Chapter 7: The Girlfriend
The silence between Scott and Luke stretched for three weeks. It wasn’t a clean break, but a slow, septic draining. A text unanswered for a day, then two, then not at all. Scott threw himself into the shallow end of things with Ethan. It was easier.
Ethan was uncomplicated. He wanted to drink cheap beer, smoke weed, and fuck. He didn’t ask about Scott’s dreams or his silences. He filled them with noise.
They were at Ethan’s, the TV playing some dystopian show neither was watching. Ethan’s hand was down Scott’s pants, rough and proprietary. “You’re distant today,” Ethan murmured against his neck, his breath smelling of IPA.
“Just tired.”
“I know how to wake you up.” Ethan’s fingers curled, a deliberate, practiced pressure. He pushed Scott forward onto the stained carpet. “On your knees.”
Scott went, the command a relief. Thinking was exhausting. Obedience was simple. The coarse fibers of the rug bit into his skin. He heard the rustle of Ethan’s zipper, the soft snick of a cap. A bottle of lube, colder than Ethan’s spit. Thick fingers pushed inside him, working him open with a clinical efficiency that was neither cruel nor kind.
“Look at you,” Ethan said, his voice a low thrum. “Always so ready. Like you’re built for it.”
Scott closed his eyes. He wasn’t built for it. He was broken for it. The fingers withdrew. He braced himself.
Ethan didn’t enter him slowly. He sheathed himself in one long, brutal push, burying his cock to the hilt. Scott gasped, his hands fisting in the carpet. The fullness was a slap, a grounding shock.
“That’s it,” Ethan grunted, setting a hard, deep rhythm. His hands gripped Scott’s hips, yanking him back onto each thrust. The sound was raw, flesh on flesh, the squelch of lube. “Take it. Fuck, your hole is so greedy.”
Each drive pushed the air from Scott’s lungs. He rocked forward, his forehead pressing into the rug. It was punishing. It was blank. He focused on the physical feedback: the burn, the ache, the jolt up his spine. It was better than feeling the gaping absence where Luke used to be.
Ethan’s pace turned frantic, his breaths hot puffs on Scott’s back. He tangled a hand in Scott’s hair, pulling his head up. “You gonna come just from this?” he taunted, slamming into him. “From getting your ass wrecked? You sick fuck.”
Scott whimpered. Shame flushed through him, hot and sudden. It tipped him over the edge. His own orgasm was a surprise, a violent, unwelcome tremor that ripped through him untouched, spilling onto the carpet beneath him. The convulsions made Ethan curse, his thrusts losing all rhythm before he stiffened, emptying himself with a raw shout.
He collapsed onto Scott’s back, heavy and spent. After a moment, he rolled off. “Jesus,” he laughed, breathless. “You’re full of surprises.”
Scott lay on the floor, sticky and sore, staring at the dust bunnies under the couch. The blankness was gone, replaced by a familiar, clawing self-loathing.
His phone buzzed on the coffee table. Ethan reached for it. “It’s your hero cop,” he said, a flicker of annoyance in his voice. He tossed the phone onto the carpet near Scott’s face.
The screen glowed. Luke: Hey. Been a minute. You okay?
The words blurred. Scott’s throat tightened. He didn’t move.
“Aren’t you gonna answer your keeper?” Ethan asked, getting up and padding toward the bathroom.
Scott picked up the phone. The impulse to vomit up everything—the hollow sex, the pain, the missing him—was overwhelming. He typed instead. Yeah. Fine. Been busy. With Ethan.
The reply was immediate. We should get coffee. Talk.
Can’t. Plans.
A pause. Then: Scott. Don’t do this.
Don’t do what? Live? Move on? The anger was a weak, sputtering thing. He typed, Melissa won’t like it.
The three dots appeared. Disappeared. Appeared again. Forget Melissa. This is about us. The word was a grenade. There was no ‘us’. There was a savior and a saved, and the saved was supposed to be grateful and quiet and eventually go away. He threw the phone across the room. It hit the wall with a dull thud.
Melissa’s campaign was more subtle than Scott expected. It wasn’t confrontational. It was osmotic. Luke mentioned it offhand a few days later, when Scott finally answered a call.
“Melissa thinks maybe we’re a little… codependent,” Luke said, his tone carefully neutral. “She’s just worried. Thinks maybe I enable your… fragility.”
Scott stood in the pasta aisle of the grocery store, clutching his phone. “Do you think that?”
A long exhale. “I think you rely on me a lot. And maybe that’s not healthy for either of us. A little space might be good. Let you stand on your own.”
I was standing, Scott wanted to scream. I was trying to stand, and then you showed up with her, and you kicked my legs out from under me. He said nothing.
The space grew. Days without contact turned into a week. Scott went to group, sat silently, and left. Michelle pulled him aside. “Where’s your shadow?” she asked gently.
“He has a girlfriend.”
“Ah.” Her expression softened. “And the new guy? Ethan?”
“He’s… loud.”
“Loud can be good. It drowns things out.”
But it didn’t. The loudness just made the quiet, when it came, more deafening. He started having the dream again. Not the full-blown nightmare of the hallway, the gunshots, the blood-slick floor. A new one. He was in the halfway house, but it was empty. He walked the grimy gray corridor, his footsteps echoing. He’d push open a door, and there would be Luke and Melissa, sitting on a bare mattress, laughing. They wouldn’t look at him. He’d close the door, open another. Same thing. Room after room, their intimacy a rebuke.
He woke from it one Tuesday night, sweat-drenched and gasping. He texted Luke before he could stop himself. Had the dream.
Five minutes passed. Ten. Then: The hallway?
New one.
The phone rang. Luke’s voice was rough with sleep. “Tell me.”
And Scott did, haltingly, sitting in his dark bedroom. He told him about the endless doors, the laughter, the feeling of being a ghost in his own memory.
Scott shivered. “It’s just a dream.”
“It’s not,” Luke said, certainty iron-clad. “It’s a message. I’ve been… distracted. Wrong. ” He paused. “We’re having dinner tomorrow. You should come.”
“Luke, she doesn’t want me there.”
“I don’t care what she wants,” he said, and the line went dead.
The restaurant was a nice enough Italian place, all checkered tablecloths and candle wax. The atmosphere was a war disguised as civility.
Melissa’s smile was a tight, polite line. “Scott, what a surprise.” She shot a look at Luke, who was studying the menu.
“I invited him,” Luke said, without looking up.
The meal was a masterpiece of tension. Scott pushed seafood risotto around his plate. Melissa talked about her caseload, her yoga certification, the vacation she and Luke were planning to the coast. Each word was a brick in a wall between them.
Luke listened, nodding occasionally, but his gaze kept drifting to Scott. It was heavy, loaded.
When the check came, Melissa put her hand over Luke’s. “Babe, remember we have that thing with my parents tomorrow night. You should get an early night.”
Luke gently removed her hand. “I’m going to drive Scott home. He’s not feeling well.”
Scott looked up, startled. He hadn’t said a word.
Melissa’s composure cracked. “Luke. We discussed this. This… dynamic. It’s not healthy.”
“The dynamic where I care about a friend?” Luke’s voice was quiet, dangerously calm.
“The dynamic where you prioritize his neediness over your actual relationship!” The word hung in the air, cruel and true.
Scott stood up, his chair scraping loudly. “It’s fine. I’ll get an Uber.”
“Sit down, Scott,” Luke said. It wasn’t a request. It was an order. Stay down. Don’t move. Don’t make a sound.
Scott sat.
Luke turned to Melissa. “You should go. We’ll talk later.”
The look she gave Scott wasn’t one of simple jealousy. It was one of dawning comprehension, and horror. She saw it now—the tether between them wasn’t just friendship or guilt. It was something darker, something that excluded her completely. She stood, grabbed her purse, and left without another word.
The silence she left behind was thick. Luke paid the bill, his movements deliberate.
In the car, the streetlights strobed across Luke’s stern profile. “She’s trying to cut you out,” he stated.
“Maybe she’s right.”
Luke’s hand shot out, gripping Scott’s knee. The contact was electric, jarring. “She’s not. You hear me? She doesn’t understand what we are. What we went through. She can’t. That house… it bound us. Blood and darkness. That doesn’t just go away because someone finds it inconvenient.”
His hand was hot, the pressure immense. Scott couldn’t move. “What are we, then?” he whispered.
Luke took a long time to answer, his eyes on the road. When he spoke, his voice was a low vibration in the confined space. “We’re the ones who survived. Everyone else… they’re just visiting. They don’t get to make the rules.”
He pulled up to Scott’s apartment but left the engine running. He turned, finally looking at him. The usual protective sternness was gone, replaced by something more primal, more possessive. “You’re mine to protect, Scott. Mine. That’s the only rule that matters now. Remember that.”
He reached over and cupped Scott’s cheek, his thumb brushing the hollow under his eye. The gesture was tender, but the intensity in his gaze was not. It was a claiming.
“Now go inside. And don’t you dare ignore my calls again.”
Scott stumbled out of the car, his legs weak. He watched the taillights disappear around the corner. The chill night air did nothing to cool the feverish imprint of Luke’s hand on his skin, or to silence the terrifying, thrilling echo of his words in the dark.