Suzie’s House 370 : A Gentleman’s Discussion

“What would you do if you found out your girlfriend had been raped?” Gene asked the question out of the blue.

“I’d hunt the bast*rd down and kill him.” Drew didn’t consider his answer. It sprang to his lips without volition. Then he realized he probably shouldn’t have said something like that.

“Yeah.” Gene actually smiled and nodded. “I’d like to.”

He lifted his head from the plastic, chase-style, lawn chair to look where Gene sat on the other side of a little glass side table that Miranda had dragged into the yard before telling Drew he worked too hard and should take a break.

If he hadn’t been tired or crazy, he’d never have blurted out such a bad suggestion to a teenage boy. Who knows? He might actually try to kill someone.

“Wait. Are you telling me Tracy has actually been raped?”

“She says she wasn’t, but Lisa says she had bruises on her neck and from what Tracy said there was one hell of a fight.”

“Oh.” Drew let his head fall back to the bouncy rubber surface of the lawn chair.

“Well, no. That isn’t all. There’s also…. Um, it’s all right to talk to you about… um… private things. Right?”

“Go ahead.” Drew waved a languid hand in the air. It wasn’t like he and Gene hadn’t already stepped off the deep end of the conversational pool.

“I mean, I guess I could go ask Vin about it.” Gene sounded doubtful.

“He’s working a case. Haven’t seen him in a couple of days.”

“Oh. I didn’t notice.” Gene fidgeted with a loose thread on his woven chair, his expression morose. “So, the thing is, she wont, um… she won’t go all the way with me. I mean, she says she will, but when we start to do it she gets all weird and wants to stop.”

“Stop…” Drew tried to visualize what stop meant. There was a big difference between her shoving Gene off and her wincing. His mind got too vivid and he squeezed his eyes together, trying to not think too much. This whole conversation was already way past his comfort zone. It was like talking to Squirrel Girl from the house in Montana – full of impulsive and uncomfortable turns.

“Yeah. So I’m wondering what I should do. I mean, I think I might have really, really messed things up because I didn’t know, and now we might break up. And I don’t want that. I don’t want that at all.”

“Well, then don’t say things like I have to put out or you don’t want to see me again.”

Both Gene and Drew looked over their shoulders so fast they nearly got whiplash. Tracy stalked across the lawn with a look of murder in her eye. Her attention was entirely focused on Gene, with none to spare for Drew.

“And if you need to talk to someone about it, shouldn’t it be me? You didn’t tell him anything, did you? How would you feel if I talked about us with Lisa?”

“Don’t you? You told her what I said. Her and everyone else in the band.”

“I was upset!”

“And you think I’m not?!” Gene got out of his lawn chair. “Do you have any idea how I feel?”

“No. I guess I don’t. Why don’t you tell me?” She plopped down in an unoccupied lawn chair.

Drew threw and arm over his eyes and groaned.

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