Heavy limbs lay over mine and I don’t want to move them or grind on his knee for some friction.
I just want to lay here in the harmony of our breathing.
After he ravaged me in the night, he pulled me into his arms and cradled me like he was frightened I’d flee, but in all the years I’ve felt a piece of me was missing, I know now I’d been searching for that stray part of me in all the wrong places because this is where I was supposed to come to find it.
The sun trickles through the window and kisses over the bed, teasing us with its affection.
Max groans next to me and muffles something incoherent, and I manage to wiggle from his hold and tiptoe down the stairs to use the bathroom.
After relieving my bladder, I rinse my hands and then go to the kitchen to make coffee.
I already sense his movements before seeing him.
“Why are you not still in bed?” he asks against my ear, wrapping his arms around my waist and nuzzling into my neck.
“I want to get a good start on the day.” A grin creeps over my face being in his embrace, as if we’re two carefree people just falling in love and living life without a care.
I don’t want it to end.
Turning in his grasp, I place my hands against his chest and welcome the slow drumming of his heartbeat.
“I can go alone if you need to open your shop.”
It’s only now occurring to me that he has a life, a business, and here I am invading his world and keeping him from his responsibilities.
“I’m the boss, so don’t worry about the shop.”
I take a minute to take in the apartment again and the information about his mom not going back to work after his dad abandoned them.
“What made you open a hardware store?” I ask, brushing my lips across his chest.
He looks off into the space above my head in thought.
“I dropped out of school early and did odd jobs here and there, and then my grandfather passed away, leaving me some inheritance. I knew if I didn’t invest it I was going to be a waste of space like my father, coasting through life and blaming everyone but myself for my problems.” His chest deflates a little at the mention of his father.
“I had mom to take care of so I asked a friend to help me with some investments, and a couple of them paid off and made me a good profit.” Dropping his head to look at me, he continues.
“I bought this place from an old timer, eighty-five years old and who had lived in this town his entire life, his family going back generations to the people that first built it. The place was a dive, used as a storage dump for an antique shop. That was what my shop was before Mr. Strafford passed away.”
His expression hardens, speaking of the death of the old man.
Was he close with him? Did it upset him?
“It was going into liquidation, so I got it at auction for a fraction of the cost it would have been and renovated.”
That’s incredible.
He mentioned only being twelve when my mother went on her rampage so that only makes him a few years older than me, and yet he’s established himself in the community and set up a business and home.
What have I accomplished?
“Come on. Let’s get some coffee with breakfast at the bakery across the street.”
Sugar for breakfast? Damn, he really is perfect.
The heat outside hits me like a brick wall.
Air is restricted in the smog and I almost miss the rain when the beads of sweat glisten over my body.
People mill around the shop windows and come and go in various doors.
The town that seemed like a ghost town at night is alive and busy in the day.
The door closes behind me and Max offers me a breath-stealing grin.
“Ready?” he asks, holding his hand to me.
Yes. A thousand times yes.
My hand just clasps his when a woman steps from a nearby car and I recognize her straight away as Miss Bloom.
Sniffling, she takes a few steps towards us and then stops, her eyes flitting to our entwined hands.
Her face reddens and she licks her lips and purses them.
“I wondered if I could talk to you?”
She’s looking at me but I’m not sure if she’s actually addressing me.
An uneasy tremor rocks through me and my paranoid mind tells me there’s more to her and Max then he let on.
I risk a quick glimpse up at him and all the happiness from this morning has evaporated from his posture.
His jaw clenches and then his lips curl back in a snarl.
“She doesn’t need to hear what you have to say just to make yourself feel better, Riana. How fucking selfish are you?”
I haven’t heard Max swear before now, I don’t think, and it seems cold on him, unnatural even. He really holds something against this woman.
But in a sense, he is right. Why does she even care? Everything happened.
It’s done, no matter how bad she feels that she didn’t prevent it.
“What do you want to say that could mean anything to me?” I ask, truly wanting an answer that will justify her seeking me out, unless this was just a ploy to see Max.
“Sorry.” She speaks on a broken choke, like it’s obvious and should mean something to me.
Screw her apologies.
My hand drops from Max’s and I take the few steps toward her until I’m close enough to see the crinkles around her mouth, the hardship of her life spiraling off in a different direction then she had planned.
She’s running on empty, broken within, like me.
“Why didn’t you do something? Tell someone?” I ask, curious of her answer.
Her mouth pops open forming an o shape.
Her lips vibrate and tremble like she has words to speak but can’t form them.
“If Max told you about me, why didn’t you do more?”
It’s a genuine question.
I don’t know what she did or didn’t do, only that it hadn’t made any difference.
Her arms wrap around her waist to hold herself up.
“There wasn’t proof. If I told my superiors and was wrong it could have ruined my career.”
She really just said that.
Kids know no different. If I was born into abuse, how would I know what was right and what was normal?
Teachers are supposed to notice, look out for and protect us when we can’t do it ourselves.
Max told her what was happening to me and she must have believed him enough to take pity on me and try to give me a birthday, and yet it wasn’t worth her career.
My safety, my sanity, my innocence.
And in the end, look where she ended up.
“How’s that career working out for you, Miss Bloom?” I taunt.
A fat, salty drop leaks down her cheek.
“Keep your sorry for someone who can use it, because It’s just more weight on my already heavy shoulders and I’m losing the strength to keep it up.”
My feet adjust to turn away from her when the world tips on its axis.
The back door of her car opens and a tiny child gets out.
The world around me slows and noise ceases to exist, all except my heart that beats so loud I fear everyone can hear it.
Can the world just pause so you can feel your own soul being ripped from within the essence of your being?
Thud…
My lashes blink, watching in agony of the implications of who she is and who she belongs to when she takes off running towards Max, a chortle pinching her chubby cheeks and her arms outstretched.
I’m bound to the moment by the unsettling welling beginning to build inside me.
No.
“One thing lead to another.”
Max’s arms open and he crouches to collect the child in his embrace.
A thousand tiny needles dance there way over my scalp and my breath is subconsciously punched from my chest.
I battle for an anchor to steady me in this moment.
I feel like I’ve been dragged from a dreamful bliss and dumped into the rude awakening of reality.
He didn’t mention them having a child.
Rage and disgust snap and fight for control of my actions.
Do I have a right to be upset?
Blinking, I know tears shimmer in my eyes as I observe the similarities.
In the child who has eyes the same as the man holding her.
In the logical part of my mind, I tell myself that these things happen all the time, but in the maddening, lost part of my mind, anger and disappointment take hold.
Desolation settles over my skin like dew seeping into the pores when I hear her giggle.
Echoes of past laughter funnel through my corrupted thoughts and push my body into action.
Wordlessly, I take the keys hanging from Max’s fingers before he can stop me.
His calls sound around me, setting fire to my insides, but I leave him with the ashes.
Jumping into the truck, I key the engine to life before skidding out of there.
The radio’s noise fills the cabin trying to distract from the betrayal I suddenly feel.
“Debris left on the tracks has been blamed for the devastating crash that claimed three hundred and thirty three lives.”
I slap my hand against the radio button to turn it off, sick of the news presenter’s monotone voice.
No one cares, woman.
They’re dead.
Whatever caused it, they’re just freaking dead.
Everything hits me at once, a tsunami of emotion tumbling over me, angry waves swallowing me up before pounding me against the shore.
Tears fall in a torrent of angry sobs.
The road blurs before me and my hands shake against the steering wheel, the overwhelming need to release everything from inside me is like a dam bursting and a life of uncertainty and grief crashing through it.
I don’t understand what it is I want anymore.
There’s this desperate longing and an intense fear that nothing will ever free me from the dark hold of myself.
I’m crawling in the dark with no torchlight to guide me in the right direction.
I want to hold my breath, swallowing the life I’m sleepwalking through and fade into the abyss.