Chapter 48: 32I wasn’t in the right head-space
When I finally came to it, I was in another frat boys’ room, this timeying on their bed. However, now
Rochelle is right beside me, holding my hand. The room was almost pitch ck, but I could still see
her, Adam, Lorene, and a college boy that looked familiar.
It was the guy from earlier, the one that was with Rochelle. He smiles forcedly at me, almost in pity.
When Adam notices that I’m up, he rushes over to me, with both joy and sadness. He’s been crying,
he’s wiping tears off his cheeks now.
“Alex.” Was all he could say to me.
I was able to make up a smile, not assuring him that I was okay, but letting him know I was happy to
see him.
The room went quiet again, I felt like everyone was staring at me, even though they were. It took me a
while to make out any words, when I finally did the mood changed.
“Where’s Hayes?” I ask.
The room is quiet again, a dark quiet as if something had hap-pened. I look at Rochelle, on the verge of
tears.
“Rochelle?” I cry. She looks away before looking at the college boys whose room we bombarded.
That was enough to have him leave the room, then follows Lorene, then Adam. But I knew he’d be right
outside the door. It was now just Rochelle and I.
“Rochelle. I’m sorry.” I break out into a heavy cry. She sits on the bed tofort me. Rubbing my back
again and again.
“I’m sorry.” She says to me, before embracing in a hug.
“Is this still the 3rd floor?!” I start to panic.
“Jay is a freshman, so he’s on the 1st floor.” She states.
“Alex, what did he do?” She asks.
“Nothing Rochelle, I’m fine. I-I just got a little too drunk, and he tried to take advantage of me. But you
saved me.” I start crying again, she wipes my tears.
“Okay.” She smiles at me.
The room is silent, when Rochelle makes an unexpected con-fession.
“I think I’m a nymphomaniac.” Rochelle states. I want tough, but there’s dark tone to it, its heavy
honesty scared me.
The room is quiet again, but Rochelle seems uneasy. The longer the silence, the more I see her
keeping something in, it scares me. I’m scared that it might be about Hayes.
“Ryan….” She goes to say but stops halfway.
“I knew Ryan, back in middle school.” She says. As soon as she says that my stomach drops.
“Remember Justin?” She ask. I nod my head, but my stomach is pulsing.
Justin was her high school boyfriend, when she was only a middle schooler.
“Yeah. He raped me…So did some of his friends.” She bluntly states, but I could hear pain and
memories resurfacing.
I look at her, not knowing what to do. I didn’t want her to hurt herself with memories from her tragic
past. I didn’t want to feel that. I try to call her name, but she continues. The next thing she said, broke
me.
“Yeah…..Ryan was one of them.” She sniffs.
Coldness turns me numb, the room somehow got darker, Ro-chelle was fading right in front of me. I
lost all sense, just the intense rolling chills coating my body, felt them inside my spine. My stomach
couldn’t rest, it kept beating, in pain. I couldn’t produce any words, just tears. The pain was too much
for both of us, I just started crying in her arms.
“He put his fingers in me…I-I begged him to stop but he just kept doing it, kept kissing me, touching
me, grabbing me. Then he pushed me against the counter, on my stomach…..and pulled down my
pants…” I stop, because I’m out of breath, I can barely breathe. Ro-chelle isforting me. I force a
breath, a nerving swallow, but at least I could breathe again.
“If you would’ve entered anyter….” I fade into shbacks.
Rochelle taps me back, with a hug. When she lets go, I look at her and smile, a genuine smile. She
saved me more then she knows.
“It’s okay to not be okay Alex.” She cries.
She helps me to stand up, for the first time in 30 minutes standing up felt weird. I wasn’t drunk
anymore, but the trauma took a toll on my body, everything was still vibrating, and my insides were
sore.
I feel dirty.
We walk around the dark room until Rochelle finds a light switch near the entrance. Which is also
apanied by a mirror. This is the first time the entire night that I see myself. My hairs everywhere,
covered in puke. My eyes are smeared with mascara from the night be-fore. My clothes… the shirt I’m
wearing isn’t mine, it’s Ryan’s.
“What the fuck.” I say.
Secondster I puke in the trashcan 2 feet’s away from me. Ro-chelle rushes to my side, but I can only
smile at her when I’m done.
“So, you’re a nymphomaniac, huh?” I say to Rochelle.
“I think, that’s what my therapist says.” She beats. Secondster we bothugh.
“Rochelle!” I bump her. Weugh for a while until her smile lowers.
“When that stuffed happened in middle school, it changed me. Made me different, made me act
different, I had no choice. I had to ei-ther embrace it or let it take over my life.” She states.
“You own it.” I state.
“Yeah. Everyone thinks I own it. My dad liked that about me.” She mumbles.
The room goes silent. For a second everything goes cold. My watered eyes re at her with fear.
“What?” I stutter.
Before she can say anything, Adam barged into the room, with panic.
“We need to leave right now!” He paces his words.
“Where’s Hayes?!?” I panic.
When I go to look at Rochelle, I can see that she is annoyed by his name, and sighs. Then gives me a
look of pity.
“He’s like ckout drunk in the back of your car. Probablyy-ing in his own vomit.” She mocks.
I look at Rochelle she looks at me then Adam.
“He’s in Alex’s car, right?!?” She asks Adam, with fear in her voice.
Before he can say anything, there’s a loud bang on the door. Loud yelling andmotion is right
outside our door. I can depict a few voices, one was Lorene she was calming down someone. A mum-
bling drunkenly Hayes yelling at the top of his lungs, and Ryan.
I immediately panic and sit back on the bed, then get up and walk closer to Adam forfort.
N?velDrama.Org holds ? this.
“Lorene!!!” Adam yells outside the door to Lorene.
She responds back with a “you have 20 seconds to move away from the door or I’m calling campus
police!!!” Trick. Suddenly it felt like the world went silent outside our door. Adam gave it only 20 sec-
onds and nodded to me before opening the door. I stayed nged to him, and Rochelle to me. The first
person I see when I look up from the ground is, Hayes.
This Hayes was different from the one I knew earlier tonight, the one I loved. This Hayes was broken,
angry, aggressive, violent but he still recognized me. The next person I made eye contact with was
Lorene. She’s holding Hayes up from plummeting straight to the ground. Then next was Ryan, and as
soon as he sees me, he spits in-sults my way in front of the entire fraternity.
“You fucking whore!!!” Was all he could get out before Rochelle punches him in the throat, and his
penis.
“You’re fucking scum, you prick!” She spits on his face.
That’s when things started to escte. Adam steps in front of Rochelle in fear of what Ryan might do to
me or Rochelle. Then he sends another punch to his already bruised face. Thenes the-
motion again, people yelling, fighting.
However somehow me and Hayes were being pulled by Lorene and Rochelle outside. Everything was
spinning out of control, and I’m starting to panic. Then I feel someone grab my hand, it’s Hayes.
We finally make it to the car, and I struggle to unlock it. Hands shaking, Lorene takes the keys from me
silently and opens the car for me. She helps us all in the car, before sitting in the driver seat. Ro-
chelle’s in the passenger, and Hayes and I are in the back. I’m nowforted by a sweaty, alcohol
aroma young man that I can barely rec-ognize. Hayes is still pretty angry and huffing every now and
then. There’d be moments when I’d catch him staring at me. He mumbles to himself before going to
sleep on myp.
Without knowing, I feel tears against my cheek. It’s too dark in the back to see, but I’m sure they’re on
Hayes now. He’s sound asleep, and I can’t help but uce our hands, so I can pet his curly, sweaty
hair.
I watch him sleep for a while until a tap on my window brings me back to real life. When I look up from
Hayes, I see him, Jeff.