Trio of Mates

Daphne

I should have known something was wrong the second the room started spinning without me.

One minute I'm laughing at something my boyfriend Silas says, my second vodka soda sweating in my hand, and the next the whole club tips sideways like the floor forgot how to hold itself flat.

"Are you okay, Daph?" he asks, slinging his arm around my shoulder.

"I don't think so..." The words come out slurred. "Something is wrong."

"Why don't you have one more shot. It's your birthday. I know you're a lightweight but I'm here. And if you get high, I'll take care of you."

"No." My tongue feels three sizes too big. "Something's wrong with me."

Today is my nineteenth birthday, and Silas, my boyfriend of two years, brought me out to celebrate with his friends. He told me it was just something small to lighten my mood, because I'd had another fight with my dad that made me leave the house that afternoon.

"Fine. I think you've had just enough anyway." He raises a glass. "To my girl." And the table raises theirs with him. Jayce. Philip. The rest of them, all faces I've known since high school, all of them grinning like this is the best night of my life.

Maybe it is. I can't tell anymore. It's just three drinks in, the club lights smearing gold and blue across everyone's faces.

Then, somewhere between one song and the next, something shifts. My stomach turns over slow, like a held breath, and the table in front of me doubles for a second before it settles back into one.

"I think I need the bathroom," I say, already standing, already reaching for the edge of the table to steady myself.

"Do you want me to come with you?" Silas asks, but he's not really looking at me. He's looking past me at Jayce, and something passes between them I don't have the clarity left to read.

"No. I'll be fine on my own. Just need a minute."

I make my way toward the hallway at the back, the one with the dim amber light and the muffled quiet, the bathroom sign glowing at the far end of it. Each step feels like walking through water. By the time I reach the corner where the hallway bends, my hand finds the wall on its own, because the wall is the only thing that isn't moving.

I hear Silas behind me before I see him, and before I can turn, he grips my waist hard enough to bruise.

"What are you doing? Let go of me." I turn and push at his chest, and my arms feel like they belong to someone else, someone slower and weaker than me. "Let go, Silas."

"I'm going to finally fuck you, Daphne." He says it so calmly it takes a second to land. "And not just me. When I'm done, I'm going to let my friends take turns with you."

I hear his friends before I place them. Jayce's laugh, and behind him, Philip.

That's when it clicks. I wasn't just drowsy from the drink. I'm a lightweight, but not once have I felt out of control of my own body from just three shots of vodka.

He put something in my drink. Something that's making my body hot, heat pulling low in my belly, and I feel aroused. So much so that I want to be fucked so bad, but I'm still in my senses enough to know not to give in to him.

"What did you put in my drink." It isn't even a question anymore. My knees are giving out. "You drugged me."

"Because you never give in. Two fucking years and you never let me touch you. Do you know how hard it's been to keep pretending around you. Pretending I'm interested in you when I never was."

"She really doesn't know your entire relationship with her was to please Bianca?" Jayce says, and I can hear the mockery in his voice.

Bianca? My stepsister.

"What... what do you mean?"

"Jayce is right." Silas smirks. "I only dated you because Bianca said she'd only date me if I succeeded in taking your virginity."

It's then, right there with my back against the wall of the club and my body barely mine anymore, that I understand. Silas never loved me. All those roses and promises were an act. He only did it to win Bianca.

"Well, since you won't give it up, and I'm tired of putting up with you," Silas says, already pulling at my dress, "I'll take it."

I try to say no. My mouth makes the shape of the word but nothing comes out that sounds like language. My back scrapes the wall as I slide, his hands everywhere at once, and somewhere fabric tears, mine, and I can't tell if the sound is close or if I'm hearing it from the bottom of a pool.

Then a voice cuts through the noise like it's the only real thing left in the room.

"Get away from her."

Silas turns, annoyed more than afraid. "What's your problem, man? Mind your own business."

"Get away from her, or I will make you."

I feel the fight more than I see it. A grunt, a body hitting something solid, Jayce swearing, footsteps scrambling away fast and small. Then quiet, except for the bass still thudding somewhere behind me like it belongs to a different night entirely.

Something warm drops over my shoulders. A jacket. It smells like cedar and clean laundry.

"Are you okay, kid?" The voice is closer now, careful.

I can't hold his face together in my vision, just dark hair maybe, a line of jaw, but I hold onto the sound of him instead. "Please help me."

"I've got you. Can you tell me your name?"

My skin feels like it's on fire, every point of contact with the world too loud, too much, and none of it makes sense except that I don't want him to stop touching me. "My body, it's on fire. Help me."

He goes very still. I can feel it even through the blur, the way his hands pause on my shoulders. "Were you drugged?"

I don't answer. I can't. The question is too big and my thoughts keep sliding off it like water off glass.

"Hey." His voice sharpens, but not unkindly, like he's trying to keep me tethered to something. "Stay with me. What's your name?"

"Daphne," I manage.

"Daphne. Okay. Do you have your phone? Is there someone I should call?"

I shake my head, or I think I do, the room spins either way. "I don't know. I don't know where it is."

"Okay. Okay, that's fine, we'll figure it out." He crouches so his voice is level with mine, and even disoriented as I am, I notice he doesn't touch me anywhere he hasn't already touched, doesn't let his hands wander with all this fire under my skin begging him to. "I'm not going to leave you here. I need to get you somewhere safe, alright? Can you walk, or do I need to carry you?"

The floor answers for me. My knees buckle, and he catches me before I hit it.

"Carry you it is."

He lifts me like I weigh nothing. My head lolls against his shoulder, and even that small motion sends heat rolling through me, unbearable and confusing, my body responding to sensations my mind is too fogged to sort through.

"Don't let go," I hear myself say, except it doesn't sound like thank you, it sounds like something else, something my body wants that I have no business wanting from a stranger while I can't even stand.

"I'm not letting go," he says. "But I need you to understand something, Daphne, and I need you to hear me say it even like this. I'm not going to touch you. Not tonight. Not while you're like this."

I don't understand why that matters. Every nerve in me is screaming for the opposite. "Please... fuck me."

"I don't fuck kids, and especially not one that's drugged and can't say no to me.”

His voice doesn't waver, but I feel something tighten in his arms, like the words cost him more than they should.