"Nothing,"
he replies, but I don’t believe him. Something my father just said catches my attention.
“You’re coming next weekend?” I ask in disbelief, astonished that my father is able to take some time off from his work and a little frightened at the thought of them here in Seattle.
“We miss you, sweetheart,” my father answers ruefully. “We’d love to see your room and meet your roommate and friends.”
I glance back at Duke and make a face. I’m not sure how well it would go for Duke and my father to meet. My father had a hard time to trust Sean, and as soon as Sean won my dad’s trust he began to beat me. Now that my father knows Sean’s dumped me, I’m pretty sure he’s going to hate every guy in my life, and Duke is the only one right now.
“I don’t have that many friends you know. Just Kate and someone else,” I mumble, suddenly shy to talk in front of Duke. However, at the mention of someone else, he perks up a little and it almost makes me laugh.
“And who is this someone else?” my father asks, suspicion pouring from his gentle voice.
I grit my teeth, angry at myself for slipping like that. Now I can’t hope to distract him. He’s not military for nothing, when he’s focused on something, nothing will stop him. I sigh. “His name is Duke and he’s a TA in my Psychology class,” I answer fast, waiting for a reaction, but it’s not at all what I thought it would be.
“Duke? A TA? You’ve got a new boyfriend?” At the word boyfriend, my mother’s squeal makes me cringe and I pull the phone away from my ear.
“He’s not my boyfriend!” And just like that, Duke sells me out by laughing hysterically. I murder him with my glare, not seeing what is so funny. Not at all.
“He’s with you?” Now my father is stern, not at all pleased at the idea, which I can understand. It’s a Friday night, it’s past ten p.m. and I’m alone with a guy. No father would like such information.
“I’m with him, but he’s not my boyfriend. We were working, Dad. Not all students are out partying or doing who knows what!” I’m blushing furiously and craving a hole in which I could hide forever, avoiding Duke’s chuckle among other things.
“But you’re alone in your room with him.”
I sigh loudly in the phone and swat Duke’s shoulder. “I’m alone with him, but in his room. Not mine.” I don’t know why this detail is so important for me all of a sudden. I’m being ridiculous. I’m not a teenager anymore and I can do whatever I want after all.
“We need to meet this boy, sweetheart,” my father says, not leaving me any room to say no.
“Yeah, whatever you say, Dad.” Soon after this mortifying moment, I hang up and hide my head in my hands. “So, apparently you’re in for a meeting with my parents.”
“God, it’s weird,” Duke says, his voice lighter than it was before this awful phone call. “They think we’re sleeping together, huh?”
He fishes for his pack of cigarettes, takes one and lights it with dexterity, being careful to blow the smoke away from me.
“My father is not very ... well, he’s going to be tough.”
“He’s protective of his daughter, it’s a good thing.”
“He’s also military.”
He coughs and turns to me, something like fear in his eyes. Now it’s my turn to laugh. A big guy like him afraid of my father. Priceless.
“I’m glad you think this is funny. You’re not the one who’s going to be threatened.” He grabs an overflowing ashtray from his roommate’s desk and flicks his cigarette over it. The ash falls easily. He puts the ashtray on his knee, careful to not let the ash and cigarette butts fall all over the bed.
“He won’t do that, but he’s going to question you about me.” I shrug and take a deep breath. “He doesn’t know about Sean, so leave the reason for our friendship out of it.”
“Imagine for one second, Skye, what he’d do to your asshole of an ex if he knew what he did to you.” He inhales the smoke deeply and exhales slowly, a small and pensive smile turning up those well-defined lips that I like to watch contracting around the cigarette each time he puts it in his mouth.
“And you, imagine that my parents are friends with Sean’s. That they often have dinner together. Less often since the breakup, but they’re still good friends.”
He abandons his finished cigarette in the ashtray and puts it back on the desk. “And? It’s not Sean’s parents’ fault if he’s a violent prick. That doesn’t mean you can’t tell your Mom or Dad.”
If only. That’s the thing, really. I bring my legs in front of me and put my arms around them. “The problem is that it’s not Sean’s fault. Not entirely.”
He stands up abruptly and begins to pace in front of me, his strong arms tapping a rhythm on his thighs he’s the only one to hear. “So now you’re finding excuses for him, for what he did to you? Fine.” The coldness in his voice takes me aback. I was expecting anger, disbelief, and maybe even sarcasm, but not so cold.
I release my legs and begin to grab my papers where I have scribbled tons of equations over the last two hours. “It’s late,” I mutter as I grab my textbook from the ground and stand up, ready to throw everything in my bag and go back to my room in the building just next door.
“No, wait,” he says, sounding more like himself. “I just can’t believe that you’re making excuses for him. I thought that you realized what a psycho this guy is.”
“You’re a Psychology TA. You could at least use some of what you’ve been taught in class,” I reply with a little laugh that sounds way too weak to be convincing.
He puts both hands on my shoulder but doesn’t squeeze, probably remembering that there are small bruises there, too. He grits his teeth and then sighs, calming down. “I’m not kidding. I don’t understand how you can make excuses for him.”
I lick my lower lip and his dark eyes follow the tip of my tongue, making my stomach do cartwheels. A warning blaring in my head brings me back to earth and this unpleasant conversation. I’m not sure if we’ll ever be able to have a good time without talking about our problems.
“Because his father hit him and his mother.” I take a step away from him, letting his arms fall against his body. “And you know like I do that often kids who were abused grow up to do the same thing once adults or teenagers. They reproduce what they know as their life, as their normal.”
“It doesn’t mean that all abused kids grow up to be abusive, too, Skye. It’s a common pattern, but not a foregone conclusion or an excuse for Sean’s behavior,” he replies adamantly.
However, he can’t understand what I witnessed. He never saw Sean with tears in his eyes after he saw his father beat his mother or after his father punched him in the stomach. He never saw that vulnerability disappear when he beat me more and more often. He can’t understand that it’s the memory of this vulnerability that made me suck it up and hope for the Sean I thought I knew back then.
“I know, but it explains a part of it.”
“Maybe, but tell me why he’s still after you? Why he hates to see you hanging out with another guy? It’s about having power over someone. Don’t let him have this power over you.”
A tear falls on my cheek. Softly, despite his strong looking fingers, he brushes my cheek to dry my tear. His thumb traces a soothing circle on my skin before he pulls away. “How do I do that?” I ask, not caring that I sound desperate and lost because I am desperate and lost. He knows it and it’s useless to hide it right now.
“By living, by not looking over your shoulder all the time to be sure he’s not there, by opening up like you’re doing with me. By just taking one step at a time.”
“What if he comes back?” We both know it’s not a matter of
if
but of
when
. I’m not sure if I’ll be able to stand up and continue in my life again because it’s too hard. It’s maybe harder now that I don’t even have a relationship with him, because now I don’t know why I’m still at the same place.
“I’ll be there. You’ve got my number now and when you have to do laundry, I’ll go with you.”
“It’s not about laundry, Duke. You can’t be there every time. You’ve got your life and friends and family. You can’t be my security blanket.”
“When you’re ready to be on your own again, I’ll give you some space, but I can’t let you go alone if I know he’s got some leverage over you.”
“Because you see me like a pathetic, fragile girl,” I reply bitterly, putting my things back in my bag before shouldering it.
“No. It’s because I like your smile and your laugh. I don’t want to see them disappear again.”
My breath catches in my throat, something so common when I’m around him. How a guy can say things like that to a girl? It’s insane. “So see me back to my room?”
He opens the door and waves at me to go before him. I smile and walk past him, moved by his behavior, and yet feeling lost in this strange friendship between two broken people.
Chapter Eight
“It’s small. I didn’t know it was this small,” my mother says with some kind of weird fascination I can’t explain. With both my parents in the room, it feels even smaller than it really is.
The tall, athletic frame of my father at the window takes in every single thing. He’s frowning; making his bluish-grey eyes—the ones I inherited—appear darker than they are. His gaze brushes my bare side of the room and compares it with Kate’s. His thin lips are not smiling anymore.
My mother is more focused on my desk, which is neatly organized with my textbooks and papers next to my laptop. Her light brown, frizzy hair—but tamer than mine—is shorter than the last time I saw her during winter break. She’s also wearing more make-up and she looks younger with the sparkle of delight in her eyes.
“I told you,” I answer with a smile, remembering the first time I saw the room last semester and called her to tell her how tiny the place was. She didn’t really believe me then.
“You didn’t put anything personal out.” My father’s voice is stern and it makes me uneasy. I don’t like it when he’s so in control like he is when he’s on the base. When he talks to me, he’s always smiling and soft, but not right now.
“I’m here to study and I really don’t want to have tons of knick-knacks to move at the end of the year,” I reply with an assurance I’m far from feeling. “And you know I’m not that into posters and stuff.”
He nods, but his movements are stiff. My mother pats him on the shoulder and forces a smile for me that doesn’t reach her chocolate eyes, which have lost the sparkle that was there just seconds ago.
The sound of noises of a key in a lock break the silence and the door opens before I have time to move out of the way. The wood bumps into my shoulder.
“Oh my God! Did I hurt you, Skye?” Kate asks me in a panic, her eyes narrowing on me like she is trying to see through my clothes to look for any injuries. She lets her designer red bag fall to the ground and I cringe at the sound of her books hitting the floor with a low thud. I’m glad her overpriced laptop isn’t in there.
“I’m fine, Kate.” I wave in the direction of my parents. She follows my movement and her green eyes widen comically. Her heart-shaped face blushes and she brings a hand to her shiny lips.
“I almost killed you in front of your parents. Talk about a first impression,” she says with a laugh bubbling at the surface, making me chuckle with her.
“Mom, Dad, meet Kate.” I feel so awkward doing the introductions in such a formal way. Moreover, it seems weird to have a friend they know nothing about. All my life they knew my friends, my boyfriend, and their parents. But now my life is different.
My mother steps toward my roommate and hugs her. Kate freezes for a second and then returns the hug with a huge smile on her face. She must be surprised to see that I’m the only one with issues about being touched. When my mother releases her, my father extends his hand and shakes the fragile one of my friend who looks at me with a smile.
“I’m so glad to meet Skye’s parents!” Kate says with her bubbly attitude in full force, almost bouncing in her high-heeled boots.
“So you two are close?” Mom asks, hope audible in her voice. I make a face at my father who shrugs with a rueful smile that turns up more one side of his mouth.
Kate gives me an amused look. “Of course! We live together.” She grabs her bag from the floor and throws it on her perfectly made bed. “In fact, we’re hanging out together more and more. Skye is different and I like that.”
“And Kate forces me to go to more parties,” I add for my mother’s benefit who seems concerned that I’m more focused on my classes than on the
college experience
as she puts it.
Dad frowns at the word party and crosses his arms over his chest. Even when he’s not in uniform he looks like a military man through and through. “Not too many parties, I hope. School is important.”
“Oh no, sir!” Kate exclaims quickly, beating me to it. “Since the beginning of the year, Skye has only been to like three parties with me. She’s a very serious and driven student.”
He nods and the stiffness in his body slowly relaxes, leaving him smiling. I relax a little, but then there is a knock on the door making me tense all over again. Kate and I exchange a look. Her eyebrows shoot high on her forehead, letting me know she’s not expecting someone, which means we both know who is behind the door.
A knock comes again and her mischievous smile broadens. “It’s not for me,” she says and pushes me to the door.