Maybe she should squeeze the blade back against her skin. This time she would slide down her wrist as hard as she could... She thought as she heard the last sentence.
Gabriel didn’t deserve anything of what she represented. She deserved nothing of what he felt... What seemed deserving didn’t mean anything.
“Mel?” The voice of Arthur left the cranky tone to sound alarmed when he reached the bed, and after depositing a cupcakes box on the mattress, look for the girl who had managed to spoil the evening for everyone.
She didn’t answer and she didn’t even look at him, but Arthur immediately knelt beside her and snatched the blade she once again carried to her already bloody arm.
“Shit!” He cursed softly at the feel of his finger. In his eagerness to prevent a new cut, he had unintentionally caused one in himself. Arthur doesn’t bother to look at his own cut finger, and just threw the blade across the room as if the small object were burning. “What are you doing?” He tried to contain the bleeding with his own hand at first, then to get hold of Melissa's face and make her look at him.
Her makeup was blurred, but what struck the young entrepreneur was the almost palpable pain he saw in the feminine countenance.
“Why, Mel?” He questioned her by shaking it slightly.
When it was clear she wouldn’t say anything, Arthur carried her to the bathroom and, holding her, he placed her severed arm under a stream of warm water.
Melissa groaned and tried to pull away; the first sign that she was alive. Arthur let out a sigh, but he wouldn’t let her take her arm away before the water had washed off all the blood. Only in this moment he could see that the cuts weren’t as deep as he imagined.
Reaching for a clean towel, he wrapped her thin arm when the bleeding threatened to continue.
Clutching the fluffy cloth against her skin, he looked at her once more. She was still crying and she seemed to say something softly that he couldn’t understand.
He didn’t need anyone to tell him, he could understand, looking at her at that moment, that the surprise party was nothing compared to what she probably had within herself.
"It hurts so much ..." He finally understood what she was saying. Pulling back the towel, he checked the cuts as it was some explanation of what she was saying. “It hurts too much ... I just want it to end”.
Internally grateful to finally see that the blood had stopped flowing, Arthur turned to the still-open spout and dipped one of his hands and brought it to Melissa's face, trying to wipe away the confusion of blurred makeup, tears and blood that her fingers had spread.
"Gabriel..." She called softly, causing the manager's heart to tighten. It didn’t take another word to understand that the girl was asking Gabriel to move away, whatever pain she was.
Unfortunately, Melissa wouldn’t have her request answered, at least not that night. His friend had told him, when they went to the hotel, that he would listen his advice, and he would move away from Melissa, leave her in peace against the madness that she was.
"I don’t know if I can handle it, Arth.” He had said.
Arthur imagined that no one could deal with Melissa, not without being completely affected by her. He had been here for less than fifteen minutes, and he wasn’t as close to the girl as Gabriel was, and he already felt as if she had drained his strength. He couldn’t even imagine what it would mean for Voss to have found her as he found it, especially when the singer hadn’t completely overcome his own inner pain.
"Gabriel is not here..." he said softly and pulled Lissa into a tight hug. “He's not coming tonight, Mel. But it's better... In the morning, everything will look better.
Melissa couldn’t return the hug or respond, just remained inert, even as Arthur broke the embrace and went looking for a first aid kit.
She let herself be led back to the room and she didn’t complain when the manager sat her on the edge of the bed. She allowed him to bandage her arm as she gaze locked on the boxes he had left there when he entered the room.
Purposely, she ignored that was wrapped in a shiny wrapping paper and slowly opened the plain white box, revealing some cupcakes. She couldn’t remember to see them on the decorated table in Gabriel's dressing room, but she knew it was from her failed surprise party by the purple cover with silver details and the little flag stuck in the dough bearing her name.
"I had to bribe some people to get these, according to Gabriel's requirements. Chocolate, red berries and marshmallow coverage...” Arthur finished the bandage bandaging the female arm when Mel took one of the cupcakes and watched closely.
“My favorite”. She commented, crying again.
“I imagined”. He answered and put away the candy before Melissa's trembling hand knocked it over. "Because you gave me so much trouble, you're going to have to eat them, even if I have to force you ..." He tried to play. "Now why don’t you lie down and get some sleep?" He suggested, deciding to take Gabriel's place on the watch that night. He was afraid to leave her alone. “Where's your medicine?”
"No..." she said weakly.
“Melissa, please...”
“It wasn’t here. Lissa continued. "I would take it off, but Gabe would not let me do it."
Arthur sighed. He didn’t crash at the door of his best friend to order the pills. If he did, he would have to explain why he wanted them, and he didn’t intend to tell the singer what he had witnessed.
"Okay... Just close your eyes and try to sleep.”
She had never made it easy, so it wasn’t surprising that she had refused to lie down when he tried to help her, or kicked her when he tried to pull out the boots she wore.
“Do you want to talk about it?” He questioned, pushing the gift that Gabriel had bought for her and cupcakes, so he could sit on the bed.
"He hates me, doesn’t he?" She whispered, running a finger through the bandage on her arm. "He gave up faster than I thought..." Her voice cracked a little more. “It’s better”.
Looking at her, he thought about denying the statement. He knew that his friend had only been hurt. When the hurt passed, Gabriel would probably look for her again. Anyone could see in that pair of famous brown eyes, that he was in love, and Arthur knew that when Gabriel fell in love it was for real. But talk didn’t look like anything that night.
She would have remained silent and unmoving, if she hadn’t pulled her knees to her chest and sobbed.
The impotence and the desire to tear a little out of that pain that was killing Melissa made the manager get up and go to the girl's suitcase. He came back with a new dress, black and long-sleeved.
"Come on..." He pulled her to her feet and pushed her toward the bathroom, when the girl didn’t move to accept the dress offered. "You can’t appear in front of him in those blood-soaked clothes”.
Lissa stared at him, blankly.
"I won’t say a word about what happened here..." He compromised himself. "You’ll tell him, if you think you should... Or just apologize, cry, hug him ... Do what you want, but you will not stay here all night crying and wondering how Gabriel feels.”
In a trance, she picked up the dress and shifted her clothes without stopping to look in the mirror. When she left the bathroom, Arthur considered her for a moment, making sure it wasn’t possible to see the bandage and no bloodstain.
"OK..." He picked up the two boxes he had brought, and with his free hand pulled Melissa out of the room. “I'll regret it in the morning...” Stopped in front of the rockstar room, he put the boxes on Lissa’ arms. "Then, please, try to make things better."
In the middle of the empty corridor, Melissa looked the closed door without know what to do. The cut on her arm allied to the face that could feel swollen could pushed her back to her own room and let Gabriel forget her, but the hole in her chest that had grown larger when she realized the singer wouldn’t look for her to spend more that night together, made her turn the knob and enter the room. She didn’t knock on the door or did anything to announce her presence, just entered the
room, as Gabriel used to do when he came to her.
The difference was that he was always radiant, with a bright aura of self-confidence leading him as she seemed to carry a dense black cloud into the room.
He was sitting in the middle of the bed, his legs crossed and the guitar in his hips. The wet hair and sweater set he wore was the only indication that he had been trying to relax after the tense night he had lived.
Gabriel looked at her for a moment, with his sad and tired eyes watching her.
Melissa cringed at the evaluative gaze. She knew that her face was marked by ruined makeup and tears. She probably looked as horrible as she felt. For the first time, she wished she were beautiful to him.
When the singer looked away and picked up some notes on the guitar, without saying anything to acknowledge her presence, she shuddered and felt the tears coming back.
She wanted to run away again, as she always did, but the sound of the sad notes he took from the guitar made her place the boxes she held on the floor and, with her eyes misty, her gaze once more before pulling out the pair of boots that she wore.
When she got close to the bed, she wished she'd had a good shower. She was dirty to have sat on the floor and the blood that had ripped from her, although with the new dress the dirt wasn’t apparent.
She hesitated because she knew that he hated someone coming up on his bed when it was dirty and she didn’t know if her presence was welcome. Finally, she decided that even with a thousand baths of boiling water would clean the mud that always carried in her soul, and that even if he didn’t want it around, she owed him an explanation.
She climbed onto the mattress slowly and approached until her cold hand touched his hand, making the sing note die.
Gabriel sighed and at last looked at her. He hated to see the contorted face staring at him. He was so confused, but still he wanted to pull Melissa into his lap and hold her. He didn’t do what he wanted, just put the guitar aside and leaned back against the headboard, stretching his legs that protested that they had been so long crossed.
Closing his eyes for just a second to prepare for what was to come, he was surprised to find Mel creeping into his lap. He was paralyzed, looking, without know what to do next.
She lowered her gaze to her own hands and let her fingers play with the fabric of the coat he wore.
The room was filled with uncomfortable silence, but Gabriel didn’t dare to speak. He didn’t know what to say.
"It was my birthday..." Mel's voice scared him, it was flawed and hoarse. “16 years. I was so excited... I had planned everything, in the smallest detail, and as far in advance as possible. Everything was ready before the New Year Eve because it was when he would arrive, like every year, and I didn’t want to waste a minute of the days with him to do anything that wouldn’t be with him.”
Gabriel didn’t know who he was, but he hated the man before he even knew more about it. The way she spoke was enough to predict what else she would reveal. The singer didn’t know if he wanted to hear, but he didn’t stop her from continuing.
"He took me to spend the New Year on the beach, just us. My mother was on some vacation trip too important to care where I would be, and he was family... Nobody really cared”. She glanced at Gabriel could see the grudge in her eyes. "It was the first time anyone had driven me out of Seattle, I was going to see the real sun, and he had promised to teach me how to drive... I was too excited to really be surprised to share the same hotel room or deny myself to wear the bikinis and dresses he had bought... All my best gifts had come from him: the doll I most wanted, the game my mother denied, my first sketchbook ... So, it was just more gifts like all the others. And for the first time, I had a gift for him too: a frame with a drawing what I had made. Us, years before, when I was just a little child and had met him, lay on his lap, laughing at the fires and the crackling kiss he'd given me”.
Gabriel couldn’t resist any longer and brought his hands up to her waist, pressing in a gesture that he hoped would be comforting.
"It was my first memory of him, and I was so proud of the drawing that I had chosen the best frame and written on the verse that I loved him as a father”. Mel rubbed her face for the unending tears. "He loved and said I would always be your princess..." Gabe heard the word being uttered with disgust, and finally he was able to understand why she didn’t want to be called that. "He said I could leave the "uncle" aside and call him dad if I wanted to. It seemed a bit strange at first, after all he was all funky and he was not more than 17 years older than me, but I accepted the offer because I wanted more than anything that he was my father.”
"Mel..." Gabriel tried to think of something to say, perhaps preventing her from continuing, but Melissa brought a trembling finger to his lips.
"He gave me a smooch, my first one, when I said ‘Daddy’ for the first time. It was just an innocent affection, he told me when I was scared”. Gabe squeezed his fingers a little more tightly around her thin waist, thinking he would suffocate if the story really headed for what he imagined. "It was also just a careless when he applies sunblock on the beach or when he pulled the top of my bikini off because he said that it would be best not to be sunburned. It had also been just a careless every time he'd touched me all over the previous vacation, so it was no big deal that he'd decided to sleep in the same bed instead of waking up at night to check on me”.
Melissa bit her bottom lip hard and focused her gaze on the singer's face.
"I was about to turn sixteen, but I was so desperate for attention and affection that I didn’t care when he continued to insist that I have to get a hydrant on my tanned skin even after 20 days after the beach season. I was so stupid that I didn’t seem so absurd that he had woken me up on my birthday with his fingers inside my panties...”
“Calm...” Gabriel pulled her into a clumsy hug, laying her on his chest and sliding the palm of his hand behind her back. He was crying with her. “It's over”.
It wasn’t over. Maybe it would never end. Mel thought as she clung to the singer as a castaway cling to the lifeboat.
"I just realized everything was wrong when he showed up in my room after the party, drunk and annoyed that I had dance with a friend from high school. I trusted him, so when he asked, I confirmed that I found the boy handsome and that he had stolen a kiss for me during the party... "She continued, now unable to look Gabriel's eyes for the position they had taken and for the shame that she felt. “He had never shouted me before, so I couldn’t believe it when he hit me in the face and cursed me. And it was even more unbelievable that he ripped off my pretty debutante dress and...”
"Mel..." The singer practically hummed her name. “I'm sorry, babe”.
“I screamed... I screamed so much.” She ran a finger down Gabriel's chest and closed her eyes tightly, trying to erase the image from her mind. "No one came and he didn’t stop... Not until I shut it down. Waking up in the next day was weird... It just seemed like a nightmare, but I knew it wasn’t because I could feel my body hurting and the dress was there, ripped to the floor. What do you do at a time like this? I just got up, took a shower, got dressed and ignored the dress on the floor and the sheet of my bed dirty with blood. I went down the stairs and looked for my mother. She was at the dinner table, having breakfast, laughing at my stepfather, and offering juice and buns to her brother-in-law. I tell everything, looking in his eyes, crying and shaking, standing at the table where the three of them continued to eat as if I hadn’t said anything.
He laughed, denied, and his brother yelled at me. He said that I was lying and he demands that my mother do something. I begged to believe me; I ran to the bedroom and went back into the dining room, pulling the dirty sheet and the ruined dress over the chopped fruit on my mother's plate. She didn’t move, Gabriel, not even a millimeter. She didn’t even look at me as she listened to her brother-in-law saying that I was just upset that I didn’t want him to leave.
When he left at the end of the day, I tried to convince myself that i
t hadn’t really happened, that it was just in my head, and I almost got it... But it was when my mother went to my room, passed her big nails down my face in a gesture I always hated, but which she insisted on calling affection. I heard her say something: ‘Mel, baby, the first time is always bad... It'll be better next time’."
Pushing the guitar away from the bed, not caring for the deaf thump that the instrument brought to the floor, Gabriel pushed Melissa away from his chest and laid her on the bed. Gently, he turned toward her and spread kisses down her wet face.
"I'm so sorry, Mel”. He said between his kisses. “I'm so sorry. It should not have happened... But it's over now. He will not hurt you again.”
His words only made the girl cry even more.
"He came back the next year, and all the others.”
Without know what to say to make her feel better or to relieve the pain he felt in his own chest when he heard her say that the abuses continued until recently, the rocker returned to kiss the insistent tears.
"Not this year..." He finally managed to get some words out and looked at her, letting her see that he was crying with her. “This year you weren’t there...”
"No..." she agreed, shaking her head and sniffing. "This year, I was with you..." She put a finger to his face and brushed back the trail of tears. “Destroying your New Year. I'm sorry!”
He forced a smile to try to cheer her up. Now he could understand the exaggerated reaction by calling her "princess" during the party. He felt like an idiot for having left her alone that night, and even more for don’t follow her when the surprise birthday party reminded her of everything.
"Don’t cry..." she asked softly. “Not for me. I don’t deserve it. It was my fault and...”
“It was not!” He cut her off, imperative. "He's a monster who manipulated you, transformed what you felt for him into something disgusting and sickly. Nothing that happened, it was your fault.”
Melissa clasped her hands around his face.
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