The Secrets We Keep

The Forty-Second Chapter

Hayden

We find ourselves in his kitchen. It's way too large for what I'm beginning to realize is just one person. Because as I look around this house, it's clear to me that he's the only one who lives here all year round. It's untouched like a museum, or worse, a haunted house. 

I'm sitting on the kitchen counter; it's marble and feels cool under my legs. My face is puffy from crying, and after doing nothing but cry for hours and talk, Nathan and I have come down to scrounge for food. 

I see him finally close the fridge and what he brings out makes me laugh. 

"What are we supposed to make with fruit, ice cream, and a cucumber?" I ask, reaching for the box of strawberries on top. He hands it to me and moves my legs to grab some spoons from the drawer I'm covering with my feet. 

"I don't know, a smoothie?" He suggests as he hops up next to me. He hands me one of the spoons and opens the tub of ice cream. Both are faces are red and as we start spooning the dessert into our mouths, I find my eyes analyzing his body. How many other scars is he hiding?

Upstairs after I'd been able to talk again, I'd found myself with so many questions. But I hadn't been able to verbalize all of them.

"Why stay with people like this?" I'd asked after I'd finally stopped crying because hearing that, hearing what his mother had done to him, broke something in me. 

"They're my parents," he'd answered like it was as simple as that. 

After that, he'd told me about other things. About his life and the things he wanted to do after school. I think he wanted to change the subject, lessen the gravity of what he'd told me but I can't just stop thinking about it. His mother deserves to be in jail. 

"Stop that," he says suddenly and I hear his spoon clatter to the counter beside him. I look up in shock to see him glaring at me. "Don't look at me like that."

"Like what?" I ask, trying to smooth my face back into one of neutrality but it's too late. 

Nathan slides off the counter and runs a hand over his hair in frustration. "This is why I've never fucking told anyone. I don't want you to look at me like I'm some kind of victim. I don't want your pity."

"Nathan, she abused you," I say, joining him on the floor. I reach out to him but he backs away from my outstretched arms. "And of course I feel sorry for you, no child should go through what you did." 

"So what does any of it matter, Hayden? What's done is done. She broke my hand and now I can't play. Do you think I don't wish I could change that? Change a hundred other things? But I can't. And so stop looking at me like that, like I'm some kind of broken thing."

"You're not broken," I say. "But Nathan-"

"I can't keep dwelling on this. Is it so bad that I just want to live right here, in this moment? I have a new chance at life starting next year and I'm sick of my past ruining that so can we just pretend I never even told you that?"

It goes against everything inside me to nod my head. If I had it my way, I would be dialing Stephanie and reporting the crime but I know from experience that victims sometimes protect their abusers. It's a twisted kind of love and I imagine it's more so when a child is conditioned to love its parents from birth. 

So even though I feel like crying again, I say, "Ok, then. I won't talk about it anymore." 

-

Nathan takes me home shortly after that. But before I jump out of his car, I lean over and press a kiss on his cheek.