Free Going Under by S. Walden Page A

matched my own.
“Actually no. I fucked every one of them.”
    I dismissed him with an eye roll. “Okay,
whatever. If you overheard a bunch of guys talking about secret
clubs and score sheets and having sex with virgins, what would you
make of it?”
    He screwed up his face in thought.
    “Just a hypothetical question,” I added.
    “Well, I think you’re talking about some
kind of sex club,” he said.
    “That much I figured,” I replied. “But score
sheets?”
    “Maybe they score the girls. How should I
know?”
    “You mean, like, how good they are in
bed?”
    “Yeah. Maybe they score the girls on their
sex acts.”
    “Have you ever heard of anything like this?”
I asked.
    “No, but then again, I don’t immerse myself
in the kinky sex culture that you apparently do,” he sneered.
    “Screw you. It was a question.”
    “Go away, Brooklyn. I have work to do.”
    “Yeah, whatever. Thanks for your help.”
    On my way out, I waved goodbye to Terry, who
asked why I wasn’t going to hang around after work and drink with
him. I headed for the parking lot.
    It was instant irritation—seeing Finn. I
thought he’d gone home, but apparently he was waiting for me. What
if I had to work the entire evening? Was he planning to hang around
my car for hours?
    I walked over to him. “Finn—”
    He cut me off with a kiss. My instinct was
to draw back and slap him. But I didn’t. And I didn’t feel any of
the things I should have felt: outrage, shock, shame. Instead, I
let him kiss me, standing there like a statue, trying to remain
emotionally disconnected from it. That didn’t last long, and that’s
when I should have pulled away.
    I pressed my lips to him harder, and he took
it as a silent invitation to open my mouth with his tongue. It was
all so familiar, sensual and frightening. I didn’t like how Finn
could make my body respond to him so easily, that I could lose all
resolve to be a better person with his kiss. I felt his arms snake
around my waist, drawing me closer to him, and I slumped against
him, letting him hold me while his mouth continued to explore mine.
Familiar sparks traveled the nerves up and down my legs. They
popped occasionally in various places along my thighs, under my
feet, and I was afraid I’d lose the strength to stand.
    Get off, get off! I screamed inside.
And then Beth’s face flashed inside my brain, and my resolve
resurfaced, fighting my sexual desire. Thank God the resolve
won.
    I pushed Finn away. “We can’t,” I
breathed.
    “Brooke—”
    “We’re horrible people!” I cried.
    “What are you talking about?” Finn
asked.
    Was he really so stupid or just completely
delusional?
    “We treated Beth like shit, Finn! We sneaked
around! We lied to her!”
    “You’re right,” Finn replied. “I should have
broken up with her before we got together.”
    “Why didn’t you?” I asked. I had never asked
him before.
    “I don’t know,” he admitted. “She started
getting really depressed. I don’t know why, but it seemed wrong to
break up with her when she was like that.”
    I knew precisely what he was talking about,
and I knew precisely why Beth was so sad. The heaviest part of my
guilt lay in the fact that Beth revealed her rape to me, trusted me
with the information, trusted me with her vulnerability, and I
continued to sleep with Finn behind her back.
    “But it wasn’t fair to you to keep dating
her,” Finn continued.
    I looked up sharply. Fair to me ? He
had a lot of nerve. I recognized my guilt, welcomed it, deserved to
feel like shit, and he wasn’t going to take that away from me.
    “What I did was wrong. I hurt my best
friend. No guy is worth that,” I said.
    I watched Finn tense. I didn’t mean to be so
insulting, but I knew no other way to get through to him.
    “So you walk away from me because of Beth?”
he asked. “She’s dead, Brooke.”
    “What are you saying? That we might as well
get together because Beth’s not here to see it? What the hell