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“I’ll guess I’ll see you tomorrow,” Johnny said, and then he turned around and walked away from me.
Feeling bereft, I chewed on my lip as I watched him walk away. “Bye, Johnny.”
“Bye, Shannon,” he called back, casting a quick smile over his shoulder.
Oh god.
With my heart knocking around restlessly in my chest, I closed the door and trudged back up the staircase. I needed to lie down for a minute so I could process my thoughts.
Slipping back inside my tiny room, I walked straight to my single bed with the intention of face-planting on the mattress, only to stop short when my eyes landed on Johnny’s jacket strewn on my bed.
Like the creeper I was, I sank down on the foot of my bed, reached for his jacket, and held it to my chest. His smell was everywhere. On his jacket. On me. Holding the drenched fabric, I inhaled deeply, taking in the familiar scent of his deodorant and then mentally chastised myself for being such a freak.
What was I doing? Why was I allowing myself to feel these emotions?
They were dangerous.
I had to stop.
He doesn’t want you. No one does.
Feeling sick to my stomach with regret and anxiety, I pulled back the covers, climbed into my bed, and then curled into the smallest ball I could.
Everything hurt.
My body. My brain. My heart.
Breathing slowly, I attempted to rid my mind of every bad thought plaguing me. Every embarrassing and soul-destroying memory of how ridiculously stupid I had behaved.
It didn’t last long.
Fifteen minutes into my silent mourning, the sound of the front door slamming filled my ears. No less the three minutes later, my bedroom door flew inward.
“Where’s the dinner?”
Remaining perfectly still, I clutched the duvet as my body coiled tight with anxiety. “I forgot.”
“Well get out of that fucking bed and come downstairs,” Dad snarled from my doorway. “You’ve jobs to do around this house, girl, and that includes putting on the dinner. ’Tis about time you earned your keep.”
“I feel sick,” I croaked out.
It wasn’t a lie. My stomach was cramping up.
“You’ll feel a lot fucking sicker if you don’t get your useless hole out of that bed,” my father warned. “Sick. Your mother’s fucking sick and she’s working to pay your bastard school fees, you ungrateful little cunt.”
I knew he hadn’t been drinking today, but my father sober was still terrifying to me.
“You have five minutes to get down those stairs, girl,” he added. “Don’t make me come back up to ya.”
He slammed my bedroom door closed, and while I listened to him thumping back down the stairs, I debated my options.
Stay where I was and take a beating, or do as he asked and risk one anyway?
There was no choice. There never was.
Not for me anyway.
Throwing back the covers, I climbed out of bed and walked back down to hell.
