Tara Taylor Quinn - The Friendship Pact

“Your folks were great, weren’t they?”

They’d promised Bailey they’d make sure that if she was sick, she’d get the best care available. They’d promised her they’d be there with her, every step of the way.

Mom was a stay-at-home mother, so she was always there—and Daddy, who worked in top management at a software firm, made enough to take care of one more if he had to. Besides, there was the money he’d inherited from his own father.

Bailey was fine, thank God. And now she had three drawers in my dresser and a lot of her clothes officially hung with mine in the big walk-in closet that used to hold shelves for all my toys.

We’d carted those up to the attic for my babies—when I was married and everything—to play with someday.

“I can’t believe my mom did this,” Bailey said now. “I mean I get why. Stan’s a jerk and she should’ve left him a long time ago, but for her to go and have an affair...”

I couldn’t believe that part, either. Not even with Bailey’s mom. Why make Stan madder? He’d found out a couple of days before and now Bailey’s mom had a black eye she wouldn’t go to the cops about and Stan was threatening to leave her high and dry with no alimony or furniture or car or anything.

“Stan seemed so nice in the beginning,” I said, shivering a little as I pictured the bearded man who scared the shit out of me.

“He’s fine until he starts drinking.”

“It sucks that he hid the whole recovering alcoholic thing until after they were married.” At least Bailey’s mom had been upfront about her own relationship with the bottle.

“And the hitting thing, too.” Bailey’s whisper changed.

Sitting up in bed, I stared down at my friend, my sister, the other half of my soul. “He didn’t hit you, did he?” I asked, ready to hit back. Funny, most times Bailey was the stronger one of us—the one who fought our battles. My job was to tend our wounds.

Or go to my parents to do it for us.

“No,” Bailey said. But she turned her head toward the wall and I was mad and scared all at once.

“Bail?”

I thought I saw a tear slide down the side of her face into the pillow. Leaning over her, I pushed her dark hair away from her eyes and said, “Bailey, tell me what he did to you.”

“It was nothing.”

My heart was pounding. “Bailey, tell me.” And then I was going straight to Mom. She’d know what to do. Where to go for help, even if Bailey’s mom wouldn’t call the cops.

“He...tried to kiss me.”

I could hardly breathe. I was freezing and frightened and... “Tried?”

“He was drunk and I kneed him in the you-know-where and ran.”

“When was this?” And why hadn’t she told me?

“This afternoon.”

Oh, God. And I’d been thinking her dark mood all night was because her mother had been caught having an affair with her boss—a partner in the law firm where she worked as a paralegal—and was getting a divorce as a result. We didn’t know if she was also going to lose her job.

“You were only home for a few minutes,” I said now, trying to wrap my mind around a world that had just completely changed.

“He came into my room when I was getting the red dress from my closet,” Bailey said. I’d been running errands with my mom after school and we were picking Bailey up to spend the weekend with us on our way home. My folks were taking us to a dinner theater in Pittsburgh the next night to celebrate the end of the school year. Bailey and I had both made the honor roll; I had straight As and she had all As and one B.

And we’d decided to wear the red dresses Mom had bought us for a Christmas dinner show we’d gone to last winter.

None of that mattered now. But it was what I wanted to think about.

She sniffed and I rubbed her shoulder. “Tell me everything,” I said. We stuck together. No matter what.

Bailey sniffled again. I swallowed, trying to hold everything in for her sake, but then I started to cry, too.

“The dress was on the top bar...” Her words were kind of hard to understand, all clogged up with tears, and still in a whisper. But she wasn’t sobbing. I almost wished she was. Sobbing came and went. These tears, they seemed like they could just keep coming and never stop.

I’d never seen Bailey like this before. Should I go get Mom now?

“I reached up for it....”

I could picture her there, inside the opened closet door—a single, pressboard thing, not like the solid wood double doors on my closet—her arm raised.

“I didn’t hear him come in....”

I rubbed her shoulder some more. I wanted to cover my ears like I’d done as a kid when Mom was telling me my grandmother had died. If I didn’t hear, I didn’t have to know and it wouldn’t be real.

“He came up behind me....”

I couldn’t stand the pain I heard in her voice. “It’s okay, Bail. It’s okay.” But it wasn’t. I had a feeling things weren’t ever going to be okay again, just like she’d said.

“He grabbed my breast....” She began to sob then, and I reached down for her, pulling her into my lap. I cradled her, rocking back and forth, whispering to her.

Neither of us had ever been touched sexually before.

We’d talked about what our first times would be like. A lot, lately. She’d heard it might hurt and asked me what I thought. So I asked Mom and she’d said it often does hurt the first time, but not always. And that it also could feel incredibly good if the man and woman were in love and took care with each other.

Bailey and I had talked about that a lot, too. About what “took care with each other” meant.

We hadn’t reached a conclusion yet, but one thing I knew for sure—the moments she was describing had nothing to do with “taking care.”

“I’m here,” I said, running my fingers through her long dark hair, hating a world that would allow such a horrible thing to happen to such a sweet, beautiful girl. “I’m here.”

We were a pair. What happened to her happened to me. We’d made that promise when we were kids, when we’d still been young enough to believe the world was fair and good.

I listened to her tell me how her drunk stepfather had groped her, shoving a hand inside the waistband of her jeans and down, slobbering all over her neck while he fingered her, before he’d turned her around to kiss her fully and she’d jabbed her knee into his dick and run.

He was a dick. And he was going to pay.

* * *

“No. No. Can’t do it,” Papa Bill stood in the Mitchells’ fancy tiled foyer as Bailey and Koralynn came downstairs together just before five on Saturday evening.

“Can’t do what, Bill?” Mama Di, Koralynn’s mom, sleek and slim and gorgeously blonde, her spiked heels clicking on the tile, walked up behind him. With him in his black tux and her in the body-hugging red silk dress, they looked like Bailey’s perception of Hollywood and they were her welcoming committee. Hers and Koralynn’s.

“I can’t possibly take these two out in public with us,” he said, his face serious. Koralynn paused. Papa Bill’s eyes had that look in them like they got when he was teasing.

Bailey stopped for a second before continuing her princess descent, her high heels sinking into the plush carpet on the stairs. After crying half the night and arguing the other half, she’d finally gotten Koralynn to promise not to say anything about what her stepfather had done the day before. But Koralynn had agreed, only because she knew it would be his word against Bailey’s and that Bailey would be dragged through humiliating shit for probably nothing, and because Bailey’s mom was leaving the jerk, anyway, so Bailey wouldn’t have to deal with him after this.

“What’s wrong, Daddy?” Koralynn was right beside her again, lacing her arm through Bailey’s, like she’d carry the world for both of them. And smiling down at her father.