Page 75 of Married with Mayhem

Sabrina finally emerges and her makeup has been scrubbed off. Her long hair is pulled into a ponytail and she’s adorably outfitted in a hoodie covered with cartoon dragons and a pair of plaid pajama shorts.

There’s no sign of tears but an aura of sadness clings to her and I’m sure it doesn’t have anything to do with our phony wedding.

She scuttles to her bed after glancing quickly in my direction. “I know what you’re going to say.”

“I doubt it.”

With a sigh, she plops down on the bed and sits cross-legged, facing me. “Monte, I’m very aware that I flirt with you and I always have. I’ve sent you a ton of mixed messages. No wonder why you called me out for it the other night.”

“Knock it off,” I growl. “I already apologized for my drunken tantrum. And I’m not in the habit of apologizing for things that aren’t my fault.”

She looks down and picks at the elastic on her slouchy socks. “You were right,” she says, barely audible.

“About what?”

“I tease you and I push your buttons because I’m very attracted to you but I know that you won’t make me pay a price. I take advantage of the fact that I’m safe with you, which is really screwed up and unfair.” She sniffs and her voice becomes little more than a whisper. “I want to do more. I really do. I think about it a lot and I know it would be different with you. But I’m just…stuck. I don’t know how else to explain it.”

“Sabrina.” I swallow the hard lump in my throat. “Can we keep talking for real?”

She nods and lifts her eyes. “Yes, I think we can.”

Maybe I have no right to extract some deeply personal information from her but I’m not in the mood to be rational. And I can’t help her if I don’t know the whole story.

Now I feel my jaw hardening as I grit out the words. “Tell me about him.”

“Who? Vittorio?”

“No, Sabrina. Tell me abouthim.”

She goes pale. “Why? What are you going to do?”

“That depends on whathedid.”

She rubs her hands on her legs and grimaces at a memory. “He didn’t physically hurt me. I told you that already.”

“Is it true?”

“Yes.”

“Swear it.”

“I swear. He didn’t rape me or drug me or hit me. Happy now?”

“No, I’m not fucking happy now.”

She exhales loudly. “It’s really not fun to look you in the face and blurt out my most humiliating secrets.”

Easy fix. I jump off the bed, walk over to the wall and switch the main light off. Then I turn the television off. Now there’s only us and the darkness.

“There,” I say, returning to my seat on the bed. “Now you don’t need to look me in the face.”

“Okay.” She takes a deep breath. “Just warning you, this is a long story.”

“Good thing I’ve got no other plans tonight.”

She sniffs out a laugh and after a few deep breaths, she begins.

“For starters, while I was growing up I didn’t have much freedom. I didn’t even kiss a guy until my first year of college and kissing was as far as it went. I didn’t date often because my father’s rules were so strict. Daisy and Anni found ways around the rules but I hesitated to disobey. I lived at home during college and hardly went out. My social life was really centeredaround the gaming world and that’s the only place where I felt like I fit in.

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