To Be A Prize

Chapter 18

A couple of months ago, Karl and I had spent the morning in bed. My legs had been draped lazily across his own whilst his fingers traced soothing circles up and down my forearm. His hair was shorter as we were in that early stage of the relationship where it was too soon to tell him to grow his hair out so I bit my tongue every time he disappeared to the barbers and returned with hair too short to run my fingers through.

"How long do you think we could lie here before people started to notice we were missing?" He had said, as his filed nails swept from the bottom of my wrist up to the inside crease of my elbow.

"You mean until people noticed you were missing" I replied, my cheek squashed against his chest, "no one except you would notice if I disappeared."

"That's not true" he stared straight ahead at the switched off laptop that sat on my desk. "You're a lot more liked than you think."

"How cryptic," I'd said jokingly, lifting myself up onto my elbows to interrupt his daydreaming by meeting his face, our eyes level. "And who might these people be who like me so much?" A smile crept onto my face as I prepared to watch him stumble on his words. I've never had many friends and it doesn't bother me, I've always been comfortable within my own company, but Karl doesn't like thinking about the years I'd spent friendless, so stumbles on his words when I bring up my limited list of friends.

His eyes darkened over and his eyebrows had met in a frown. "I hate when you say shit like that," he sighed and removed his hand my arm to rub his face.

I rolled my eyes, "Karl, the sooner you get over the fact that before I met you, no one cared whether I lived or died, the better. I am. So you should too." I smirked. I wasn't entirely sure whether I believed what I was saying. I think sometimes it was easier to trick myself and accept the lie that I was an introvert by preference, rather than delve in to the pit that was the fact that I have never been anyone's first, second or even third choice. That was, until I met Karl.

"How can you say that when there are people who would kill to be with you?" Karl's cheeks had pricked with a red flush, and his eyes stared at me with burning questioning.

My own cheeks then competed with his, as they had flushed bright pink with embarrassment at his piercing attention. "That's a little dramatic don't you think," I had said.

For some reason, this had angered Karl. He'd swept his legs off the side of the bed and sat with his back to me, face turned once again to look at the blank screen of my laptop. "For fuck's sake, y/n, when are you going to realise how amazing you are. All this self-pitying bullshit you spew is really boring at this point."

When he said this, I felt as if someone took a pair of scissors and cut a nerve that ran from the nape of my neck to the bottom of my spine and I suddenly sat sharply upright. Self-pity? Is that what he thought years of feeling like an outcast was about? Because I couldn't get over myself and pluck up the courage to make a couple of friends?

"Shit, I'm sorry, I shouldn't have said that it came out wrong," Karl had gushed somewhat apologetically.

"No, no, please carry on telling me how pathetic I am. Fill me in on why I'm actually to blame for my lack of friends", I'd replied sarcastically. The temperature in the room had felt like it was rising as my cheeks began to heat up and turned red with anger.

This had begun our biggest and most explosive argument. I was sure it would be the end of our relationship at the time, sure that there was no coming back from it. I just couldn't work out why he would say something so hurtful.

In the end he apologised but there was always something left unsaid between us, as if there was more he had wanted to say but didn't want to stir up another fight. But neither did I so I left it and moved on.

Thinking back to that day, I realise that I shouldn't have backed down from that conversation, I should have dug deeper to uncover what he was keeping from me. I think that back then I saw myself as so unlovable that I was terrified of pushing away the only person who had shown me affection in years and I believed that in order to keep Karl in my life I had to remain as tolerable and complacent as possible.

Now that I am whole again I will not allow myself to be pushed around by people in fear of losing them because I have already experienced losing the most important person in my life- myself. And I will not allow that to happen again.

"Sit down, Karl," I say, smiling sweetly to the confused man in front of me who eyes up the now wet knife in my raised hand, "join the others. We've got some things to talk about".