She hadn’t had this much energy since...well, before everything happened. Her legs moved on their own accord; she went straight up to the elevator, but the doors shut right in front of her, and the people inside just stared at her rather than pressing the “open doors” button like absolute assholes. Rather than waiting, she found herself taking the stairs, and she sped up them with impressive endurance, a trait which must have been hibernating last semester when she took her running class. At least rushing this fast didn’t make her sweat. She already looked a mess with her hair in a half-done braid and sweats. She didn’t exactly plan to run into anyone while doing laundry at eight in the morning….
Cat’s hands shook when she approached Peter’s door. She tried to breathe deeply, to keep her head despite the thickness in her throat that made it all so difficult. Her face was hot to the touch, vision blurry. Her fist slammed against the door three times before her lip started to quiver. No, she said to herself, stay angry. But the silence from the other side of the door was almost too much. Was he not in?
She’d finally felt something, like she woke up from a long nap, and he wasn’t answering? Absolutely unacceptable.
“Peter,” she called into the crack of the door, knocking again. “I know you’re in there!” She wanted her voice to be loud, confident, but it tapered off so weakly.
Finally, the knob began to twist, and the door cracked open. She held her breath; he opened the door so slowly, groggy; his hair completely sloppy and unkempt, his brilliant, green eyes half-hidden behind his eyelids. At least he looked just as disheveled as she did. He seemed to care more than she did, tugging at his pajama shirt and pulling up his boxer briefs. If she hadn’t been so focused on keeping the kindling in her stomach aflame, she would have let him change first.
But Cat shoved at the door to push it open more, using the only bit of angry energy she had left to stride into his dimly-lit room. Peter’s arm that held the door hardly resisted her shove, and just fell to his side. She didn’t even fully look at him until she was in the middle of his room. Through the shadows of the blinds, she watched him, quivering, as he shut the door. Just that one movement seemed to wake him out of his sleep fully, and as he raised a hand to rub at his eyes.
She wanted to start yelling, to scold him for not stopping the rumors, but her words faded away. Peter’s soft face slowly came into her focus; his brows furrowed, and despite how she stood so hostile and barged into his room, genuine concern filled his eyes. It made her knees tremble. She may have felt awake now, but the rest….
“Did something happen?” Peter asked after she failed to announce the reason for her visit. His words tugged at her, disintegrated the heat in her stomach. Now it rose to her eyes, and she blinked over and over again to try and maintain her focus. But when she took in a breath, despite her best effort, a hot tear ran down her cheek.
“I--I just had to tell Cam--” The sob came out faster than she thought it would. Something inside her chest unraveled, and now even though she covered her face to try and hold everything back, she wasn’t strong enough. “Oh, God….” Her hip fell into the soft edge of his mattress, begging to take some weight off of her shaking legs. Peter was at her side in an instant, but all he did was act as a whisk, mixing every feeling that rushed to her chest at once.
Anger. Anger that she had to be here, dealing with this, that Nate was such a shitty person. That now any reputation she tried to build was completely dependent on a rumor spread by stupid boys. Despair from being so lonely, from keeping this bottled up so tightly that she hardly felt anything anymore. Fear that everything was coming to light, that people would look at her differently, that they would whisper about how weak she was. The warmth from Peter’s hand on her shoulder stirred everything slowly into a messy blend that tugged at her heart. Cat tried to wipe away the tears that now free-flowed, tried to sniffle enough to let herself breathe out of her nose, but every effort was erased by a new, pulsating sob.
Eventually, her legs buckled; she slid down the side of Peter’s bed and onto the floor to hold her knees, and though she couldn’t open her eyes for longer than a second at a time, she was aware that Peter knelt beside her, his hand now rubbing up and down her back slowly. He wasn’t counting, but he moved his hand against her spine so methodically and slowly; each vertebrae he ran his fingers down marked a second, and she understood immediately that she was hyperventilating. Subconsciously, her breaths began to match his silent advice.
Cat sucked in as much air as she could, struggling to compose herself. This was Peter’s room, for Christ’s sake! What was she doing? She came here to scold him for spreading rumors, not...to just utterly crumble into a pathetic puddle to the point that he had to remind her how to breathe properly. She didn’t come here for him to comfort her, but….
“Why--why is this happening?” she finally managed to utter. Through her swollen eyes, she finally managed to look over to Peter, who just watched her, passively keeping time. His hands were always so warm, his expression so soft and patient. It slowed the world for just a bit, enough to let her catch up.
Despite herself, the few minutes of sobbing and asking stupid questions at him began to solidify her feeling on the ground. She could breathe a normal pace; and though she kept wiping snot on her sleeve and couldn’t breathe out of her nose, her heart slowed and offered her the tiniest of lucid moments.
Finally, she wiped at her eyes, the salt accumulating on the corners of her eyes.
Cat braced herself, then faced Peter to ask, “Why did Cam say that we…?” She couldn’t bring herself to say it. But based upon Peter’s expression, she didn’t have to finish the thought. He and Cam had apparently been fighting about it for a few days, now. His dimples punctuated his frown. And although he wasn’t keeping time for her breathing anymore, he still held his hand there, heavy and hesitant.
“Nate started saying that….” She waited for him to finish, but it seemed like the words were too foreign for him, too.
“And you didn’t deny it?” Her hand twitched into a fist for just a moment, but Peter looked away.
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“I was going to, but….” His gentle fingers slowly peeled away from her back, eventually reached up to rest on the side of his bed. Her emotions must have been like oil and water; the minute he stopped whisking them together, she could feel it all separate, tear her apart like she was some unstable concoction. She opted not to focus on that, and instead steeled herself to try and keep it all behind a wall, now.
“If Cam doesn’t believe you, no one else will, will they?” she asked quietly. Peter shrugged.
“I don’t have--I didn’t tell Cam anything, and he took that to mean I was guilty of--of--stealing you or something--and with you being so distant lately, he just kind of ran with it and took Nate’s side.” It was such a shock to even think of being with Peter, of him saying it like that out loud, stealing her. She couldn’t breathe when he spoke; it just made the hairs on her arms stand on end. How could Cam even think that?
For a brief moment while she tried to see things from Cameron’s perspective, she saw herself drunkenly sitting on Peter’s lap to kiss him in the hot tub at Hannah’s party; she saw herself giving him the first tamale that her mom sent, holding his hand under the table after keeping his drunken secrets, and how she’d now gone to this very room intending to see Peter as many times as she had Cam--and now, running in, crying…. She snapped her thoughts back. She wasn’t going to justify Cameron’s part in spreading rumors. He could have just asked her!
Cat brushed some of her loose hair out of her face. “And now the whole team, and God knows who else, is just accepting what Nate says as some stupid fact?” Peter didn’t answer her. Cat grit her teeth; the frustration served as an adequate replacement for Peter’s metronome like hand. “So that’s it, then?” He pursed his lips. “I’m either a two-timing whore or some alcoholic slut that went and got herself drugged?”
Peter recoiled, shocked at her words for whatever reason, shaking his head. “No one’s saying that.”
“Those are my options,” she spat. She could hear her dad in her ear, now: My stupid daughter went and made herself a statistic!
“You do realize you’re a victim, right? Nothing you said or did could have changed anything.” At that moment, she didn’t know if that was better or not. His option made her less guilty, but a hell of a lot more terrified.
“Why didn’t you just say nothing happened?” she demanded instead. He sighed.
“I tried--but--look, if I said I was trying to get you out of there, it looks bad. People ask why. If I say nothing happened--people saw you. You couldn’t exactly walk. You were holding onto on me and Georgia, and it either looks one way, or….” Cat struggled to remember that night. But other than vomiting in the toilet and having a panic attack in the middle of the street, everything else was distant and blurry.
She shut her eyes, letting one last tear fall down her cheek. If she couldn’t walk, it must have looked like she was hanging on him in either a druggy way or a flirty way--and the implications were worse for the former, without context. Cat curled into herself a little, her arm pulling at her leg as she set her forehead against her knee. Peter remained silent, but she could hear the gears ticking in his mind. In about three seconds, he was going to tell her….
“You can talk to someone--”
“Shut up,” she muttered quietly.
“Like Georgia said, you’re not the only one to go through this--”
“I said shut up!” She couldn’t remember what Georgia said. But what would that do to comfort her, by saying others had gone through this? The fear, the vulnerability, not to mention the awful physical side effects? Why was this something that more than one person ever had to go through?
“If you even just told the captain, Thomas--” She interrupted him with a scoff.
“And what?” She snapped her gaze to him. Peter bit his lip, caught in his unfinished thought. “And just go up to him without evidence and accuse Nate of….” Her tongue tasted like rust. “And then he goes to Nate, laughs about it, and then what? He’s telling everyone I was with him!”
“You can report Nate--”
“With what evidence?”
“Georgia and I will--”
“Are you kidding me?” Cat interrupted, letting her legs fall. “The two people I supposedly slept with while snubbing Nate? Yeah, sure, that will work!” Ugh, she sounded hysterical. Why did she bother coming here? She wanted to know why he let these rumors spread, why he didn’t snuff them out at the start. Well, she could have figured this out on her own.
Cat shoved herself off of the ground, despite her aching knees, the screaming of her head. She felt so heavy. Peter still sat there, staring at the ground, seemingly guilty.
“Whatever,” she said quietly. “Fine. Tell everyone we slept together so you’re not the rapist. I don’t care.” But she did care. She cared a lot. Cam, Nate, Peter--how many members were even on a water polo team? Did it look like she was just making her rounds? She has a type, she remembered Nate saying about Kelsey. At the time, she didn’t even realize what he meant by that. She should have said something on her behalf. Now everyone was saying the same thing about her.
Cat half-expected some sort of clever quip from Peter, but when she looked back down to him, he just continued staring at the floor. She shook her head and walked to the door, but the energy of the room shifted. She could hear Peter twist to face her, and quietly, as her hand touched the knob, he said her name so softly, “Cat….”
Her heart stopped right in her chest, took her breath with it. It was as if even if she didn’t hear him, her body would have reacted to his words. She found herself turning to look at him even though she didn’t plan to. Peter looked up at her, gentle, tender. “Please. Even if you don’t report him, you can still talk to someone about it.”
Her throat was so thick. She shook her head. “What difference would it make?” Before he could answer, she continued, “He’s still here. He’s still--” Her words were unsteady in her mouth, no matter how hard she clenched her teeth. “He still a-almost--”
Peter sighed. “It’s not about him.” Cat didn’t have a response. She ached all over, her brain screamed at her for coming here in the first place, for breaking down on Peter’s carpet, humiliating herself further. Had she any energy to suppress her thoughts, she wouldn’t have even realized she felt better after being there.
But now she had confusing feelings like that swimming around in her brain, too.
----------------------------------------
Cat left her clothes in the washing machine for two hours longer than she should have. She couldn’t return to the laundry room. Not after what she said to Cam…. Instead, Cat holed herself in the bathroom until she knew Hannah had class, and spent the rest of the remaining hour curled in a ball on her bed. Her alarm on her phone went off, signifying she had class in thirty minutes and to prepare for it, but she dismissed it. No way could she show up like this.
She figured it was safe at about ten, when Hannah was supposed to have been in class for an hour, when Cam’s laundry should have been done. She was able to retrieve her clothes and put everything away while ignoring all text alerts.
By the time all her shirts were folded and her dresses hung, Cat had been looking to her bed longingly. The sheets were pulled up as a way to keep her from crawling back into it. The tiny barrier failed. Her chest ached, her head was still stuffed, and she was in no different place than two hours ago.
Except physically, of course. Now she crawled into bed rather than crying next to Peter’s.
And now that she thought about it, lying in bed, alone, didn’t feel quite as nice as when he kept a tempo for her breath with his hand running along her spine, gentle and consistent. With her window and door locked, her phone on silent, she was safe here. No one could pry at her with words of pity or tell her to do anything, or echo vicious rumors to shame her for anything she got herself into. No one could hear her thoughts, could tell that the only way she was able to soothe herself to sleep was by imagining Peter’s soft voice counting in her ear.