Fight Like a Girl - Sheena Kamal Page 0,55
it down with some water. “You should go home and get some sleep.”
“I don’t want to go home.”
He doesn’t look at me for a while. Like Kru in the office.
I just sit there like a loser until he pulls back the covers on his tiny bed and gets in, leaving a space for me. When I get in, his arms come around me and he presses a kiss to my temple, where that girl hit me once. The exact spot my headgear had slipped and lost me the fight, her fist plowing straight into the soft tissue there.
“You’re burning up,” he says, reaching over to open a window.
Am I? I don’t feel hot at all.
A breeze comes through. The room is so tiny that it takes no time at all to cool it down. For just that moment it feels like we’re the only two people in the world. Everything feels sort of smudgy, like we’re in a painting or something. Not in the real world. I slide a hand under his T-shirt so I can feel the muscles in his back. It still feels nice.
We fall asleep just like that.
* * *
I’m dreaming. Floating in a sea of red. I feel something bite me and, with a slap, pull my hand away to find a dead mosquito. The slap wakes me, but it takes a full minute to figure out where I am. I hear someone breathing nearby and I am seized with this feeling. Like I’ve got to be quiet, or else. Shhh, if you stay still like that no one will notice you. He won’t hit you if he doesn’t know you’re here. If he doesn’t know you’re here, he’ll only see her. I shut my eyes tight, but I still see the red.
I hear a voice. “What’s wrong?”
I don’t open my eyes or move.
“Hey, Trish?” I feel someone stir beside me. In the bed, beside me. Then Jason’s hand rests on my arm and I relax. “Want me to call your mom? You’re so hot. I think you have a fever.”
“No, don’t call her!” I say. I can’t help the fear in my voice. I know he’s heard it, too.
He pauses. All his attention focuses on me in the dark. “Is there something wrong? Trish?” When there’s no response, he brushes a lock of hair from my face. “How did you hurt your arm?”
“Fell down the stairs.”
He knows I’m lying. I don’t know how. Maybe I was talking in my sleep. Maybe in my sleep I let all my secrets hang out to dry before shoving them back in again in the morning. Guys shouldn’t know how to read girl-secrets but Jason somehow does and it isn’t fair, because he doesn’t stop with just the one.
“How did your dad die?”
I say nothing.
“Trish? Hey, talk to me.”
You’d think that fear would make me keep my mouth shut, but it has the opposite effect. It makes me want to tell him everything. “I killed him,” I whisper. “I was driving and it was raining and I didn’t mean to, he just appeared out of nowhere, like he came at us—”
“I don’t believe you! I don’t believe a word you say. Why are you lying?”
Shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up…
“She told me to.”
Damn it.
There’s a coldness now as he takes his heat away from my side. He switches on his desk lamp. “I’m going to call the cops.”
“And tell them what?”
“You can’t…you don’t deserve this. You’re so stressed out, Trish. I’m going to call someone.”
“No!” I get up. I see him there, looking so angry and confused, and I want his heat back, pressed into me, and I remember what it was like the night we had sex. Like I could stay here forever. I want it again, that feeling. So I kiss him, but he pushes me off.
For the first time ever, it’s like he’s stronger than me.
“I don’t want to take advantage of you,” he says, but all I hear is I don’t want.
“It doesn’t feel right?” I sling his own words back at him and watch as I hit my target, centre of the mitt.
He flinches. “Trish…your dad just died. You’re going through something and I don’t understand it at all.”
I turn away. Suddenly, I can’t stand the sight of him. I feel stupid, so stupid, as I wrench the door open and rush down the stairs of his dorm.
* * *
Now there’s no anger keeping me