Where I End ( jenlisa ) ( gip )

4

L

When the car comes to a stop and the engine shuts off, I lift my head off the seat and open my eyes. No longer holding her hand since she had to use it to shift the car into park, I realize I miss her touch, her warmth. I can't look at her, not yet. I still can't believe she came outside, and that I told her things I have never spoken of to anyone but my mom. Yes, it was only a small piece but for it to have been her, there is no way she will ever look at me the same again.

I sit in the car, lost in my thoughts, and don't notice Nini has left until she opens my door. I look up at her and blink a few times. With the sun at her back, her golden-brown hair hanging over her shoulders in soft waves, she looks like an angel. One I don't fucking deserve, and who I wish would have let me end it all. The pain crashes back into me with such force, it has me buckling over in the seat and pulling in deep breaths.

Her hand rubs my back as her voice floats to me. "I'm here. Take your time. There's no rush."

I'm so fucked up. How can she show me sympathy? I was the biggest dick to her in high school. Always doing things to draw attention to her, and not in a good way. Every day it was my mission to embarrass her, and yet here she is helping me as if none of that ever happened. How can she forget so easily? How can she want to be near me when I was so cruel to her?

The pain subsides to the point I'm able to sit up and get out of the car. It's still there, waiting in the background to slam into me again. I don't meet her eyes when I get out. I'm not worthy of her or her kindness, yet I follow her like a lost puppy. I am lost. Completely fucking so far off the path lost. I merely exist at this point. Walking behind her is done with zero thought. My body wants to be near hers, and I let it. At least I'm not walking back into that house. The house I shared with the woman who raised me, then brushed me aside, as if nothing I said to her was worth her time. The woman who, no matter how many times I begged and pleaded with her to help me, turned her back on me. She believed him over me, even when I came to her bleeding from him being too rough. She told me I must have done that to myself and, how it wasn't nice to lie and make other people look bad when they've done nothing wrong. I still can't comprehend how she thought I'd hurt myself like that. Or maybe she wasn't paying attention to me at all. Brushing me off because she was busy working.

For a while, I thought it was me. Maybe what he was doing was how things were supposed to be, but then he got rougher. He hurt me. God, he hurt me so fucking bad. And not just my body. He would say things to me; make me feel as if I was insignificant. That I was a spoiled little rich girl who didn't deserve anything I was given.

No matter how many times I hid, or locked the door, he always got in and found me. He would drag me from whatever spot I hid in to try and escape him, and he would force himself on me, so he could "teach me a lesson". I did nothing wrong in my eyes. I would come home from school and go right to my room. Out of fear of what he would do to me, I never talked back to him or showed him an ounce of disrespect. The only time I opened my mouth to him was when I would cry out in pain; pain he inflicted. But he had ways of silencing me. Ways he would say were used to get me to toughen up and deal with the punishments he was giving me. Was it really a punishment, though? Now, I know it wasn't. Back then I would search my mind trying to figure out what and when I did something wrong. I wanted to know, so I would never make the mistake again. I never came up with anything but in his eyes, I was a horrible, ungrateful child.

"I'm on the second floor," Nini says, pulling me from my dark thoughts. She turns to me and I immediately drop my eyes, as if by her looking into them, she will know everything I'm thinking. Then her hand finds mine and she laces our fingers together. I try to swallow but can't. My throat is thick with emotion. She's showing me kindness I don't deserve, and I can't push her away.