Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
WHEN ADALINE WOKE UP THAT NEXT MORNING, for a second she had forgotten everything that had happened. She noticed that she was in a foreign bed in a room too dark to have been her own bedroom, dressed in clothes that weren't hers either. The memories of the previous day only came back to her once she saw Arvin sleeping in the small chair in the corner of his room.
Adaline saw the stubborn, dried blood across his knuckles that wouldn't wash off. She saw him beating her father. Her throat felt hoarse. From screaming. Even her teeth felt sore, and there was a subtle bitter taste lingering in her mouth.
Soap.
Adaline inhaled sharply as each horrid memory fit into the puzzle inside her head, piecing together everything that had happened. Even things that she had remembered only yesterday that had happened ten years ago. Arvin's eyes blinked open, springing out of the chair once he saw Adaline awake and afraid.
He knelt by her bedside, "Adaline, you're alright now. He's not here, he ain't gonna hurt you."
"I wanna—," she croaked, needing to clear her throat before speaking again. "I wanna go home."
"Adaline..."
"I want to go home, Arvin," she told him. Maybe her mind was just playing tricks on her, showing her what she wanted to see. "I want to see him. He was drunk. He probably don't even remember what he did." Arvin obviously wanted to do anything else besides take Adaline back to her father, whose hungover self—for all he knew—may even be worse than his drunk self. But he wasn't going to keep her captive in his room. If she wanted to go home, he'd take her home.
He lightly nodded, "Okay." Arvin stood up to grab Adaline one of his jackets from the hall closet since the mornings were growing colder, and the T-shirt and pants he leant her last night were each two sizes too big for her. He came back to see her standing in the middle of the room, arms crossed awkwardly over her chest. He wordlessly handed her the jacket that she shrugged on overtop Arvin's clothes.
Neither of them spoke much during the short drive back to Adaline's house, but they preferred it that way. They were both not particularly talkers, and knowing that they were in each other's presence was more worthwhile to them than having to fill up the silence with words.
Arvin heard the faint sound of sirens and saw what appeared to be flashing lights through the morning fog as they drove closer to Adaline's house. A thought crossed his mind but he had to get rid of it as soon as it came (in fear that it was real).
Adaline's sat forward when the sound of the sirens grew louder and the lights became clearer, anxious to get past the fog and see what was happening.
