Becca Ritchie - Hothouse Flower

“I had Ryke,” I say. “He’s been there for me.”

“But you didn’t have us, your family,” Rose says, clasping the box of tissues with an iron grip. “You know you can come to us with anything, Daisy, right? We love you.”

Lily nods in agreement. “Whatever it is, we’re here.”

I believe it, but they haven’t heard the whys yet. They just have part of the story, but I know I have to paint a clearer picture. I describe the easiest moments first. The ones that I’ve recounted to my therapist and Ryke a million times over.

The cameraman who broke into my bedroom.

The pissed off pedestrian that attacked my motorcycle and then attacked me.

But the story that hurts the most is after all of those. It’s the one begging to be released, pleading to be shared and let go. It’s just a matter of starting.

Beginnings are the hardest because they’re the parts that pull people in, that make them want the ends. And endings are the most painful, the parts that can leave you bleeding out.

I don’t have any more time. I just have to begin.

I stare at my hands, unable to look them in the face. “I was sixteen when your sex addiction became public, Lily.” I pause and take a deep breath before continuing. “I remember the day I went back to school. My friends asked all these questions.” At first I hesitate on repeating them, but I look up and Lily actually nods at me, encouraging me to continuing.

She says, “It’s okay.”

My sister’s strength floods into me, and it propels me to continue, like a gust of wind blowing me in the right direction.

Even if it hurts, I say it.

“My friends would ask: Does your sister just sit in a room and fuck all day? Does she bang girls?” I cringe as I remember more. “How bad does she want it? Would she fuck me? Would she fuck a homeless man?” I swallow. “And I didn’t have any answers for them. And I didn’t know if it was true, but I defended you anyway.” I’d still defend her today. I’d do it all over again. I can’t ever regret that. “The questions started to change though.”

“To what?” Rose asks with a frown.

I shrug. “They started asking me things. Like, do you do it all the time too? Do you like it in the ass, Daisy? Would you fuck me? Would you blow me?”

“God,” Rose says, whipping out her cellphone. “Who are they?”

Lily reaches for Rose’s hands and whispers in a small voice, “Let her finish, Rose.”

My fiercest sister reluctantly turns off her phone and waits for me to continue.

I rub my eyes and keep my gaze on the hardwood as the seriously deranged part takes ahold of me. Please say it, Daisy. Please don’t be a coward. I breathe deeply. “The entire time…I thought my friends, Cleo and Harper, were still my friends. I mean…” I let out a weak, tearful laugh. “I grew up with them. I knew Cleo since she was six, and I thought childhood friends were the ones that last…like you and Lo,” I say to Lily. My eyes drop to my fingers. I scrape the yellow paint off of my nail.

I see the rest play out in my head. I see the scene like it was yesterday. A flash bulb, a memory that surfaces to haunt me and to release me from this hell.

Cleo and Harper had called me to go shopping with them, but their breath stunk of booze. They’d been at a “brunch” party with a handful of other kids from school. Hunch punch was served apparently. And they said that I was talked about a lot, but they never said what. They just giggled and laughed, in a drunken stupor.

I should have left, but I was worried they’d do something stupid, like shoplift. So I stayed with them, and I rode with them up the elevator to Cleo’s penthouse apartment—where she lived with her parents and this pretty black cat named Shadow.

And then Cleo, with her silky blonde hair and coveted Birkin bag on her arm, did something…she pressed the emergency stop.

I smiled at her devious grin, thinking they wanted to pull a prank on maintenance. “What are we doing?” I asked.

“Seeing if it fits,” Cleo said, and she shared a furtive glance with Harper. They both giggled again. Cleo wobbled in her heels, and Harper dug her hand in a shopping bag, revealing a pink dildo.

My smile vanished. “What’s going on?” I asked.

“Some of the guys wanted to know,” Cleo said, “how many inches fit inside you. We told them we’d find out.”

I tried to laugh it off, charm her. She was drunk. Harper was buzzed. They didn’t know what they were doing, right? “Very funny,” I said. “Come on, let’s go up to your place.” I tried to hit the buttons, but Cleo blocked me while Harper stood off to the side, the sex toy in her hand.

The hairs on my neck stuck up in alarm. “Cleo, come on.” My voice was no longer joking. I wasn’t playing around. “It’s not funny.”

Harper waved the dildo at me. “You’ve probably had ones like this in you all the time.”

“Yeah,” Cleo said. “You’ll love it. Whore runs in your family.” And then Harper grabbed my arms.

“Stop!” I screamed. I jerked out of her hold and instinctively backed into the wall. I was frozen with this horrifying shock and fear, and then Cleo made it even worse.

She said, “If you don’t do this, we’ll make your life a living hell until graduation. Every day in the hall, every day in class.” I learned that the guy who prodded Cleo to do this to me in the elevator was Houston Boggs, a senior that she had a crush on.

She had to follow through, and if she didn’t she’d look bad in front of him, all talk, a tease. And she wanted to show him that she could play in the big leagues. She wanted to fuck me over, and I just wanted to be left alone.

“Stop,” I said. “Please.”

The waterworks came the moment Harper gripped my wrist and yanked me to my knees.

“Do it, slut!” Cleo yelled—as though I wasn’t even her friend. She laughed, and Harper smiled. And I cried.

I started unbuttoning my shorts because I thought—I can’t be tormented for the rest of prep school. I had six months left. Half a year. That was six months too many.

What was one moment compared to weeks and weeks?

But I cried.

I cried as I slipped off my shorts. I cried as I was forced to make a decision that had no good end. The longer I hesitated, the more Cleo threatened me—the more I feared. She said they’d break into my bedroom. She said they’d watch me while I was sleeping. She said that the whole grade would get behind her, rallying against me and my slut sister.

She said all of this with a slur, the alcohol glazing her eyes. And then I thought—I’ll get away. They won’t remember this in the morning.

So in my panties with the sex toy by my knee, I made a decision that would haunt me for six more months and counting.

I stood up and cried, “No.” I shook my head, my hair tangling at my waist. I stepped back into my shorts, zipping them with trembling hands.

And I pushed the girls out of my way. They were screaming behind me, tugging my hair, but I got the elevator moving, and when the doors burst open, I sprinted.

I sprinted, took the staircase back down, and I kept looking back—terrified, haunted.

The next day at school, my locker was filled with condoms.

The next day after that, two guys cornered me in the hallway and tried to give me a titty twister in jest and cruelty.

I always looked over my shoulder. I always locked the door. And I prayed for the end.

Graduation may have come. But my fear always, always stayed.

I wish I could go back and choose the other option. I’ve told that to Ryke before, and he said it probably wouldn’t have made a difference. Maybe he’s right.

“Daisy,” Rose says, her voice breaking.

I realize that I’m crying so hard. And both Lily and Rose are kneeling on the hardwood beside me with tears of their own. My throat burns, and it takes me a moment to recognize that everything swirling in my head came right out of my mouth.

That story—they heard every little detail. All the bits and pieces and the pain.

“It’s over,” Rose says, rubbing my back. “They can’t hurt you anymore. We won’t let them.”

I nod, believing her words. I haven’t been confronted by someone in months. Ryke’s made sure of that.

“Daisy.” Lily speaks, her voice surprisingly steady. She’s the one that holds my hand tight. I finally look up, staring into her bloodshot eyes that flood with tears. “I’m really sorry this happened to you. And I know…I know it’s hard sharing this stuff, but thank you for telling us.”

My chest swells, and I nod a couple times.

Rose wipes some of my tears for me with the brush of her fingers to my cheek, and she asks, “Have you told your therapist?”

“Parts,” I whisper.

Rose shakes her head. “Daisy, you have post-traumatic stress. It’s probably why you aren’t sleeping.”

My tears just keep coming, silently.

“You need to tell your therapist the rest, okay?” Rose adds, sniffing. She dabs a tissue under her eyes, careful not to smudge her mascara.

“I told Ryke all of it,” I murmur.

“And I told Lo about my problems,” Lily replies sweetly. “It’s not enough.”

I stare at Lily’s hand in mine. Her nails unpainted and bitten to the beds, but she has a beautifully strong grip, one that makes me feel okay and safe.

“Boys are like pillars,” Rose tells me. “Ryke is something to lean on. But they don’t make you move. You have to do that for yourself.”

“I want to be stronger,” I whisper. “I just don’t know how.”

“One step at a time,” Lily says.

“And you’ve already taken the biggest one.” Rose kisses me on the head and Lily tackles me with her hug. I smile into these tears, this sadness that is ready to leave.

I don’t think I’ve ever cried so much.

But it feels good.

I feel light. Airy. Like I can breathe.

RYKE MEADOWS

We don’t rush the living room. I walk back and forth in the kitchen a couple times, and then I see Daisy curled on the couch and Rose tucking a flannel blanket around her. Her black dress rises to her thighs as she sits beside Daisy, stroking her hair. Normally Rose would pull down the hem of her dress, but she’s too concentrated on her sister to notice. She whispers to Daisy, who tries to sleep.

Lily pads into the kitchen first, dried tear marks all the way down her cheeks. Lo pulls her into his chest, leaning against the cabinets while she wipes her face.

I’ve spent the last ten minutes explaining what happened with Daisy’s friends to both Lo and Connor. She asked me to do that part, so it would be less awkward. I would have told everyone months ago, but it wasn’t my place. That story is too fucked up and personal and she needed to talk about it with other people. I couldn’t do that for her.

When Rose’s heels clap into the kitchen, the tension breaks. Her blazing yellow-green eyes are on me, and my back straightens, on the fucking defensive. “I’ve tried to get her to talk—”

“Thank you,” she cuts me off. Surprise coats my face. I can’t hide it, but she continues anyway. “You were there for her, and if you weren’t, I don’t think she could have managed… So thank you.”

My throat squeezes, and I nod in reply.

Connor sidles behind his wife, and his arms slip around her waist. I notice how his palm rests on her stomach for a brief moment or two. His head lowers, and he whispers in her ear.

The silence strings through the kitchen, and there’s this unspoken feeling of regret, of wishing we could have been there to fucking stop it from happening. The most I could do was protect her afterwards, but it was hard while she was still living with her parents. She had to walk down the hallways and find an inner-strength that I couldn’t give her. I don’t think anyone could.

 Rose is the first to disrupt the quiet. “I can’t believe it was her own friends.”

Friends aren’t forever. Daisy used to tell me that a lot. One of her fucking theories. I wish I could disprove it, but we’ve all had shit luck with friends since the fame. Small price to pay, most people would claim.

“I never fucking liked her friends,” I say, stuffing my hands in my leather bike jacket. “They were fake.”

“I’m not surprised,” Connor adds. “Teenagers can be crueler than most. They feel above the law, especially the ones who come from our kind of lifestyle.”

Lo nods like he understands that. In prep school, he was known to be a fucking bully and be bullied. But he was also verbally abused as a kid—not an excuse, just a fucking fact.