from the blow. I had no damn idea what was happening, but damn sure wanted nothing with her to stop.
“Why do you want it to stop?” I should have been embarrassed by the fucking cry in that simple question.
“Because I don’t want to be like my mother?” Her last few words spilled with the tiniest whisper.
“Who is she that you don’t want to be like her?”
“A whore.”
My body tensed. That singular word packed a punch. “Why—what makes her a whore?”
Tori hesitated, regard bouncing all around as she struggled. “She slept—sleeps—with married men. Always has. It’s wrong…and embarrassing for me.” I didn’t speak. Couldn’t. Tori had to deliver this on her own volition. “When you came to get me, that guy was the first one she did it with that brought me trouble. His daughters hated me. The most popular girls—family—in the neighborhood. They were bigger than me when everybody in the park found out. And they beat my ass almost every day their mother cried about her husband being in the trailer, a lot away from theirs with…my mother.”
“For how long?”
“Forever. Until I learned how to fight back. My Margaret used to come and get me all the time from school or the center—it’s what we called the playground in our park—when word got back to her that they were jumping me. She told me I had to stick up for myself and if I didn’t, I’d get beat up for the rest of my life because my mother wasn’t going to stop. When I asked my mother would she cut him off, she told me she loved him and wouldn’t lose him for his kids.”
“His kids?”
Tori nodded, gaze into the distance. “Not me. The kids. That hurt. She didn’t dismiss me, but she did. Her focus was on his kids and not me.”
I recalled her answer to what made her get into boxing. “So that’s when you got tired of getting your ass kicked.”
She nodded. “I didn’t learn to box, I learned to fight. It took a few more ass beatings, but I started winning. His oldest daughter tried to push me down at school when we were having a field day. Everyone laughed, even the history teacher covering our activity. She tried not to, but did. That was the first day I fought back and won.” I watched her fists clench. “After that day, they tried me twice more and lost.”
“That was the end of your Ls?”
She shook her head. “They jumped me a couple of times after I beat them up one-on-one. My cousins weren’t around to help then. But the fighting didn’t stop until my mother broke up with their dad.”
“Was it a bad breakup?”
Tori shrugged. “I was like twelve then. He just…stopped coming. And I was so fucking happy, Ashton. So happy.”
“I’m sure.” I tossed my chin. “They stopped fuckin’ with you.”
“And he stopped, too.” Her eyes were on me, gaze unequivocal.
“Stopped what?”
“Paul—the one I told you about—used to…touch me. He’s the first one who made me do things with him.”
A wave of nausea washed over me and I closed my eyes, remembering her sharing about her torment. Swallowing convulsively helped me with not passing the hell out. “The first?”
She nodded. “The other was my mother’s boyfriend, too.”
A bolt of anger shot from my belly. “Who protected you?”
Shaken, Tori flipped masks from sound and calm to closed, guarded, and temperamental, it felt. She leaned away, shrugged, and lifted one side of her mouth.
“No one?” I pushed.
Long seconds later, she shrugged again. “My Margaret.”
“How?”
Fuck patience for her to open up.
“She figured it out one day—” Her face screwed. “—Look! I don’t wanna talk about that. I’m just telling you what’s been on my mind since Jersey. I’m trying to explain to you who I am.”
I sat up. “Am I not here, captivated by your sharing?”
“No. You’re here deciding how much baggage I have.”
“How so?”
Tori took a deep breath, closing her eyes and rolling them behind her lids. “I just wanted to tell you what we did was wrong. I don’t want to be that…” She dithered. “I’m not ready for sex.”
She wasn’t making sense.
“You’re not ready for sex, or you don’t want to relive infidelity against the most popular person in your community?”
It happened again. Time suspended as we gazed into each other’s eyes.
“I’m not ready for sex, but I don’t want to be the blame for you and Aivery not being what you’re going to be.” The aggression in her voice shrank.