“It’s me!” she chirped. “How are you?”
Humiliation curdled in her gut.
“Oh, you know.” The party lights glinted obscenely off his teeth. Charlotte’s hands twitched at her sides. “Same old, same old. Clawing my way up the podcast charts.” He winked, derision and pride dripping from his brag.
Revulsion streaked through her like the chemical aftertaste of Nina’s funfetti-tinis. Her brain’s last sliver of sanity urged her to run for the exit, but she couldn’t move.
Her mouth was on its own, survival mode piloting solo. “Good for you!”
Ben slouched against the bar. His eyes tracked down her body and back up again, taking in her sneakers and scissor-cut crop top, the roll of her late-twenties tummy. She felt devoured and insulted all at once. It was indecent, his stare. Beads of sweat collected at the back of her neck.
He sucked the light out of the tent, and the strength from her body.
“You look ravishing,” he said.
Ravishing was one of Ben’s favorite compliments. He doled it out for the dress she wore at his fraternity formal, and for the Hollywood curls she painstakingly created before he greeted her at Rawls Tower. She remembered his hand loose at her throat as he kissed her shoulder, pushing her back against the door. You look ravishing, Charlotte. My little thorn.
Angry tears pressed against her eyes. She forced them back. His index finger traced a pattern on the bar and she felt it on her skin, running down her cheek and her neck and her chest and—
“Thanks,” she blurted out. Her face was red but her chest was full of ice water. “Thank you, you look great too!”
Politeness poured out of her like vomit.
She had to get out of here. She didn’t know how, she couldn’t think, she couldn’t—
Ben glanced over her shoulder, unimpressed and bored.
Oh god.
She forgot about Reece. She forgot about Reece and he was watching this and she had to get him out of here. She had to get out of here before she humiliated herself even further. She needed to be away from the noise and Ben’s eyes on her skin and the memory of obeying this man at her own expense.
Ben’s eyes flicked back to her, dismissing Reece without comment. “I thought that was you at my panel on Thursday,” he drawled, leaning closer. Charlotte’s skin crawled as he looked up at her from underneath his lashes, blue eyes flashing with amusement. “But you ran away too fast for me to say hello.”
The knife slid in easily, not even rusty. One last insult to remind her that he once knew everything about her, and he remembered. Shame tasted like blood, like the dying scream in her throat.
“Anyway, I should get going. Thomas is finding us some party favors. It was wonderful to see you, Charlotte.” He smirked at her, nothing but narcissism in his smile. His words dripped poison, diluting her consciousness.
She would burn her own name if it would leach away the sound of it in his mouth.
Time crunched and ground to a halt as Ben hugged her, his arms circling her waist. She felt her own hands rise up weakly, brushing the smooth fabric of his jacket. She got a nose full of his cologne and the fumes made her head spin. She couldn’t breathe, she couldn’t speak, she couldn’t do anything but stand there and play dead.
And then he sauntered away, disappearing into the crowd. But he wasn’t really gone. Ben was an oil spill, coating the world around him in a thick grime of self-loathing. Campus belonged to him now, again, still. Forever.
She’d been a fool to think anything had changed. She’d been a fool to think this weekend could be different. She hadn’t changed. Ben was right.
You’re so fucking pathetic, Charlotte, no wonder your family hates you, you’re nothing—
Charlotte’s throat flexed and tightened. Dread pumped through her bloodstream. Was she breathing? Did she want to breathe?
A hand touched her shoulder. She jerked away, twisting to face the new threat.
It was just Reece. His empty hand froze outstretched in the air. The world tilted around her as new shame joined the agony in her chest. Charlotte closed her eyes and grabbed on to the lip of the bar.
“Shit, I’m sorry, I—” Words got lodged and lost, the ribbon of her thoughts tearing.
“Are you okay?” Reece stepped forward and she shrank back. His face tightened with hurt. He looked so confused and upset and he didn’t deserve it; she couldn’t even look at him.
“I need to get out of here,” she somehow managed. “I can’t—I’m not—”
“Come with me.” He wrapped his arm around her shoulders.
Charlotte shuddered, her skin crawling, but she let him guide her from the bar. She focused on her breathing, choppy and shallow.
My name is Charlotte Thorne. My name is Thorny and I am twenty-seven
Reece murmured comforting words that she didn’t process. He found an exit and steered her through the tent flap into the cold air.
It’s 2018 and I’m at Hein and I am
Charlotte lurched forward. Her body folded over as she threw up into the grass. Reece caught her as she stumbled, a thick arm slung around her waist to keep her upright. Her hair swung into her face. She realized she was crying when she tasted salt along with vomit.
“Oh god,” she groaned, shuddering between heaves.
Reece made idle shushing noises. He collected her hair, ignoring the glaze of puke in the strands. “You’re okay,” he said. “It’s okay, sweetheart.”
Charlotte Thorne, thorny bitch, you look ravishing.
She’d thanked him. She’d thanked him. She asked him how he was and let him wrap his arms around her. She could still smell him on her clothes underneath the sour stench of her own weakness—
