Page 40 of Property of Thrasher
Lyric moved closer, thigh to thigh now. “I get that.”
“I liked the sex,” I blurted, as if I had to prove I wasn’t broken, as if liking it were a test I could fail. “I liked how my body felt. Heck, I even liked the ride on his motorcycle before. Well, once I stopped thinking about falling off. I liked that he watched my face. I liked that he said it was good. I liked that he held me after and didn’t make me talk. Mostly, I liked that he stopped to ask me for consent.”
“Okay,” she said, nodding like we were taking inventory. “Liking is allowed.”
“But I don’t know that I fit in his world? He said we would do this for as long as he wanted. Well what if I fall in love like a fool and then he poof leaves me?” The word love felt too big in my mouth. “I don’t know that word anymore. Not the way other people use it. I don’t know how it fits.”
Lyric leaned her head back and looked up into the fan of leaves above us, some green, some browned at the edges. “After BJ,” she said, “I learned sex and love aren’t the same animal. Sometimes they share a collar; sometimes they run in opposite directions. I wish I’d learned that when I was sixteen instead of almost twenty, but here we are.”
I waited.
“I did things I didn’t want to,” she said, voice steady as a metronome set slow. “Because he told me they proved I loved him. Because he told me wives do things for their husbands. Because he told me ‘no’ was a sin against him and God. That wasn’t love. That was control wrapped in a word that should have protected me.”
I thought of the man the church wanted to hand me back to. The way they smiled with their mouths and not their eyes. The way they said “God’s plan” as a loaded gun.
“So when I got here,” Lyric went on, “I told myself I’d never confuse the two again. Sex is something I can want or not want. Love is the feeling that is inside. It means I’m more of a better me with someone than without them. And those two things can happen together or separate. If you liked sex with Thrasher, that can be true all alone. You don’t owe it anything more. You don’t owe him anything more—claim or no claim—unless you decide you do.”
“How do I decide?”
She laughed, soft and a little sad. “One day at a time. One touch at a time. One choice at a time.”
I closed my eyes and let my head tip against her shoulder.
The memory fresh of him came back again. The ride we shared, my arms around his middle, the scent of leather and soap and gasoline, the way the wind pressed us together so that I couldn’t tell where I stopped and the rest of the world started. I remembered his hands after, how careful he was when he figured it out, like I might crack if he moved wrong. I remembered the claim and how something in me liked it because it sounded like being kept, and something else hated it because it sounded like being owned.
“I don’t want to be a possession,” I explained and she nodded.
“Then don’t be,” Lyric retorted, as if it were the easiest thing. “Say it out loud when you see him. ‘I’m not your play thing. I’m me. If you want me, ask. Don’t tell.’ See how he handles that.”
“What if he doesn’t handle it well?”
“Then he’s not a man you keep,” she said casually. “That’s our new life. We don’t accept less.”
I imagined saying it. I imagined his face. Thrasher liked control. But he’d also listened. He’d stopped when I flinched earlier, right at the start, when my body remembered fear before it remembered want. He’d asked if I was okay. He’d waited until I nodded. He didn’t push. The claim came after, not before. It didn’t erase the asking. It simply complicated it.
“I keep thinking about the word ‘first’ like it’s supposed to change me,” I admitted. “Like, I’m supposed to wake up different. But I woke up and my knees still creaked when I stood, and I still needed coffee, and my shirt still smelled like the dryer. The only thing that changed is I know what a certain kind of wanting feels like in my body now.”
Lyric smiled without looking at me, eyes still in the leaves. “That’s what it is. The knowing. BJ tried to make me think sex was something done to me. It’s not. It’s something I do. Something I have. Something I can refuse. Something I can ask for. If you liked it, Mel, you can like it again. If you don’t like something about it, you can say that and see if he listens.”
“He did listen,” I said, surprising myself. “In the moment, he was absolutely laser focused on me.”
“Good,” she said. “That’s a start. Also, you should know because I’ve asked the girls and Tiny too. Claimed doesn’t mean married. It doesn’t mean you stop being a person. It sure as hell doesn’t mean he gets your yes without asking each time. If Thrasher wants you, he can show you with actions that don’t make you smaller.”
I picked at a loose thread at my cuff. “Do you think I’m dumb?”
“For having sex?” She snorted. “No. For liking it? Also no. For wanting safety? Definitely no. For worrying about what it means? That just means you’re careful. If you want the official Lyric protocol, it’s this: protect your heart, protect your body, use your words, and carry cash.”
I laughed. “Carry cash?”
“You never know when you’ll need to call a cab and get gone.”
The laugh left me lighter. The fear that hummed steady under my skin dialed down a notch, like someone had finally found the right switch.
We let quiet happen. A pair of girls in matching aprons cut across the lot toward the bus stop, their conversation filled with laughter. Somewhere inside, a man yelled, “Yo, where’s the mop?” and someone else yelled back, “Check the closet, genius,” followed by the kind of laughter that said they weren’t mad.
Lyric nudged me. “Tell me everything else.”
“About last night?”
