Hurt Like HELL (new adult contemporary romance) (5 page)

My father didn’t intend to punch Jack, not even close.

As he spun, Jack readied another fist for my father. 

I caught sight of something reflecting and before I could scream for the entire ordeal – and night – to just end, my father came at Jack with a knife. 

The knife was there and gone.

Just like that.

There and gone.

With a grunt and a dry gasp for air, Jack touched his stomach.  Blood covered his hands as he started to step back.  His head bounced and his mouth opened.  He looked at me and let out a whimper and continued to step back.

“No!” I screamed and lunged for him.

I was an inch from touching Jack when something jerked me back.  My father had a handful of my hair.  He pulled me to his side.  I couldn’t break away from his fierce grip.  So I stood there, and I watched Jack die.

The boy I loved.

The boy who cared for me.

The boy who gave me my first kiss.

He fell to his knees, touching the end of the knife and his stomach.  He then fell to his side and stared off into nothing.

When he was finally dead, I heard my father laugh.

I shook my head, wanting to take it all back, but that wasn’t possible.

“He tried to hurt you, Tessa,” my father said.

It would be the first of about a thousand times I’d hear that phrase.

He tried to hurt you, Tessa…

Our hearts aren’t broken.  Our lives are.

10 YEARS LATER

~1~

One foot, then the other.
  It was like learning how to live my life but instead I stepped into the hot water waiting to hear my skin sizzle.  I never understood why I took baths so hot but somewhere subconsciously I believed it was my body’s way of reminding my heart of the pain that could exist.

Trust me, I’d never forget.

Even with a new last name, I’d never forget.

I had been offered numerous times to change my first name but I couldn’t do it.  There was only one other name that made sense to me and that I held tight to my chest, my secret to keep, never to share with the world.  The rest of my life had been an open book, from the newspaper articles to newscasters trying to follow me, my life, and everything in between.  It felt good to have a secret with myself.

I stood and looked down at my feet in the water.  I never put anything in the water – no bubbles, fragrances or any of that – but sometimes I ran the water so hot it appeared cloudy for a few minutes.  A thick steam rose from the water and had already coated the small bathroom, leaving condensation dripping from the white walls and fogging the mirrors.

Good.

That was how I liked it.

I put my right hand to the wall and felt the slippery cool tile and braced myself to sit down.  The best way to do it was just to sit.  Kind of like getting into a pool for the first time.  Rater than slowly torture yourself going one little step at a time, just jump the hell in.  I again thought about life and all of its reflections that live around us. 

Lately, life (
and all of its reflections
) were all I could think about.  College had been done for a year and while I technically could have been considered unemployed, I gracefully introduced myself as a not-so-much starving artist and writer, trying to forge my own path into success.  I had taken up writing and attempted painting back in high school.  My awkward teen years were doubled considering all that had happened and all that began to spread around school.  Kids were cruel long before social networking.  After living in the adolescent jungle of when to lose your virginity to studying for a Spanish test all the way to realizing that school would end and life would begin, I made my move and went off the grid, so to say.

Somehow, someway, I had been set up with a trust that paid me when I turned eighteen.  My Auntie B trusted me enough to make whatever decisions I felt I needed to make in my life.  The fact that she openly wanted me to get out of her house and live my own life meant a lot to me.

Living my own life meant choosing the smallest apartment I could find, driving a car that died on random days, and watching television on a set so small, it could have been a tablet computer standing on its side.

I took odds and ends jobs, the current one being a barista for a local café called Thorns.  The pay was horrible, but the hours were flexible.  The place was laid back and had tons of activity in it.  All the local artists and artsy people hung there, did freestyle poetry, brought guitars and small drums, and just had fun.  Friday night we had a local band, but more times than not bands would just show up during the week days and play.  It was the exact kind of atmosphere I needed in my life.  I needed that driving force to keep pushing me towards writing.

I sank into the water and let out a small cry as it burned me.  I lifted my hand out of the water and just from being in there for a few seconds my fair skin was red and steam came off it.  The perfect temperature for a perfect bath. 

I had just come off working a late morning into early afternoon shift.  The quietest shift for Thorns.  The place was usually hollowed out like a ghostly shell of the night before.  It was as though the café rested, everything so calm and relaxed that I would catch myself falling asleep.  I started bringing notebooks to work to try to write, but I can’t write freehand.  Call me spoiled by technology, but the idea of writing an entire book with pen and paper is archaic and a waste of time.  Plus, I left my notebook there a few times and some of my coworkers found it hilarious to read the material out loud.  To them, it was bratty emo stuff, girl becoming a woman, thriving in her own manifested pain of not being asked to prom or something.  If I could only have the courage to actually explain the real pain behind my words…

None of that mattered now.  All that mattered was the bath.  The soothing bath.  I wanted to clear my mind completely and take advantage of my early evening by writing.  My phone had amazingly remained quiet from my friends and I had already talked to Auntie B yesterday, giving me at least another full day before she’d call with a casual check in and gossip about friends or boyfriends. 

Not my boyfriends, those I didn’t have.

Auntie B was in her early sixties now and still didn’t believe in settling down.  She made her money writing steamy novels under several pen names and didn’t want to share it with any man.  She was the one who helped me get into writing although I can admit that my writing is nothing quite like hers. 

My friends had been on a binge the last month, fighting over two guys for me to choose from.  I had nothing against men, all of those issues had worked themselves out years ago.  I just really didn’t want a boyfriend.  All my friends complained about their boyfriends, leaving me to wonder what they saw in them.  At least outside the bedroom.  In that department my friends seemed happy but I guess most women would be.  However, that was something I couldn’t speak to because… I was still pure.  The issues of my life took me into college and by then it was a feast of sexual energy that I couldn’t compare to.  I confided my secret with my two best friends, Bridget and Chelsea, who both came to the conclusion that I should have just gotten drunk one night and gotten it over with.  At least that’s how they felt about their virginities being lost in high school.  Once and done, then I guess you were free to go.  To have momentary love.  To savor lust.  To…
fuck
.

I just couldn’t do it.

The opportunities came and went and I watched them go.

Sometimes I worried about it.  Sometimes I felt regret.  I was worried that once I finally met someone worth trusting, I would share my secret and it would become some kind of curse.  It was funny how time did that with some things.  If a high school girl is a virgin, she’s a good girl.  Now I sat in a hot bathtub staring halfway down the age of twenty-three and it seemed odd that I was still a virgin.

Either way, I wasn’t going out with the guys Bridget had picked out for me.  One worked with her and the other came into the cafe a couple times a week.  The one I liked was a guy that I could honestly admit I had my eyes on, but from a very far distance.  His name was Brett and he was in a band.  So typical, I know, but he had long black hair, played guitar, and had a confidence that I wished I could have had. 

Bridget didn’t like him because she felt he was too scummy.  The man she had picked for me, named Ted, was clean cut, shaved, with a perfect jaw line, and he wore a suit everyday.

Whoa, I’m impressed now.

As much as I loved Bridget and her wild crave for men and sex, even though she swore she was dedicated to her boyfriend of four years, Timmy, I sometimes wished Chelsea hadn’t moved to California.  Her father offered to pay for law school only if she moved to California to work at his firm while she was in school.  Her father had left when she was ten and this was his way of buying back into her life.  She couldn’t pass up the offer and I didn’t blame her.  It was sure better than living here in North Carolina.  The winters were harsh, the summers were hot, and I was too far away from the beach to just go there without making plans.  And by making plans I mean packing stuff and filling the car with gas. 

I thought about Brett, for a second.  Standing on the small stage at Thorns, his long hair down, playing a black acoustic guitar.  It just felt wrong thinking of him while I was naked in the tub.  Men weren’t the only ones who could think with body parts other than their brains. 

I closed my eyes and took deep breaths, recalling some meditation methods I was taught a long time ago.  Those were the days when other girls left high school to practice cheerleading and some left to smoke pot in the woods, and some left to go play house with their boyfriends.  In those days, I left school and went to see a doctor.  To help me.  To fix me.  To heal me.

I’m glad those days are long gone.

The water is already feeling too cool for my liking.  Sure, there’s steam everywhere and it’s sort of hard to breathe, but I need the constant sting of the water to enjoy myself. 

I lifted my right foot from the water, wiggling my toes, stretching them for their next feat.  I was able to turn the water on and off using just my toes.  How’s that for an ice breaker with Brett or Ted?  I could bring him back to my place and turn on the water with my toes and give them my virginity, all in the same night.  I dare a woman to top that.

My toes were instantly cool and then quickly became cold when I found the sweaty faucet. 

I started to pull down on the hot water handle when I felt something touch my toe.  At first I thought it was a droplet of water but then it came again. 

Something not just touching, but gripping me.

Like something pulling at my toe.

Or someone.

~2~

I opened my eyes and saw nothing
.  Well, nothing out of the ordinary.  And why would there be?  My apartment was locked with two locks – a standard lock and a deadbolt.  I was also in the bathroom, with the door locked.  Not that it provided much protection.  The wood was thin enough that a swift punch would probably splinter it. 

Regardless, I was alone in the bathroom.  My foot remained out of the water, touching the hot water handle, but I was frozen.  I stared at my big toe, trying not to focus on the fact that I was one of those people whose second toe is longer than their big toe.  My big toe felt normal at first, but as I stared at it, it tingled, more and more, then it started to feel cold.

Very cold.

Freezing cold.

I shivered and dropped my foot back into the water.  It created a circular ripple, small waves ran towards me, dying well before they were able to reach me.  I still couldn’t get the feeling of being touched out of my mind.  It was like someone pinched my big toe.  Of all things to have happen… to any given person on any given day, from catching that first twinkle of a star in the predawn hours all the way to winning the largest lottery jackpot in history, I swore that my toe had been touched.  Pinched.  By someone.

But yet I was locked in a bathroom, locked in an apartment.

In the water, my toe and foot felt fine.  It wasn’t cold anymore.  That’s when I realized my shoulders were cold.  And my neck… my neck started to feel prickly, like a January breeze licking at me.  My skin tightened and I found myself whipping my head to the left, wondering if there was a breeze blowing on me.  I looked at the toilet.  It was a toilet.  I took my hand from the water and held it out.  The air felt cool against my burning skin, but I didn’t feel anything else out of the ordinary.  I turned back, stubborn on relaxing.  In a matter of seconds, my body shivered without shivering.  My skin pulled and I could feel the goosebumps forming literally everywhere.  My skin above the water was one thing, but watching my legs and lower body under the water breakout in goosebumps really scared me.  I had the urge to turn my head again, but this time I fought it.  A feeling warmed over me, the feeling of being watched.  I felt exposed and violated, actually crossing my arms to cover my chest.  I sat up more and wished I had used some kind of bubbles or something, anything to completely cloud the water.