler says, letting her legs drop to the floor as she sinks even lower into the bean bag. “I am so glad rush is over. I usually love Bid Day, but I was exhausted today.”
“Maybe you’re getting old,” Becca offers
“I am. I most certainly am.”
“And you’re still considering running for president?” Becca asks
Skyler frowns, a strand of her long, brown hair falling into her face. “As crazy as it sounds, I am. I know Erin and I went through a lot of shit last year, and I wasn’t sure if I’d ever want to have anything to do with the presidency after that. But… I love KKB. That’s my family. And to lead them for a year? That would be an honor.”
I listen to them talk in a sort of numb daze, broken up time to time only by them saying Erin’s name. Every time I hear the two syllables, a zing of something hot and uncomfortable assaults my chest.
“You okay, babe?” Becca asks me quietly when Skyler pulls out her phone. I bet money she’s texting Kip. With him being at school in California, they’re committed to the long-distance relationship thing — and I am not envious of the work that goes with that.
“I’m good,” I assure her, rubbing her back before I press a kiss to the sunshine yellow bandana tied around her hair and covering her forehead. “Just going to run to the bathroom real quick.”
“Okay,” she says, smiling at me, but I see the worry etched in her eyes.
When I slip out from under the covers, Skyler whistles.
“Hot damn, Bear,” she says, eyeing me from head to toe. “I didn’t think it was possible for you to get more beastly than you already were. What the hell have you been eating?”
“He eats like The Rock now,” Becca answers for me. “I swear, I counted one morning, and the man had eight whole wheat pancakes. And a half a pound of turkey bacon.”
Skyler whines. “Not fair. If I ate like that, I’d have an ass the size of Texas.”
“Ain’t nothing wrong with that,” Becca says, smacking her own ass.
When I don’t so much as chuckle, Skyler eyes me warily, but I avoid her eyes.
“He’s also been working out like a mad man,” Becca continues, but I snuff out her next sentence with the gentle snick of the bathroom door closing, reveling in the time alone.
After I piss, I wash my hands and dry them before splaying them on the bathroom counter. My eyes find those of my reflection, and I hold my own gaze, searching for the man I used to be in the mirror. But he’s not there, he’s not anywhere — not anymore.
They say there are moments in your life that change everything. I could look back and name a few in mine — when Mom first asked me for money, and when she and my older brother bailed on life, leaving behind my nephews and my little brother, Clayton. I could even peg my breakup with Shawna as one that changed me, and the night I saw Erin raped definitely fell into that category, too.
But finding out I had fathered a child with her, one that she never told me about, one that she aborted — it didn’t just change me.
It fucked me all the way up.
I search my dead eyes for a sign of humanity, of someone still capable of feeling, but come up short. Becca is the only person I’ve been able to be even close to myself with over the summer, but even she can’t break through entirely.
I can’t discern what I feel. It’s like a never-ending tornado, one that has lifted everything in my life up into the air — me included — and is just tossing me around, dropping me and picking me back up again, not sure where it wants to leave everything when it finally dissipates.
In the past few months, I’ve cycled through everything from anger and guilt, to crushing depression and horrifically sad understanding. I want to hate Erin, but I also want to run to her. I want to shake her and demand answers, but I also want to hug her and tell her there’s no need, that I already understand.
And in the process of these cycles, of this tornado, I’ve lost myself completely.
I sigh, scrubbing my hands over my face before I shove through the door and back into my bedroom. Skyler is gone, and Becca sits on my bed in one of my t-shirts, her legs tucked under her.
For a long while, she just stares at me, her eyes speaking to mine without a single word being said.
Then, she leans back, pulls her knees up to her chest, and slowly, seductively, she lets them fall open, revealing that she doesn’t have a pair of panties on under that shirt.