Page 66 of Rough Hard Fierce (Chicago Underground 1-3)
“I don’t think this is a good idea.”
“Shelly, I have to,” I said. “It’s the best way.”
“You don’t just have a conversation with your rapist.”
“It’s something I have to do. And I think maybe I can even convince him to walk away. Now that he’s had time to really think about it, to get over the shock.”
She traced the wood knot on the side table with her fingertip. “Philip says if you press charges, that he wouldn’t have a legal claim.”
“I can’t believe you talked with him about it.”
“He brought it up,” she said. “I figured I might as well hear what he had to say.”
“Well, it’s more complicated than that.”
“I’m not saying it would be easy, but…” She’d always wanted me to report it, to press charges. And I’d tried, she knew that much. She looked up, anguish in her eyes. “At the hospital. What happened with that cop?”
The lunch in my stomach threatened revolt. The doctors and nurses had left, leaving only the two cops to question me. I could smell the alcohol and sickly hospital smell.
I shook my head to clear the memories. “Why did you push so hard?”
She demurred and sat back. I’d hit my mark.
I’d guessed long ago why she had been so ferocious toward Andrew. A friend would have supported me, but she’d practically taken up a war cry. She was a victim too; that was why. I didn’t know the details, but it explained a lot. Not just her reaction that day, but her subsequent profession. One day while I was nursing Bailey, she announced that she was an escort, as easily as if she’d gotten a paper route. It had been part of our tacit pact. She never brought up the rape—or the hospital—and I never questioned her work. She pretended like my “date nights” were normal, and I pretended like selling her body on a nightly basis was A-OK. We were enablers of the best sort.
“Give me the number.” My gaze held hers, willing her to do what I asked.
She pressed a few buttons on her phone, then slid it across the table to me. It was opened to a contact—JW, it said. Andrew Williams. We used to joke about the fact that our last names started with the same letter. Said I wouldn’t have to change my initials when…
I hit the Call button and waited.
“Hello,” and just like that, I was back in my childhood room, calling to tell him about the drama of second period. It took a second to return to the present.
“Hello,” I said. “It’s me.”
“Allie? Are you okay?”
I almost laughed at the concern. It felt real. No, it probably was real. Our friendship had been real, except for that one time when it wasn’t. “I’m okay. I think we need to talk.”
“Yeah,” he said. “Remember Pop Rocks?”
I smiled at the memory. There was a diner where we’d hung out and gorged on cheap cheese fries and free refills of soda. Then Andrew had made a miniature explosion with his drink and the fizzy candy, and we’d been banned. Not that it mattered now—only two years later and we were both unrecognizable. “I remember.”
“Meet me there in thirty,” he said.
“Okay.” I hung up the phone and handed it back to Shelly. “Can you watch Bailey?”
“Of course,” she said. “I miss my girl.”
My head was blissfully empty as I drove into that crappy part of town.
The diner was the same, still dirty but somehow smaller. I sat down in a creaky vinyl booth. The lamination was peeling off the tabletop. I rested my hands there, but it was sticky to the touch, so I put them in my lap.
The worst part of waiting was the thinking. What would I tell Andrew? It depended on his mood. He’d become increasingly capricious, up until that day—the emotional equivalent of an atomic bomb. It wasn’t personal; at least, I thought not. I just happened to be in the vicinity at the time—a casualty.
Thinking, thinking. I heard Shelly’s voice, What happened with that cop?
Then again in her voice, Don’t think about it.
