I'll Be Holding on to You

that night

AUTHOR'S NOTE DO NOT SKIP

I REPEAT: DO NOT SKIP

*****TRIGGER WARNING*****

PLEASE skip to the bottom for a summary if anything about sexual assault may trigger you. Don't try to read it anyway and figure it'll be fine. This is a brutal chapter so anyone sensitive or oversensitive may wish to skip to the summary too. This is a VERY SAD CHAPTER I'm not kidding. 

******

Of course I dreamed about Robbie, exactly as it had all happened, because my memory is and has always been a fucking curse.

It had been nearly three years earlier, and most of us were eighteen. Two weeks before Halloween, the same time of year Cam's dad had gone crazy in our classroom, the same time of year Evie's parents had died in the car accident.

Evie, Hadley and I had a marine biology class at the junior college that Tuesday night from five to seven, to which we were fifteen minutes late because we'd taken my parents to the airport to fly to some conference. I apologized and mentioned our excuse to our hot professor. We knew he was only twenty-six, loved to surf, and was the reason half the girls at the college took his class.

Robbie, of course.

Afterward we dropped off Evie at her house so she could unwind. The others had a Women's History class from seven to ten and would pick her up on their way back to my house when it was over.

In the meantime Hadley and I picked up four pizzas, with Freddy in mind for later, and settled back to catch up on a show only we liked. We had a four-pack of fuzzy navel wine coolers and drank them in celebration of having the house to ourselves, not that there was anything we would do that we couldn't with my parents there, but nonetheless.

When someone knocked shave-and-a-haircut on the door at nine thirty, we automatically checked the peephole. It was our gorgeous teacher, holding a cardboard file box.

"What the hell?" I asked her in a low voice. "I've seen porn movies start like this." Every time I thought of this smart ass remark for the rest of my life, I would hate myself. A lot.

She covered her mouth to stifle her giggles. "You fucking wish. How does he even know where you live?"

"Oh my God, who even cares?" I half-joked, sealing our fate. We fixed our hair with our fingers and I opened the door, because we were trusting fools.

"Hey," he said with a disarming smile, not seeming to notice we were in our pajamas. He had on jeans and a white t-shirt fitted enough to show his abs. "Sorry to bother you ladies so late." He winced. "I hope I didn't wake anyone up."

"No, my parents are out of town," I said absently, the alcohol making me slow on several levels.

"That's right; you mentioned that in class." His smile widened, his eyes friendly. "So I just hit up my storage unit this evening and while in there I found those dissertations we were talking about. The blue whale one's right on top." He shifted the obviously heavy box.

Hadley elbowed me. "Oh! Sorry, come in," I said, realizing. Making the worst decision of my life, I stepped back to allow him entrance.

Like when you invite the vampire in.

"Wow, great house," he said admiringly, trailing me through the entry way with Hadley behind him. 

I led him through saloon style swinging doors and into the alcove off the kitchen that we only used for fancy dinners, like four times a year. There was a square table and four chairs; when we actually used it we brought in the middle leaf and extra chairs from the garage.