Spin the Bottle

I think for a second that he might hurt me. Maybe I want him to hurt me. I want to watch him hit me over and over, wrecking everything. I see myself in my mind, broken in places I didn't know I could break, breathing with my face bloody and begging him to hit me again. I open my mouth to say something, maybe even plead for my life, and he laughs, pushing me down to the ground where the bottle is. He sits down on the other side of it and laughs at me trying to sit up.

“I know what we can do,” he says to me, and tosses a twig at me. I look at him, and he points to the bottle. “Let's play spin the bottle,” he tells me. His words a little slurred.

“Spin the bottle,” I say. “There's only two of us.”

He smiles and laughs, looking away, then he looks at me again. “I'll go first,” he says.

“Okay.” What else is there to say?

“Unless you want to go first,” he says, raising his eyebrows.

“No it's okay. You go first,” I tell him.

He reaches out and spins the bottle, as though neither of us knows what's going to happen here.

I wish someone had told me not to meet him the woods that night. Someone, anyone. I wish I stayed home in bed.