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‘Can you just take me home, please? I’m tired and—‘
My scalp screams. I scream. My mind screams. Everything hurts as Archer’s hand shoots out and wraps around my hair. He yanks it, wrenching my neck back, and brings my face close to his.
I don’t think I’ll ever forget the look in his eyes, or the smell of his breath, or the scent of his cologne, as he sneers, ‘Are you fucking him?’
But I don’t answer. I can’t do anything but plead for him to let me go.
‘Are. You. Fucking. Him?’
‘No! I promise I’m not. I’ve never even met him—‘
His other hand squeezes my jaw painfully. ‘You actually expect me to believe that?’ He brings his lips to my ear. ‘Do you think of him when you’re with me? When I touch you?’
I actually think I’m going to die. I think he’s going to kill me. How deep is his rage? I start to cry, and I close my eyes as he kisses away a tear.
‘It’s okay, love.’ His voice is so gentle, so comforting. ‘You’re not going to talk to him anymore.’
My heart cleaves in two.
Kai, who has been my distraction from my parents. Kai, who makes me reach for that faraway mountain. Kai, who I look forward to talking to every day after school. Kai, my best friend.
But I shake my head, because I sense it beneath Archer’s words: a promise of something more, something worse.
He kisses another tear. ‘Good girl.’
He says nothing as he drives me home.
I’m frozen again, like I’ve walked through a spider’s web, like every muscle in my body is paralysed.
Maybe I shouldn’t be texting Kai. Maybe my friendship with Kai is what’s keeping Archer from wanting a relationship with me. If Archer had been texting a female friend prior to whatever the hell we have, and if it continued during, I wouldn’t have been bothered, but now I question it.
Maybe it is cheating.
And I know letting go of Kai is the right thing to do, because Archer holds my hand all the way home.
I don’t want to lose him, not when I’m so close to having him.
But how many more pieces of myself do I need to choke so our flame can thrive?
???
I wake to my dad calling my name.
I crack an eye at my screen: 4:07am.
I don’t know why, but I throw off the covers and race for his room.
I flick on his bedside lamp. He sits on the edge of his bed and leans his head against his cane. His boxers are wet, and there’s a patch of damp soaking his bedsheet.
‘I hate being like this,’ he says. ‘I pissed myself in the shop earlier, but I couldn’t rush to the toilet. I’m a bloody cripple.’
For a moment I just stand there not really knowing what it is he wants from me, but then I spring into motion. I guide him to the bathroom and hand him a fresh pair of boxers, and whilst he changes, I strip his bed and soak up the urine with a towel. I leave a fresh towel beneath the new sheet.
He comes back in just as I plump his pillows.
He grimaces as he sits. How have I been so wrapped up in my own issues to notice his hip has deteriorated?
I pour him a glass of water from downstairs and sit next to him.
