Chapter 77
Damien
Play - Purple Rain by Prince
Let me understand you
I had gotten good at noticing things she tried to hide. We’ve been spending more and more time together for no particular reason. But every time she smiled, and pretended everything was normal, I knew she was lying.
The silence that comes after a relapse and the way someone could be sitting right in front of you and still feel like they’re somewhere else entirely is a really strange experience.
She’s trying so hard to pretend she’s fine after that night, because she promised herself she would never do it.
Something bothered me about this. I can recognize the signs, the shaking hands, the avoidance when she looks at certain things for too long. But it wasn’t enough to understand.
And if I don’t understand what she’s running away from, how am I supposed to help her stop running?
I tried to focus on the note, the one with his signature, even if it was a joke, or something else, I should have focused on it and let it take over everything.
Instead I find myself watching her and realize that two fears are sitting beside me. One is the person out there who could hurt her. The other is the part of her that already knows how to hurt herself. Now that we’re in my car, I know I have to understand her to protect her from both.
“What’s going on?” I ask as I glance at her.
She looks at me for a second too long, like she’s deciding whether to lie, but then she smiles. “Can we park somewhere and just… stay there and talk? I don’t want to work on anything tonight.”
I nod and pull into a narrow, unlit spot near my house far from the campus.
I get out first and open her door, and she looks at me, amused and confused.
“Come sit in the back with me,” I say. “It’s easier to talk that way. And if you get sleepy, you can always nap.”
“On your lap?” she asks, laughing.
“Anywhere you want.”
We settle into the backseat, her hand drifts toward my pocket and I raise an eyebrow. “Not sure that’s a good idea.”
She ignores me long enough to steal my cigarettes and lighter, then rests her head on my lap like it’s the most natural thing in the world. I laugh, because if I don’t, I might do something worse than laugh.
She closes her eyes, cigarette between her lips. And I watch her softly, waiting for her mind to think I’m worthy enough to let the thoughts free and make her talk to me.
“What did they do to you?” I ask as I take one too, lean down, and light mine slowly. She opens her eyes just in time to understand what I’m offering.
Blue distant eyes that are focused on me. She inhales, stealing my flame, our faces too close for a moment then she exhales smoke and laughs softly.
“I’m lying on my professor’s lap,” she says, “in the back of his car, smoking, and trying not to think about the fact that I’m very attracted to him.”
“Miss Vitelli, you’re attracted to me?”
“That’s all you heard?”
“What’s making you overthink?” I ask instead.
“A lot of things.”
“Talk to me.”
I brush a strand of hair away from her face without thinking. She goes still, she doesn't pull away, nor lean in. I can feel her chest rise and fall quicker, and my head goes blank.
“You know how kids start forming a real and stable sense of who they are around six?” she says quietly. “How everything after that just…piles on?”
“What happened to you, Mireya?” I ask, terrified of what answer is coming.
“What didn’t happen?” She whispers.
The cigarette burns low. Her eyes are sat on me, and I can’t seem to look away. I’m painfully aware of where she is, of how carefully I’m keeping my hands still just because I don’t trust myself when my brain doesn’t comprehend what my heart and instinct need.
My thumb brushes her jaw, like I’m memorizing it instead of claiming it. She leans into my hand before she seems to realize she’s doing it. “I wish,” she says suddenly, sitting up, close enough that her knees press between mine, “that it wasn’t this difficult.”
Her hand slides up my chest, stopping below my collarbone. “I wish you weren’t you,” she whispers. “And I wish I wasn’t me.” Then she leans in and kisses the corner of my mouth, softly. Devastating. The feeling, the mark it left, is enough to haunt me.
It lasts barely a second, but I keep feeling it.
She pulls back first, forehead resting briefly against mine. For one terrible second, I think she might close the distance again. But she doesn’t.
“That’s all,” she says, voice shaking. “That’s all I can let myself do.”
She sits back, head on my lap again, and she folds her hands together like she’s bracing herself for impact. “You asked me what happened,” she says. “So… now I’m going to tell you.”
A second passes before she speaks again, “A man stole everything from me when I was twelve.” Her eyes drift to the window, fingers picking at the edge of her sleeve and I watch her get lost in the memories.
“I had my favorite pajamas on, and he came into my room while my mom was crying in the next room because he just finished hurting her.” Her voice breaks and she continues, “My dad was drunk on the couch.”
She’s telling this story like it’s not bad enough to explain what made her that way, like if it’s simple enough, it won’t become real. But it is, and I hate that I can’t rewrite that chapter of her life. She was surrounded by adults, she was just a child, and nobody came.
“Mireya…”
A long breath escapes her lips. “I don’t remember his face, I don’t remember anything about him.
I remember the feeling, the incomprehension and the distraught it made me go through.
” She smiles sadly before opening her eyes and looks at the vast sea outside.
“I asked myself for so long, what if I just knew him from before, what if he was a neighbor, a teacher, or even the man who would leave the journals in front of our door. What if I smiled too long and he thought it was an invitation. What if my dad thought it was a good way of punishing me because I ruined mom, because I looked too much like her and all he ever did to her was hurt her. What if everything was just my fault…”
For a second I forget how to breathe. There are too many things I want to say.
No, you were twelve. You were a child. You did nothing.
But she keeps going before I can get a single word out.
“Do you think I should’ve screamed? Because I did.
I hear it a lot in every rape cases I’ve studied or heard of.
She should’ve screamed, she should’ve fought, she should’ve said no and run.
What if I tried, what if every victim tried but it never worked.
What if it’s not our fault ? All I can think of is that, if I wasn’t so easy to hurt, I wouldn’t be like this now. ”
Something twists painfully in my chest, because she’s asking me somehow, if she was worth the protection. “It was never your fault…”
A faint smile lifts her mouth as she shakes her head. “It shouldn’t feel like it, but when it happens again… and again… and again. It seems like it’s mine.”
“No it wasn’t. Remember Philomela? Do you think what happened to her was her fault?”
She looks up at me confused, wet blue eyes that feel so … so sad, and then she replies, “She was a victim. But what if I still can’t forgive myself for being one?”
“Look at me. Look at me, Reya…” I say, and she does. “You. Are. A. Victim and it was never your fault.”
That’s when I see the tears, falling down like a waterfall on her cheeks before she buries her head in my chest.
“You keep looking for the thing you did wrong, because you were a child. Children always look at themselves first,” I whisper as I brush my thumb over her tears. “But I need you to understand that the only person who should carry guilt for this, is the person who caused the harm.”
I’ve seen her angry, I’ve seen her scared, I’ve seen her break, but now, she’s vulnerable.
She’s letting me see parts of herself she’s spent years trying to hate.
And I hate how she learned to apologize for hurting.
You can’t take someone’s pain away by pretending it never existed, all you can do is sit beside them while they finally let it out.
That’s all I’m going to do.
“Repeat it, Mireya. It was never your fault.”
“It was never my fault…” She repeats it again and again.
“It’s okay…it’s okay… I’m with you now.”
I want to find the person who did this to her, fight him and destroy any drops of life he has in him.
But sitting here, watching her wipe her tears softly, I understand that tonight, staying is the fight.
She spent so much of her life being someone’s shelter that she never realized she deserved one too.
I’ll be that for her. I promise I’ll be.