I change the strings on my guitar and tighten them, some instrumental tracks I worked on last week playing as I work when they show up and I am relieved.
"I am losing it over here." I say and take the beer he hands me and crack it open. They both watch me closely as I pound the beer.
"Something happen?" Chad asks and sets his gear on the stand in the sound booth. I hand them my phone and let them read the interaction between us this morning.
"What the fuck else does she need?" I look to Noah for the answers.
"What the fuck was the worst of it and that bad?" Chad asks and I feel like shit for not thinking about him reading it, not knowing what the bad was.
"Jen was brutally raped by four dudes in a drug deal the night before she brought Axe to Cal's folks." Noah says, dropping one hell of a bomb on Chad.
"What the fuck?" I yell and look at him with complete shock. "Don’t tell her shit to just anyone!"
He takes a bite of his Low Mein they brought and looks at me like I’m the asshole. "It’s Chad dumb ass, the second-best people to talk to when dealing with a woman who has been raped. He's not a gossip whore or a clown. He can help you understand it."
Meanwhile Chad looks sick and sits slowly looking at nothing. "You okay?" I ask and steal some of Noah's noodles.
He looks up at me, sad eyes and concern. "Jenny was raped?"
I realize as does Noah, that to him this was new, ugly and as her friend it saddens him.
"Dude, I’m sorry. I have had the time to adjust and Noah has known forever." I say and hand him a beer.
"You’ve adjusted to four men brutally raping the woman you love?" He asks me in a seriously annoyed tone.
"Love?" I ask and both Noah and Chad shake their heads.
"Dude, so not the topic to debate right now." Noah says and I see Chad, still in shock and decide he is right.
"I see daily the way it twists Carrie up. She carries so much burden over her abuse. What she could have done differently and still to this day she needs Noah to pull her out from time to time, though our Trust me game is nothing like theirs. I have to be understanding, no matter how brutal it gets and there are times I can’t deal."
I hate the reminders of what she and Noah survived. Their past reads like the worst horror scene ever created, and dealt to them by the hands of their sadistic father.
"How do you feel knowing he is behind bars?" I ask, because I am seriously getting involved to catch these lowlife fucks.
"I would feel better if he were dead. Don’t give a fuck by the means. Let the scary mother fuckers get him, let cancer get him...fucking let him hang himself. Just want him six feet below. I settle for prison."
Noah raises his beer. "Cheers to that, but I remain hopeful."
"I want her to go to the cops." I admit and wait for their reaction, yet both seem to ponder it.
"She won’t." Noah finally says and shakes his head. "We wouldn’t either. It's a pride thing. It's easier to keep the secret even if it festers than to admit to strangers and the public in our case that you were weaker than the demon that tortured you. Heaviest pill to swallow and not choke on it. Jen will never rat them out for many reasons."
"You seem okay with that. She deserves justice." I say and scrub my hands over my face before linking my fingers behind my neck.
"Cal..." He says and rests his arm on the production desk. "Jen is from the ghetto. The streets. It is all she knows and those are the laws she lives by. She might hang with the rich, but she is white trash beautiful and those are her thoughts not mine. She won’t rat those fucks out just like I didn’t rat the bickers out. Snitches get stitches and you don’t seek the taboo out and then cry when it hurts you. Carrie and I came from money, but we lived on beans and rice and whatever scraps of happy we could find. There is a different world neither of you could understand and it’s because you had what we didn’t. No better no less, just living on a different set of life’s rules. Hard knocks are a bitch buddy."
I try to take in what he says and realize I know very little about Jens life. When we were young and hung out, we stayed on the clean side of Gig, never beyond the bridge. I only crossed into her world once... she always came to mine.
I was raised in a moderate sized home full of love and vacations and big Christmas’s. I never had to work for my guitars or bikes or cars. Good grades, dinner on the table every night. Nothing bad happened in my world and evil was for other worlds not mine. I never knew it existed until I met Carrie and Noah.
"I want justice." I pause, knowing it isn’t true. "Fuck that I want vengeance. Viking shit. I wanna hurt them in a way they will forever suffer. It's fucked up."
"Me too." Chad says and I believe him after his rant on Cody Beckett.
"Keep it to yourself, especially with her thinking she deserved it. You'll piss her off." Noah says and Chad sighs.
"She thinks that?" He looks so lost and Chad is the heart of us. Nothing about emotional shit freaks him out. Noah is strength, Chad is heart, Shame is funny and I am awesome.
