Roseanne
"Oh you're home," Bambam's tentative and guilt-laced voice cuts through the simmering remains of my panic attack. I'm soaking wet, sitting on the daybed by the pool with my arms wrapped around my legs. Even though it's a scorching day, I can't stop shivering.
"You been swimming in your clothes again?" He wanders towards me.
He seems to want to clear the air and takes the fact that I haven't run off as encouragement.
I don't raise my chin from where it rests on my knees because I know the minute I do the bruising on my neck from the biker's massive fist will be visible.
Making up a tummy ache, I scrambled out of the gym shortly after I heard the motorcycles tear out of the car park. I took the half-hour walk home to try and calm my nerves. Unsuccessfully.
Growing up around the mafia has meant I have seen plenty of glimpses of violence and law-breaking and I have always known there is a strong possibility I could be targeted by enemies of my family or the Manobans.
Today was the first time that I experienced it.
The bikers were rough, a different kind of criminal from the ones I live my life with. My criminals come in suits and are wined and dined by the establishment. Bikers are outlaws; they don't pretend respectability. They smell like petrol and leather, and the danger they present feels dirtier.
Even though the blue-eyed biker with the man-bun is objectively very good-looking, I was repulsed by his griminess. Without their leader's attractiveness, the other two bikers looked even rougher. The way they salivated over me, pointedly staring at my breasts and bum, sent a shot of terror to my brain. It was that implicit threat that they could take me and use my body however they wanted that has left me shaking like a leaf.
Years of therapy have done wonders for my ability to ride the waves of inevitable triggers. Where my parents shipped off a traumatized and broken girl without a thought of how to remedy her pain, my grandmother at least had the presence of mind to send me to a psychologist once a week.
Undoubtedly I'm still a hot mess. Therapy doesn't fix anyone. It doesn't take away what happened. If it's successful it simply teaches us how to live with our traumas and push on with what we have left.
I'm sure the Manobans and my family have their opinions about why I jump in the pool in my clothes so often. My parents probably put it down to attention-seeking behavior. Bambam doesn't question it. Maybe Lisa and Jackson think I'm crazy. Mark would need to care about me to form a proper opinion.
The truth is that one of the coping mechanisms I learned for managing distress is to use acute changes in my five senses to jolt myself out of a spiral. By focusing on the physical, the emotional and the mental can get a break. The shock of jumping into a cold pool seems to have become my go- to tactic since returning to Australia.
"You're shaking. Are you okay?" There is concern in Bambam's voice and he hurries over to where I sit. He wraps his arms around my hunched-over form and drags me closer to him. "Roseanne, has something happened? Oh my god...was it Jason?"
I quickly shake my head at that and an involuntary shudder follows. Lifting my head, I expose my neck so he can see the red fingerprints and the bruises that are already forming.
"What the fuck! Who did this?"
Clearing my throat sends searing pain down my esophagus and it is becoming increasingly hard to swallow. "Bikers...came to the...g-gym," I rasp. I can barely speak.
