23. Bailey
23
Bailey
“ T hey don’t see you like I do, princess.” Ed twirled me around in the stall, dancing with me, smiling with me. “Those guys, they are just boys. You are so much more mature than them. So beautiful for your age. They will never see you like I do.” When he looked at me with those brown eyes, I felt like I was the only girl in the world that mattered. I mattered.
I couldn’t say anything. I could feel myself blush as I bit my lip, my lashes fluttering at the compliments. Ed started humming a country song as he danced with me, just the two of us in the empty stall. My heart was racing so fast I didn’t know what to do, but I knew he knew what to do. Ed would take care of me. He would make sure I knew what to do. Even when everyone else left me, he would always be there. He promised.
He twirled me around once more, pulling me so my back was against his front. My shoulders barely reached the height of his chest.
Bending down, he kissed me on the cheek, and at first, I was shocked. I turned around. “You’re so beautiful. Take it as a compliment when a friend gives you a kiss.”
“Oh, thank—” My words were cut short as he smacked his lips to mine. A small gasp escaped me, and I stepped away, covering my mouth.
“Take it as a compliment by returning the favor.” His words were smooth, soft. “You don’t want me to leave. You don’t want me to change my mind.” No…I didn’t. I wanted to matter to someone.
“If my dad sees…” I looked to the doorway, backing up until I stood against the wall.
“It will be okay. You are just thanking me, for the compliment.” Ed stepped forward, towering over me, and ground his lips against mine. It was my first kiss, and I didn’t know what I was supposed to do.
Ed grabbed my chin, pressing down and forcing my mouth open as he assaulted me with his tongue. I gagged.
He pulled away. “That wasn’t good manners. If you aren’t going to thank me for my compliments, perhaps I will find someone who will. Maybe you’re not as mature as I thought.” And then he left.
He turned the lights off and closed the barn doors behind him, leaving me, the light from a window shining down in the stall. Next time. Next time, I would do better.
I was sitting on my window seat, looking out my bedroom window at the garden shed as I remembered my first kiss. My phone was in my hand, and I flipped it around as I thought.
“You had so much to learn.” Ed stood in the far corner of my room. “But you were moldable. You were such a fast study. Eager to please.”
“It was wrong,” I whispered. They were words that were stuck in my heart for so long, and the snap I had felt last night released them.
I didn’t even bother looking at Ed. I knew he wasn’t real, wasn’t really there. I stared out into the dark of the early morning as I scoffed. “I was so ashamed of myself for not being mature. For not thanking you the way you wanted me to. For the longest time, I thought…what was wrong with me? I was so mad at myself that I gagged, but now, looking back on it, I know why I gagged.” I looked at Ed in a way I had never looked at him in my life. I glared. “Your breath smelled like alcohol, your saliva was disgusting, and you practically shoved my tongue to the back of my throat. You didn’t give me a choice.”
“You didn’t need a choice. You needed to be told what to do.” He held his ground, but he didn’t move forward.
I looked away from him in disgust. “You were wrong. Nolan gave me a choice. No—he didn’t give it to me. He respected my choice, even when I didn’t say it out loud.”
That memory. That memory of my first kiss…I used to look back on it and hate myself for not being what he wanted me to be. To the point that I practiced, so the next time he did it, I was ready, and I did exactly what he wanted. And now, after last night with Nolan, that snapping release I had felt was like a curse breaking. It was like I saw things differently. I looked back on that memory, and I saw…a fourteen-year-old child, forced into a nonconsensual kiss. How? How can the feelings from the same memory change over time?
Even though it was three in the morning, I pulled up Nolan’s contact on my phone, ready to call him. At the last second, I froze. I knew Nolan would answer. I knew he would talk to me. But…I needed someone who may have gone through this before. I scrolled in my contacts and paused for just a moment, my thumb hovering over the call button. How odd it was. Last year, I had no one but Ed, and this year, I had two friends I was pretty sure would pick up right away.
Glancing over to the corner—where Ed had been but was now empty—I pressed call. The phone ringing in my ear seemed loud after sitting in silence, but it wasn’t long until he picked up.
“Bailey?” Lachlan’s groggy voice spoke.
“Hey,” I whispered. “I’m sorry to wake you.”
There was some shuffling on his end, then I heard a door close. “It’s all right. You okay?”
“This is going to seem so stupid. I had a question and just really need it answered, and I thought you might be able to help me.”
He yawned. “Shoot.”
“I don’t even know if this is going to make sense. Is it possible to feel one way about something, then, years later, feel completely different about it?”
Lachlan cleared his throat, and then there was some rustling around, like he was sitting up in his bed. “Like, blocking out events that resurface years later?” I relaxed a little, I knew Lachlan wouldn’t judge me.
“No. I remember everything that happened. I remember how it happened. It’s just…different. How do I know which memory is right, when years ago, I felt one way about it, but now, looking back, I see how wrong it all was?”
Lachlan’s voice was calm and confident when he spoke next. He didn’t let his emotions in, which was exactly what I needed to sort through these thoughts. “From strictly a third-party observer, you have to think about the circumstances surrounding it. You said years later . Well, years ago, you were a young teen, right? A fourteen-year-old interprets situations differently than an eighteen-year-old. Fourteen-year-olds are often impressionable, gullible, even. Their minds sugarcoat things to make it understandable. If you were to put your eighteen-year-old self in the same situation, how would you respond now? Now that you’ve lived a bit more and better understand how to read people and situations. My therapist would say my emotions back then were valid. Right. What I felt then was true, but how I feel now is also true. You can have happy memories and still validate the trauma within them. Does that help?”
No. Yes. Maybe… I took a deep breath, eyeing the garden shed as it sat in the moonlight. While the love I had for Ed was true, what he did to me can still be wrong. “Thank you…for talking to me. What time is it, even?” I quickly looked down at my phone.
“I don’t want to lose you, Bailey,” he said, his voice gruff. “Shit happened to us, not between us. We need to stop letting it get between us and just get through it together.”
Like a family. I wanted to tell him everything, but doing so would put him in a bad position. Would it make him an accomplice? When the truth finally broke free, would he get in trouble for withholding information in a criminal case? Was this a criminal case? I felt like a criminal. Eventually, I was sure, the police were going to come for me. That, or Ed would die, and my lie would never be discovered. “I’m still working through everything. I feel like I have no right trying to work through it, though. I’m too young for this shit, you know?”
“Yeah, I know what you mean. I think I have a bit of an idea what is going on. I didn’t have anyone to talk to, and it fucking ate me up inside. Talk to me, okay? Even at three in the morning.” I smiled at that, nodding, even though I knew he couldn’t see. So, should I indulge? Tell him a few truths, get his opinion while I opened up? “How did you like stargazing?” he asked.
“How do you know about that?”
“Nolan and I talk.”
“Do you, now?” I raised my eyebrows, finding it amusing they were talking about me, but at the same time, not bothered by it.
Then again, I didn’t exactly trust myself. What if I was falling for one of them, but I was only deluding myself, just like I had with Ed? I trusted them, but I didn’t trust myself to trust them. At least Nolan and Lachlan weren’t isolating. If one of them were to suggest cutting everyone one around me out, I was sure the other would step in before I made another mistake.
“Yep, we sure do.” Lachlan made a noise, like he was stretching. “Ugh, why do Monday practices have to be morning practices? Should be banned, like double practices are.”
“Double practices?”
“Yeah, the last few years, we used to have one double practice a week—practice before and after school. The school board banned it, saying it was too much.”
“That sounds like it would suck, but I would be all for it. I like practice.” I got up from the window seat and walked over to my bed, slipping under the covers.
“If you like practice, just wait for the game,” he said. “You’re going to have the whole crowd chanting your name, trust me.”
I rolled my eyes. I highly doubted that, but I was excited for the game. “I should let you go. Thank you for answering me.”
“Bailey, I will always answer you.”
Silence fell upon us as it normally did when I was talking to Lachlan; he was so good with the calm quietness. My eyelids started to close as sleepiness took over. “Hear that?” I whispered, listening to the silence.
“I only hear your breathing,” he whispered back.
I smiled. “Same.” No loud bangs. No dogs barking. Just…the sound of his breathing…