As tears slowly climbed out of my eyes, my mouth hung open in a desperate attempt for oxygen and he only pressed harder. Any sound that had escaped my throat was hardly loud enough for myself to hear, let alone any bystanders. I looked into his eyes, they were hungry and irate. His lips grazed along my jaw, his free hand pressed into my waist to keep me still.
“I don’t like a tease.” He murmured into my ear.
I pushed my palms as hard as I could against his chest but it accomplished absolutely nothing. He had me pinned against the wall. Legs and all.
My face was hot and my sight of Harry began to blacken. I prayed and prayed for someone to just turn down the hallway, just turn down the hallway, turn down the hallway … turn … down… the hal…
My vision went completely black first. I could still hear Harry’s rapid, shallow breaths, I could still feel the bass from the club, but quickly that faded as well. I drifted into an abyss of nothingness.
***
There was a bump, I felt my body shift and the top of my head smacked against something solid. I groaned while slowly bringing my hand up to massage the point of impact.
“She’s alive!” someone squealed.
I opened my eyes to a laughing Emma in the back of a taxi. I rubbed the haze from my pupils and began to lift myself into a sitting position.
“Emma…” I started. She stared at me with a huge grin across her face. “What … happened?” I began to realize my head was pounding, I let out a quick hiccup and winced in some of the most excruciating pain I’d ever felt. I brought my hand up and lightly danced my fingertips along my throat only to find pain with each tap.
“Josh and I found you passed out in the hallway to the VIP loft.” She was laughing, and I just couldn’t bring myself to find it funny. “I freaked out a bit at first, but you were fine. Well Josh said so anyway. We actually got Harry to carry you out to the taxi.”
The second his name left her mouth, I remembered. My heart raced and I started flailing my arms around in an attempt to get her to pay attention to me – not that I even gave her a chance to. My mind was going a mile a minute and for some reason I couldn’t get the words out right away.
“Emma, Harry choked me! Harry choked me out!” I grabbed her arm. “We have t- to go back, I mean like what do I do, Emma!”
Emma’s face contorted into something I could only describe as disgust.
“Vaeda, I’m not taking you for drinks and weed ever again.” She moved her arm from my grip and smirked, shaking her head.
“Wh-what?” I stuttered.
“You’re out of your head right now. You’ve clearly had too much.”
The expression across her face was one that had me thinking over the night’s events. I remember Harry passing me the joint, I remember laughing with him about my office job, I remember staring into his green orbs – and as I remember his eyes my mind begins to flash back and forth. His eyes are bright and we’re laughing and I’m biting my lip and then the next thing I know we’re in a dark hallway and his eyes are dark, the darkest green can get without becoming black, and no one is smiling and no one is laughing.
“No.” I said shaking my head. “No, he fucking choked me, Emma. I see it in my head. I see him choking me right now. I went to look for you and – … he- he choked me, Emma!”
She scoffed, rolled her eyes and peered out the window for the duration of the ride home. Despite how she’d promised me she’d spend the night, you can bet she let me walk right into my building alone.
