courage. Like maybe if this is just ancient history, a sad story he wants to know, then maybe we can just fucking forget about it. I mean, I’m not stupid. I know it’s going to change things but if I think about it too much I’ll fucking run.
“So after the wedding, Paul sends my mom on a nice holiday with her friends. He tells her that he’ll take care of me so she can just let her hair down. After the year she’s had she deserves some time to herself. She’s so fucking grateful to him, doesn’t think twice about it.”
I can’t say the words, I can’t describe any of it, but I’m well-versed on talking about it without mentioning the details. “Two years later, I got what I thought was my period and passed out at school. Woke up in hospital with police officers and a social worker. Turns out I was pregnant without even knowing about it and the bleeding was a miscarriage. There’s a lot of questions when that shit goes down with an eleven-year-old. I tell them everything, every little fucking detail of it, and you know what they did?”
Tomi shakes his head and I take one last mouthful of the whiskey and push the glass away from myself. Anymore and I’ll spend the rest of the night puking my guts up.
“Nothing. They did fucking nothing about it. Paul told them I was a willful, disobedient whore of a child. Acting out about my dead daddy. A disappointment to the family. My mom backed him up.”
I see it.
I see the moment the cracks start to form in Tomi and his entire opinion of me changes. I try not to let him see just as clearly my heart breaking.
I have to finish it now. “He started beating me after that. He didn’t just… yeah, it was a lot worse. So I learned to keep my mouth shut, keep my head down, and the moment I could, I ran.”
Silence falls between us and I can’t be the one to break it this time. I can’t give him anything else, I’ve run dry.
“Who did the fake ID for you? It was fucking good.”
I rub at my neck. “I met a guy at my school. He wanted me but everyone knew I was the baby killing whore… yeah, rumor was I threw myself down a flight of stairs to kill the baby and make sure no one found out about my secret boyfriend. Middle school was a fucking lovely place. Anyway, the guy wanted me but not enough to deal with being the guy with the whore so he would invite me around after hours and try to fuck me. Well, his older brother was a forger and I somehow managed to convince him to give me the ID to get into clubs and then I ran. I’m not sure he even knew how good his fakes were.”
Tomi nods and opens the bottle of whiskey, drinking it straight and as though he needs to forget the whole thing.
“I’ll head home. I mean, it’s probably best if I do,” I mumble and his eyes narrow at me.
“You walk out that door and I’ll be on your ass, dragging you back. You’re here for the night and then in the morning we’ll go home and finish the cladding on the house. We’ll get the bed set back up and go pick out a new oven. We’ll pick the fucking tiles too. You can have a shower and I’ll go get us food. I think it’s pizza night. Pick a movie, I just wanna lie around for a few hours before we sleep so you don’t have your nightmares. Go on, go get clean.”
It makes no sense.
I shower and scrub every inch of myself that I can, struggling with the cast that I’ve had to wrap in plastic. Next time I'll have to ask Tomi for help but he’s being very… careful with me.
I can’t argue with the fact that I need it.
Tomi yells through the door that the pizza is cold but I like it best that way. When I step out of the bathroom, clean and ready for bed, he’s stripped down to his boxers and lounges back on his bed like some sort of cover model, a fucking living god, and I feel so freaking unworthy in my dad’s old sweatshirt and a pair of his boxers that I’ve rolled the waist on until they fit.