Page 65 of What Lies in the Woods

I swallowed.You and me, you and me, you and me.Hand under my T-shirt. A cheap blanket beneath me, an unbearable sense of weight. “I slept with someone,” I said.

“What?” Mitch pulled his hand out of my pants. His hair fell over his eyes as he hovered over me, his thigh against mine.

“Exactly what I said. I had sex,” I said. I needed him to stop touching me. I pushed him off, and he sprang away like I’d sprouted thorns. I yanked my shirt down where it had ridden up and smoothed my hair back into order.

“We’ve been broken up fordays, and you fucked someone else?” Mitch asked, incredulous.

“Yeah, well. It’s what I do, apparently,” I said.

“Who?” he demanded.

“No one you know.” I grabbed my bourbon and took a few swallows. My head was ringing, my shoulders tensing as memories snarled together.Cheap blanket against my bare shoulders—no, a concrete wall. Hole in the roof the size of a fist, leaves shivering just beyond. The smell of the forest. The smell of gasoline.

Of all the shit in my life, I’d thought I was over this part, but apparently I wasn’t.

Mitch’s fly hung open. I hadn’t noticed him undoing it. Everythingwas weirdly blurry around the edges. My hand shook. “I don’t get a name, at least?” he asked, affronted.

“Oscar,” I said, not thinking, not thinking aboutnowat least, and then I shook my head. “No, it wasn’t, it—”

“You don’t even remember his name?” he asked with sneering contempt.

“Get out,” I said, not looking at him.

“It’s my apartment. This is my bed.”

“Then I’ll go.” I stood.

He shook his head viciously. “Forget it. You can stay here tonight. But after that I want you out of here.” He strode out, slamming the bedroom door behind him. A moment later I heard the front door follow suit. Probably going out to drive around angrily. I sank back onto the bed, head dropping into my hands.

What the hell just happened? I should have just fucked him so he could feel like he was helping.

But when he’d touched me, all I could feel was Oscar’s hands. Oscar hadn’t smelled of aftershave and lotion; he’d had that cut-wood scent of the mill, machine oil, sweat. He’d laid down the ratty blanket like it was the most noble thing anyone had ever done for a girl, and right before he thrust inside me he told me,Don’t worry, it’s supposed to hurt.

I threw back the rest of the bourbon, feeling it scorch down my throat. Why had I saidOscar? That was years ago. And it was yesterday.

The flesh does not acknowledge linear time, a therapist had once told me. The past is written alongside the present on our skins. I told him he should have written poetry instead of prescriptions. He accused me of deflecting insight with sarcasm.

He was the one who’d told me that it was a mistake to order my life into Before and After, as if the attack was the root of every bad thing that had happened since, as if my life had been utterly reordered by the cataclysm that found me. And he was right. Oscar was Before, and he was After, and he was, whether I liked it or not,Now.

Oscar had known Jessi Walker. And she was the one solid piece of all of this I still had. She was what Liv had been chasing. The reason we’d been in the woods.

Sometimes it seemed like the only thing I’d ever been good at was surviving being broken. I didn’t know how to be whole. So any time I felt like I was healing, I found a way to break myself again.

Stahl was the worst monster from my childhood. Oscar had been the first. But I hadn’t run from him. Years after the woods—after all of it—I’d gone back, again and again, until there was nothing left that he could take from me.

Until I had run out of ways to break myself apart.

Saturday’s bride was a hugger. And a crier. She had shock-blue hair, combat boots under her poofy princess dress, and a Rebel Alliance tattoo on her shoulder. For a few hours, I lost myself in the work, capturing the moments of heady bliss and wild energy and the soft, tender seconds in between—the groom’s grandmother sitting at the edge of the dance floor with her eyes full of pride, the flower girl twirling slowly to watch her skirt billow out, the moment the bride leaned her head briefly on her father’s shoulder in a moment of rest.

We made our lives of rites and rituals, and this one was bright with joy and meaning. I stood on the edge of it, a witness but not a participant. More than ever I felt the wall between me and the images I took.

At the end of the day I packed up my gear and headed to a hotel I couldn’t really afford. I still had the engagement shoot tomorrow, or I would have just headed back to Chester. For all the crowds around me, I’d felt isolated all day, exposed. At least I had work that I could focus on.

At the desk in the hotel room, I pulled up a few shots I’d already identified, doing the most basic of touch-ups on them before zipping off a few web-sized JPEGs to the bride.Just a preview!!! I thought you might like to share these. CONGRATULATIONS!!!

I was uncomfortable with exclamation points, but one had to make certain sacrifices to work in the wedding industry.

---