Athalia Quinn

9 - Hickey

What're you, Momma? I want to say. Over the last five years, you've had more than ten failed relationships. Oh, how badly I want to say those words.

But I remain quiet.

She stares at the hickey with disgust. "I am so ashamed of you," she spits at me. "I needed your fucking help tonight, but you were too busy being a whore, weren't you?"

"No—"

"Damn liar," she snaps, and brings her knee up to my stomach.

I hunch over, the wind knocked out of me. She slams her fist into the side of my face, her rusted wedding ring that she never takes off cutting me. Blood drips down my cheek.

Breathe. Breathe. Breathe.

"You're fucking pathetic," she shouts, grabbing onto my hair and pulling me towards her. Tears sting my eyes. "You weak, pathetic slut."

Breathe. Breathe. Breathe.

She throws me to the ground, stepping on my hand as she walks off. I hear her open the refrigerator to grab a can of beer. I don't move, I can't breathe.

For what seems like hours, though was really probably three minutes at most, I lay on the cold floor, catching my breath and trying to ignore the ache in my stomach and the sting on my cheek and the feeling of her hands pulling my hair.

For those three minutes, I don't let tears fall.

But when I make the long trek upstairs, and turn on the shower to wash away tonights events, I begin to cry.

For my mom. For Levi.

For me.

* current day *

"Hey, Big D!" I exclaim as I walk through the doors of Dan's Diner. He has a red rag slung over his shoulder, meaning he'd just finished cleaning for opening.

He smiles at me. "Hello, Athalia."

Yesterday, I took the entire day for myself, which was pretty selfish, but I figured I should let myself heal a little before making others worry about me. Now, the cut on my cheek has scabbed and I think it might scar, so I put a bandaid on it.

Don't you worry, I have a cover story. A few, actually.

'I was a bad-butt and got into a street fight. You should see my opponent.'

'I tried making a hibachi dinner with cool knife tricks, but my tricks were so cool that I accidentally cut myself.'

'Tripped and fell, hit the corner of a wall, silly me.'

'I have a cat.'

I feel like the cat one would be most believable. But I don't have a cat.

Big D lets me hug him, which surprises me, but I don't take it for granted. I think that he assumes I'm going to be hugging him every day now, since that one day I thought I was getting fired I offered to hug him about a bajillion times.

He pats my back when he's done. "Go on now."

I head to the back of the diner to put my apron on. Frannie's here, and she makes conversation with me. She makes conversation with me! She asks what happened to my face, and I just play it off with a "Doesn't it make me look so awesome?"

She doesn't ask any further questions, and instead heads out of the employees room with a "Totally."

She doesn't ask about the hickey either, and I'm smug about that. Yep, that's right. I used my amazing makeup skills to conceal the darn hickey that Levi gave me.