short fiction, four

“So, can I tell you something? You don’t have to say anything and I’d rather you just forget it after I tell you.”
“ok…”
“remember that night you were at Happy Endings with () and the Glasvegas guys? And I showed up with that giant douchey-looking guy? I met him earlier that night at some restaurant opening in Soho. He was trying so hard, you know? He kept bringing me drinks and telling these awful jokes. I guess it was cute, sweet, whatever. So after four or five drinks he suddenly has all this coke and we’re doing rails in the bathroom of this restaurant. The party died down around midnight and I was faced, so I said we should go to Happy Endings. In the car I gave him some bullshit about how I had to go back to campus soon because I had an early class or something – it was basically a ‘we’re not going to fuck’ speech, and he was all ‘oh of course, totally, here have some more coke.’
I remember that moment when I walked in and saw you and my heart just fell out and it hit me what a fucking disaster I was. I vaguely remember sitting next to you, trying to convince you I wasn’t fucked off my face. I don’t remember leaving but I remember getting in his car so he could drive me uptown. He handed me a fresh bag of coke and a key and offered me five hundred dollars to go home with him. So I figured, fuck it. Why not?
So he let me into his apartment in Dumbo and I turned to face him when I heard him lock the deadbolt and I swear to god, (), nobody’s ever looked at me the way he was looking at me. He grabbed me by both arms and slammed me against the door and for a second I thought ‘well, he’s the one paying half a grand, I guess he gets to decide how rough the sex is gonna be.’ But he just kept slamming me against the door, over and over. I was so scared. When he saw that I was crying he held me against the door with one hand on my chest and with the other he punched me in the stomach, hard. The second time he did it I puked and he dropped me. I was sobbing and I curled up in a ball on the floor and he walked toward me and I thought, you know, ‘this is it. I’m gonna die. This guy is going to kick my head in.’ But when he was about three feet away from me he doubled over for a few minutes and moaned a little, like he was cumming in his pants. When he was done he stood up, threw the cash on the floor next to me, walked into another room, and slammed the door.
This is the part that gets me. I didn’t call the cops, I didn’t call () to come tear this guy’s fucking arms off, I didn’t even call you for a ride. I called () – ()'s friend? I don’t remember if you’ve met him – and I took a cab to his place off the Bowery and made him boot me. I shot all that guys fuckin’ money into my arm.”
They both lay on their backs and stared at the hotel ceiling.
“Why did you tell me that?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never told anyone and I couldn’t carry it around any more. I guess I thought you should know that I might always be the kind of girl that you can beat the shit out of for five hundred dollars.”
He rolled over to face her and she smiled at him and her smile was heartbreaking.