Sinbound

(18) Can we talk?

"Alex?"

"Can we talk? I can talk to you, right? That is an option?" Alex says, feeling extremely nervous as she showed up on Amari's doorstep.

"Of course you can talk to me," Amari smiles, opening the door wider.

"It's just, I'm feeling overwhelmed a lot of stuff is coming out and I think I want to talk but Pol and I are in a weird place, and she's annoyed at me - I know I can still speak to her, obviously, she's Polly, but-"

"You don't need an excuse to talk to me, Lex," Amari states, "let's go upstairs, downstairs is crowded."

Alex follows Amari up the stairs to her room. She found this weird. She'd never been in a woman's room where it hadn't ended in something sexual.

"Make yourself comfortable," Amari says, and Alex looks around the room, before sitting at the edge of her bed. Amari's room was neat, and bursting with colour and life - the total opposite of her own, which was bland, almost as if it was uninhabited.

Oddly, she felt extremely comfortable in this room. Just her and Amari. It felt like she could talk about anything. The room was inviting conversation.

"My dad is back in town," Alex tells her, "everything is a mess."

"Because of him?"

"No, he is just a factor, Ada refuses to speak to any of us since Freddie got arrested, everyone is blaming Tommy," Alex says, "but now Arthur is mad at me for not giving my dad a chance to fix his 'mistakes'."

"You don't think whatever he did was a mistake," Amari states.

"Can beating your daughter be a mistake?" Alex remarks, "almost killing her and only stopping when your sister pulls a gun on you. No, nothing he did can constitute as a mistake. I already can't sleep - him being back won't help,"

Everything was coming out. There was no distinguishing between her thoughts and her words. Anything that came into her head, came out as coherent words for a patiently sat Amari to hear.

Her friend, Amari. She'd never had a friend before. It was nice to have somebody to talk to that wasn't family. When she spoke to family it felt like it had to be about the business.

"Why can't you sleep?"

"You won't tell anyone anything I'm telling you, right?" Alex asks, and she shakes her head, "of course I won't, whatever you say is strictly between us and these four walls."

When she imagined Alexandria Shelby being in her bed, this is certainly not what she had in mind. Yes, that would've felt good. But Alex viewing her as a safe space felt infinitely better.

"I have two recurring memories about the war, one Polly knows about," Alex states, "the other I haven't told a soul."

"I was a prisoner," Alex tells her, "after the boys and I were separate, I was with Bentley. But then we got split up. He was transferred and he thinks I was too, I didn't have the heart to tell him."

"The memories are interconnected. The first is when we were attacked in our trench, Bentley was there then, he took me to the infirmary. After that, the trench was declared unsafe, Bentley continued with the platoon, I was placed in the infirmary of a different regiment," Alex explains, "there was a raid, and I was still recovering, they'd given me opium to knock me out."

"Some Hungarian troops found me," Alex tells her, "for a month I was kept chained up in a room a quarter the size of the back room in the Garrison. And most nights, when I try to sleep, I imagine I'm back there. Being whipped, and starved."

"I don't know why I never told anyone - and I don't know why it's you that is the first to know, just you got in my head about not talking, and I didn't want you to worry about me," Alex says.