Little pants of pleasure began to escape me involuntarily.

“Don’t patronize me, Roman. I know what’s good for me.”

“I’m pinching your clit.”

Groan. “Roman.”

“Your pussy juice is all over my chin.”

Why was he doing this?

The orgasm started at my curling toes, shooting upwards like a bullet and exploding between my legs. I tried to loosen my trapped hands from his grip, but to no avail. I came on nothing, barely touched, just from his words. It took me a few minutes to calm down, my pulse floating down slowly like a feather, before I noticed the warm, damp cum sticking my top to my lower back.

He’d come, too. From rubbing off against me.

“I hate you,” I muttered, my voice shaking. I’d never realized how empty my sex was until I met Roman and realized that I wanted him there. All the time.

“Good night, birthday girl.” He planted a soft kiss on the back of my head, dropping his heavy arm on my waist.

For the first time in years, I didn’t want to put on my Keds and run from the demons that lurked under my bed at night.

For the first time in my life, I let them sleep with us, inside my bed, in my room, knowing that they were just ghosts of my past.

That they couldn’t touch me.

BY THE TIME I CRACKED a reluctant eye open, Bane was gone.

The space where he’d slept was cold and empty. I blinked away the cobwebs of sleep and felt for the cell phone on my nightstand. It was a new move, one I hadn’t practiced in two and a half years. As a teenager, that was the first thing I’d done every morning: check my phone for messages, and Snapchat and Facebook posts. After The Incident, I’d migrated my cell phone to one of my desk’s drawers. That’s until Roman barged into my life.

He’d left me one message, probably a few minutes after he’d climbed his way down my window.

Roman

Let’s talk tonight.

I tried to read it in a casual way. Bane was a casual guy. But I was so pathetically dependent on him that fear trickled into my system. I tried to tell myself no true friend would break a friendship with you the day after your birthday. I replied with a curt ‘sure’ and hopped downstairs, taking two steps at a time.

I was starving. It felt like I hadn’t eaten in years. And in a way, that was sort of the case.

“Good morning,” Hannah sang from the kitchen, slicing root vegetables for Pam’s gross shakes. My mom lived off vegetables, Botox, and wine. A diet made in Hollywood hell. If Hannah was surprised to see me—which she should have been as I never left my room during the mornings because I slept away the night run’s exhaustion—she didn’t let it show.

“Hungry?” She peered under her lashes.

“Famished.” I opened our glass fridge, sticking my head in.

“Pancakes it is, then.” I heard her cluck her tongue behind me. Hannah was nice. Too nice for Pam. Darren treated her well, but Pam had conveniently forgotten that she’d been waiting tables not too long ago, before Darren had found us, his pretty little strays.

“Please don’t bother.” I put a reassuring hand on her shoulder, realizing I wouldn’t have done that weeks ago, before I met Bane. The forty-something-year-old used her waist to butt me out of the way in front of the fridge. “It’s your birthday. Well, technically a day after, but birthday girls deserve pancakes. It’s a rule.”

It was a rule I was happy not to break.

I sat at the breakfast nook, watching Hannah doing her thing while twisting a lock of hair around my finger and chewing on it. I needed a haircut. No. I’ll rephrase—I wanted a haircut. For the first time in years, I wanted to look pretty. Or maybe I was simply ready to be seen. Hannah squatted down to take out a measuring cup from a drawer, and when she turned around, holding the stainless steel thing in her hand, my jaw went slack.

Me. Sitting on a couch. Reading a book. Everything around me is black.

Him. His back to me, just like all the pictures I took ever since the day it happened.

Backs.

Heads.

Necks.

Faceless people.

He held something made out of stainless steel in his hand. Cup? Shaker? It smelled of vodka. His vodka.

“Dad?” I asked. But, of course, it couldn’t have been. I loved my dad. I put my half-eaten Kit Kat bar on the table beside me and rose to my feet.

“I want to leave.”

“No.” His hand locked on my wrist. He was sweating. He still had no face. Why didn’t he have a face? “No, baby.”

I watched the younger version of me as her face twisted with realization. She was not going to get out of that room. Not the same way she’d walked in, anyway.

“Please, I don’t want to…”

She didn’t get to finish the sentence. He pinned her to the wall like the masterpiece that she was and tarnished her into something empty and hollow.

“Jesse? Jesse? Honey?” Hannah shook my shoulders, and I finally snapped out of it. In front of me was a plate full of thick, fluffy, hot pancakes and maple syrup poured generously on top. Blueberries and cut strawberries made out the number twenty. And I’d officially lost my appetite.

“I made you the good stuff with the Sparrow Brennan mix that costs two bucks more, but your parents can handle it. What’s wrong? You seemed out of it.” Hannah wiped her hands on her apron, leaning against the counter and pouring herself a glass of OJ.

“Yes. I’m sorry.” I smiled, hurrying to stab a fork into the mountain of pancakes and bring a bite to my lips.

I forced myself to eat at least two, knowing how hard Hannah had worked on them, but for the life of me couldn’t taste their sweetness.

Something in me told me Mayra could not know about this.

I washed my plate, gave Hannah a hug and, when she wasn’t looking, grabbed the stainless steel cup and carried it to my room. I put it on my desk, staring at it, lost in thought.

What happened to me?

Since I didn’t have a shift, and Roman hadn’t answered me, I decided to pester Dr. Wiese. I called him twice, but he didn’t answer. Reluctantly, I walked over to Mrs. Belfort’s, my mind still on Shadow. I felt like I’d been neglecting Mrs. Belfort ever since I got a job, and I promised myself I wouldn’t be that person. The person all my high school friends turned out to be after The Incident. A user. A leaver. An asshole.

First, I took a lengthy trip by myself in the maze, trying to decode my most recent flashback. Yes, flashback. A chunk of my memory was missing from my brain, and I didn’t know how or what had happened to me exactly, but I knew that it had snowballed into a catastrophe that had ended up ruining my life.

I hadn’t been a virgin when I’d met Emery.

And whoever took my virginity, did it by force.

My dad died around the same time it had happened. I knew, because in all the flashbacks, I looked to be on the verge of adolescence. Twelve, maybe thirteen. Although I loved my father dearly, I couldn’t help but wonder—what did I know about him, really?

I knew that he’d cheated on my mom with another woman. That he’d had a lengthy affair. That’s why my mom had kicked him out the day he died. But I also knew he’d been nothing but amazing to me. He was the one to teach me how to ride a bike. To take me to school every day. He was the one to wipe my tears when I was sad and make me laugh when I was angry and tuck me back into bed when I had nightmares.

He read me stories about princesses and castles and dragons, and always changed the plot so that the princesses saved themselves from the fire-breathing villains.

He spent the extra buck on Band-Aids with the Wonder Woman branding. He made me his special mac and cheese with crushed Doritos whenever I had the flu because he thought I liked it, when really, I liked the attention. I liked his standing in the kitchen doing something silly for me.

I liked being loved.

Yes, he was a drunk, with vodka being his drink of choice. I remembered the bite of alcohol when he’d pressed his lips to my forehead when he’d kissed me goodnight.

I’d liked the sharp bite of it. It smelled like home. And I refused to believe that my home had become my hell. That he’d done something to me.

By the time I emerged back from the maze, my head pounded with unsolved questions.

Mrs. B was waiting for me in her usual rocking chair, swaying back and forth, her lip curved in a smile. She was wearing two coats in September, but that was brittle bone disease for you. She seemed lucid, exceptionally calm. Juliette handed me a pair of tweezers, tapping her cheek silently.

“Want me to weed out your whiskers?” I dragged my chair close to hers, wiggling my brows. It was best to pluck Mrs. Belfort’s chin whiskers under bright sunlight. She said that I’d be getting them too when I became her age, but the thing about being twenty is that you don’t actually understand the concept of getting old. You know it’s going to happen to you eventually, but you don’t believe it. Not really.

I plucked her hair for a while before she said, “Love is art. Some people shut their eyes and refuse to see it. Others visit every museum in the world. Which type do you fall under, Jesse, my dear?”

I blinked, staring at the maze. “I think I’m capable of seeing the beauty in art.” I swallowed, looking up at her and plucking another misplaced white hair floating from her chin.

“Good. Good. Because that’s the only way you’ll get to my age with no qualms. I know what you see when you look at me, Jesse, and I know it mustn’t look appealing to you. But understand this—I have no regrets. I lived life fully. Wholly. I loved freely, without doubt or jealousy. Whoever that boy was…” She tilted her newly-smooth chin to the maze, her smile spreading to her cheeks. My heart lodged in my throat—she remembered Bane? “That boy cares for you. Be smart and care for him back. No one should live a lonely life.”

She looked down at me and smoothed my hair lovingly. Like a mother would. Like Pam should. “Yes, I remember him, Jesse. I have a condition, but I’m still here,” she said softly.