The First Timers Club Pt. 09

"What are you talking about?" Ashley cried from her seat, her fearful eyes scanning my enraged face for some vestige of understanding. "Who is this woman you hate so much? Is she the one who hurt you? Tell me, please! Tell me who she is!"

"I can't!"

"Why not?"

"Because, I can't!"

"Just tell me!"

The truth burst out of me.

"It's your mom!" I yelled at the top of my lungs, and the girls fell silent. Courtney gasped and Ashley reacted as if she'd been struck.

"W-what?"

"It's...Erin."

Ashley shook her head, her eyes filled with horror. "No, no, no. That can't be true. It can't be her."

I slumped into my stuffed chair and cradled my head in my hands. "It's true, Ashley. I wish it wasn't, but it is."

And then I told them everything. I told them how I first met Erin and Clay, and my conversations with them on the river. Erin's flirtatious behavior at the party. Our encounter in the den later that evening and the things we'd done. My attack on her in her bathroom. The details of how she'd drugged me and the things she'd bade me to do. Her assault on me in the garage and the seductive offer she'd made to me.

I left out nothing. I told them every gory, salacious detail. Their faces fell and twisted into masks of disgusted shock as each new revelation added to the grotesque picture of abject depravity and degeneracy I'd painted for them.

Then I played them the recording of my torture of Erin. Their shocked expressions turned to revulsion. They stared at me and their eyes widened as they reacted to my vicious words with increasing horror, first pulling their feet up underneath their legs, then backing into the cushions to put distance between us until they'd nearly crawled over the back of the sofa. When the recording reached the moment of my lies about impregnating Ashley and my threats against Chelsea, Ashley covered her mouth and wept while Courtney put her arm over her shoulder to console her.

"You're fucking disgusting," Courtney said quietly when the audio file ended. She'd looked terrified to say it to me.

I wiped my face with both hands. "I know. I disgust myself."

Ashley rose from the sofa, holding back Courtney when she tried to rise with her, then wandered off to my bedroom and shut the door. She needed to be alone. Courtney and I exchanged brief, uncomfortable glances across the coffee table, but neither of us spoke a word to the other. What had already been said was more than enough to fill the room ten times over.

I went to refill my whiskey and brought Courtney a glass of wine, setting it on the table in front of her. Despite her obvious disdain for me, she picked it up and downed it in a few gulps, then got up to refill it to the brim and gulped that down as well.

When Ashley returned from the bedroom, she seemed subdued. Her eyes were puffy and swollen, but she no longer cried. She avoided looking at me and returned to her spot next to Courtney.

"You want to get the fuck out of here?" Courtney asked softly, rubbing Ashley's back. Ashley stared at the floor and shook her head.

"You lied to my mom about getting me pregnant," she said, and I realized she'd spoken to me. "You told me you can't have kids, so it had to be a lie, right? Did you lie to her about going after my sister too?"

Courtney's head popped up. I nodded, then realized Ashley hadn't seen it and said, "Yeah. I lied."

"Then why did you say those things?" she asked, finally lifting her head to look at me. "Why would you say something so awful?"

I slicked back my hair and rubbed my face, then breathed deeply and shook my head. "I don't know. To hurt her, I guess. To scare her so she'd leave me alone."

Ashley considered my response and quietly judged its truthfulness. "You'd never do anything like that, would you?" she asked, and I could tell the question unsettled her for no other reason than she'd felt compelled to have to ask it. I shook my head.

"No, never. I may be a lot of terrible things, but I'm not a sadistic fucking monster."

"You're not buying this bullshit, are you?" Courtney asked Ashley, her voice dripping with contempt. "He's fucking Satan!" She glared at me. "You let me suck your cock right after you buttfucked her. Twice! Fucking cherries my ass!"

I closed my eyes. "I know. I'm sorry, Courtney. I don't have any excuse for that."

"Why didn't you tell us all of this sooner?" Ashley asked, desperate to move the conversation past my anal encounters with her mother.

Even now, after all that I'd done, I could tell she still sought some kind of redemption for me. For a moment, I considered saying it was to protect her, but I told her the truth instead, because there was no reason not to anymore.

"I think because a part of me liked it. Your mother disgusts me, Ashley. You have to know that. She's evil and I want nothing to do with her. But there's something broken inside of me because, as much as I hate her, I can't stop thinking about her. I didn't want you to know about it because, deep down, I liked it and wanted it to go on."

My honest answer appalled them both, and Ashley looked like she would be sick.

"This is part of the reason I need things to end between us," I said. "As long as you're in my life, I'll always be tempted by her. She's so toxic, and I know she'd never leave us alone. I'd constantly find myself sucked into her scheming manipulations. I don't want that for myself and I don't want to put you and your family in the middle of it. I feel bad enough as it is that I let things get so out of hand. The only way to ensure our lives retain some kind of sanity and normalcy is to get as far away from you as I possibly can."

Neither girl responded right away. Courtney downed her third glass of wine and set down the empty stemware hard on the table.

"What's the other part?" she asked, her voice thick. "You said that's part of the reason, so that means there's something else too. What else haven't you told us? Do you have any more wine?"

I rolled my eyes. "Yeah. Hold on," I said. I returned with a freshly opened bottle from the wine fridge and she filled her glass to the top, spilling some on the table.

"I already told you the other part. I'm no good for you guys. I've been selfish and impatient and I've pushed all of you to your limits. I constantly worry that I'm going to seriously injure one of you. You all mean so much to me. I couldn't live with myself if I hurt you." I looked at Ashley and my mouth turned down. "I've already hurt you."

Ashley sat silently to think about what I'd said. Courtney still clung to her anger and disgust at me, casting resentful glares my way in between gulps of wine. She'd finished off the better part of a bottle already, and it showed on her face.

"How could you let me do that?" she asked, her tone bitter and her words slurred. "That was so fucked up!"

I sighed and shook my head. Ashley pushed Courtney's wine glass away from her lips and addressed me, desperate to head off further mention of her mother's ass.

"I won't lie to you. That was really painful, but you didn't do anything wrong. I asked you for it. Maybe I should have spoken up and said something, but that's not on you. That's on me."

Her words gave me little comfort. She was bending over backwards to excuse my behavior, and I wouldn't allow it. I thought about the first time I had anal sex with Brittney. I'd assured her that I wouldn't hurt her, and that if it didn't feel good that we'd skip it. I'd given no such assurances to Ashley. In fact, I'd done the opposite. I'd wanted her ass and I took it.

"Don't do that," I said to her, and she didn't know what I meant. "Don't make excuses for me, okay? You don't know any better, but I do. I'm older than you and I'm more experienced and I should have stopped sooner. I knew how much pain you were in, but I kept going anyway and, as a result, I hurt you."

Courtney nodded in agreement. "Fucking-A right, you should have stopped!"

Ashley's eyes narrowed. "And you don't do that," she said. Courtney and I both assumed Ashley had spoken to Courtney, but she hadn't. She'd replied to me. "Don't treat me like I'm some child. That's really patronizing. You taught us to go after what we want and to stop being scared little virgin girls. I knew it would hurt, but I didn't care, okay? I did it anyway and I'm glad I did because at least I had the courage to try. I've endured far worse pain in my life. Believe me."

She just didn't fucking get it. Like Courtney's proposition to make her my whore, Ashley didn't know anything. She was just too damned young and naïve and way too quick to forgive. She'd given a loser at the arcade a handjob because he'd told her he was in pain. Even after everything I'd told her about how manipulative men could be, she'd still let me force my way into her ass and then she'd apologized to me for it! Had I taught her nothing about standing up for herself?

"Fuck, man, I wish we were still going out tonight," I said absently. "because it's painfully obvious you still don't know shit about how to avoid getting used and maintaining control of a situation when you need to." I stood and paced to the kitchen.

"I knew I wasn't the right person for this shit," I muttered to myself, opening and closing the fridge and peeking into cabinets, looking for nothing in particular. "I must have been out of my fucking mind to think I could teach four virgins how to fuck." I slammed a cabinet door shut and turned to brace myself on the kitchen counter, closing my eyes to take a deep breath and gather myself. When I opened them, I fixed the two girls with a regretful look. "I'm really sorry, you guys. I fucking failed you. Epically."

Courtney seemed about to say something, but Ashley stood up, incensed, and cut her off. "You can be a real condescending son of a bitch, you know that? You're right. We should go out tonight. Just to prove how wrong you are."

Even in her inebriated state, Courtney had her wits about her. "For fuck's sake, Ash! Can't you see what he's doing? He's fucking manipulating you. He's using that same sad sack, mopey loser routine he used to steal your driver's license."

"Oh, you don't have to tell me," Ashley said in a scoffing tone. She crossed her arms. "I know exactly what he's doing, but I don't care. I'm going to prove that he doesn't know shit about what I'm capable of. We're going out tonight, and I'm getting that damned orgasm."

A smile crept upon my lips. Maybe I'd underestimated them after all.