Unraveling (5 page)

“Go out with me,” he looked at me with pleading eyes.

A part of me wanted to cave but it was impossible.
“No,” the word came out sharper than I had intended.

He sat back. “Wow, I don’t think I’ve ever been turned down for a date before,” he rubbed the stubble on his jaw. “This is new.”

“I don’t do dates… with anyone. Not since…”

“Not since
what?
” He leaned closer to me.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” I shut down. I looked out the window of the coffee shop. I was tempted to make a run for it, but it wouldn’t be fair to leave Piper.

I turned back to Jared and found him studying me. His dark brows were drawn together.

“There’s a mystery to you
, Katy Spencer, and I plan on solving it.”

With those words, he stood, grabbed his coffee, and was gone.

A few seconds later, Piper slid into the vacant seat. Her mouth formed a perfect O. Shaking her head, she said, “Do you know a model? He has to be a model, right?”

“I
don’t know anything about him,” I told her, looking away from her inquisitive gaze.

“But you do know him, right?”
Piper looked over her shoulder and out the window where Jared was getting in his Toyota.

“Yeah, I guess,” I gave a small shrug.

“He looked like he was really into you. You should jump on that,” she grinned.

I laughed. “There will be no ‘jumping’ from me.”

“What’s his name?” she asked, as she watched his car leave the parking lot.

“Jared,” I answered with a sigh.

“He’s sexy,” she sighed dreamily. “If you’re not interested, feel free to send him my way,” she winked.

I laughed. “I don’t even really know him… We just seem to keep
bumping into each other.”

“Not that I was eavesdropping or anything,” Piper winked and stirred her coffee, “but I think
fate
, destiny… whatever you want to call it, is definitely playing into effect here.”

“I
don’t believe in fate,” I replied sharply.

“Why not?” she took a sip. She winced and added more sugar.

“If there was such a thing as fate, then bad things wouldn’t happen.”

Piper snorted. “Those bad things are merely bumps in the road, leading us to the g
ood things in life.”

“I
wish I could be that positive,” I muttered.

“My mom always did tell me I was an optimistic person. The way I see it, there’s no point in dwelling on the bad. That’s just giving
it the power to hurt you more,” she pointed a finger at me.

“Huh,” I soaked in her words, “I’ve never looked at it like that before.”

She shrugged. “That’s my little bit of wisdom. I hope it can help you.”

“Yeah,” I mulled. “I think it just might.”

6

“You seem… happier,”
Sharon remarked as I sat down across from her.

“Yeah, I guess I am,” I said with a smile.

“Do you want to tell me the reason for this change?” She tapped her pen against her notepad.

“There’s this new girl in one of my classes and she said some
things that just made me think.”

“What was it she said?”
she scribbled something down on her paper.

“Something about, not thinking about the bad so much, that it only gives it the power to hurt you more.”

Sharon smiled. “She sounds like my kind of girl.”

“I really like her. She’s nice and she
doesn’t judge me for being… me,” I shrugged.

“I must say
, this is major progress, Katy. For as long as you’ve been coming to see me, Rollo has been your only friend. This is good. You need a girl that you can talk to. Did you go to the self-defense class like I suggested?” she raised a brow as she waited for my answer.

“I did,” I wrung my hands together and glanced sheepishly at the floor.

“Did it go well?” she questioned.

“Not exactly…”
I bit my lip, looking anywhere but at Sharon.

“Tell me what happened,” she prompted.

“I went with Rollo but the instructor wanted to partner us up with strangers so… When Paul, I think that was his name, grabbed me, I just kind of… freaked. I don’t like being touched by anyone, especially strangers. The whole thing,” I shook my head, “it just brought back memories of that night.”

“Katy,” Sharon turned her head slightly, studying me. “I think maybe you’d feel better… start to heal, if you said it like it is.”

“What do you mean?”

“I think you need to stop referring to it as
that night
or
the event
. I think you need to say what happened. You’re giving Preston too much power by referring to it that way.”

“What do you want me to say? The night I got raped? The night my whole life fell apart because he took a part of me?” Tears
clogged my throat.

“Yes, I think it
would be very healing for you.”

“No! I
don’t
need to say it that way! What I
need
is for my mother to just believe me! Instead she believed that prick! He
raped
me and all she did was laugh at me! Laugh! What kind of mother
does
that?
Nobody
believed me! I was dying inside and everybody mocked me!” I grabbed my bag and stood to leave.

“Katy, please don’t leave. You still have fort
y minutes left in your session,” she looked up and the clock above the door.

I shook my head. “I can’t do that. I have to get out of here.” I opened the door.

“Katy!” I heard behind me. “You can’t keep running from your problems!”

“Watch me,” I muttered under my breath.

I made it to my car and as soon as the door was closed the tears overwhelmed me. I hated crying over ‘the event’ but sometimes I just couldn’t help it. It hurt, so much, to remember what Preston had done to me. I preferred to block it from my mind. I hated him. Not just for raping me, but for killing some essential part of me when he did it. I’d never been the same since.

I went from being the happy,
popular, captain of the cheer squad, to the most hated person in school. Nobody had believed that Preston raped me. After all, why would heart throb, star quarterback, Preston, need to rape anybody?

Even my own mother hadn’t believed me.

That hurt the most.

We’d never been close, but I thought she would’ve been there for me. Instead, it drew us even farther apart.

The only person that didn’t abandon me was Rollo.

Someone tapped on the window and I jumped. Wiping my
tear-streaked eyes, I turned to see who stood there.

“Katy, please come back inside,” Sharon said.

Another sob wracked my body.

“Sweetie,” she tapped again.

I was frozen.

She opened the door and I fell into her arms.

“Katy,” she said, soothingly, “It’s okay to cry about it. It’s okay to be angry. You’re only hurting yourself by holding it in.” Her fingers smoothed through my hair.

“I just don’t want to remember! I don’t want to
feel!
” I cried.

“Katy,” she lightly pushed my shoulders back so she could look in my eyes. “You know that isn’t possible. You can’t undo what’s already done. I wish that wasn’t true, but it is.
” She pushed my hair back off my forehead, like I was a child that had fallen off her bike and she was checking for scrapes and bruises. “Please, let me help you,” she said.

I nodded.

“Are you ready to come back inside?”

I extracted myself from her
arms and wiped my face. “Yeah.” My voice wasn’t as shaky as I thought it would be.

“Good,” she said, and guided me back inside the building.

~***~

“So,” Rollo said, taking a bite of pizza
, as we sat on the floor in front of the coffee table, “how did it go with Sharon today?”

I picked a piece of pepperoni off the pizza, just to avoid Rollo’s watchful eyes.
“It was…” I knew I couldn’t lie to Rollo. With a sigh, I admitted, “I kind of had a breakdown.”

“Well, I wish it was a breakthrough, not a breakdown, but do you think it helped?”
Rollo asked.

I shrugged. “I think I’m beyond anything helping me. I’m hopeless.”

“No, you’re not,” Rollo took a sip of Diet Pepsi. “No one is hopeless.”

“I’m broken, then.”

Rollo laughed. “Katy, you’re a lot of things but broken is definitely not one of them. Neither is weak,” he said, when I started to open my mouth. “You’re the strongest person I know. True, you’ve got your quirks but they
do not
make you weak. They’re how you’ve coped.”

A tear slipped out of the corner of my eye. “It’s been two years, Rollo. Some days
, I feel like I’m worse now, than just after it happened.”

“No, baby c
akes, you’re better every day, especially recently. I think, at least I
hope
, you’re starting to realize that not everyone is like Preston. Most people are actually decent.” He grabbed another slice of pizza.

“I feel like…” I took a deep breath and braced myself to say the word. “I feel like, when he raped me, that some essential part of my soul was broken, and I don’t know if it can be put back together.”

“It can be put back together… but it will take time,” Rollo’s kind blue eyes met mine, there was a sadness there and I hated that it was because of me.

“When d
id you get so wise?” I chuckled, trying to lighten the somber mood.

“
Puh-lease, I’ve always been wise. You just choose to ignore my insanely awesome wisdom,” he bumped my shoulder.

I flicked a piece of pepperoni at him. It landed on his shirt and he made a face of disgust.

“Ew! Katy! This is my favorite shirt!”

“Your, ‘I only look straight,’ shirt is your favorite? Really
, Rollo?” I chuckled.

“What can I say? I like to let the ladies know that I’m off the mar
ket. I’m considerate like that,” he grinned, pulling at the tee.

I rolled my eyes.
“I sometimes wonder why I’m friends with you.”

“Because I’m insanely awesome, funny, smart-
” He rambled.

“Rollo, this is not M
atch.com, you do not need to list your best qualities to me. I’m very well acquainted with them, and your bad ones.”

“Oh please,” he flipped his curly
blonde hair, “you know I have no bad qualities. I’m far too awesome for that.”

I laughed. I could always count on Rollo to make me feel better.

I leaned my head on his shoulder. “I don’t know what I would do without you, Rollo.”

“Sometimes, I don’t know either, baby cakes,” he said
, solemnly.

A tear leaked out of the corner of my eye and I hastily wiped it away. “You’ve always been there for me, Rollo. I don’t say it enough, but thank you for being the best friend any girl could ever have.”

“I’m always here for you, Katy.”

“I know,” I whispered.

“And I always will be,” he kissed the top of my head.

7

“Katy, we’re going to be late if you don’t get out of the car,”
Rollo said slowly, like he was afraid I would run away.

I’d been sitting in my car for the last five minutes, debating
whether or not to skip the stupid self-defense classes.

I finally turned the engine off and opened the door.

“Good girl,” Rollo said.

I locked the car, and started towards the door… the front door this time, not the back.

As soon as I opened the door to the classroom we’d used last time, I heard, “Well, if it isn’t Katy Spencer, I was starting to think you weren’t going to show up.” Jared raised a brow as he ticked names off on a clipboard. “And you must be Rolland?” he pointed at Rollo.

Rollo made a face. “Please, never call me
, Rolland. I go by Rollo.”

“Rollo it is, then,” Jared chuckled, and sat the clipboard down.

I looked around the room and fiddled with my hands. Finally, I couldn’t stand it any longer and spat out, “Where’s Todd?”

Jared turned to face me, giving me a peculiar look. I noticed he had a dimple in his chin. “Todd’s sick
, so I said I would cover the class. Is that a problem?”

“Um, no, no problem, at all. I was just… curious,” I plopped down on the floor, wishing it would just open up and swallow me whole. I had to be the most embarrassing person on the planet.