Keep you safe from me

Chapter 2: Vulnerability

KEEP YOU SAFE FROM ME

CHAPTER 2

VULNERABILITY

STOP! Please, no! Please, stop! I am not that girl. I am not her. Please!

Emily bolted upright from her side of the bed, panting, shaking. She looked over the person sleeping beside her and found Lucas still sound asleep on his side, snoring a bit. She calmed a bit, consoled at least for that moment.

Another nightmare.

She slipped out of the covers and sat by the corner couch, her personal think chair and safe spot.

They had been frequenting her lately. Ever since she got back from that out-of-town trip three months ago. She still could not believe what had happened that night. She did not know how to react. Whether to tell her boyfriend, her mother, or her best friend. She had always been a secretive girl ever since she was a child. She did not know how to communicate especially those that she considered sensitive... but this was a different kind of sensitive.

As she took her feet upwards on the chair and clasped her knees, she began remembering how she had felt like shit... like a whore. How she did not want to inhabit that body anymore, feeling it was soiled with the malice of a man's touch. How she'd rather die then. Unfortunately that time, dying would have to wait because she had an important conference in the morning and had to regroup immediately. Every time she had the nightmares, however, she wished she had broken down instead.

How she managed to live with that for the last three months, she could not remember. Right, exactly. By pretending it did not happen. For the sake of her career and her relationship, she would forget about the incident. And if she was lucky enough, she would never have to relive those moments in her mind.

But apparently, she's not lucky enough to be saved from nightmares. And every once in a while, the feeling would creep on her again, like a ticking time-bomb. The only consolation she had was that she could not seem to remember the face of the people she encountered that night, probably the effect of alcohol-laced memory.

There was also the lie she had told her boyfriend, choosing not to let him know despite the sensitivity of it. She was afraid, yes. Very much so, in fact. But, at that moment, considering what they just fought about trust, she was more unsure of whether he'd believe it than her own embarrassment of telling him the situation. Besides, if she really thought about it, there was no harm done. Really. No. Harm. Done.

She sighed.

Yeah, keep telling yourself that, Emily. Good job.

She thought, as long as it did not resurface in her waking life, she was going to be okay with it.

There was one thing that she did not anticipate though, aside from the nightmares. The one where she would reject any physical contact from any guy she came across with. Or be physically close to. Such as men on public vehicles, trains, in her office. Even Lucas for that matter.

Going back that weekend made her more comfortable and at ease being to a place she was familiar with. Lucas seemed to have forgotten the whole not-being-at-your-own-dinner fiasco and greeted her warmly. But something different must have really happened because as he was embracing her that night, memories of what happened to her suddenly flooded her thoughts and she felt restless. Too much in fact that she could not sleep that night.

Only when she fetched herself a glass of milk and sank into the bed on their spare room downstairs did she manage to settle down and finally get some rest. When Lucas inquired about it the morning, she just told him she dosed off upon checking for something in the spare room.