Chapter 7
Chapter seven
Different
The next couple of days fly by in a blur, and before I know it, it's Thursday evening.
I'm anxiously awaiting my scheduled apartment tours this weekend.
I received a phone call from another building this morning, wanting me to come in for a surprise tour that I was thankfully able to squeeze in about twenty-five minutes from the office.
However, this apartment is a luxury one bedroom on the third floor of an apartment building.
It has two strikes against it: I need two bedrooms, and it was too expensive.
I get out of the office a little earlier than usual and decide to treat myself out to dinner at a nice restaurant across town.
My mouth waters in response to Bumpy's incessant demand for fried chicken.
I smile brightly at the waitress when I slide in a dimly lit booth, ordering the two of us our favorite fried chicken salad, happy that at least we have each other.
Though right now it's lonely, and probably looks as lonely as it feels, it's just not worth it to go home and have to look at Brandon for a few hours before bed. So I pull out my tablet and begin to go over notes for work, relieved there are no more emails from Dr. Richardson.
As I work, it hits me that I haven't heard from my dad in a while.
My heart tugs as those wishes and dreams wither just a little bit more.
There was a time I'd kill to be a daddy's girl, but now, it seems like wanting it is starting to kill me.
Stirring my salad, I shove that hurt into the place where I store my feelings about Brandon and commence to letting them die together.
It'll hurt, until it doesn't. And I'm determined to get to the place where it doesn't hurt anymore.
Because right now I feel like every hope and dream I'd ever held close to my heart has been cruelly ripped away, leaving a giant void where love and contentment should be.
I eat my food in silence. Peaceful with the fact there's no one here to hit me, scream at me, spit on me, or take my things away. Right now I'm just a woman sitting in a booth and enjoying dinner. Right now, it's the best, most content feeling in the world.
Until it's not.
I spend the fifteen-minute drive home playing instrumental music to soothe myself; however, the feeling quickly morphs into dread when I pull into our little paved driveway and see the lights on in the front of the house. Brandon is home, and by the looks of it, he's still awake.
Dammit.
I blink back tears as I fight to keep my dinner down. I hadn’t wanted to deal with him tonight. I was having such a good day.
Walking into the house, I sit my purse and tote bag on the little kitchen counter.
He's sitting on the couch in the living room, the television on and muted, and the resentful energy chokes me from twenty feet away.
His face is hard, impassive, and he's holding a glass of something dark.
Drunk again. The stuff seems to seep out of his pores in a vile, sickly-sweet smell, making my stomach roll once again.
Pausing in the little entryway of the living room, I place a shaky hand on my tummy over the top of my purple blouse, willing the nerves to go away. I just have to get to these apartment tours.
God, help me get something and fast, please.
“Where the fuck have you been? You were supposed to be home hours ago.” The weary tone of Brandon's voice sends dread through me, his blood-shot eyes shooting to mine quickly as I force myself to remain silent.
The hairs on the back of my neck stand up as his energy begins to assault me.
The hushed accusation lining his rough tone makes me nervous.
I glance at him before hastily averting my eyes, feeling something different in his energy tonight.
I wet my lip and shift my weight onto one foot, desperately wanting to put a door in between us.
I push my hair behind my ear with a trembling hand and make myself speak loudly, confidently.
Trying my hardest to make myself sound strong.
“I went for a late dinner and caught up on some work while I was eating.”
He grunts. Hard eyes drift down my body. "Since when have you ever had to catch up on anything, Mrs. Goody Two-Shoes? You think I'm stupid?"
"No. You're very smart, Brandon," I say flatly. "Always have been."
Feigning confidence, I take off my cardigan, draping it lightly over one of the two wooden stools at the peninsula off the kitchen. I flinch as Brandon gets up suddenly, slamming his cup down on our new glass living room table, spilling the contents onto the wood frame.
My eyes widen. Not wanting my new table to be ruined, I rip a paper towel off the roll that's on the peninsula and quickly hurry over to the spill to clean it up so the liquid won’t bubble the wood. As I bend over to wipe it, I yelp as Brandon’s hand shoots out and slaps me across the face.
White-hot pain reverberates through my head, and I fall with a hard thud on the floor, pulling my legs to my chest, and covering my head with my arms.
“Brandon, no! Why are you doing this to me?! Stop it! Please stoopp! I thought you loved me!” I sob.
Self-preservation kicks in, and I panic. Rolling over, I try to crawl toward the kitchen, thinking I should just get a kitchen knife and be done with this.
I'm only able to make it a few feet before my knees drag my skirt down. Shaking, I glance up in terror when the sound of his boots bring him closer to me, and I hastily reach a shaky hand back to grab the material so it won’t drag off my hips.
But before I can, pain explodes across my back as he kicks me mercilessly hard in the center of my spine, causing me to scream before it's cut off by the air shooting out of my lungs at the contact.
Sweat dots my upper lip as I shudder flat on my front and desperately heave, working to suck in another breath.
It's like breathing fire, it hurts so bad.
"Ugghh!" I grunt, my body jerking as he lands another kick to my hip.
He pulls his foot back again, making contact with my shoulder blade now. I screech in pain when he grinds the hard sole of his boot in, almost falling over me with the severity of his movements. "You fucking cheating, lyin' ass, bitch!"
In his anger he rears his leg back and kicks me again with a dull thump into my back, over and over.
"No, God, pleeaasse. Please stop it!" I scream, my eyes widening in fear, and my words coming out garbled with every blow into my back.
"Shut up!" Brandon yells.
I flinch hard as his boot bites into my ribcage once more.
Yelping, I put my hands to my ears and curl inward, trying to close off my ears to the sounds of Brandon’s furious grunting as his blows land all over my body.
Throwing out my arms, I drag myself, but it's no use.
He kicks me repeatedly as I attempt with everything in me to crawl over the hardwood living room floor to the tile of the kitchen.
By some grace of God, I make it and fall to my side.
He mercilessly ignores my screaming until I'm suddenly overcome with pain and vomit all over the kitchen floor.
Flopping to my side, my body gets hot, and I break out into a sheen of sweat as I lose control of the contents of my stomach. My screams cut off as he keeps kicking me while vomit pours from my mouth and through my nose, choking and gagging me.
Dry heaving now, I choke just as he delivers a nasty kick to my upper back, making me slide into the mess I’d made.
An eerie silence descends upon the house, only broken by my cries of anguish.
He watches me, laying stunned in the aftermath of his fit of rage.
I press shaky hands to my face in terror.
"Are you happy now?" he says hoarsely, running a trembling hand through the disheveled hair atop his head. "Huh? Are you?"
I say nothing, feeling the mess begin to soak through my skirt.
I find myself thankful that my hair didn’t get in it, because I'd never be able to fix it after what he just did to me. This was the worst he’s hit me yet.
My fingers twitch as I whimper, laying there trembling with my eyes pinned to his chest. Scared to make eye contact, scared to move, scared to breathe.
..forcing myself to be deathly still until his footsteps fade as he lets himself out the front door, leaving me alone once again.
I lay there for an hour, moaning, crying, and hiccuping until the worst of the pain subsides, and I'm able to sit myself up on shaky arms.
A chill moves over my body, making me shiver as an ice cold sweat covers my body.
I sob, in pure disbelief at what just happened.
Pulling up my blouse that had fallen off my shoulder, I limp slowly to the bathroom and strip, throwing my vomit stained clothes into the corner of the bathtub before turning the water on to soak them.
I go to the cleaning closet in the hall, not bothering to put any more clothes on.
Whimpering and wincing with every reach to the upper shelf, I carefully pull down various cleaning supplies, and for the next hour I clean up the kitchen floor.
Slowly, naked, and with tears pouring down my face as I pray.
No use, really, because I feel no comfort; however, I am feeling small cramps in my stomach once again.
But I have to get this mess cleaned up. If I don’t, he for sure won’t.
But the seconds tick by slowly like molasses until I'm shaking so hard that it takes three times as long to clean up the mess as it should have.
Fatigued and hurt beyond belief, I cry harder, placing my hands on my knees and willing myself to breathe through the pain.
I can't even describe how badly my back hurts as I move slowly to the bathroom to shower, this time not bothering with a plastic cap.
I pull my hair into a sloppy, haphazard looking bun on the top of my head, and stand under the spray.
Defeated, and worn down. Not even having the strength to soap up, merely letting the water rinse me off.
As I stand there, I try to not let my sanity go down the drain with the water.
Emotionally and physically spent, I dress in pajamas before curling up crying on the sofa.
My phone is clutched in my hand, but I'm too scared to reach out to any of my friends. Not that I have many left. They all fell away because of Brandon, from being uncomfortable in his presence. I really only have Jerome and Chris. And if I alert the two of them to the severity of what's going on, I have no doubt they’d try to find Brandon and kill him. It’d make everything worse.
Thankfully, I don't have any clients tomorrow and only have to deal with seeing Dr. Richardson. That’ll give me most of the day to rest.
Pulling up the blanket, I spend a couple hours trying to ignore the pain, and focus on breathing deeply. Completely exhausted, I shut my phone off, vowing to go to urgent care in the morning to get me and Bumpy checked out. I end up crying myself to sleep.
Wishing things could be different.
So much more different.