DEAR YOU [Part 2]

Chapter 20

“Hey come in.” I welcomed him in.

“You’ve got a nice place, real cozy.” He said analysing the whole house. His eyes were first caught by my childhood and family photos that hung on the wall, showing a part of my life that existed no more. It wasn’t that he didn’t look at them, it was the fact that he decided to not to talk about it.

The next thing he saw was the junk I placed so artistically on the table and on seeing them, he smiled.

Rubbing his hands together, he looked at me and slyly said, “look what I got.” He slowly revealed a plastic bag from his jacket pocket. A joint, that couldn’t be a good idea but what the hell do i know.

“Lets do this.” I exclaimed enthusiastically.

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“So tell me something.” We were sitting on the couch, our feet up on the oak and our heads resting on the backrest.

There were some chips making a haphazard pattern on the carpet beneath and a half smoked joint that we exchanged periodicity.

“What do you wanna know.” I looked at him, not moving my head but just my eyes.

“I dunno. Something?”

The filter that my thoughts usually went through before becoming words that came out of my mouth was gone so basically anything that I said, I meant. And that was a dangerous thing, not for me but for Mark.

“What actually happened that day in the cafe?” he finally spoke after 5 minutes or what felt like an hour. Drugs do that sometimes.

“You don’t wanna know” I dismissed him with with a flick of hand.

“I do. I do.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

I pulled myself up from the very comfortable position I was in. It felt the right thing to do, as if a correct posture would add more meaning to what I was about to tell him.

After a few seconds of silence, I finally opened up. I took the joint from between his fingers and took a puff.

“He was my ex.”
He now also pulled up and looked at me curiously.

“His name is Dave and we broke up about 2-3 months ago.”

“O-okay."

“I first met Dave when I was a junior and he was a senior, captain of the swimming team and basically everything a teenage girl would be attracted to. I never thought he would find someone like me attractive given that he was almost completely surrounded by beautiful girls but he did notice me, more than notice me actually.”

I paused for a minute just enough to gather some more strength to continue the rest of the story. Just talking about him made me feel tired.

“So we went out on a date and he was the most charming and well behaved person I had ever met which even I thought was out of character for him but I just went with it.
It was great for a while, the perfect couple people called us. But they didn’t know what happened behind the curtain of perfection. It wasn’t”

“perfect?” mark completed my sentence.

I nodded.

“He slowly started revealing different sides of him to me and honestly, they started to scare me. He started to scare me. And I don’t want to sound weak, helpless girl who couldn’t handle herself so I decided not to tell anyone. I decided the second i felt unsafe, I will break it off.”

I sighed deeply and without my knowledge, it had been five minutes of me staring, fixating on a pen mark on the wall.

“and then, that night happened. We were out with our friends on a Saturday night as we usually were. We watched a movie and then he and his drunk friends would drop me off but this time, it was a bit different. Instead of taking me to my house, he stopped the car in front of his. There were no people around us, just me and Peter which terrified me. He slowly whispered in my ear that he wanted to”

“Its okay if you don’t want to continue.” He grabbed my hand as he noticed how difficult it slowly became for me to speak.

After catching my breathe, I continued
“Fuck me. I was taken aback, shocked but more scared. Petrified. My whole body started shaking and my mind froze numb. I didn’t know what to do or what to say and he mistook my silence for yes.
He hastily forced himself on me as he took off my top. His hand made his way to the hook of my bra while his other hand creeped it’s wake up my skirt. He harshly pressed my hands against his balls.
It’s frightening how I still remember how his touch felt, so cold, so forced. The worst part of all this was the way I acted, the way I didn’t move or said anything. I just sat there letting him do whatever he wanted because I was not brave enough.
That still haunts me, the way he felt that he could do anything to me, as If he owned me, as If it was his right. It still scares me.

Few minutes into it, I gained my strength back. It was like suddenly I was aware of the fact that I can move, I can scream and I can run. I kicked him in his balls and ran the fuck out of there.
My body froze as the cold air pushed it back but I know the real reason why it froze. It wasn’t the cold, it was the after effect of his cold touch.
Ever since then, he’s trying to get in touch with me. Showing up at places unexpectedly and behaving like , like the way he did.”

The whole time I talked, I had my eyes fixed on the wall. It’s better that way because if I didn’t do that, then my mind would begin to wander off. It will bring me right back to that night and that was something I didn’t want.

Honestly, I didn’t feel much when i recalled the incident. I used to but now I didn’t.

I broke contact with the wall and looked back to see mark tearing up, his face was white and his nose was red. He tried to contain his tears which made his lips tremble.

“You don’t need to cry Mark, I’m okay.” I pressed his hands tightly trying to comfort him.

“Did you tell anyone?” his voice shook uncontrollably.

“My mom.” I shook my head

“And?”

“She didn’t believe me. She thought this was just one of my ways to ask for attention.”

I saw him sit there stunned by my answer. He couldn’t make sense of the fact that my mother would do so and I get it, it’s a difficult concept to grasp. But I was used to it.

After gathering himself, he hugged me tightly with all the warmth he could provide and slowly whispered, “

You are brave enough. You are the bravest CORALINE fucking RAE.”

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