“I think it happened because I worked for it!” I fire back. “Because people actually like me, Brian. Because for once, I washappy!”
He laughs again, but there’s no humor left in it. “Happy?” His free hand moves, gripping my shoulder. “You call this happiness? Running around barefoot, letting some nobody touch you on camera?”
“Don’t,” I say through clenched teeth, getting out of his hold.
He steps closer. “Don’t what?”
“Don’t talk about him.”
Something flashes in his eyes. “So you are fucking him?”
“Brian, I?—.”
He cuts me off by slapping his hand over my mouth, exhaling slowly, and shaking his head. “You really are ungrateful.”
Releasing his grip, he begins gathering items from the coffee table—my notebooks, my makeup bag, my camera—and slams them onto the floor.
He rips up the paper, stomps all over my makeup brushes, and finally destroys my camera.
“This is what you wanted, right? Attention? Congratulations!”
“Stop it!” I say, my voice shaking. “You’re scaring me!”
He turns to me, face flushed, jaw clenched. “Don’t you raise your voice at me.”
“I’m not?—”
“You are.” His voice drops low and dangerous. “And you forget who you’retalking to.”
My heart pounds so loud I can hear it in my ears. He moves closer, his cologne sharp enough to sting.
He lifts his clenched fist toward my face, hesitating; thankfully, he lowers his hand, but what he does next is worse.
Gripping my shoulders, he slams me onto the coffee table, where all my belongings are broken.
He’s yelling at me, but I can’t hear anything over my heartbeat pounding in my ears. He kicks me in the side, spits on me, all while saying these terrible things.
“You don’t walk out on me, Layla! You’re not going to leave me!”
I freeze, every muscle taut. My breaths come in shallow pulls, pain spreading in my side, where he touched me.
The hands that once cared for me, savoring the feel of my skin with his, are the same hands that just hurt me.
He scoffs, muttering obscenities under his breath, and leaves without looking back.
I lay there in the aftermath; makeup scattered across the rug, the notebook open on the floor, its pages torn. My hands won’t stop trembling.
It takes me a full minute to realize I’m crying.
A silent cry forces its way out of me, my lungs burning as I try—and fail—to breathe.
I curl into a ball, staring at the mess, trembling. A smear of paint stains my wrist, glowing faintly under the harsh apartment light.
The ache in my chest sharpens. I wipe my face and whisper to the empty room, “You said you’d be looking at the moon.”
“I’m coming back,” I whisper. “I just have to figure out how.”
layla
