Chapter 2
Ava
I was standing in front of the mirror in Charity’s bedroom, staring at myself because I hadn’t decided if what I was wearing was good or terrible.
“Will this do?” I echoed my thoughts aloud. Charity was sprawled on her double bed, which we had been sharing for the past five days. She was scrolling through her phone and eventually looked up listlessly at me.
“Well, it depends, what impression do you want to create?” she said and I stared at my reflection some more. What impression did I want to create?
Please give me a job so that I can rent a matchbox sized apartment in the bad side of town. If you like the way my jeans hug my ass, maybe you’ll like the way I can pour drinks into an endless stream of glasses that you won’t mind if I break. Maybe if you give me this job, I’ll be able to save enough money to make it through college.
“I think this needs a black shirt,” I said, instead of replying to Charity, and began to roll my t-shirt off. I was walking around in the hot-pink bra I had on and a pair of jeans that were the only decent ones I could find.
When I looked up at Charity, I noticed the look of sympathy she had in her eyes. I didn’t want her to be sympathetic. I wanted her to help me find a black shirt!
“I would have offered you one of mine, but you’ll float in it,” she said and smiled. She liked to self-depreciate herself. She was what…a size 16? She was big and curvy and had the kind of boobs I was jealous of, but she liked to call herself that ugly word… “fat”. To me, she was beautiful and needed to embrace her body more.
“Don’t be silly, Charity, you seriously need to stop talking about yourself that way,” I said, bending down to fling clothes out of boxes as I rummaged through them.
“I’m being honest. You’re skinny, I’m not…which means that my smallest black shirt…you know, the one whose buttons keep popping open when I wear it, will be five sizes too large for you,” she continued in that same tone and I rolled my eyes at her.
I still hadn’t found it.
I was hunched on the floor now, flinging clothes around me. I was going through box after box but there was no sign of a black shirt anywhere.
“What the hell am I going to wear? Everything is in boxes. I need to be appropriately dressed!” I barked at nobody and nothing in particular.
“Just calm down, Ava, we’ll find you something to wear,” Charity said and I shook my head, still frustrated with everyone and everything. I knew I had no reason to be taking it out on her, but I was trying so hard to keep my emotions in check and now things were beginning to get a little out of hand.
“What am I going to do?” I said, a tear rising in my voice and she jumped out of bed and came over to give me a hug.
“I’m gonna go check the laundry and see if I can find something for you to wear, okay?” she said and I nodded my head and threw her a smile. I was grateful for having a friend like her, and I’d stopped myself from erupting.
The only way was the way forward and the sooner I left my frustrations behind me, the easier it would be for me to move on.
Charity left the room in search of a black shirt or something appropriate that might fit me, and I remained on the floor, flicking through clothes and other possessions…most of which I couldn’t even remember buying.
It was strange to see that my whole life had fit into five boxes. Five perfectly square cardboard boxes were the sum total of my life. I was just glad I hadn’t adopted the puppy I was going to last Christmas, this whole ordeal would have been a million times more difficult if I was also responsible for another soul.
With my arms sunk into one of the boxes, I tried pulling out a silky material which I thought could be the black silk shirt I remembered buying some years ago. Instead, when I pulled it out, I saw that it was a silk scarf and I dropped it from my hand, like I’d touched lava.
It lay on the floor innocently at my feet. Orange and beige patterned, one I used to wear quite often, not necessarily because I liked it…orange was never really my color…but more so because it was one of the first gifts that Blaine had given me. And when I spent the day with it tied around my neck, it reminded me of him and I liked that feeling, of belonging to someone.
Blaine and I had met a year after high school, well, my high school. He already had a high-flying job and a career. The fact that he was a little older gave me a kind of thrill that I hadn’t experienced with other guys before. High school’s sloppy kissers and awkward dancers had turned into this man who had a job, could afford to rent an apartment by himself and last more than three minutes in bed.
The foolish twenty-year-old me believed that she had met her dream man. The foolish twenty-year-old me didn’t realize that there were other signs to look out for. That it wasn’t exactly paradise I was living in.
Within six months of dating, he had asked me to move in with him and I was more than thrilled to have an opportunity to leave home. I should have gone to college, I should have studied to become a Vet Tech like I always wanted to, but instead, I settled for playing house with a man I didn’t really know.
Blaine had the makings of a good boyfriend.
He opened car doors for me, held out my chair at dinner, replied to my messages and left me little gifts in the bathroom before he left for work. These were the signs I was looking for. I believed these were indications that I’d found my soulmate.
What I hadn’t been looking for, was the way he looked at me, if the smile reached his eyes when I cracked a joke. If he kissed me goodnight when he went to sleep. If I always went to bed with him by my side.
I was younger than him, and he had me believe that I didn’t understand what it was to have a real job and real responsibilities. He always claimed that he was out earning a living for us, to build a home for us and the fact that he worked hard and worked late into the night; were supposed to be testaments to how much he wanted us to have a good life.
In my hand now was the scarf that I had discarded on the floor. The gift he had given me on our third date and the one I liked to wear often, no matter how garish it looked with the clothes I had on. And as I held it in my hands, I could still remember that time he didn’t come home the entire weekend.
One whole weekend. Asshole.
He barely answered my calls and only replied to my texts to let me know that he was alive and well. When he returned, he warded off all my questions with the excuse that he was caught up in meetings and couldn’t leave the office.
That was when I started looking for other signs. I tried to rack my brain and think about all those nights he hadn’t returned home, or if he did return home late; how he had been drinking and how his clothes smelt of someone’s else’s perfume. He’d always made sure that I was aware he worked with a lot of female colleagues, but how close were they working together for their perfumes to have rubbed off on his clothes?
That weekend away was a line he had crossed and after mulling over it for two days, I decided to confront him.
I was twenty-three by now, working two part time jobs and still dreaming about a life surrounded by animals. My daily schedule had revolved around Blaine’s up to this point, and I wanted to know if it had all been in vain. If he had been cheating on me this whole time.
When I confronted him after work that evening, I could see the rage in his eyes. I hadn’t realized how much he hated being questioned. We had shared a quiet, vanilla relationship with scheduled sex once every four weeks if I was lucky. I hadn’t ever raised my voice to him before and the fights we had; always ended with him taking me out to dinner or buying me something expensive. The fact that I was challenging him for the first time, didn’t please him. Not one bit.
I continued to grill him. Questioning the late nights. The perfume. The weekend away and his slap came out of nowhere. He’d caught my jaw and it felt like a punch and I fell down to the carpeted floor from the force.
“Get up. Stop whining!” he’d barked at me, as I looked up at him from behind watery eyes. The metallic taste of blood was on my lips, as it dripped down my nose.
He had picked me up by my shoulders like a rag doll and pinned me to the wall.
“You don’t get to question me. Not while you have food on your plate and clothes to fucking wear,” he had growled.
And early the next morning, while I packed my boxes in silence; I tried to pick out all the stuff he had given me over the years and carefully kept them aside. I’d somehow missed this scarf and it had found its way to the bottom of this pile of clothes.
That was five days ago. Charity was my closest friend and the only person I could turn to in my hour of need. My two part time jobs had to be dropped because I was afraid of Blaine finding me there.
Thankfully Charity lived in a different part of town, and he didn’t know much about her but I was always afraid these days, always looking over my shoulder. I had seen a side of Blaine I had never anticipated and it had scared me.
“What about this?” Charity’s chirpy voice interrupted my thoughts and I turned to her with a deathly pallor on my face, like I had seen a ghost. When she looked at me, she knew immediately what I’d been thinking about and she came rushing towards me.
“Ava, you don’t have to worry. You know you can stay here with me as long as you need to,” she said, in her most affectionate voice and I nodded my head, battling back the hot tears that pricked the back of my eyelids. It was sweet of her to offer, and I appreciated her generosity, but I wasn’t going to accept any more hand outs from anyone.
I hadn’t realized that was what I was doing all those years with Blaine, and therefore he had so much control over me.
“Thanks, I found something else,” I smiled at Charity and pulled out a white shirt from one of the boxes and started putting it on. She watched me in silence and I could see the sympathy return to her eyes. I forced a smile on my face and stood up. No way was I going to let anyone feel sorry for me.
“Gotta go,” I said, as cheerfully as I could and I left for the interview.