Shhh...Mack's Side (20 page)

Mr. Nichols stopped and looked up
at me. He wanted an answer this time. “Um, I don’t know. No. I guess not.”

“I disagree. I think had things been different, had I not been married, I would have waited for Gia. We had a fir
e that I didn’t share with Sarah.”

I was going to be sick. I was feeling ill while my blood started to boil in fury. Coming to my feet, I stood. “My whole adult life has been
a fucked up mess over, jealousy? Possessiveness? I helped my friend send an innocent man to prison over your fucked up love affair with a student?” I couldn’t breathe. I was so mad. Why hadn’t I seen it? Why hadn’t I known? How could I not know?

“You don’t get to be mad. Are you fucking kidding me? Do you really think you have the right to be mad at me?” Mr. Nichols asked, coming to his feet, yelling at me.

“Fuck you! Fuck you and Gia both. How long, Mr. Nichols? How long were you fucking her before I put my life out there for her? I can’t fucking believe this. This had nothing at all to do with grades, losing scholarships, going to the wrong college, or being split from me. This was all about you. Wasn’t it? Wasn’t it, Mr. Nichols?”

“You went along with it. You fucking sat right there on that stand and LIED!” he screamed in my face. I didn’t care. I screamed back.

“You were fucking Gia all along!” That’s when he hit me right across the face. I was numb, I felt nothing. My whole fucking life had been a lie and Gia controlled the strings. “When? When did that start? How long before I gave up everything for her?”

“People aren’t who you think they are, are they, Mack?” he asked, sliding down the wall again. Taking a deep breath
, he rubbed his eyes with the balls of his hands. He looked tired and weary. Drained of a life lost. I wondered at that moment what was going to happen to us. All of us.

“I want to see Gia. Please,” I begged.

“Yeah, let’s do that. Let’s go let her out.”

“Let her out?”

“Yeah, she’s been in the a little padded room for three days now.”

“Why?”

“She was a bad girl. She’s not crazy in the head like you. She’s crazy in the head in her own fucked up way. She’s not going to care about you. You know that, don’t you?”

“She will.”

“Nah, Mack. She won’t.”

I didn’t understand that. Why wouldn’t Gia care whether I was there or not? She would care. She had to. I played it out in my mind, walking down the hall to where he kept her in solitude. She would squint her eyes from the darkness, see me, and then cry, and embrace me with all her might. I was sure of it. Would I hug her back? She lied. She lied all these years. She betrayed my trust in her.

I wasn’t sure I could forgive her. With all that we’d been through together and she never told me. We were supposed to be sisters, best friends, always were, always will be. She was fucking him all along. I got tangled in a web of deceit and deception that had nothing to do with me at all. All those pep talks from Gia, telling me how we could move on once the trial was over, how I had just as much right to be pissed as she did, and how we’d continue with our plans, we had to, she said. If we didn’t, it would all be for nothing. Well guess what, Gianna? It was all for nothing.

I
t didn’t matter how much I missed Gia being in my life. It didn’t matter how hard it was to know we drifted away like we had. It didn’t matter that we broke promises to always be there for one another. She broke every best friend rule in the book. Granted, she didn’t know about Kyle and never would as long as Mr. Nichols kept his mouth shut. It was all coming out. I was going to let her know that I gave my life for her and she betrayed me. How could she do that? How could she take everything we shared and torch it into a dust of ashes?

“I can’t wait to hear all about the night you two cried rape. I think I’ll make you tell it while I hold Gia’s mouth shut. I want to f
eel her reaction while you relive the night that fucked us all,” Mr. Nichols said from behind me. Shit. I didn’t want him dictating how things were going to go down. This wasn’t some family reunion anymore. I wanted to run the show.

Gia covered her eyes from the light. She looked horrible. Like death. Her naked body was so skin
ny and the way her eyes derived into her head was ghostly. Her lip was puffy and one of the black eyes was from a fist. That I could tell. He hit her. He hurt her. Her eyes stayed squinted from the light while she slid on the shirt Mr. Nichols tossed her. We stood, staring at each other without a word.

“What’s the matter? You’re together. Isn’t that what you’ve been whining about, Mack?” Mr. N
ichols asked, shoving me toward her. “Come on, it’s a reunion. Let’s have a party,” Mr. Nichols sang. “Don’t you want to embrace each other? How long has it been?” he chanted. Gia and I only stared at each other. Neither of us knew what to say.

“Wow. You two never shut up in high school. I can’t believe you don’t have one word to say to each other.”

This was too much. I couldn’t do it. Not like this. Not this fast. I needed time to process things. I needed time to decipher what was real from what wasn’t. This was real. Gia was right in front of me.

“What’s wrong with you?” Gia finally spoke when I used the ball of my hand to stop the voices. That wasn’t real. I kept hearing Gia calling after me. The wind chimes were so loud.

“You! You’re what’s wrong with me. You were fucking him the whole time. My life was ruined because of you.”

Gia snorted with some sort of snide look on her face. “Yeah, Mack. I fucked him. I fucked him so many times it would make your head spin. I understand you now. I know why you chose the older man over the boys. T
hey’re way better at fucking than the high school boys. Don’t you think, Mack?”

What the hell? I looked right to Mr. Nichols. If
he told her, so help me god, I would kill him. There was no sense in it. We’d all been hurt enough.

“Don’t look at me,
” Mr. Nichols retorted, surrendering with both hands in the air. “I didn’t tell her shit. Why don’t you share with us what you know, Gianna,” he taunted, walking around her, letting his hand, slide around her waist. Her shirt lifted and I couldn’t help but notice her bare slit, peaking from below. Looking back to her eyes, I frowned. What did he mean?

“Go ahead, baby. Tell Mack here what you know.”

“You think I ruined your life? You think you didn’t play a role in how this all turned out? Poor little innocent, McKenzie, always getting the pity.”

“Pity?” I asked. What the hell was going on here? We were all crazy. We all belonged in a nut house.

“Yeah, pity, Mack. I know. I’ve always known. Well, from about the time we were eighteen anyway. Was it before that, Mack? Did my dad touch your pussy when you were a little girl? Is that why he always liked you more than me? Did he play with your little girl pussy?”

“What do you mean, you’ve always known?”

“I needed you, Mack. I came to you crying my eyes out over something I’d just seen. Something I never told you about.”

“You kept a lot of secrets,
” I accused.

“Shhh,” she said with her finger. “I’m talking. I don’t think you have any room to talk about secrets.”

“Yes! I love this. Go on,” Mr. Nichols coaxed, wearing the fakest smile I’d ever seen on him. He was rubbing it in. He wanted us to fight. I pushed my finger into my temple, trying to stop the wind chimes. My eyes felt glazed, like I was looking through swimming pool water and my head impulsively hurt out of nowhere.

“You were coming to tell me about Mr. Nichols?”
I asked, contemplating the strange expression on Gianna’s face.

“N
ah, I was coming to tell you I was pregnant with his baby.”

My shocked eyes went right to Mr. Nichols. He didn’t look as surprised as me. I assumed he knew, maybe he knew before, maybe that was part of all of this. I didn’t know. I didn’t know anything anymore. I was more interested in Gia knowing about her dad and me. 

“Yeah, Mack. I was scared. I needed you. Guess where you were?” I only shrugged. How could I answer that? I didn’t even know what time period we were even talking about. I was having a hard enough time keeping up with the current day. The now. Right this second.

“You were on your dad’s desk. With my dad between your legs. You were telling him it was over. It wasn’t over, was it, Mack? It went on and on and on.”

Oh god. She knew. I knew what day she was talking about. I stood in front of her, covering my mouth. I knew the exact day she was talking about. She knew. Gia knew all along. It all made sense now. I’d gone home from practice without Gia. She had to meet her parents for dinner, or so she said, anyway. Kyle pulled in right before me. I hated him in his suit and tie. It reminded me of him being someone’s dad. Gia’s dad. He was way sexier in his basketball shorts and no shirt, shooting hoops in the driveway.

My bedroom window had the perfect view to his driveway. He always knew when I was watching, flexing his muscles more, forcing his chest out and shoulders to square up more than normal. I thought it was cute. My bedroom was also a straight shot to his office over the garage.
This is where I did my teasing, and torturing, walking around naked, exposing myself to him. I’m going to blame it on the age difference. I would have never let any of the boys at school tell me what to do. I’m going to assume Kyle used his age and authority over me to his advantage.

If Gia would have read between the lines, she could have figured it out more than once. A lot more. Like the night I’d just walked out of my bathroom, noticing the light over the garage. I dropped my towel and walked to the window. Kyle was standing there with his arms crossed. I
couldn’t really see his face or the expressions, he was too far away for that, but I could see his body, and I’d seen the expression a million times.

“Working late?”
I asked, answering my cell phone.

“Yes. Turn around. Let me see your ass.”

Twirling, I flipped my hair. I could do those things with Kyle. I was comfortable with Kyle.

“Touch yourself
,” he whispered.

I didn’t answer. I brought my foot to my vanity bench and slowly ran my fingers up my already wet sex. Watching him bring the binoculars to his eyes, I put on a show, sliding my fingers in and out of my
overactive sex, rubbing my swollen little nub, and spreading myself for him to see.

“That’s it,
Kenzie. Rub it. Make it come for me.”
I moaned, feeling that very thing about to happen. He sensed it too and stopped me.

“Go over to your bed and get on your hands and knees.”

It’s actually a good thing he was a pervert. Had I not turned when I did, Gia would have caught me playing with myself in front of the window. Thank god we had that kind of relationship. She didn’t even notice I was naked, thought nothing of the dirty towel on my bed or the flushed color on my cheeks. She plopped to the bed and started talking about Mr. Nichols. I wished she would shut up about him. That’s all she talked about. Like she was ever going to have a shot at James Nichols. I guess I was the fool, too.

I assumed it was the same sort of thing with me. She was attracted to older men,
not quite as old as her thirty-eight year old dad, but older. Mr. Nichols older. The difference was, the willing to participate. Kyle was a willing player. Mr. Nichols would never touch Gia. Yup. I was the sucker.

It took me several minutes to pull my memories back to the solitary confinement room, Gia was being held in. I didn’t know who I was looking at. What the hell was going on?

Not in my wildest dreams could I have ever guessed this one. Everybody has a story. I don’t care who you are. Everyone’s got one. This was so fucked up. Gia was pregnant with Mr. Nichols
’ baby. For a second, I felt bad for not being there for her. She came to me. She needed me and I wasn’t there. I was fucking her dad in my dad’s office.

That’s where she was. That’s why Kyle was home and she lied to me about dinner with her parents. I didn’t read a lot into it. I knew something was up. I just didn’t know what. Not only
was Gia pregnant, but she watched me have sex with her father.

“Gia, I tried to stop. I did,” I
pleaded, taking a step toward her.

“Did you?” she asked angrily.

“Did I what?” I couldn’t keep up. I didn’t know what was happening. The room was so bright, the colors so vibrant. I couldn’t breathe. I needed my fake inhaler. I needed my meds. I wanted my medication. I wanted out.

“I
t was never over, was it? You fucked my dad all the way through high school.”

“You lied
, too. You kept secrets from me, too,” I reminded her.

“Now this is more like it,” Mr. Nichols boasted, clapping his hands, causing the loud echo to vibrate the close walls.
I almost grabbed my head from the thunderous noise. “Go on. Why don’t you give us a story, tell us all about fucking Mr. Edwards. Tell Gia how good her daddy’s cock felt in your pussy.”

I lunged at
him like a crazy person. I
was
crazy. I could get away with it, easily pull it off in my state. He slammed my face to the floor without a bit of distress. I was no match for him. His shoe dug into my face and he held me there. “Don’t, you little fucking cunt. You seem to have forgotten the rules. I’m in control here. I’m pulling your strings now. Not your goddamn Gia. You got that? You’re my fucking puppet now. Answer me!” he yelled.

“Yes,” I mumbled from my squished face.

“Good girl, now get up.”

I stood and looked at Gia’s sto
ne cold face. She didn’t stand up for me. She didn’t go after him. Why? I would do it. I would shove him off her. Wouldn’t I?

“Sit down. Both of you.”

Gia and I both sat on the clean, but dirty, floor. Mr. Nichols made us cross our legs and sit directly in front of each other. I found it odd, but he was odd. He wasn’t being rational. For the first time since he had brought me there, I was afraid. I was afraid of him. The look in his eyes was full of vengeance. Maybe getting us together was the last straw, the one he needed to explode and release the years of built up tension.

“Go ahead, Mack. Be the little bitch that you’ve always been. Tell Gia here a bedtime story,” Mr. Nichols ordered, circling us both like a mad man. I didn’t know what he wanted. What the hell was I supposed to say? “Hmmm,” he thought, tapping his chin with his finger. “Let’s start with how many times. How many times did you fuck Gia’s daddy, Mack?” My eyes moved to Gia’s and I watched her swallow the lump in her throat.

“ANSWER THE GODDAMN QUESTION!” he yelled, ripping my hair back, screaming in my face. Yes. He was losing it. I could feel the spray spew to my face as he released his fury. Gia still didn’t say anything. She just sat there. What the fuck? Thanks best friend.

“I don’t know. A lot,” I replied.

“Wasn’t it for like two years? Why don’t you tell us how many guys you fucked in high school?” Again, I looked to Gia.

“None.”

“What do you mean none? We lost our virginity together. We dated all the high school boys, some we both fucked.”

“No, Gia. I’m sorry to have to break this to you, but your little friend here’s a fucking liar. She never fucked those boys. She fucked Kyle Edwards, your
so called daddy. Isn’t that right, Mack?”

“Mack?” Gia questioned with a frown.

“Tell her. Tell her who popped that little cherry.”

I didn’t want to say it. Gia had been hurt enough. He was making me hurt her. I didn’t want to hurt her. Mr. Nichols read my face. He knelt before me and ran the back of his knuckles down my cheek. “What’s the matter, McKenzie? You don’t want to hurt Gia’s feelings? Did you ever once think about my feelings? Did you ever once think about all the lies you told to a courtroom
full of people? I think it’s time to come clean. Let’s all play nice now and tell the truth. Whose dick stole your virtue? Be a good girl now and tell Gia all about it.”

“Your dad,” I whispered, dropping my head.

“My dad? My dad took your virginity?”

“Yes. I tried to break it off with him. Lots of times. I swear I did
, Gia.”

“Yeah. You tried the night I watched him fuck you on your dad’s desk. Think about that for a second, Mack. Imagine watching your dad do those things to me,” Gia retor
ted with constricted, bloodshot eyes.