The Unnamed Nightmare

“I hate Mondays!” Maria moans, flopping onto Grant’s bed and jarring both me and his laptop, balanced on my lap.

I laugh, “Well then you and Garfield have something in common.”

“Wonderful,” she groans, “I have something in weight with an overweight orange cat.” She lifts her face slightly up from its burrow on Grant’s comforter.”Grant, you almost done with that coffee?” she calls.

“It’s goin’ Maria.” He replies, coming over to sit beside me on the bed. Maria buries her face back in the covers.

After Grant and Maria’s last class of the day, we all came back to Grant’s room to rest and relax. He made coffee and heats up the leftover pizza from his dinner last night, and Maria and I settle on his bed, happily engrossed in Scooby Doo’s Mystery Cruise.

Grants leans over, kissing my neck and I smile, growling deep in my throat: my one weak spot and he finds it within a week. Maria sits, curled up in a blanket, watching the movie, and doesn’t even look up when I turn around, wrapping my fingers in Grant’s hair and kissing him. He picks me up, carrying me into his small, box-like bathroom, and sets me down, kissing down my neck and chest. His hands stray to the button on my jeans.

“Grant.” I say, pulling his hands away, setting them firmly on my waist.

“Cecillia, please?” he asks, pushing me against the wall and kissing me harder. “I really want you.” His hands are back at my jeans; I try to push him off, but his full weight has me pressed against the wall, pining me.

“Grant. No. I don’t want to.” I say, seeing the outline of his face in the darkness. I’ve heard about rape, but never thought that it would happen to me, especially with Grant.

“C’mon, Cecillia. You got me all worked up. You don’t want to be a tease, do you?” he hisses into my ear, pulling my hand down to his zipper as he speaks. I pull my hand away as if I’ve been burned, while my mind starts working over time: Doesn’t no mean anything to this guy? Maybe if I just keep saying it, he’ll stop, just ‘cause I get annoying, right? He won’t go through with this, not with Maria in the other room! Doesn’t he realize that I tell her everything?

“Grant, no. Stop. I don’t want to.” I plead. I say it forcefully. I repeat it until it gets annoying, even to me. He has me pinned; I try to push him off with my hips and legs, since my arms are pinned, but he just takes it as a sign of passion and pulls me closer, groaning through lips mashed against mine. He has my jeans unbuttoned, one hand inside of my underware. Finally, I do all that I have left- I zone out, focusing on one corner of the ceiling. I feel as if I’ve just gone completely numb, as if every emotion that I could possibly feel ever has drained out of me, and now there is just nothingness. After what feels like two or three eternities, Maria knocks on the door.

“Yall have been in there forever!” she whines. “Kyle says that if you shake it more than twice, you’re playing with yourself.”

Grant laughs and I get up, dressing slowly, knives and long knitting needles stabbing every inch of my body below the waist. I’m thankful that my best friend has come to my rescue, somewhere deep down in the part of my mind that never really shuts down. Pulling up my jeans, I run my fingers through my hopelessly knotted hair and avoid Grant’s eyes, following me around, even as he pulls his own clothes back on. I run my hands over my face and closed eyes and feel moisture- I was crying and didn’t even realize it, something that , up until now, I thought only happens in books and movies.

I walk out in front of him, still feeling as if there was a gauze veil separating me from the rest of the world. Grant was- as my great Grandpa would say- smiling like a pig in shit, as was Maria, making me feel like I have missed out on some huge joke that they have been told, and they aren’t willing to let me in on it quite yet.

Admittedly, I was embarrassed. Quickly, I left the dorm, head to my car and, after I get there, sit with my head propped up on the steering wheel, replaying the whole scenario in my head. I should have fought, I think, and suddenly feeling dirty, all the way down to my bones. I strip off Grant’s sweatshirt and throw it into the backseat. My hands shake as I try to pick up my phone and call someone, anyone, to come get me; but, if I call someone, I argue, there are going to be questions, serious ones that I don’t want to answer. Again, I replay the episode: I stopped saying “no”, right? I didn’t fight him, or even attempt to. No one in their right mind would call what happened rape. Rape is like those videos they show us in P.E. when we were in middle school: when they hit and clawed; where the boys had beat them up to make them still enough to finish what they wanted. In none of those videos did the girl give in. No, what happened was just sex, that was all.

I drive home, still in a fog, and get into the shower as soon as I walk in the door. The hot water runs and runs, fogging up the mirror, the steam making it hard to breathe. When I feel as if my lungs will explode for the humidity, I open the bathroom, then get back in until the water runs cold.

Yeah, it was just sex.