Joey Avery appears to have everything. Happiness. Loving parents. A life all mapped out. But it's all a lie. An entire life based on a lie. First of all, she's a her, not a him, though it gets people confused all the time, since her name is typicall...
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As I'm setting up the living room to watch a movie, waiting for Joey to be done in the bath, but giving her all the time she needs, I hear something smash against the floor — more like someone —, then I hear Joey let out her classic fudge.
"Fudge," she whispers, but I can still hear her and the pain in her voice.
I jog to the bathroom, calling out her name, but I get no respond. As I walk in the room, I find her sitting on the floor.
"Are you okay? What did you do?" I chuckle at the sight of her, her face struggling between laughing and crying.
"I slipped," she mutters like a kid.
I kneel in front of her, looking around to make sure she didn't hit her head or hurt herself badly. When everything seems alright, I get her up from the floor, hugging her to my chest, rubbing her lower back after she tells me she fell right on it. I look up in the mirror and that's when I see it and I can't help but get upset. I stiffen at what I see.
"What's wrong?" Joey asks me.
How does she do that? She reads me like a fucking book.
She pushes herself away from me, though she doesn't let go, turning her head when she notices that I'm staring at something behind her. As soon as she realizes what I'm looking up, she steps out of my embrace, grabbing a towel and wrapping it around her body.
"It's ugly, don't look at it."
"Did he do that to you?" I finally find the courage to ask.
Not a sound escapes her mouth, but she nods.
"It isn't ugly, Joey. Nothing about you is ugly," I step forward, pulling her back to me, taking a hold of the towel and yanking it away before she can stop me.
I spin her around, her back now facing me. My index finger traces the scars on her back, hairs standing on all over her body as a shiver runs through her. There aren't many, and they aren't big, but they still are there when they shouldn't be. She shouldn't have a memory of the horrors she's been through, but she has. She has a stupid fucking reminder of what he did to her, and it'll never go away. I lean towards her, kissing the bottom of her neck where the first scar begin.
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