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Wanting to get the topic off of me, I asked, “So what happened with Luca?”
“I decided to stop being an idiot and tell him how I really feel…I told him everything.”
“And by everything, you mean?” I prompted.
“Olivia,” her hands tightened on the steering wheel, “this is something difficult for me to talk about. It’s why I push people away, and it’s why I fucked random guys for like…ever.”
“Okay,” I swallowed thickly, preparing myself for what she had to say.
“God, I don’t want to tell you this,” she kept her eyes on the road and away from me.
“Avery,” I spoke her name softly, “you don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to. I’m not going to hate you if you keep secrets.” Even this many years later I had never told Avery about my Live List. Before I met Trace, I had been embarrassed about it and I knew if I told her she’d try to cross everything off in one night. But once I met Trace and confessed my list to him, it sort of became our thing and I didn’t want to share it with anyone else.
“No,” she shook her head. “I need to tell you. But you have to understand something…no one but Luca knows this. It’s taken me a long time to admit that what happened to me was real. But it happened and it sucks. But you move on. Talking about it…makes me feel better,” she sighed deeply. “My only hope is that you don’t look at me differently once I tell you.”
“Gosh, Avery. Look at what I went through with finding out about my real dad and then after Aaron tried to kill me. I can handle it,” I told my best friend with the utmost sincerity.
“It seems weird telling you this in the car,” she forced a laugh. “But I don’t have a choice now.”
“You always have a choice, Avery. You can wait.”
She took a deep breath to steady herself and continued like I hadn’t said anything. “You remember how I told you growing up that my parents were gone a lot?”
“Yeah,” I nodded, my brow furrowing.
“When my parents left on their extended business trips and whatnot, my dad’s sister and her husband would stay at the house with us. They couldn’t have kids so they said they didn’t mind,” she began to tear up and my heart clenched. “One time, when I was eleven, my uncle said he was going to take me up to bed and read me a story. They always read a story to me, but that night Ray didn’t read me a story.”
“What did he do, Avery?” I asked, not really wanting to know the answer.
She turned her head towards me slightly before her eyes flicked back to the road.
“He pushed me on my bed and he raped me. I screamed and tried to fight him, but he held me down and nothing stopped him.” She was crying now and her teeth were clenched.
“Didn’t your aunt hear you scream? Your brothers?” I gasped, horrified by what she told me. I had known there had to be something to make Avery the way she was. But I’d always assumed it had to do with abandonment issues from being left by her parents all the time. Never, in a million years, had I ever suspected something like this.
She shook her head. “They were all in the basement, watching a movie. No one heard…unfortunately.”
I didn’t know what to say. Frankly, there was nothing I could say. I didn’t understand how anyone could do something like that another person, let alone a child.
“Avery,” I started and words failed me.
“It’s okay,” she looked over at me. “For a long time I blocked it from my mind. After that, I put up a fit and my parents didn’t ask them to watch us anymore. Actually, shortly before graduation I saw them. It was the first time I had seen Ray since he’d—” She paused, then forced the word out through clenched teeth, “—raped me. Up until then, it had been easy for me to pretend it hadn’t happened. But seeing him sent all those memories rushing back at me and I felt so helpless. I lashed out at you and Luca, because you’re the two people I care about the most,” she swallowed thickly. “I was really mean to him and so we broke up. He told me he’d be waiting when I decided to tell him what the fuck my problem was. So…I finally told him. If I expect to have a future with him, he needed to know everything.” She glanced over at me and it was like a weight had been lifted off her shoulders by telling me.
“Oh, Avery.” I desperately wanted to reach over and hug my best friend but since we were driving that wasn’t exactly the best idea.
“It’s okay, Livie. I knew I needed to tell you, so you would understand why I was being so distant. Seeing Ray made me want to close myself off from everyone and I’m sorry about that. It’s the only way I know how to deal with things…that and fucking guys. But I’m a new woman now,” she squared her shoulders, turning into a parking lot. I looked up, surprised to see that we were already in Tysons. I guessed we’d been talking longer than I thought. “Luca changed me…no, that’s not right. He didn’t change me. But the love I feel for him did.”
She parked the car and I could finally hug her.
“What was that for?” She asked when I pulled away.
Wiping my tears away, I answered, “You needed a hug.”
“I did?”
“You definitely did,” I forced a laugh.
“I don’t want me telling you this to change things between us,” she stared at her hands so she didn’t have to look at me. “I’m still me, Livie.”
