𝐄𝐯𝐞𝐥𝐲𝐧 𝐖𝐫𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 is far from perfect. Before starting her senior year of college, she's already guaranteed her position as the black sheep of her once prestigious family. To make matters worse, she took up bedding the rival family's eldest...
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𝑻𝒉𝒂𝒕 𝒏𝒊𝒈𝒉𝒕, 𝑬𝒗𝒆𝒍𝒚𝒏 spent almost two hours in the bathtub, scrubbing her skin until its undertones went brick red. From then on, the routine felt like crazed yet necessary chaos. She started off with normal soaking to unwind from her day. Then her thoughts would drift. Then, like every night, they would always take a turn.
Jackie.
He had seen her naked before, his eyes glinting with pure lust as they traced every line of her as if he were dedicating a portion of his memory to her bare form, and she hated that—so much so that she hated looking at her nakedness herself. She could almost feel his fingertips pressing into her skin and his wet mouth overcoming hers. Sordidly, she remembered the way she stood there like a fool, letting his tongue invade her mouth in a one-sided kiss with those same lips that had cruelly grinned at her after revealing more deceit. I'll brush until I throw up, she'd decided that same evening. And the remainder of her bathing time was a ruthless attempt to scrub the rest of her body clean of the memories branded into her mind and physical matter.
Possessed by disgust and ignorant to the pain it caused, Evelyn ran her bathing net across her every surface in vigorous circles. Her urgency to feel even cleaner beyond that was uncontrollable. The net lathered in soap wasn't enough. It hadn't gone deep enough. Despite the traces of rationality that were smothered during this routine screaming out for her to stop, she grabbed her pumice stone, wincing with every scraping pass until finally, her skin felt like it would slop off her bones and into the water around her from the intolerable sting of friction.
Somehow, she never noticed how awful and bizarre the act was. The more compelling matter was distracting herself from the stain of mental images from the past Saturday that had left her feeling like a dirtied, used tissue. Utterly useless, deserving of being discarded. Menemi. The only time that she gave the newly-formed habit true consideration in the two weeks that followed was when Mariah pointed out its unsightly scars.
"Damn, it's welts all over the back of your neck, E!" Mariah marveled, following the raised, red tracks with a brush of her fingertip and wide brown eyes.
Evelyn shivered away from Mariah's touch and quickly twisted in front of her vanity mirror to take a look at the area herself. She lifted her freshly-pressed hair off her shoulders, and a sinking feeling landed in her stomach when she caught a glimpse of the batch of deep red streaks over her scapula.
Mariah continued gaping at her through their reflections in the mirror, her face twisted in horror. "I know Jonah didn't do all of that to you, did he?"
"No," Evelyn answered simply, making great effort to modulate the emotion from her voice. "I think I jus' was scratchin' too hard in my sleep or something."
With a shun of a head tilt and pursed lips, Mariah disagreed. But Evelyn was thankful her best friend decided to play along with the alibi rather than make her suspicion further known. "I would just keep your hair down even if you start sweatin' it out," she said, "that way it mostly covers all of that up."
