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{tw: this chapter has mentions of rape!}
Mel angled her head downwards, letting her hair fall in her face and focusing intently on her hands where they anxiously wrung together in her lap. Tears poured down her cheeks and splattered onto her hands and into her lap and a panicky part of her brain wished she hadn't said anything, wished she'd just remembered to take the damn cymbals to the studio so Joey wouldn't have even stopped by her place that night.
Stress and anxiety felt like they were gripping her heart and squeezing and finally she couldn't take Joey's silence anymore. Realistically she knew it had only been a few short moments since she'd spoken, but it felt like hours. It felt like days. It felt like an eternity.
She whipped her head up to look at him so quickly that she startled him and he jumped, looking at her with wide eyes. When she focused on him, she realized that the reason he wasn't speaking was because there were also tears in his eyes.
"Jesus, Mel," he said finally, his voice raw and worn suddenly. He sounded like someone had unplugged him from the wall and he was deflating. "That's the last fucking thing I expected you to say."
She shrugged.
"It's the last thing I ever thought I'd have to say, you know? I'm careful, I know how to defend myself usually. But yet..." she trailed off, interrupted by a sob. She shook her head, burying her face in her hands as she continued to cry.
"Shit. Fuck, I don't even know what to say. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry," Joey whispered, opening his arms for her hesitantly like he wasn't sure if the gesture was appropriate or not.
If he were anyone else she probably wouldn't have wanted him to touch her, but something about the way he was looking at her with his face so full of care and concern and gentleness made her cry harder as she launched herself into his arms. He held her tightly and she shoved her face deep into his chest, the cold metal of the necklaces he was wearing pressing up against her cheek and undoubtedly leaving an indent in it.
She sobbed into his chest unrelentingly, the panic attack she'd halfway staved off before fully hitting her now. Her breath caught in her throat and she clutched the fabric of his t-shirt, her fingers filling with pins and needles with the force of her grip. She was wheezing and sputtering, soaking his shirt with tears and snot as he tried his best to comfort her somehow.
"Get it out, it's okay, babe. It's alright. I'm here. I'm here and you're safe. I'll keep you safe," he told her quietly, one of his arms still holding her fast to him while the other hand moved up to pull her long hair off of her face as much as he could. He twisted it around his finger and tucked it into the neckline of her shirt, and immediately she felt cooler and less suffocated. "I've got you. It's okay. Just breathe. Breathe," he murmured, his voice steady and slow.
What felt like an eternity later, she could finally kind of breathe again. She unfurled her hands from Joey's shirt, not missing the fact that the fabric was stretched out and distorted where she'd been holding it. No matter how many times it got washed in the future, the thin fabric would probably always look exactly how she felt: ugly and distorted, an incorrect and fucked-up version of itself.
Joey released his grip on her and she backed away from him slightly, watching as he stood and crossed to the kitchen. Careful not to step on the glass, he poured two glasses of water and downed one himself, bringing her the other. She drank it thankfully, feeling like he throat had never been so dry in her life.
"Do you... wanna tell me about it?" he asked her a few moments later. "Obviously you don't have to, but I'm here if you do."
She sighed heavily, pulling her hair out of where he'd tucked it into her shirt and pulling a hairband off of her wrist to arrange it in a big pile of a bun on the top of her head. She closed her eyes, moving so that she was sitting cross-legged on the couch facing outwards, not sure she'd be able to say anything at all if she was facing him. He settled into the corner of the couch and waited patiently.
"I, uh... you know how I told you yesterday I was going to that new club downtown to watch some bands play last night?" she asked him, not opening her eyes to look at him.
"Yeah," he said quietly. "You were going with Connie, right?" he asked, referring to a mutual friend of theirs.
"Yeah. Well, Connie's got the flu or something. I don't know, she called and cancelled literally right before I was about to leave. I was going to just stay home, maybe see if someone else was free to go get some food or something, but I didn't. For whatever reason, I ended up at the club anyway," she explained, taking a deep breath. Blindly, she reached for his hand. He gave it to her and she laced their fingers together at once.
"It was okay at first. The place is a fucking shit hole, but everywhere in Des Moines is so it wasn't that big of a deal. It reminds me of a lot of the places 'Knot played in the very early days. I ended up meeting up with a few people I used to know and the first band was fine. Nothing remarkable, but fine. The drinks were cheap and not entirely terrible, so I stayed for the second band. They were better. Still not fantastic, I wasn't dropping my panties for them or anything, but I enjoyed them," she continued, her hand starting to shake within Joey's. He reached and wrapped his second hand around both of theirs, holding her steady.
"The second band finished and I was about four drinks in. They were some sort of bitchy little cocktails, nothing too severe, nothing that usually would've phased me too much," she told him, and she could feel him nodding through his hands' grip on her. Everyone who knew her knew she could hold her liquor with the best of them. Her brother was almost a foot taller than her and easily a hundred pounds heavier but on a good night, she could drink even him under the table.
"But I started feeling... off, like something wasn't right. I was getting dizzy and my mind was getting fuzzy. It scared the shit out of me because nothing's ever made me feel that way other than a few particularly bad drug trips. Alcohol has never made me feel that way, and I knew I hadn't taken anything from anyone or anything. I paid my tab and made it outside, found a payphone and started dialing a number. I don't even remember whose. Maybe yours, maybe Mick's, maybe someone else's, maybe it didn't belong to anyone I know at all. I don't know. That's when things started really going in and out," she paused again, knowing she was explaining in too much detail, that she was making things too vivid. Her hope was that if it sounded like some fantastical story, maybe that's what it would actually end up being. Maybe if she made it sound unreal and over-described it, maybe she'd wake up the next day and realize it had all been in her head, some bad nightmare.
"I think I fell down. I don't remember it happening, but I remember being on the ground and my knees are scraped today. Out of nowhere, there was this guy. He helped me up, I guess, because in my next flash of memory I'm not on the ground anymore. He was trying to be funny, was coming on too strong. Even in my altered state I remember trying to get away from him. He smelled like piss and some cheap cologne," she paused once more, swallowing hard. Joey just held her hand and patiently waited. She wanted to look at him, to find comfort in his soft eyes, but couldn't force herself to.
"Uh... it's really only vague flashes after that. Touches I didn't want, sensations that didn't hold the pleasure they're supposed to. Tears, a lot of them. Fear, worse fear than I've ever felt. I wondered more than once if he was going to kill me. I don't remember him... finishing or anything like that. I don't remember him leaving me, don't remember how I ended up where I did. All I remember after that is waking up in the alley behind the club who knows how much later. My clothes were ripped, barely covering me, and I had blood all over me. Like I said, my knees are scraped and so are my knuckles and arms. At first I didn't have any idea what happened. I panicked and ran to my car, locking myself inside. It wasn't until I was sitting that I realized how sore I was somewhere that I absolutely should not have been sore," she finished the story, still not able to look at him. He didn't say anything at first, didn't say anything for a long while.
"I'm so sorry, Mel. I'm so fucking sorry," he whispered eventually, and at last she was able to open her eyes and look up at him. She'd managed to make it through the story without crying, but one look at his sad face sent her right back over the edge and into hysterics. She buried her face in his chest once more, wishing she could stay right there pressed up against him forever.
