The Green-Eyed Peasant

Chapter Fifteen: I Have This

If I had any breath I most likely would have vomited it up. Not a pretty sight. I felt...like someone had punched my soul out of my body and I was floating there watching my motionless body struggle to move without me. I was not the first person to speak.

"Ari, I need to talk with you." And he yanked me away from my friends and into an unfamiliar hall way.

"I know." He whispered holding my face in his hands. He could have broken it and it would not be a surprise. My eyes must have taken a long time to refocus.

"I-I don't know what you're talking abo-" I gasped as his eyes filled with rage.

"I'm not blind Ari," his fingers danced over my healing lip and to the new small cut on my cheek, "I am not blind." He muttered again. His fingers gently tracing ever cut, bruise, and scar.

"I know you're not." I breathed my eyes had snapped to a point that didn't exist, wide and staring.

He didn't speak just kept memorizing my face as if he could ignore my mistakes.

"Why? Why do they..." If you had been in my shoes would you be able to continue my sentence because I highly doubt it.

"It's been two years and I still have the scars and I still don't know the answers. We're left with our shitty loves without answers or reasons. It's life's way of saying our lives are bullshit and it doesn't give a shit."

"That's not answer." I protested.

"And I can't make it one."

"Tell me!" I begged. Was it hell for him too?

"I was small when it started, maybe four, five. But for eleven years I died every time I got home. My palms would get sweaty and my heart felt like it was going to punch right through my chest, I felt sick and scared. Answers were nothing but weak excuses. I think it was the best day of my life when my mom kicked him out of the house, he returned about a year later begging for forgiveness but the moment he began to hit us I fought back and won. I told him if he ever touched me or my mother again he'd be a dead man. I guess he believed me."

We seemed to sink to the floor at the same time, both crumpling as our hollow torsos collapsed.

I snuggled into his arms like a kitten and his hand slide to the back of my head and brought me into a hug.

"My fault." It was so soft I felt confident he hadn't caught it.

"No, shut up that's bullshit and your not. Forget it."

I nodded like a brainless dog.

"I watch you come into school everyday. I notice every new cut and every purple bruise. I will not let you fall into the trap, Ari. I will not!"

"You'll run out of band-aids at some point." I mumbled.

"But I have a net that's going to catch you and keep you away from the ground."

"The ground will come up and get me." I spit bitterly.

"Then I'll shove it back down."

"How?"

"Because it's not the ground, just a rock. A small pebble that can't stop, but I will stop it!"

"Why? It's nothing but a pebble and me?"

"Because I didn't have a net and the pebble became a mountain."

"What happened to the mountain?"

"I shoved it down."

"How?"

"Because, in the end, it was just a rock."

I closed my eyes and only a few brave tears squeezed their way through. I wish that my tears would weather the unmoving mountain, but that mountain was unbeatable. I wish I was brave but shoving back is just as hard as falling without a net to catch you.