Uncle's Hands

SWITCH FLIPPED

My n*****s tightened against the cotton of my top. His words, the rough way he said them, l like he was barely restraining himself from touching me. My body hummed and vibrated with want. Words glued to the back of my throat, and my tongue wouldn’t unstick from the roof of my mouth.

“Must have slipped my mind, care to remind me exactly how you said it?” I whispered right back.

I watched with my head c****d to the side, as the lust in his eyes came to life like a roaring fire, waiting to consume everything and anything. I sucked my lip in between my teeth as I pressed my legs firmly together. I had never felt this way for any other male, guys my age, the ones slightly older, none of them. I felt attracted to them, we could kiss, even touch each other, but none of them compared to this. He was only speaking, and I felt like I was going to erupt. What kind of hold did he have on me?

“Zoey Tribbiani! I can’t believe you came right back to these people!”

At the sound of my father’s voice, my head snaps to the entrance, and I find him walking to our table with long purposeful strides, his face contorted into a mix of disgust and anger.

“Dad?”

He snatched my hand, pulling me up from my stool, his grip was vise like. I looked around us, the place was scanty since it was still daytime, but everyone’s eyes were on both of us. I was sixteen again, in places where I shouldn’t be, my father right there to pull me out, just like this.

My face burnt with embarrassment.

“Dad, stop it. I am not a kid.” I said, pulling away from his hold, it was too strong, too painful.

“Then stop acting like one!” he shouts in my face. I still, eyes wide in fright. Veins pulsed on his head and his neck.

“You never learn, do you? How many times do I have to pull you out of situations like this? "I thought you changed since you went off to college, but you come right back to this, to these people?”

He says these people like it was disgusting for him to talk about. My father always considered himself dignified, and anything less was a mistake he had to fix. Turns out a mistake like me was no easy fix.

“They are my friends, dad. They have names, and they have nothing to do with this.”

That only made it worse. His eyes widened so that I could see the red of it, my breathing paused, my body stilled. I don’t know why, since he had never done it before, but it felt like he was going to hit me.

“Hey man, she’s not a kid anymore, she can handle herself.” Uncle Levi whispered to my dad, placing a hand on his shoulder.

My dad’s nostrils flared, his hold on my wrist softened; he always listened to Uncle Levi. Uncle Levi… s**t, he heard everything, he saw everything, he witnessed my father treating me like a kid.

“Don’t worry, I will take care of everything. See you back at the house.” Uncle Levi whispered to me as both of them walked out.

I collapsed onto my stool, my wrist still hurting and my throat dry from the entire thing, my heart still hammered against my chest. I pluck a drink from the table and down the entire thing in one go.

“I can still drive,” Tamara says, nodding to the table to show that she hadn’t taken more than a shot.

I put my head between my hands, everything rushing to me now, the past, the aftermath, the running away. I anchor myself to the only reason I came back: Uncle Levi. Everything else dulled to a hum at the back of my head.

“Are you saying Janice and I cannot?” I say with a grin.

She grinned right back, she understood as usual. Tamara and I had been friends for so long we understood our unspoken words, and everything in between.

Her parents had been lawyers who loved to defend innocent citizens more than they loved their daughter. No matter what the case was, they defended innocent people, and they lost everything in the process, including their lives, and now she lives with her grandma, who couldn’t care less if she lived or died.

“Cottage right?” Hunter asks, snatching up the keys. Tamara argues that she is perfectly fine to driving and nobody buys it.

“Parents, am I right?” Janice asked, her head drooping from the side. This was her idea of a joke, since she was raised by her elder brother, and nobody knew the story of their parents.

I snort, “Once Jerold finds out you took his stuff again, you will be living on the streets.”

She lets out a big laugh. Her brother was the town’s official dealer, and after making sure she could survive on her own, he was always in and out of town. Nobody except Jerold knew where he was at a given time.

We were a perfect fit for each other.

We arrived at the Cottage, a small wooden house that was surrounded by water. A birthday gift one time. Courtesy of Uncle Levi, his words were,

“So I always know where to find you.”

My dad doesn’t know about it, and Uncle Levi doesn’t mind my friends hanging out here, neither does he mind what we did here.

“We agreed to hold you underwater until you stopped breathing,” Janice tells me as we walked the wooden beams to the cottage.

“If you could wait a few days before that happens, I would be grateful.”

Janice snorts. “Too much mercy for you.”

She goes quiet after that, and then in a little voice, something I heard only a handful of times, she goes,

“The college here is good, even if it is a community college, it’s not like you are a stellar student. Why did you have to leave?”

My heart squeezed, I shut my eyes, the memories threatened to overwhelm me.

“It’s the town Jan.” The excuse sounds stupid even to me. All four of us were stripped of a lot in this town. A lot of times after we had smoked, we made plans to travel around the world, then the plans seemed so real, so realistic, but the claws of a place like this dug deep into you, too deep.

“Welcome back fucker!” Jan screams, the small voice gone, as if she were a new person. She laughs and that was the last thing I saw before she pushes me into the water. My own laugh is swallowed by the bubbling dark water.

I come up for air and when my head bobs up, I find all three of them staring at me. They had forgiven me, mostly.

Hunter walked inside, to get me a towel most likely. The water was just right, not too cold, not too hot either.

“Now, tell us, what are your plans of sleeping with Mr. Hot and rich?” Janice asks with her arms crossed.

I raised my eyes to Tamara in alarm, she raises her arms in surrender.

“I may be high, but I am not stupid. Everybody with eyes can see you came back to f**k him.”

Pushing myself forward, I was at the edge of the water, my hand holding the beams as I stared at her.

“Hunter…”

She rolls her eyes again, “The puppy doesn’t know. Honestly, I don’t know how he hasn’t given up yet.”

Tamara gives me her hand and I took it. Pulling myself out of the water, I searched my purse for my phone. Tamara waves it in my face. Her secret talent: She must have taken it before I was pushed.

“Lucky for you, I have some information that might help,” Jan says dramatically. If she wasn’t high all the time, she wouldn’t have been kicked out of the drama club back in school.

“He and his wife haven’t been sleeping together.”

My brows fly into my hair. Another thing about Jan, she was always listening, just that she never looked like she was, so people dropped information carelessly around her.

“What?”

She shrugged, “I was at the salon the other day, getting my highlights in, and overheard the new Mrs. Wright says something like, Why wouldn’t he touch me? It’s been what, three months? He was all over me before, and after the wedding, it was like a switch flipped, and he wanted something else.”

Jan did a superb impression of Kate. But the information was even more impressive. Uncle Levi seemed to want something else after we kissed the night before his wedding.

Have I become the subject of Uncle Levi’s fantasies?