If My Heart Was a Guitar

Enough

*Trigger warning: attempted sexual assault and domestic violence. 

Later that night, I was sitting on my bed, jamming out to some Led Zeppelin. "Whole Lotta Love." If any man could play this song for me, vocals or guitar, he'd have me hooked. I thought about using this song to audition with, or maybe some AC/DC, perhaps Def Leppard--
Then the familiar sound of the door slamming broke into my thoughts. Bentley. 11:43 pm. Lord knows what kind of stuff he got into today. I prayed he just went to bed, fall off a mountain, anything, any form of given peace. For a few shocking minutes, there was silence. Just when I breathed a sigh of relief, the bedroom door swung open. 

He stood there swaying back and fourth, lightly balancing against the door. My question of where he was got answered. He's even worse when he's drunk.
"Playing with your cheap, noisy instrument again?" he slurred.
"If you mean make music in my condo, yes," I said, not wanting to hear him insult my instruments or my skills to play them.
"Don't sass me, Shay," he said. "And if you really had any skills or brains, you would've had your washed up parents put you in Hollywood."

That got to me. You wanna insult me for my appearance, choices, and who I am, fine. But leave my family out of it. I could feel my blood boil, I could hear the voices in my head cuss him out. My hands tensed on the strings, feeling the scratchiness under my nails. I hoped he'd stepped down before I ended up saying something I would so long desire and regret.
"Stupid little Shay is a loser, hippie, rocker groupie whore who has no life or any self-pride," he went on. "Disgraceful."

He stumbled out of the doorway. I was seriously thinking about pushing down the spiral staircase, then get away with it calling it an accident because he was drunk. I smiled to myself as I fantasized about it. It felt so good and so wrong to find pleasure out of torturing Bentley in my thoughts. 

I sat on the patio overlooking the city of Portland. Something about living in Maine gave me a huge cleanse of freedom of my parents' fame. While they were living in Los Angeles with my little sister Natalie, I was here on the other side of the country, finding myself. Yet, here I was getting verbally and mentally damaged by what I thought was a great guy. How I longed for my parents and their beautifully harmonized speaking voices. Everything was just fine until I met Bentley, that's the one mistake I wish I could take back.

I laid in my bed, still deciding to go through with the audition. I dropped out of college the day after getting my tattoo, fed up with kidding myself. That, and my arm still hurt from my tattoo and I really didn't want to suck it up for another pointless day at college. I wanted to make music and seeing the flyer for an audition relit the spark in me that I couldn't find in school.
The door quietly creaked open. Bentley's dark figure appeared in the doorway. He looked as though he was one of those monsters you see on horror flicks who have blood dripping from their teeth. That's what I view Bentley as: a monster that was real.

"Shay you still awake?" he slurred.
I didn't answer. I was done dealing with him for the night, I wanted sleep. I wanted to disappear into my temporary escape.
"I know you ain't asleep, because I swear I saw you blink."
He was so drunk. The room was nearly pitch black if it weren't for the small pink furry lamp that only lit up a small area of darkness on my nightstand. I guess drinking can give a person a sense of superpowers, I had yet to experience this.

He staggered over. I shut my eyes, pretending to be asleep, anything to send him out of the room. I could feel him look me over. He roughly nudged me.
"Wake up. Wake up, I say," he demanded.
I figured it was better to throw Cujo a bone.
"What?" I asked, annoyed and tired.
"You're dumber than a bag of bricks, but I still find you attractive and decided I needed to tell you extremely personally," he said, a cunning quality he had to his voice. I wanted to run but fear kept me frozen in place.
"Good you told me," I said in attempt to diffuse the situation. Despite the confidence I put on, I still had a bad feeling overdosing my body, but I'd never let him know that, let him have the satisfaction.
"You told me you're a virgin and maybe I could fix that," he laughed evilly.