I woke when I felt her rolling out of bed. I could see in the scattered light as she pulled on that T-shirt and stepped into her jeans. She bent over the bed, kissed me, a nice soft kiss, and said, "thank you, David, that was fun."
And she was gone. I never saw her again.
It was still dark, so I went back to sleep.
I woke again, still in the dark, as Ashley crawled into bed with me.
I smiled and turned to her, planning to embrace her but her hands were covering her face, and that put her elbows between us.
And I could feel the soft shaking as she cried.
"What?" I asked, holding my voice soft and low.
"Tell me," she started but stopped and I could hear her crying some more so I just held her, letting my hands lightly rub her back, letting her cry it out.
"What?" I asked again as she wound down.
This time she got it out. "Tell me I'm not just a worthless cumdump," she said.
I laughed softly and said, "you are much more than a worthless cumdump."
She pulled her hands away from her face then.
"Ashley, what the FUCK!" I said, well, I yelled more like it.
I lifted my legs up and then rolled into a sitting position before stepping off the end of the bed, finding the light switch on the wall, and turning on the lights.
She looked like Sylvester Stallone after Rocky won the second fight. Her right eye was swollen almost shut, her upper lip was puffed out, and she had a hand-shaped bruise across her left cheek.
I didn't say anything. I just went into the kitchen, got some ice, wrapped it in a dish towel, and went back into the bedroom where I crawled up onto the bed beside her.
She winced when I laid the ice pack against the swollen eye but then I could feel her crying settle down.
I didn't say anything. I just tried to comfort her. As someone who has both won and lost fights, I had a pretty good idea of what she was feeling right then.
So I held her, using the dishtowel, as it got wet from the melting ice, to wash her face, assessing the damage. Her nose had been bloodied but it didn't appear to be broken. Her lip was a classic fat lip, but I saw no blood and, although I couldn't see, I doubted she had lost any teeth in the fight. That's a special pain and swelling and you tend to instinctively protect that. I know, one of my incisors was now part of a partial bridge.
When she finally managed to stop crying, she said, "thank you."
"Ashley," I said, "what in the fuck happened?"
She giggled, very softly, and then winced.
"The guy I left with wasn't really from the park," she said.
"And," I said, brushing hair from her face and putting the ice pack back against her eye.
"He had a motorcycle and said they were having a party if I'd like to come," she said.
"You know me," she went on, "I can't say no to a party."
She giggled again and I thought there was a little hysteria in her voice so I embraced her, holding her close and saying all of that calming shit you say in those situations. "It's okay," I said, "I've got you, Dave's here," you know, stuff like that.
Finally, she drew a very deep breath, long and shuddering. She smiled, a caricature of a smile through her distorted lips, and said, "make me a screwdriver, David, a triple please."
So I did. I helped her stand and then walked her into the living room, well, okay, the living area, of the travel trailer. Then I took my time, allowing her to gather herself.
I thought about it and found her a straw too.
She said, "thank you," and started sucking on the straw as I cleaned her face some more, making sure nothing was broken. It looked like she had taken that kind of a beating but nothing appeared to be.
She drank steadily for a minute or so, draining the glass and then holding it out to me.
"Play it again, Sam," she said, and giggled. I thought there might be an edge of hysteria in that sound but I made her another.
She drained that one too, as I held her and washed her face.
"Now, talk," I said, stroking her hair, almost petting her.
When she didn't say anything I did the two-fingers-under-the-chin thing I had seen my father do so many times, forcing her to look at me.
I kissed her forehead and said, "you are beautiful but you've been hurt. Now tell me what happened."
She managed a crooked smile.
"God, you are so sweet," she said, and managed to kiss me albeit an awkward kiss, her lips too damaged to allow much contact.
She took another of those deep, shuddering breaths and started.
Ashley's Story
He was handsome, David, and I just assumed he was part of the camp, you know. When he showed me his motorcycle, a big thing full of chrome and leather, and said that he wasn't from the camp but that he knew where there was a party I figured, "what the hell."
I felt young, you know, riding on the back of the bike, the wind and my hair blowing and all of that crap. It was fun.
When we got to the party, and it was somewhere in the woods and no, I couldn't begin to find it again, there were a couple of dozen people there. It looked to be all couples and I knew, right away, I had fucked up. Every one of them was dressed in leather and every one of them sported a bunch of tattoos.
"Look what I found," he said and no, I never did learn his name, "entertainment."
Well, hell, I shed the last of my modesty and my inhibitions long ago, you know, and when he started tugging on the hem of my T-shirt I figured "fuck it, it's not like I'm a virgin" and raised my arms.
He stripped me naked and they were all hooting and hollering, calling me granny and piggy and I don't know what all. But I knew I was in trouble and decided to make the best of it.
One of them came to me, no names but he was obviously the leader, and said, almost politely, "on your knees, grandmother."
So I got to my knees.
He grabbed my hair, jerking so I had to look straight up, my neck bent painfully.
"Now grandmother," he said in that same, almost polite voice, "if you bite I'm going to cut your tits off, one at a time, and cauterize the wound with that fire over there," and he pointed to a fire int he middle of the clearing, not quite what would qualify as a "bonfire" but more than a "campfire," "and then I'll do the other one," he went on, "and your fingers and your toes and you'll spend a very bad weekend dying."
He smiled then.
