Читать книгу Rebirth - Dmitry Nazarov - Страница 3

– Are you serious right now? – I just choked with indignation. – You didn’t fucking meet me because you were playing?

– Hey, what the fuck are you so pissed about, sunshine? – Oleg barely bothered to throw me a brief glance over his shoulder, unable to look away from the monitor. – It’s a fucking important game, and you’re home. What’s the problem?

My lungs cramped, and I pressed my hand to my split lip. I just can’t believe it. Where the fuck were my eyes before this? Come on, they were there, just being all alone was scarier than taking all that shit from him. But right now it was over. Forbidding myself to burst into tears, I walked resolutely to the table and slammed the lid of the laptop shut with force.

– Are you crazy, or what? – Oleg squealed. God, he squealed, like some girl who got her ass pinched in a crowded bus. – Do you have any idea what you did?

He tried to open the gadget, but I slammed the lid again, this time nailing his fingers. Long and well-groomed ones that had once attracted me with their «musical» appearance and their ability to play pretty well with the sensitive parts of my body. Which hasn’t happened much lately, considering he’s never taken his eyes off the screen.

– Look at me! – I barked, not even sure where I got this stiffness from. But, on the other hand, I had never been on the verge of gang rape before, practically in my own backyard. I’ve never been anywhere!

– What now, Rory? – He threw me an annoyed, distracted look and glanced at my face and clothes. – Damn, are you in trouble?

– You’re the one who’s in fucking trouble, Olezhek! – I got mad. – You were supposed to pick me up from work, but you didn’t fucking do it! I was attacked by some fucking kids, almost raped and robbed! You know, I suddenly realized that I don’t know what the fuck I need a guy who sits around my apartment all day, eating at my expense, and who happens to be too busy to protect me!

– Rory, I’m sorry, I just lost track of time, and…» Oleg did seem confused and guilty at first, but then he must have gone through some process in his feeble but unusually dodgy brain that had allowed him to win our arguments before. To be honest, later I always wondered how I always fell for his bullshit explanations, and how I felt guilty for jumping on the poor kid.

– You say there was a whole bunch of them? – he made big eyes. – So you’d rather have me with you and get attacked, too? Do you have any idea what those punks could have just beaten me to death? I’m not a chick that can only count on being raped!

It’s just… I was leaning against the wall, I couldn’t believe my ears.

– Do you realize what you just said? – I asked in shock. – You think being raped is some kind of bullshit that just makes a woman get up and wipe her face and pull her skirt up and go home as if nothing had happened?

– Well, it’s not like being beaten up by a bunch of angry thugs and then you’re dead to the world! If you want my opinion, you know, I think it’s easier to be fucked than beaten.

And I lived with THIS for almost seven months? Even considered the prospect of starting a family, having kids, looking past the joints and convincing myself that others have it «worse»?

– Get out! – I didn’t yell, because I was already dead tired today, and this worm stupidly didn’t deserve the energy it took to yell. – Immediately!

– Have you lost your mind? Did you see the time? Almost midnight! – Oleg’s eyes darted nervously around the apartment.

– And what? – Snorted contemptuously. – I got home somehow, and you get to Mommy’s apartment! You can even call a cab.

– I don’t have any money for that! – The guy snapped. What kind of a guy is he, though?

– So walk, like I just did! – I snapped. – And if you get cornered by some thugs, you can tell them to suck your dick or fuck you in the ass, because you just said that rape is preferable to a beating.

– I’m not a girl!

– Oh, don’t be so hard on yourself, baby. They won’t look too hard in the dark. – I was carried away, and I will probably be an hour later to regret everything I said, but now my body and mind were still burning with the adrenaline of the experience, and it needed somewhere to go out.

– Look, Aurora, I know I messed up, but why don’t you calm down, take a bath, and then we can talk quietly…

– About what? About how I just got groped on the boob by some beer-smelling jerks? Or how one of them was sticking his fingers between my legs and the other was describing in detail how I would suck them all off while their two buddies gutted my bag and emptied it of all my valuables? Or maybe about how I was so fucking lucky that a police car was passing by, and when they saw the flashing beacon, they got distracted and I was able to escape?

Oleg made a very believable picture of a guilty and broken face and stepped closer.

– Rory, but you know that even if the worst had happened, I still wouldn’t have turned my back on you and loved you. Even if they did to you…that, I wouldn’t think you were defamed or anything…

– Get the fuck out of my house! – I yelled, pointing my hand in the right direction to be sure.

Oleg squinted his eyes at me for half a minute, but then humbled himself and moved toward the door.

– Always been a freak,» he muttered to me from the hallway. – I’ll get my stuff tomorrow! I didn’t want my laptop to get taken away by some jerks.

The door slammed, and I threw my head back against the wall with a thud. Of course, the safety of a precious gadget is much more important than the safety of the woman with whom you live side by side. How the hell did I ever get to this pathetic semblance of a relationship?