Total pages in book: 238
Estimated words: 231781 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1159(@200wpm)___ 927(@250wpm)___ 773(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 231781 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1159(@200wpm)___ 927(@250wpm)___ 773(@300wpm)
Aydin tore open an anti-bacterial wipe with his teeth, his eyes darting to hers before cleaning the blood off her foot.
“I could never figure out why he hated me so much,” she continued. “Like where did the anger come from, you know? We had good parents. They didn’t abuse us. He wasn’t bullied.” She trailed off, staring at the glass. “But he was always like that. As early as I can remember, everything had to be perfect. My hair. What I wore.” She started breathing heavier as the memories played behind her eyes. “Something was always out of place, and it never pleased him. Everything I did was wrong.”
She fell silent, and I forgot the others in the room, remembering her dirty, untidy cuffs, and the hair always in her face.
“So I stopped talking,” she nearly whispered. “The outbursts got worse, and then the shouting started. Waking me up in the middle of the night, because I forgot to unload the dishwasher, or there were streaks on the bathroom mirror.” The look in her eyes grew distant, like she wasn’t here anymore. “I peed my pants one night at dinner,” she said. “I was fifteen.”
I frowned, imagining going home to that every day after school.
“I realized he was sick, and nothing was going to be good enough,” she told us as Aydin bandaged her foot, “so I stopped trying. My clothes would be wrinkled and my hair not brushed, because if he was going to hit me anyway, then…” She met Aydin’s gaze. “Then fuck him.”
I watched him watch her, the space between them disappearing as he held her leg, but neither of them moved.
“I hardly ever saw him drunk,” she told us, “but one night, he passed out with a quarter of this bottle left. I emptied it into a water bottle and took it to school.”
She chuckled, but a look of sadness crossed her eyes, remembering that day. When was it? Did I talk to her that day? Mess with her? Was I nice?
“He thought he drank it all. He never knew.” She paused before continuing. “It was just one time, but that was a good day. I didn’t feel a thing. Not even the cracked rib.”
I knit my brow, thinking about Emory Scott sucking down bourbon in math class or stumbling through the cafeteria, and how easy it must’ve been to hide it, because no one ever noticed her.
She’d needed that bourbon more than she needed air that day, and I got that.
God, I got that.
You smile and laugh, not just because your head and everything in it feels lighter, but because when you’re drunk or high, it’s like a vacation. When you’re away from the same people, the same places, the same work…you don’t think about it. It’s a break from everything that worries you or makes you anxious or keeps your world small and shallow, and everyone who wants to take a piece out of you, and when you’re high, it’s like that. It just doesn’t even matter. Suddenly, you’re seeing Machu Picchu from your front porch, and you didn’t even have to leave town.
She got drunk and loved her brother again.
What made her stronger than me was that she only did it once.
She closed her eyes as she lifted the glass to her lips, and I could tell by the longing on her face that she was escaping again. I charged over and grabbed the glass, the liquid sloshing onto my hand as I tossed it to the side.
It crashed against the wall, the glass shattering.
Don’t. I stared down at her.
I’d rather eat my hands than see her do that to herself. If this was who she was, I’d rather this than see her become what I became—someone who needed to hurt myself day after day in order to fucking smile.
“Clean it up,” Aydin ordered.
But I remained still. I didn’t know what the hell I wanted to do with her yet, but this—whatever this was going on between them—was not happening. She didn’t get to find herself with Aydin Khadir. She was coming with me.
“He didn’t save you then,” Aydin told her. “He won’t save you now.”
He watched her, and she watched me, and even though I knew she’d told me the truth last night in her bed when she said she loved me, I also knew Emmy was an oak. Her roots were firm, and love would not save the day.
“Am I going to save you?” Aydin asked her.
“No one needs to save me.” She kept her gaze on me. “I got it handled.”
“You do.” He finished, setting her foot back down on the floor, and then stood up, cleaning off his hands. “I can almost see it, can’t you?” he asked her as he gazed between Alex and me. “Them together? How good they look together? Him driving into her like he’s done a thousand times and looking down into her eyes as he does it?”