Embracing the Fall (2 page)

Twelve-thirty in the morning and Ziporah had gone beyond worried to scared. Mark had
picked Cami up at six o’clock sharp. They were only going to dinner; nothing else
had been planned since they both had classes the next day. Maybe she was just being
a mother hen, but the Cami she knew was no night owl and wilted after ten o’clock.
She also would never, under any circumstances, go all the way on a first date, no
matter how cute the boy was, so the late hour was really bugging her. Z picked up
her cell and sent off the fifth text of the evening.

It’s super late C. U gotta call or at least txt. Worried about you grl.

Two a.m. arrived and Ziporah was frantic. And pissed. She was going to kick the crap
out of someone. Whether it was Mark or Cami had yet to be seen, but someone was getting
an ass-whooping. She was just shrugging into her jacket, having no clue where she
was going to go to look for them but needing to look anyway, when the door finally
opened.

“It’s about fu ...” Her words tailed off in shock at the sight in front of her. Z’s
mouth just hung open while her brain tried to make sense out of what she saw.

A mess of a girl stood silhouetted in the doorway. Z let out a cry when she turned
on the light. Hair that had been shiny and full of bouncing curls, was muddy and hung
in limp clumps. The bright and blushing face that had smiled as she walked out of
this room was bloody, bruised and swollen. Her lovely dress was as muddy as her hair
and looked as though it had been fed through a shredder. Even Cami’s legs were destroyed,
covered in bloody scratches, skinned knees and bare, filthy feet.

All this registered in seconds, but those seconds seemed to last a lifetime for them
as Z brought her horrified eyes back to meet Cami’s devastated stare.

“He hurt me, Z.”

October, five years later, New York

“Are you masturbating, Cami?” Cami flinched as her eyes flew about the room, trying
desperately not to look her therapist in the eye.

“Um. Well, umm.”

“We talked about this last week. You were supposed to try. It will help you take back
your sexuality. Help you claim it.”

“I know,” Cami hedged, “I tried. In the summer and spring I don’t have any trouble
doing it. It’s just hard to do in the fall.” She looked out the window at the view
of Central Park, with the trees clothed in bronze, gold and yellow. And hated that
she hated it. “Too many memories.” Too many similarities.

Mark had been a perfect gentleman during dinner. He’d flirted just the right amount
and had also spoken to her like she had a brain. He was interested in what she had
to say, and that had made her love him just a little. Her looks and shyness had always
made boys assume she was empty headed, so when Mark had acted as though he thought
she was more than a pair of boobs and a piece of ass, she hadn’t been able to resist.

When dinner was over and he suggested the ride into the country to visit a local pumpkin
patch and corn maze, she hadn’t even considered refusing. They’d driven along the
winding road, leaving the city further and further behind. Cami had been quietly thrilled
when Mark had reached out and gently taken her hand. He’d held it lightly and drew
lazy tickling circles on her wrist with his thumb almost the entire way, and she had
marveled at the riotous fall colors flashing under the street lamps.

When they arrived at the farm, Cami hadn’t noticed Mark wasn’t surprised that it was
closed. No, she didn’t clue into that until later. “Where are you going?” she’d asked,
“it’s closed.”

“C’mon. Let’s go through the maze any way. It’ll be fun.” She hadn’t thought twice
about it when he grabbed a blanket and a flashlight from his trunk either, because
he’d wrapped the blanket around her shoulders and told her, “Here, so you don’t get
cold.” She’d thought he was sweet.

Then he’d led her into the corn that was two feet above her and she’d giggled as they’d
zigzagged through the field, with the stars over head. The moon was so big and yellow;
it seemed as though she could reach out and touch it.

She had been breathless when he stopped them. They had made it to the middle, and
with the moon shining down like a magical spotlight, he’d slipped the blanket from
her shoulders so it spread at their feet, and kissed her. Slow, soft and as romantic
as the rest of the night had been. One kiss led to another and then another.

Then she felt him urging her down to the blanket.

Cami steeled herself and placed her hands on his shoulders. She would have preferred
that he know when to stop, not push it so far that she had to put on the brakes. But,
it didn’t dim his light in her eyes. It was college, and after all, he didn’t know
she was a virgin. “Mark,” she murmured as she pushed a little on his shoulders. “Mark.
Stop. We should go now.”

“C’mon baby,” Mark wheedled as he placed his mouth on her neck and sucked. “C’mon.
You’ve been driving me crazy tonight.” His hands snaked around to her bottom and he
squeezed her pelvis tight to his erection as he ground against her. “You know you
want to.”

“No.” Cami pushed a little harder, her passion fading fast as he kept grinding and
pumping against her. Kisses that she had found devastating in their passion just moments
before, she now found revolting as she twisted her head back and forth trying to dodge
his relentless tongue. “Stop it Mark!” She gave up all efforts to be nice about it
and shoved at him when he started again to pull her down to the blanket. “I said no.
Take me home. No.”

“C’mon. Christ. I’ll make it good. I’ll even eat you first.” This horrifying thing
was said just as he stuck one hand under her skirt, past her panties and speared two
blunt fingers into her untried and never before touched flesh. Cami went cold inside
and wrenched out of his arms with a feral screech. She didn’t yell or hit him, she
just turned and ran.

She hadn’t gotten far.

“Cami?” Dr. West said in her quiet way, “what are you thinking right now?”

“About that night. About how I wish I could go back and never go on that date.”

“But you know that isn’t possible. So, what is possible for you?”

Cami looked at the sweet and gentle doctor and wanted to kick her. Not that she ever
would, it’s just that the woman was so frustrating the way she made Cami think for
herself. She didn’t want to think for herself sometimes. Sometimes she wanted ...
ah, hell ... she didn’t know what she wanted sometimes.

“I can focus on today. I can take the life I have and be glad in it.” Cami repeated
the mantra with all the enthusiasm of a third grader reciting times tables.

Dr. West smiled and wasn’t fooled for a second. “Cami, have you ever considered exploring
your sexuality?”

“Exploring how?” Cami was perplexed. “What do you mean?”

“I mean that you tend to hide from your own sexuality. You’ve taken on guilt and blame
for what happened, almost as though you are punishing yourself for it. You turn away
from anything that excites you or gives you pleasure.” Dr. West looked kind yet stern
when she leaned forward and added, “You have got to stop beating yourself up for this.”

“I don’t beat myself up,” Cami protested.

“That comment about wanting to go back and not go on the date. That was a kick against
you. Not him.”

Cami opened her mouth to insist it wasn’t when the doctor rushed on. “By that statement
you are saying if
you
had done differently this wouldn’t have happened. You—not him.”

Nothing she could say to that.

“You went on a date with a handsome and charming young man who was nice to you. You
kissed him under the moon and stars, and it was lovely and romantic. The rest is on
him. Not you. And during the spring and summer and winter, you know this and never
question it.” She stopped for a moment and let that sink in.

“It’s because the fall is dark now. From September till December, it’s always dark
for me. I feel so helpless when I remember it. Weak and stupid and helpless,” Cami
confessed with a tiny sob.

“You were not weak; he was a wrestler. You were not stupid; you were trusting. You
had no reason not to trust. And the sad truth is that there was no one there to help
you.” Dr. West held up her iPad and scrolled through what Cami assumed was her file.
“Now, I have more on that thought, but first,” she continued, “let’s go over what
you did after. After this pillar of society left you battered and bleeding in a cornfield.”
Cami remembered
.

She’d been in shock, so nothing felt real. Not the pain, not the endless wandering
in the maze, not any of it. She’d stumbled and fumbled for hours trying to find her
way out of that corn. When she finally had enough and just pushed through the walls
of it, forgoing the trails, she’d eventually stumbled out into the pumpkin patch.
She must have tripped a dozen times over the fat orange fruits, with their prickly
green vines that shredded like sandpaper through her bare feet and ankles as she made
her way to the house that sat on the edge of the field.

The poor farmer and his wife … The farmer had raced out with his shotgun, looking
for Mark, while his tender-hearted wife had cried for her. She hadn’t let them call
the police. It made her panic when they reached for the phone. Panic or no, they were
insistent, but she managed to get them to agree to take her home to pick up Ziporah
so she wouldn’t have to face this alone. Then they took both girls to the hospital
from there
.

“I still can’t believe he got away with it,” Cami said in a whisper.

“Again, look to yourself and what you have control over. You did everything right.
You faced the police and the exams. You faced the scandal and the long drawn out court
battle. You did everything you could.”

“But it wasn’t enough. He walked away.”

“What did Ziporah teach you to say?”

“Justice would rather see guilty men go free than even one innocent man go to jail.”

Cami’s skin still crawled when she thought about it. All that humiliation of the doctor’s
exam and then the horror of the cross examination by the defense attorney, only to
have Mark found not guilty because he claimed it was the steroids. That he had no
idea that his ‘vitamins’ were actually steroids and that he’d been blindsided by ‘
roid rage
when she tried to run from him.

She had sat there with her stomach churning, while he’d sat on that witness stand
and cried. Looking at her with his perfect hair and perfect blue eyes overflowing
with tears, while he’d begged her to forgive him.

Well, she hadn’t forgiven him, but the jury had. They’d seen it as a terrible and
tragic mistake— an accident. No prior trouble of any kind for him and no other girls
had come forth during the trial to show any pattern, so the jury had let him go.

“He didn’t get off completely scott-free. He lost his scholarship and had to leave
school.”

“Yes but his parents were rich and just put him in another school.”

“Was that something you could control?” the doctor asked in her calm voice.

“No.” Knowing that she couldn’t have changed anything didn’t help her feel any better.

“Cami.” She leaned forward and placed her elbows on her knees, giving her an earnest
stare, as though compelling Cami to really listen to what she had to say next. “This
creep took something from you that you are never getting back. He took it in a brutal
and unforgivable way. He stole that from you.” She paused for a moment that stretched
until Cami could hear her own heart beat. “What I want you to ask yourself is: how
much more are you going to let him steal from you?”