Read Online Aftertime by Sophie Littlefield - Free Book Online

from running into dead shrubs and trees, and from falling in the dark. The nails were black and broken, her wrists creased with dirt. Her own odor was strong enough that she caught sour whiffs when she moved; she could only imagine how she smelled to others. “If you don’t mind,” she said, suddenly near tears and more humbled than she had ever felt in her life. “I’d like to stay.”
    “I was about done,” Gail said, flipping thick brown braids over her shoulders and stepping aside to make room. “But don’t worry, I’ll stick around and chat.”
    She stepped closer, her smile slipping when her glance fell to the nearly healed wounds on Cass’s arms. When she looked in Cass’s eyes again, her curiosity was edged with sadness.
    “Did you do that?” she asked, and for one heart-skipping moment Cass thought Gail knew, that she had guessed, about the attack, the Beaters, everything.
    And then the truth hit her, bringing clarity, but no lessening of shame.
    Gail thought she’d harmed herself.
    And she wasn’t wrong. Not about the story, only about the details.
    There were days…dark days, when the end of the evening approached with no relief in sight, no one to slip into the shadows with, no strong man to bend her over double until there was no room for her own regrets, nights when every shot she downed added to her screaming headache without ever bringing the blessed numb of forgetting. And on those nights, once or twice…or three or four times…she’d found that sharp thing, the shard of broken ashtray, the coiled end of the corkscrew, the dull knife a bartender cut limes with.… She found the thing and she traced the shape of her shame until she could finally focus on the pain and forget the rest.
    So, yes. Once, she’d borne the road map of shame on her skin. And was this really so different, these marks made by her own hands, in a fever she didn’t remember?
    She hung her head and blinked at the hot mist in her eyes. Immediately Gail put her hand, warm and comforting, on Cass’s wrist, in the small band of unmolested flesh between her hand and the first of the chewed places.
    “I’m sorry,” Gail murmured. “Please, just…just forget I said anything. Past is past here, if you want it to be. Everyone gets to start again.”
    Cass shivered, unable to speak.
    “Well, look,” Nance said, interrupting the moment with deliberate cheer. “Look, we’re just glad you’re here. You’re the first new face we’ve had in…well, a while. I’ve been going nuts here with all these yokels.”
    “Nance isn’t cut out for small-town living,” Gail said, withdrawing her hand after a final squeeze. The moment had passed, nothing more than milkweed on the breeze. “She’s way too upscale for the rest of us.”
    “I’m from Oakland,” Nance said. “I just came up here to help my mother when things went bad. I never dreamed I’d get stuck here.”
    “Nance isn’t much of a nature person,” Gail said. “She keeps wishing she’d wake up and there’d be room service.”
    “I put in this shower last year,” Nance said. “In my condo? One of those rain shower ones? There were jets along the side, steam…”
    “And I bet you never had any trouble finding someone to share it with you, right?” Gail said, winking at Cass. “Nance also doesn’t like the men here.”
    Cass dipped her washcloth into the warm water, savoring the sensation of the water closing over her fingers, her hand, her wrist. Slowly, she trailed the cloth in an underwater figure eight. “I’ll ruin this water. It’ll be filthy when I’m done.”
    Gail shrugged. “It wasn’t exactly crystal clear to start with. We just drag it up from the creek. We don’t bother to strain it or purify it when it’s just for washing.”
    Nance wrinkled her nose. “Yeah, it smells a little like rotting fish. I don’t know what we’ll do when we run out of shower gel to hide the smell.”
    “We’ll stink,” Gail said. “Just like we