“Hey, don’t do that.” He says seriously. How he knew me already, what I thought, how I felt, I’d never know. “You are amazing. Don’t shy away from me.” I lean into him and kiss him gently, a wordless thank you. “I am the luckiest guy alive right now. Its a great night, I’m on top of this rickety piece of shit ride with the most amazing girl on earth, and later, I get ice cream.”
I laugh at his assessment of what constituted lucky, he was seriously a child trapped in a grown man’s body. A seriously fine grown man. But I can’t deny that I feel insanely lucky in this moment too. “And maybe, if you’re even luckier, you’ll have another sweet treat when you take me home.”
I don’t know what had come over me. He made me crave his touch, his look. Yep, that look, the one he was pinning me with intensely right now.
Looking over, I can see his wide, mischievous smile under the moonlight. Suddenly, we stop moving, suspended in air three cars from the top. The car swings lightly, just enough to put me on edge. But my heart pounding in its cage for an entirely different reason puts me on edge even more.
Owen turns to me, puts a hand on my face and looks me in the eyes. He stays like this for a beat, and then another. In the distance, I can hear the tinkling music of the carousel. My hands are sweating in my lap, I’m trying to stay still, capture this moment and burn it onto my brain for eternity. This is it....
And then he angles his head, swoops down, and kisses me.
His mouth melds with mine, his tongue dancing past my teeth and tangling in an exotic rhythm with my own.
Don’t get me wrong, it was a great kiss. A fantastic kiss. A kiss that melted my heart and made my ears ring. But it wasn’t those three little words. I don’t know why I’d expected them tonight, we’d only been seeing each other for a little less than three months.
I guess I thought he could feel the same insane, soul-binding connection I did. That when he looked at me, we had the shared knowledge that we were put on this earth, in this god forsaken southern hellhole, to find each other.
Why was I twisting myself up over this? We had plenty of time to explore our relationship.
Except we didn’t. Owen went back to school in two days. We hadn’t discussed the specifics of what would happen between us. I was panicking. Ever since the party debacle, I needed a confirmation, whether it was those three little words or just a verbal commitment that he was mine for always, no matter how far apart we were.
Our ride comes to an end shortly after, and we fulfill all of the other cliche things on the “teenagers go to the fair” list.
Chloe wanted to do bumper cars, which was actually one of the only things Miles seemed to take pleasure in. I think it was because he got to ram into people at high speeds.
Owen insisted on showing off his “mad basketball skills” for us and ended up winning me a little stuffed bear. Before I could drag everyone over to the cotton candy booth, Farris disappeared to god knew where. Poor Chlo.
“Its a fair ritual and I will not leave here before my stomach is filled with pink sparkly fluff.” I whine as Owen protests my choice of dessert.
“Cotton candy is literally pretty air. There is no substance. Wouldn’t you rather have something good, like funnel cake?” He puts his best puppy dog face on, but I’m not budging.
“YO! Axel, what’s good man?!”
That voice.
I turn, knowing that when I do, the world will bottom out.
Keep it together, it can’t be him. You can’t remember his voice.
But then I see Owen hug him. Gregory. Right there, embracing my boyfriend in front of me.
It feels like I am simultaneously being punched in the stomach and stabbed in the heart. My fingers stop working. My senses go haywire, my vocal chords all but freeze up.
They were standing two feet in front of me, chumming it up like old buddies.
“...want to introduce you to my girlfriend. Hey, babe...come here, I want you to meet someone.” He motions towards me, waving with a giant grin on his face.
Chloe stands there, a somber, fearful expression on her face, waiting for my cue. Were we bolting, playing it cool? Did I need anything?
Only a time machine to take me away from this moment.
Gregory turns his head towards me, away from the conversation he’s having with Owen. The moment his eyes lock onto mine, he stares in disbelief for just a moment. Then, the jerk has the nerve to look over my head, as if Owen wasn’t talking about me.
I can’t move. Chloe is looking at me, Owen holding out his hand, and all I could do was stare into the venomous eyes of the boy who had shattered my world three years ago.
When Gregory finally realizes I must be the girlfriend Owen is referring to, he leers at me. Gregory openly assesses my body, his beady little eyes roaming over my curves. I involuntarily cringe at the memory of his hands on me, and cold sweat begins to trickle between my breasts and down my neck. I thought I might bend over and spill the contents of my stomach into over the dirt.
“Babe?” Owen’s voice breaks me out of my terror coma.
“I want to go home.” I declare, standing stoically in my place, not having moved any closer toward their conversation.
“What? Come meet my friend Greg,” he looks at me, annoyance marring his aqua eyes.
He was annoyed with me? I’d told him my deepest, darkest, most personal secret. I had shared my shame with him, and he stood there, bro-pounding the asshole who’d stolen my virginity? Taken it from me under false pretenses only to throw it back in my face.
“I want to go home.” My brain isn’t working fast enough. It was the only coherent thought I could voice.
“Minka, what? Come here, and then I’ll take you home.” He moves closer to where I am rooted into the ground. “You’re being kind of rude, this isn’t like you…” he whispers for only my ears.
His words feel like a slap, so much that I flinch backwards. Owen catches my arm, yanking me back towards him before I have the chance to trip over myself and land in the mud. He looks at me like I’ve come down with the plague. “What is wrong, babe?”
He really isn’t comprehending why my senses are shutting down? Why I can’t stand to breathe the same air as this creep. Unable to bear the sight of what was transpiring anymore, I turn on my heel and begin to walk off, not stopping when I hear Owen start to call my name.
I feel an arm snake around my waist, and lean in as I feel Chloe start to support my weight while we increase our pace. She knows, without me even needing to say it, that I needed to be as far away from him as possible.
“Just breathe, I’m getting you out of here.” Chloe instructs, punching the keypad on her phone.
It feel like every breathe I take in is searing my lungs, flaying me open from the inside out. I was shaking so violently that I almost couldn’t walk.
Finally we hit the parking lot with Owen hot on our heels.
“Are you ok?! What the hell was that, Minka? Do you need to go to the hospital?” He looks bewildered, and mad.
After I’d disclosed everything about my past, after we’d had sex, I thought he would have understood. I thought he would have known about everything that went down. But apparently he was more trapped in his popular bubble than I had originally thought. He hadn’t been paying any attention to me when we were in school together. How had I ever expected him to understand the gravity of what went down?
Pulling him away from where Chlo would hear us, I knew I needed to tell him the whole truth. My voice shaking, and tears pooling in my eyes, I forged on.
“Remember how I told you about my past when we were at the beach? About the bet and how awful high school has been for me? I told you that it was a certain guy who had led me on.” I look down at my fingers, pulling at them to avoid spilling the truth. I didn’t want to say his name. The whole thing was just too painful for me to even talk about, let alone remember.
“Yeah, I remember. And I told you I didn’t care about any of that. That yo
u’re beautiful and smart and you shouldn’t let what idiotic things other people choose to do or say affect you.”
It was so easy for him to take that mentality.
“I know that. But…..the guy.” I stall, twisting my fingers and biting down so hard on my lip that I thought I might draw blood. “It was Gregory.”
Owen looks honestly stunned. Questions fill his eyes, and I know he was thinking it over in his head, rolling the idea around like a marble, trying to place the events I’d described to him onto his friend.
“No, it couldn’t be, Greg is a great guy.”
My stomach drops to my feet. My throat goes dry and it feels like he’s slapped all of the air out of me. He thought I was lying?
“You don’t believe me?” I can hear the unshed tears clogging my whispered question.
“I just…Babe I’ve known Greg forever. I really think you’re mistaken. He’s an awesome dude, he wouldn’t do something like that. Maybe you didn’t get the entire story…”
My head is spinning and I can’t feel my limbs. I can only tell that I’m crying from the wetness spilling from my cheeks and chin onto my collar bone as I stand there motionless.
And there it was, clear as day. The blatant difference between us. He was in, and I was out. He would always put his cherished people, the popular crowd, over me. That’s how this always worked. Their word was stronger than mine. There was no use fighting the inevitable.
“I have to go home.” I glance around, looking for Chloe. I see Kelsey’s green Jeep pull up and know Chloe has called her. I could kiss them for being so great if I didn’t feel like my heart had just been carved out of my chest. I will my numb feet to move towards them and away from Owen.
“Hey, wait a minute! I can take you. Minka, what the fuck?!” Owen grabs my arm, looking incredulous, as if he hadn’t just ripped my heart from its cavity and stomped on it. Its hard to even look at him. I wanted to tell him that I loved him. How the hell had I ended up here again? I’d overlooked all of the warning signs, the bells and whistles telling me I was walking into a trap. I had to get out of there.
Facing him, I deliver the blow that I know will wreck and preserve me all at once. “Owen, we shouldn’t see each other anymore. Please don’t call me.” I hope he can hear the robotic sentences coming from my mouth. I’m sure my octave is even reaching a hair breadth over a whisper. I was trying so hard to force the syllables past the lump in my throat. Big salty tears leak from my eyes as Chloe grabs my waist, supporting me once again over to the car.
“MINKA! What are you doing? Can we talk about this? What the hell is happening…..” I see Owen’s pleading eyes boring holes into me as Chloe loads me into the car. He plunges his hands into his hair out of frustration and moves angrily towards the car.
Pulling at the now locked door, he shouts at the side of my face through the glass, “Minka! You’re seriously mad about me talking to Greg? You have got to be wrong! Come out here and talk to me, god damnit.” He pulls a few more times at the locked door handle and pounds his fist into the window.
I strain my body and will it to keep facing forward. I can’t look at him or I will dissolve into a puddle of tears. My body feels like it's being sucked into the earth; my ears are filled with a whooshing sound and my stomach and heart keep doing that dipping thing like I’m on a roller coaster. I’m not shocked to find I might be sick in the back of Kelsey’s car.
I feel the engine of her Jeep come to life under my body, and know that this is the last time I will see Owen if I can help it. As she slowly pulls out of the gravel parking lot, I turn my body to glimpse him one last time.
Out the back window, he’s jogging now to keep up with Kelsey, who is laying her foot on the gas. I see his mouth shouting my name as he runs faster, waving his arms in exasperated movements. Tears leak down my face. I should have never gotten involved with him. I should have kept my walls up.
The farther we get, the more he slows down, until I watch him stop dead. I can just make out the pained expression he wears, and I feel the same hurt marring my own features.
I watch Owen for as long as I can make him out, until he disappears in the cloud of dust the tires kick up in their wake.
26
Minka
Its funny. Well it isn’t actually funny. But in a way it is.
Its funny how history has a way of repeating itself.
I’d told myself from day one of meeting Owen that I wouldn’t give in. Then I told myself I could be with him, but I wouldn’t get hurt. Then I told myself I wouldn’t fall. And after I’d fallen, I’d told myself that he would never let me down.
You almost have to laugh. Almost. But that would require you to stop crying.
A knock sounds on my door, the place I had scarcely left in five days. Ever since Owen left.
I look up from Jane Eyre as my dad enters the room. He was home for dinner almost nightly now. At least one relationship in my life was looking up.
"Are you...are you ok? You seem down this week. And your eyes...they’re red. Like you've been crying." He joins me where I lay on my stomach in the middle of my bed.
I haven't completely filled him in on the implosion that was my relationship with Owen yet. I haven't even wanted to process it, let alone go through the uncomfortable conversation of explaining it to my dad. But I guess here we were.
"Owen and I....we ended things."
"That little prick..."
"Dad!" I’m surprised by his sudden curse. Usually my dad is a ball of pent up temper, but he keeps a good lid on it.
"What? I told that little asshole if he hurt you I'd break his neck. And now I'm going to have to go do that." He makes a motion as if he was about to spring from my bed.
"Dad, stop it. You don't have to kill anyone on my behalf." He looks at me as if I was crazy to assume anything else. "Plus, I'm not angry. I'm just sad."
I look down at my book as another tear drops.
"Oh come on, don't cry sweetheart. Any guy who makes my daughter this upset is really not worth it anyway. He's an idiot."
He pats my back like I remember him doing sometimes when I was a little girl. It helps ease the pain a bit, but the bite of reality still sinks deep.
I was telling him the truth. I wasn't angry, because deep inside I knew something like this would eventually happen. I knew I was Icarus, flying too close to the sun. I was bound to disintegrate into ashes.
I was just sad. So very sad. I always thought when they talked about broken hearts it was all bullshit. But now I knew, you could actually ache in the middle of your chest so badly that all you wanted was whatever would ease that pressure.
I understand the addicts now. Because as much as I hated myself, and Owen for what I'd let him to do to me, the only thing I wanted was him. He was the only thing that would alleviate this hurt.
“I know he is. But I’m a bigger one. For getting involved with someone like him in the first place.”
“Someone like him?” My dad wears a puzzled look.
“You know, popular. Cool. Bright, and gifted, and athletic. Someone everyone looks up to and reveres. Someone who lights up every single room they walk into.”
I thumb at the pages of the book. For as far as I’d come in my self confidence, part of me was always going to be that naive, wall flower sophomore who didn’t believe in herself.
“Who said you weren’t someone like that? Because from what I see, you are all of those things and more.” Dad pushes me over so that I sit up, face to face with him. “I’m not sure who along the way convinced you that your worth was less than anyone else’s, but they were dead wrong. You are the best kind of person, Minka. You are considerate and intelligent, beautiful, you have the wittiest sense of humor. And let me let you in on a little secret. You don’t just light up a room, you burn so bright that even the solar system is jealous.”
I brush away the tears that are again dripping down my face. I don’t know how many years I’ve waited for someone to say thes
e things to me. And I realize I haven’t even known that I’ve needed them.
“Don’t you dare let anyone make you feel inferior again, ever in your life. You are perfect, exactly the way you are. Exactly the way your mother and I made you.”
He pulls me into his chest, where I collapse in sobs. I cry for my mother, for not being able to grow up with her and hear her wisdom. I cry for the years I’d wasted doubting myself and hiding from the world. And I cry for the love that I couldn’t seem to make go away, no matter how hard I tried.
But as I surfaced from wallowing in the pit of my grief, I felt something else.
Beneath all of the sadness and heartbreak, I felt empowered. I was finally sure of myself. Sure of my worth. And I wasn’t letting anyone strip me of that again.
* * *
The first three days of school had passed without consequence. There wasn't anything taped to my locker, no one harassed me with dirty notes in class, and I even got to eat lunch peacefully with Kels.
That was, until today.
I’m unwrapping my roast beef on wheat when I hear her. Allison Renner.
She’s two tables away from me, surrounded by her posse of popular-bots, drinking a green juice and filing her nails. Someone really needed to tell her this was high school in North Carolina.
"So then, I heard that he took her down to the Banks just to bang her where no one could see. How pathetic is that? I mean how desperate can one person be..."
Kels saw me freeze, listening to the entire conversation. "You want me to go over there and teach that slore a lesson?"
It was a sweet offer, but I was done having people fight my battles for me. "Nah, I think it's high time I said something to her, don't you?"
And with that I get up, smoothe out my favorite teal button down dress, and head right for the girl I'd let control my image for way too long.
"Hi Allison." I stand over her where she sits, waiting for her to acknowledge me.
She looks up, an expression of disgust clouding her perfect features. "Oh...hi...um, Maggie, is it?"
Pitching to Win (Over the Fence #1) Page 19