Page 55 of Adam & Eve

She was seething, her whole body was visibly shaking. I saw it in her eyes that she was about

to make me regret bringing up the subject.

“Tell me! Tell me now, you motherfucker.”

She reached out and slapped me. Once. Twice, and then again. Crazed she chanted “tell me”

over and over again. I realized then this wouldn’t end well whether I told her or not. I’d pushed her

over the edge. There was no turning back.

Just get it over with, the voice said.

“Ok I’ll tell you,” I said holding up my hands defensively, successfully blocking her next

blow.

“I read your file, the one from when you were in the hospital. It said your foster mother caught

her live-in boyfriend molesting you.”

A sob left her mouth, and she sank to the floor. Cautiously I approached her, feeling tears

come to my own eyes. I wished I could go back in time. If I could have, I would’ve never confronted

her.

I got down beside her on the floor. She allowed me to pull her into my arms. “I’m sorry.

There’s nothing to be ashamed of. It wasn’t your fault. You were a child.”

My anger threatened to choke me. I didn’t know who I was angrier at, myself for causing her

to cry or her foster dad for taking advantage of her.

“Ha! You’re an idiot.” She laughed, it was cold and shrill. “I’m not ashamed of anything. You

don’t know shit.” She pushed away from me. “I liked it,” she confessed. “How does that truth sit with

you, Adam?”

“Liked it?” I couldn’t wrap my head around the thought of a fifteen-year-old girl wanting to

have sex with her middle-aged foster dad. “You liked having sex with some old man?”

She laughed at my expense.

“What if I did, Adam? What if I told you I liked the way he fucked me? What if I told you I

begged for him to? He was twenty-four, Adam. Not some old man you conjured up. The devil’s in the

detail, Adam. You called yourself researching me, but you missed that bit of information.”

I had missed that tidbit. I had simply assumed he was as old as her foster mother.

“He was twenty-four, and I was fifteen. That was only nine years. He was twenty years

Rose’s junior, and no one saw anything wrong with that. We should have been allowed to be together.