Page 27 of Worse Than Wicked
She thinks about it, and even though I wish she would jump in and reassure me right away, her thoughtfulness reassures me more than any denial could. She’s considering it before she gives me an honest answer, something I can’t rely on most people to give. That’s why I told her first, before even Baron.
But finally, I can’t take her silence. My stomach is knotted and sour, and my heart is racing so hard I can’t think straight. “Is that weird?” I manage. “Is it more than weird?”
“I wouldn’t say it’s normal,” she says at last. “Why are you friends with her?”
“I don’t know,” I say miserably. “She’s just… Fun, and simple, and I don’t have to impress her or worry about what she thinks. It reminds me of how it was to be a kid, when I didn’t care about all the shit I have to care about now.” I cover myeyes with my arm, since looking at her when I ask this would be unbearable. “Do you think that means I’m a pedophile?”
“Are you attracted to her?”
“No,” I say, horrified that she’d ask that.
“Have you done anything physical to her?”
“What? No! It makes me sick to think of it. We just hung out and ate cereal for dinner and, I don’t know… She’s easy to talk to.”
“Then why would you think you it’s wrong?”
“Because. Everyone said that. Or acted like it.”
“Sounds like they’re the ones who shouldn’t be around children,” she says. “Why else would their minds go there?”
“Probably because our dad was basically one,” I say, wanting to fucking die. “And they think if I was raised by one, I’m suspect, and now I have a kid friend, so they’ve got to watch me and see if I’m as sick as him. What if I am?”
I’m quaking so hard Mabel can feel it, and she rests a steadying hand on my chest. “I don’t think wanting to feel like a kid again makes you sick,” she says. “Sounds like they’re projecting, or else they’re just sanctimonious cunts who would rather ruin someone’s life than consider the many facets of being human.”
I’ve never heard Mabel use that word before, but she says it so calmly, in such a straightforward manner, as if it’s an indisputable fact. Maybe it is.
“You really think so?” I ask, rolling back to face her. I tuck a pillow between my head and my arm, watching her. “Are you just saying that to make me feel better?”
“That’s not something I do,” she says, but I’m not so sure.
Maybe she doesn’t mean to, or do it intentionally, but hearing her get defensive of me like that has already made me feel a thousand times better. Just as she needs me to get out of her head, I need her to get out of mine, to calm the raging storminside it. In all the time I’ve spent with her, the pearl lady has never made me feel as good as Mabel has in these five minutes.
“Am I sick for wondering, though?” I ask. “Because they’d probably think so. They didn’t even like her coming in my room.”
She’s quiet a minute, and then she answers slowly. “I think that’s good,” she says. “Not because of you, but because they’re protecting her. More people should do that instead of assuming everyone has good intentions. But their caution doesn’t mean you’re doing something wrong. Just as being introspective and wondering if you’re a monster because you were raised by a monster and everyone is telling you that you are one doesn’t make you a monster. It makes you self-aware. Your actions make you a monster.”
I swallow hard and force the next words out because I’ve come this far, and maybe I want her to finish what I couldn’t today. “I thought about her once… when we were hooking up.”
She stiffens in my arms. “You were fantasizing about her while you were fucking me?”
“No,” I snap, a shudder going through me. “She popped into my head, like, I didn’t want to think about her, but she came up.”
“And then?”
“And then I pushed the thought away,” I say. “It wasn’t a sexual thought. It was… I didn’t want to think it. I hate that it happened, that I can’t control my mind, Mabel. What if it happens again?”
“That sounds like an intrusive thought,” she says. “Not like you were getting off on it.”
“I wasn’t,” I promise her, so miserable I want to die. “I hate that my mind does that. What’s wrong with me?”
“You can’t control intrusive thoughts,” she says. “They intrude. You don’t want them to. They’re terrible.”
“It was terrible,” I agree, squeezing my eyes closed. “How do I make them go away?”
“You don’t,” she says, pressing her ear to my chest and wrapping her arms around me again. “You just know that you’ll be okay anyway. They’re not real. Just thoughts.”
“How do you know?”
