Page 93 of Badd Love
"So it's gonna be even more difficult to let yourself be vulnerable," Dru said. "We get that. And I know Dane does. But the first step, since I'm handing out unsolicited advice, is to just let yourself feel things. Which I know is hard when you're used to shoving all that shit aside."
I stared out the window at the rippling, shimmering waters of the Passage, swallowing hard, eyes burning—I let them burn. Let tears slip out. "I've been on my own my whole life. The closest thing to a family I've ever had is Rune and her parents. And they are, quite literally, the only reason I'm…" I shook my head, at a loss for the right words. "They fed me, clothed me, and helped me when my car took a shit. Paid for therapy. But at the end of the day, you get in bed alone, and it's just you and your thoughts,and I…I sometimes feel ungrateful for feeling lonely or whatever when I know I had—and have—Rune and Mom and Pop Rigby. I just…" I sighed. "I don't know what I'm even trying to say."
"That's okay,” she said. “Maybe you just need to express all that stuff that you haven't let yourself express. All those thoughts and feelings that we label as ungrateful or spiteful or whatever…the sadness, the loneliness, the anger, the bitterness. We lock all that up in a vault somewhere around our stomachs and ignore it. And you know what happens? It turns physical. It makes your back hurt. It makes your stomach hurt. It fills you with this bubbling, festering, fermenting sea of nastiness inside that has nowhere to go."
A strange, high-pitched keening sound erupted from my throat, a tight, teeth-gritted half-scream of raw emotion too potent for anything so prosaic as mere words.
"I'm soangry!” I hissed through my teeth.
"I never had a mother. I never had a father. My brother was a nightmare—a useless troublemaker at best. And it was his best fucking friend who ruined me. I've spent my entire life running, hiding, suppressing, pretending…hating him, hating myself, hating my brother, hating my mother for not protecting me, for blaming me when I was the fucking victim. I've tried to…to be okay, and I'm fucking not. I'm tired!" My knees wobbled, and I sank to the ground, to my hands and knees, gulping ragged hot breaths. "I'm so fucking tired of fighting. Of being sad. Of being scared. Of hating. It's so exhausting, hating. It’s exhausting trying to act like you're not a fucking zombie on the inside."
I felt hands on my back, body heat on either side of me, hands holding my hair back, stroking my back.
It felt like vomiting. You know the feeling: you've had too much to drink and the earth is wobbling unsteadily and whirling around you, so you lay down on the couch with one foot on the floor hoping to steady the universe a little bit, and your stomachis sour and boiling and acidic and hot and you don'twantto vomit but you know you'll feel better once you do but you still fight it back until it's a hot flood surging against the back of your teeth, and then you finally lurch and stumble to the bathroom and let 'er rip. It sucks, the process of emptying it all out. But then once you're finally done, fuck, you feel so much better.
"Why me?" I rasped, my voice a hoarse whisper. "Why me? Why did Danny have to pick me? It's not like I want anyone else to go through what I did, but I just…I can't help asking why me? Wasn’t it enough to not have a dad? It wasn't enough that my mother was a useless piece of fucking human garbage? It wasn't enough that my brother was mean, cruel, vindictive, troublemaking fucking cunt? I had to be sexually abused every fucking day for four fucking years? And now I have to live with that! Where's the goddamnedjustice?"
My phone rang, just then. I dug it out of the pocket in the thigh of my leggings and glanced at the screen—it wasn't a number I recognized, but a niggling feeling in my gut told me to answer it.
"Heh—" I had to clear my throat and try again. "Hello? This is Lindsey Snelling."
"Good evening, Miss Snelling. My name is Special Agent Cameron Urie. We met briefly in Los Angeles."
"You arrested Danny Cohen," I said, recognizing the voice—the Patrick Warburton lookalike had a similarly recognizable voice.
"Yes ma'am." A pause, a clearing of his throat. "I thought you would like to know—Daniel Cohen is dead."
The world tilted; it was a good thing I was already on all fours or I would have fallen down. "I…he…how? In prison?"
"Yes ma'am. We don't have too many details other than he was shivved in the food line. We aren't certain who or why, but such things are, unfortunately, all too common. It could be assimple as a disagreement over cigarettes or a card game, or it could be he made an enemy who got to him on the inside."
"Honestly, Special Agent Urie, I don't care who or why. He got exactly what he deserved, and I will not be wasting a single second mourning him."
"No one will, ma'am. I'm not supposed to say things like this in my offical capacity as a law enforcement officer, but Daniel Cohen was a real piece of shit."
"He sexually abused me for four years, starting when I was twelve."
The silence, then, was profound. "I'm sorry to hear that, Miss Snelling. He did indeed get what was coming to him."
"I'm tempted to send an edible arrangement to whoever shivved him," I said. “They did the world a favor."
"I am inclined to agree, ma'am. Well, I've got to go. I just wanted to make sure you were aware. You don't ever have to worry about him again."
"That's the best news I've had since you showed up to arrest him."
"Glad I could provide at least some kind of comfort, Miss Snelling. No one deserves what that creature did to you. Speaking as a father of a daughter, I don't know that I could have stood in a room with him and not committed murder."
I sniffed a laugh, now sitting on my shins as if I were Daniel-San at the Cobra Kai dojo. "I thought about it. But I…I wasted way too many years hating him. If I'd been the one to kill him, even if I got away with it, it wouldn't have brought me any peace."
"I can guarantee you it wouldn't have, Miss Snelling. I've seen a lot in my line of work, as I'm sure you can imagine. I've seen the aftermath of revenge, and it's never pretty. Revenge is a game with no winners, only losers."
"Glad I chose the other path, then," I said. "Thank you for telling me, Agent Urie."
"Of course, ma'am. Take care."
"You, too."
I tossed the phone to the floor, tipped my head back, and blinked at the ceiling. "He's dead."
