He didn’t just think I was pretty. That’s what I was thinking in that moment. Even though he wasn’t supposed to, and he was the kind of man he was, wealthy and experienced, he wanted me. I felt more powerful than I ever had in my life. I was dizzy with it.
I could feel him hard against my thigh, but I was so out of my depth I could only nod. He said, “Good. My house, next weekend.” Then he slipped his fingers under the seam of my panties and touched me.
I closed my eyes, but he said, “Look at me.” So of course I did.
I’m going to tell you the truth, Jamie, because if I don’t, you won’t fully understand. It felt good, the way he was touching me. I was afraid of him, and I knew what we were doing was wrong, but I still wanted it. That’s something I’ll always have to live with.
He whispered, “You’re my good girl, aren’t you?” By then I almost couldn’t bear it, how good it felt, how ashamed I was, but he said, “Say it,” in that voice, and everything got clearer. I said, “I’m your good girl,” and he was happy.
He put his hand around my throat and squeezed, but he was still touching me, and my hips were rocking against the wall. I could feel it building inside me, and part of me was mortified, but I wasn’t going to stop. That’s when he said, “Underneath, you’re just a little girl looking to be owned, aren’t you? That’s your secret. You want to be mine. Tell the truth.”
It cut through every layer. I should’ve been shocked, or repulsed, but instead I thought, How does he know? There was something in allowing it that made me feel dangerous and wild. Up against the wall like that, I went over the edge.
On the ride home everyone was silent. I was already thinking about going back.
（Throat clearing.）
I think that’s enough, for tonight.
End of transcript.
***
Jamie and I sat across from each other. Him on the bed, me in the chair. I watched him, waiting, but his eyes were fixed on the wall above my shoulder. I sat inside the silence until I couldn’t bear it.
“Say something.”
His eyes dropped. “Jesus, Shay.”
“I know.”
“That was just the beginning?”
“The very beginning.”
He put his head in his hands, then looked back up at me. “I’m not trying to make you feel bad. But what the fuck with that gender essentialism? That male and female empowerment, submission bullshit. Why was that appealing?”
I wanted to say it wasn’t. It was the other thing, the way Don could see me, hurt me like I was only beginning to discover I wanted. It was the way I felt powerful when I hooked him, reeled him in, put him in a position where he needed me. I wanted to say Don could have told me anything, invented any pretense, as long as we ended up where we did, with me confessing and his hand around my throat.
But I knew Jamie wanted to draw a straight line connecting the girl he’d known in Heller—bookish Shay, then Shay the boy-hungry beauty queen—to the girl in Don’s house with her back against the wall. He thought he already knew what explained my choices: internalized misogyny, case closed. And maybe that was right. Hell, maybe deep down, despite my proclaimed feminism, I’d believed the content of what Don was saying, not just the effect. God only knew I didn’t deserve to be let off any hooks. But it just didn’t feel like the whole story.
Jamie read my silence differently. “I’m sorry,” he said quickly. “That was out of line. Don was manipulating you. You were what…twenty, twenty-one? You were young and naive. Laurel was carrying around all that trauma, maybe Clem, too, from the way she grew up. He took advantage of it. You were victims.”
I didn’t know about that word. What did you call yourself when you’d taken an active role in your own suffering? When your hands weren’t clean, when there wasn’t a single part of you that was, especially not your mind, all those deep, dark corners?