Kori Novikov | 18+

2. All grits and no glam.

~••♡•▪| KORI NOVIKOV |▪︎•♡••~

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I kicked off my sneakers the moment I had stepped foot through the door. I leaned against the doorframe for balance,  throwing my head back in exhaustion.

My eyes scanned the room and my heart sank. Everyday felt like a prison.  My life felt like a rat race.

Wake up,  work, make ends meet — barely and repeat. There was no sense of accomplishment when I needed to work to survive. 

I left my bag on the floor near the door before making my way to the couch. My eyes closed as I tried to enjoy what was somewhat of a peaceful moment.

The door rattled open, my eyes turned to face the door as I watched Gene walk in. Gene wasn't my boyfriend— I think, I wasn't too sure,  he liked to act like it though. It wasnt something that I wanted.

He'd kiss me and hold me when he wanted to but would get mad at me if we didn't go any further. I didn't want to take it further, I wasn't ready. 

I was extremely insecure about my body,  the scars were visible and made me hate the way that I looked. The belt marks were dark across my back from when my father would punish me.

I was quite acquainted with the leather of my father's belt. There was rarely a day where he wouldn't use it on me. Sometimes even the littlest of things would piss him off  and he would take out his anger on me

"Hey," he spoke, dropping his backpack to the floor. He was covered in grease, he worked at the auto shop a few roads away. So, he was naturally always covered in grease.

"Hi," My voice was hoarse.

"What's for dinner?"

I frowned at him, it was unfair that I had to be the one to cook dinner every night.  "I just got home, but there's leftover pasta in the fridge if you'd like," I responded, my fingers moving to circle my temples to suppress the upcoming headache.

He simply scoffed and I tried to ignore it as an attempt to avoid a fight.

"I gave you a place to stay, the least you could do is cook me something decent to eat," his snide comment provoked me.

"Decent to eat? Come on Gene, I just got home," I was beyond exhausted. 

He stepped closer to me, his hand curling painfully around my arm. "Unless you want to end up back in that abandoned rusted car where I found you—," he seethed, "I suggest you cook me something fucking good to eat,"

I felt my body go numb, I thought I had escaped my abusive life, but here I was, in another abusive place.

It may not have been worse from where I came from, but I was definitely exhausted. I forced a smile,  wiggling out of his grip and made my way into the tiny kitchen to rummage up something to cook.

"Good," he smiled at me, "And hurry up,"

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5 am

That's the time I usually woke up, the earlier I got out of the house, the quicker I could get to work.

It usually took the subway 35 minutes to reach my destination, and the walk to the subway was around 10 to 15 minutes. 

The walk to work from the station was a solid 8 minutes. So all in all it took me an hour to get to work.

Factoring the time I needed to get ready, 5 am was the only somewhat decent time to wake up.