Paper Cut Lover | Kylo Ren

TWELVE

I'm glaring at the receptionist, my legs tightly clasped together to try and scratch away the vulnerable feeling of not wearing any underwear beneath the coarse material of my jeans. Folding my arms over my chest after readjusting my hair over my neck to hide the creeping splotches of purples and reds that mark my skin, I sit in the silent entry-way outside my Father's office.

It's unbelievable that I even have to wait on this hard and uncomfortable chair, it is demeaning that I have to listen to the unbearable taps of his assistant's nails on her keyboard behind the reception table. 

I scowl when her eyes are too focussed on the gentle glow of her computer screen. Was she the woman my Father had an affair with? I would never know. All my Mother and I knew, was that the reasoning behind him staying late every-night, all those years ago, was because he was secretly bending an assistant over his desk and I grimace when all I can think about is the way Mr. Ren had done the exact same thing to me on the exact same campus.

I wonder what my seventeen year old self would have thought about this whole situation? If I had the power to turn back time and go to tell the old me as she cried on the doorstep of her own home, dressed in a silk prom dress that was bought with three months saving from cheques given after working at a stingy ice-cream shop, she probably would have burst down into more tears than what already cascaded down the mascara-ruined, face. 

I remember that night as if it was yesterday. After stumbling out of the hot celebratory hall, my prom dress of rose-pink, already stained with the droplets of the laced punchbowl, I recall the way the brisk air hit my face and immediately, somehow, sobered me up enough – As if it knew what was coming to my childish unknowing. 

Leo was in the backseat of his own car, which used to drive me home everyday, and one of the more popular girls was wrapped in his arms, whilst their lips and tongues were at play in each-other's mouths. I can't even recall how I got home though, did Percy drive me or did I run home in my prom dress with a hazy vision through all my crying sobs and tears?

Around that time, I had suspected that my Father was having an affair and my Mother already knew, and that they both just wouldn't tell me the truth, but when I crashed into my lonesome Mother's arms and explained what had happened, she told me the truth of my Father's illicit affairs too and we both cried until eventually, our own tears were becoming too much to sympathise so we parted ways to sorrow in our own heartbreak. 

The front porch stairs is where I ended up that night and many hours later, when my Father's car finally drove up the driveway at the late hour of early morning, 3AM to be exact – I rustled my dress together and laid my limp punches on his chest to show the pain he had caused in breaking our family apart, only using the force of my useless blows to mask the real hurt of Leo's burden. 

"Harvey will see you now." The secretary's pitchy voice cut through my daze, pulling me strongly back into my place. My stomach churned at the way she used his first name instead of a title. She could have just let it slip, for she knew her boss was my Father, but that didn't stop me from biting my tongue when I assumed that it was because she indeed was, the one who had torn my family to shreds. 

Hair of gold and dark, blue eyes, even her smile is perfect to the rest of her undeniable beauty. My own Mother could never compare and by the way she carries herself so comfortably and confidently, my heart tugs painfully on the idea of my Mother back home, wrapped tightly in the blankets of my childhood room, wondering where her life had initially gone wrong and why her talents of being an acclaimed writer, had fled along with it.

The woman's got a picture of a fresh baby on her desk, wrapped in a scarlet frame to match my boiling blood at the fact that she had ruined what was left of my family, and yet she most likely has a loving household back at her own home, where like my life now, she holds her flames of secrecy to keep them from catching alight her surroundings – That is, if she indeed is, the woman my Father had an affair with.