Page 32 of Dirty Like Seth
But those days, I had a lot of low moments. Most of the time I just tried to annihilate them withdrugs.
Got a problem? No worries. Just drink and snort itaway.
That night, though, I didn’t get any more fucked up than I already was. The argument with Jessa had kind of shocked me sober, or at least sober enough to put her in cab so she could get to Brody’s party intact. It was the only time I’d ever come close to putting my hands on her during an argument. She’d hit me first, but that shouldn’t have mattered. Loving her and wanting to hurt her; those shouldn’t have gone along together. I knew thatmuch.
“That must’ve been… painful,” Elle said, and there was some sympathy in her voice as she studied me. I wasn’t sure I deserved it, but there it was. “God knows there was a lot of… well,dramain my relationships back then. Still is, sometimes. And Jessa… We all knew she was struggling. She raised a lot of hell for Jesse back then. For Jude and Brody… all of us. I probably would’ve too, though, if I was in her shoes. Losing her parents so young. Being raised in the middle of this rock ’n’ roll circus…” She trailedoff.
I had no idea if she meant every word of it, or if she was just trying to encourage me to open up, tell her more about my relationship with Jessa. Baiting me, maybe. Wanting me to feel safe to talk to her, confess my sins, as she measured my responses. I could see it in her eyes. Like a little scale tipping back and forth, weighing the validity of my words. Mysincerity.
But on this, I was nothing butsincere.
I had no reason to lie about what went down between Jessa andme.
The damage had already beendone.
And it was never me who wanted our relationship kept a secret. It was Jessa who insisted onthat.
“Jessa Mayes is a beautiful girl,” I said, choosing my words carefully. “But I saw the ugly side of her. That’s the worst thing you’ll ever hear me say about her, and I don’t mean it as an insult. Whatever darkness she had in her, whatever she struggled with, I struggled withworse.”
Elle didn’t respond, but after a moment she nodded her head, like she wanted me to goon.
“My memories aren’t exactly… clear. At least, some of them aren’t. Some of them are. Some of them don’t even exist. But IknowI never abused her. Brody accused me of that… of raping her.” I shook my head as I spoke. I would never be able to stomach that accusation. “I know I tried to push her in the end, to want to be with me. To love me. To not leave me. But I never pushed her for sex, Elle. I know she was younger than me. But we were both teenagers when we gottogether.”
We were. I was nineteen, she was sixteen, and she instigated sex with me. I remembered, clearly, the first time it happened. We’d taken ecstasy together, and the ecstasy was mine. There was a group of us who’d taken it when we’d gone out clubbing. I didn’t intend for me and Jessa to end up alone, in bed, that night. But by then, I liked her. Alot.
I knew how it might sound if I tried to explain that to Elle, so I just said, “I know that doesn’t make it right.” Because itdidn’t.
“So what do you think she said? To Brody?” Elle asked me. “To make him think you did that toher?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know what she said. But I know Brody, and I saw what it was between them.” I did see. That was a big, big love, probably long before I ever came around. “I think, no matter what she said, it’s easier for him to believe I forced myself on her or manipulated her into sleeping with me than to think she actually wanted me, even if it was only for a moment in time, and maybe, for the wrongreasons.”
Elle cocked her head, considering that. “What wrongreasons?”
I took a breath and said, “Maybe I gave her something at the time that no one elsewould.”
That much was true enough, though I had no idea if Elle would understand what Imeant.
Jessa and I had spent a lot of time together writing songs, at first, and that had been our first bond. And I knew she felt comfortable with me. I didn’t judge her or have expectations of her or enforce the same rules on her that her brother and the other guysdid.
Over time, though, our relationship was definitely fueled by our mutual druguse.
But I wasn’t about to go telling Elle, or anyone else, that Jessa had asked me for drugs. That she’d asked me several times before I smoked up with her the first time. And every other time, she’d asked. Including the time we’d first done ecstasy together. She didn’t ask me for ecstasy in particular, but she’d wanted to gethigh.
It seemed irrelevant. And dirty, somehow, to put it on her like that. It felt too ugly, that I’d given Jessa drugs, no matter that she’d wanted them, no matter what my motivationswere.
Maybe Brody would always believe I got Jessa high so I could take her to bed. But he was wrong about that. I knew that. No matter how sketchy my memories, no matter what anyone else accused me of, no matter that I was attracted to Jessa. No matter, even, if Jessa remembered itdifferently.
Elle was silent. She sipped her coffee and seemed to be considering what I’dsaid.
Did she think I was a creep? A total fuckingasshole?
I really had noclue.
Elle had always been kind of a mystery to me. Something unknown, and far above me. Kind of like the stars in the sky were a mystery to your average man; you might understand the basics of how it all worked, but that didn’t mean you could stand there in the light and the beauty of it all and not feel small, awestruck and evenunworthy.
All I could really do was wait for her to pass judgment on me. She was gonna make up her mind about me one way or the other. There was little I could do about it now but tell the truth. My truth; the only truth Iknew.
“Would you do differently, if you could?” she asked me after awhile.
