What Collides Us

Leslie

The cold water hit my feet causing me to move back in shock until I hit someone's chest.

“The ice cream-“

His voice followed as he moved the ice cream to the side.

“I’m so sorry.”

I said turning around as soon as I realised, I almost hit an ice cream. We had been here for two hours and in those two hours, I’ve never felt more alive. Though there were people around us, I still didn’t feel hostile. Everyone seemed to be in a moment with the ocean and I didn’t even have to wonder why. The ocean was beautiful, and loud and the water kept crushing into the rocks, but it still had something about it.

Something that made it beautiful, and peace filled.

“Seat with me.”

I said seating comfortably on the rock that I found. I took the ice cream from him as he sat down, and we both watched the beach and sunset in a quiet moment.

“I’ve never came to the beach before, I’d see it but I never came to watch it. Not with my mom, and not with Lisa or her dad or my own.”

I exhaled as I sat on top of his car, wearing yet again his hoodie feeling the cold breeze hit my thighs. Isaac was standing in front of me, he chose to watch me more than the rest of the sunset because he loved how ‘beautiful the light touched my skin while the sun is over the horizon.’

“Mom had Lisa at a really young age, she couldn't keep her, so she took her to her dad’s. I was born from a one-night stand, and she hated me for it. She hated that I was the one child she couldn’t get rid of.”

I chuckled reflecting on those horrible moments, moments when I wasn’t even sure I was going to make it out alive. I wiped a trailing tear on my left cheek, I kept my eyes to the ocean. I didn’t want to look at him, because something in me knew I’d stop as soon as I looked at him. Something that would tell me I didn’t need to dwell on the past anymore, I was okay and so was everything.

“She came home one day with this man, and she was so happily in love with him. She didn’t even need to know that she fit with him, he had a lot of money and that was enough. He had side deals and one day I came home from school, and she had started injecting herself with drugs. I had to watch the only woman I had ever known and loved in my entire life turn into someone who couldn’t do anything with a drug in her system, it made me so angry that he had turned her into that.”

My eyes came to my hands, and I started pulling on my nails. It wasn’t hurting but I could feel myself going back somewhere, remembering things I didn’t want to remember.

“The first time I had ever lost it with him was when she overdosed and woke up in hospital. I remember feeling like I was on fire and yet scared. I had worked into my house and slammed the door of their bedroom open and yelled and screamed at him asking him where the hell was, he when that happened. You know what he said… “I was here, watching her do it so she could die and finally leave us.”

I wiped yet another and another tear, frowning like I could still feel him walk towards me, breath to my ear.

“He said he was doing it for me, that he saw it in me. That I wanted him, and I could feel something was wrong but when I was ready to run, I was a little too late. He stuck the needle in me as he held onto me, and I lost every part of myself to a numbness that I couldn’t control but I could feel everything.”

My eyes snapped up to Isaac’s and his eyes were bloodshot, his face moist but he still kept the gaze. I wanted to touch him, I wanted to remove it from his face. The pain and sadness that moved between him and I.

“The most painful part wasn’t that he made a never-ending stop to my bedroom since I was 14. It’s the fact that my own mother said I was disgusting, evil and she wished that I’d die for seducing her boyfriend. They’d fight about it, she’d say all those awful things and beat me up and he’d come into my room, night and night and day and night. Everything just kept happening all at the same time, on and on and then one day everything stopped.”

His eyes ran over my face once and they steadied on my eyes again. I had stopped trying to wipe them away, they weren’t going to stop.

“One day she died, and I didn’t have a reason to stay there. Not even for my mother’s grave whom I loved so dearly that I couldn’t see past her hatred. It’s like this locked door suddenly opened and all I could see was light. She died from the overdose and he ran away, child services started telling me about this sister that I had as my other sibling and I remember crying so much about it and I was in such a horrible state that they had to take me to see some therapist and I could only tell her a drop in the ocean.”

My eyes ran back to the dark ocean in front of us as I realised time has passed. I looked back at him and gave him a smile.

“I never go out because I never went out as a child, my mom didn’t like me much and my home was always cold and cruel. I said I’d never open up to anyone either, but I guess places like the ocean dare you to. Take me home.”

I moved him aside and got off the car, I went in wiping my face and I sat at the back feeling a headache. He got into the car, and the drive was quiet with us stealing glances at each other. When he stopped in front of my house, I thanked him as I had recited and then I ran into the house.

As soon as the door opened Lisa came into sight eyes wide as she took the last step down the stairs.

“I told him”

I said and she opened her arms wide, I ran into them and started screaming the pain out. We sank to the floor, and I could tell she was crying as her body trembles while she tried to hold me together. I was in exhausted pain, and I thought I was past the agonising pain after I stopped crying so much at therapy.

We had sat there for an estimated hour before Frank brought us water.

“Are you okay?”

Lisa asked and I nodded.

“Go to bed, I’ll be there soon.”

I nodded again getting up.

“He’s still here and he’s not saying anything.”

“I’ll call his mom.”

They whispered but I had grown sensitive to sound. Isaac had been here all the time, probably crying because that’s all we  did since I told the story of my life. My eyes ran to my window, but I didn’t have it in me to look at him, so I just climbed into bed and slept willing to give up anything for a fresh start.

I didn’t have it in me to go to school, but I allowed myself to because I wasn’t going to let my past define the person I wanted to be. At the back of my mind, it haunted me, but I wasn’t going to let it swallow me whole.