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“You don’t have to be nervous Ellison. Everything is cool between us.” I bent down and kissed her ruby lips again. I didn’t ever want to leave her fucking kitchen.
“I just wasn’t expecting a kiss, I guess. I thought I fucked up last night. I feel, I don’t even know how I feel. Strange. I need to just shut the hell up and stop talking.”
She looked down and I pulled her chin up to look me in the eye. She looked at me like I was a king, and it made me feel like the flipping master of the universe.
The best part was she was holding her own—two feet planted firmly on the ground. There was no sign of a seizure coming from what I could tell. Maybe she was already getting used to me.
“Let’s just take it one step at a time. I’m not going anywhere; I live across the street. Besides, we start school in a week, and it will be better if you know someone. I’ll show you around, carry your books. I could even give you a ride if it’s okay with your parents.”
She nodded gently and I felt a huge sense of pride. This girl, this beautiful, sweet girl, had given me hope in ways she couldn’t even know. My life was gonna change because of Ellison, I could feel it happening already. Something had shifted and we were now a team, me and her against the world. Inseparable. The two of us were going to be epic.
“Tomorrow night. You and me. I’ll take you out to get something to eat. You ever been on a bike, Ellie?”
Chapter 10
ELLISON
“You really think it’s a good idea to let her go out with that boy?” my father asked my mother. I stood frozen outside their bedroom door listening as they discussed Calvin and his family. My fingers were crossed on both hands. All I wanted was to see Cal again.
“Patrick, it’s just a date. He seems like such a nice boy and his mother was lovely. You should have seen him when Ellie seized. He was right there beside her, reviving her, just as attentive as I was, without any explanation or any prior knowledge of her condition.”
“That sounds dangerous already. Emily, you see all those motorbikes across the street? Those people are in some kind of biker gang. Let me at least run his name at the precinct.”
The downfall of having a cop for a dad was that he could run a background check on all your friends, and if he was like my dad, he would.
“Sweetheart, it’s two sixteen-year-old kids having some fun. Besides, it’s the first time I have seen her smile like that in a long time. She didn’t ask to move. It’ll give her some confidence at school if she knows someone. I don’t want her to end up back in the hospital.”
I watched my dad put down his phone.
“She’s been so good for the past year and this move has her shook up. I’m hoping Calvin can show her that living here isn’t as bad as she thinks. God knows it will be good for all of us to get away from all those memories. This is the fresh start we’ve been dreaming of, let your daughter have it too.”
I looked down at the scars on my arms. Most of them had disappeared in the last year, but some were still there—too deep to ever really go away. I knew my dad preferred it if I covered them up. He didn’t like to be reminded of the trials I’d gone through. Guilt and sadness made you need a release, an outlet of sorts, and cutting provided me with that relief for a long time, at least it used to. I didn’t allow myself to do it anymore.
To the outside world, I was the daughter of two incredibly caring parents who were madly in love and who loved me just as fiercely. I didn’t have any daddy issues, I didn’t have abandonment issues, I wasn’t bullied. All of the pressure I felt, I put there myself. I wanted to be perfect and hated my imperfections. I always felt like there was something inherently wrong with me, a glitch, a malfunction. I was a misstep that needed to be corrected.
Then my big brother died, and it all went downhill. My parents tried to help, but they were devastated, too. When things became too much for me, my seizures came back, my body’s strange but effective coping mechanism. But the crushing stress was ever-present, even now, even when I created it myself and there wasn’t any external pressure. Inside, I felt like I was drowning, and there was only ever one way out.
The razor.
I never intended to have these marks, but one day I accidentally cut myself shaving my legs in the tub. At first, I was startled by the rapid trickle of blood, how it ran down my leg going faster as it joined the water droplets, pinking up the water, and smarting sharply at the source. I thought I’d pass out, like a baby who couldn’t handle the pain. But instead, the pain was a surprise. It fueled me, it was cleansing, both relieving and empowering. Then that perpetual pressure that was always weighing me down, lifted off me like magic.
