The One and Only

Part three

"What the hell am I gonna do with you Alice?" My eyes flutter, the bright lights and white walls hurting my tired eyes. Where the hell am I? What the hell happened? "Alice?" I hear a voice call out gently. My entire body was in pain, my hand hurt, my back and shoulders, my head. I look over to see Alisha who looks concerned as she touches my hand with hers.
    "Where am I?" I ask trying to gather my jumbled thoughts.
    "The hospital." She says in a strained voice.
    "Why?" She sighs letting go of my hand before she stands up, her arms crossed under her chest as she starts to pace.
    "You got into a bar fight Alice." She says in her lecture voice.
    "I did?" I watch her, trying hard to remember what happened after Sebastian freaked out on me.
    "Yeah, you did, with some guy. Alice, you're nineteen years old, when are you going to grow up and stop letting these men use you?" She says her voice dripping with pain and betrayal.
    "Some guy?" I went to a bar?
    "Yeah, some bartender." She waves her hands around dramatically expressing her anger as she holds back her voice. "Alice, you're getting out of control, then I hear from Shannon that you're opening up to him. I've been your friend for how long now and you haven't said anything to me about your past. What's going on?"
    "My past." I mutter. I never told Alisha, I've never told anyone, and I know I didn't tell Shannon, I would never tell Shannon. "Alisha, please sit, you're making me nauseous, I'll tell you in a minute." She quietly sits beside my bed. I take a few deep breathes, collecting myself, preparing myself to tell the first and only person what's made me what I am today. It was so unbearably painful to remember, but I think it's time I tell someone what actually happened. "When I was fifteen, my boyfriend at the time... Jason... he- he convinced me... pressured me... into sleeping with him and I feel asleep he took naked pictures of me. He sent them to all his friends and they sent it to theirs and so on, I didn't know until Monday when I went to school and this group of girls who hated me told me about it. They made me cry and said... some really mean things. Jason used me for sex and everyone called me a whore... I was ready to just end the pain, drop out of school, just do nothing with my life, but then I found out about Thirty Seconds to Mars and they saved me. They made me confident and sure of myself. I missed two straight weeks of school and when I came back, I was exactly what they called me. Instead of fighting them and telling them I wasn't what they claimed I was, I embraced it I slept with just about everyone, I stole boyfriends, slept with the entire football team, I dressed in short skirts and revealing shirts. I was steadily making myself known, and then I met Josh, and everything changed.
He made me feel so good, like I'd never felt before he was good to me, surprisingly, he didn't fuck me and ask me to leave, he was nice, genuine and I fell into older guys. Highschool guys suddenly weren't my thing. I'd show up to school covered in hickeys from all these hot older guys, I'd post pictures of myself in front of the mirror in a bathing suit to show off the hickeys. I was a whore.... I am a whore. So when Sebastian said something tonight, I lost it, like I always do. I'm not that little girl who can be tossed around like a rag doll, Josh made me even more confident, he completed my slut transition. But when Shannon showed me some genuine kindness the other day, I had no idea how to act, it was the first time I was treated like a human being and not a whore, the first time I spent the night at a guys house and nothing happened and it changed my perspective.
I'm nothing. He shouldn't be showing me kindness. I'm a whore who sleeps with everyone, I party, drink, I've done pot, I don't have a good relationship with my parents, and to top it all off I'm not going to college, and I don't have a job. I'm literally going nowhere in life, yet this man is being nice. All I could think about was how much I don't deserve it." The tears were falling steadily down my cheeks by the time I'd finished. "And Sebastian just made me hate men all over again. They're all the same Alisha, look at you Anthony left you because you wanted to be in your own house, with your family, and he thought he could stay with his sister forever." When I finish my story, she looks at me a second, lost as to what to say, but finally she says something.
"I'm so sorry." She whispers, climbing in bed with me, pulling me into her as I sob. "Listen." She says firmly, pushing me away, making me look up at her. "You do deserve a love who treats you good. You deserve Shannon and his kindness, you deserve protection, comfort. You're not a whore Alice, you're just lost and afraid with no guidance. Listen to me. I want you to move in with me."
"Alisha you don't-"
"I want you to... I need you to, please."
"Thank you." I'd never felt so accepted, so loved, in all my life, Alisha had made me realize that who I'd made myself, who they made me was no one, that wasn't the real me.
"Sure honey. And the cafe is hiring I'll put in a good word for you, and before you know it, we'll be living in a house. You, me, and Makayla maybe a dog."
"Thank you so much."
"Hey, what are friends for?" She brushes back my hair. "I promise, everything will be okay now."
"What happened to your hand?" I ask wiping away my tears, she chuckles humorlessly.
"I punched his lights out, and I'm glad I did."
"No you didn't." She chuckles.
"Oh I did, he hit the floor like a sack of potatoes."
"She's not kidding." I hear a voice come from the door and I see the three band members and Makayla come in.
"All with a baby on her hip." Tomo says chuckling.
"Oh, you brought Makayla?"
"Yeah, when Shannon called and said you called him crying, nothing was going to stop me from finding you, not even a baby." She chuckles getting up from the bed, leaving me alone once again. "Though when I hoped the bar and beat the prick I didn't have Makayla."
"Please tell me someone recorded it." I tease.
"You were awake, don't you remember it?" Shannon asks coming to my side.
"No, I black out during fights."
"Well, you hit him in the face with a beer bottle if that refreshes any kind of memory." Alisha teases looking at Jared who's got Makayla.
"Miss Donnelly?" The doctor comes with a clipboard. "Good to see you're awake, you're free to leave whenever you feel up to it. Just call the nurse and she'll take you out to the car."
"Thanks."
"Sure." He nods and leaves us again.
"I'll go get your paperwork." Alisha suddenly suggests motioning for Jared and Tomo to follow after her. What the hell is she doing?
"Thanks Alisha." I thank her despite her sneaky ways of leaving Shannon and I alone.
"Sure. You stay and help her get dressed please." She says looking at Shannon, winking at me before disappearing closing the door behind them.
"Sorry, she's a little... off sometimes." I say after a few tense moments of silence.
"Look Alice, I'm not going to act like this isn't bothering me." He sighs, folding his arms over his chest.
"What?"
"You really scared me tonight-"
"I didn't me-"
"I know you didn't and Alisha explained that when you're like that you have no idea what happened, but you called me crying. You had no idea where you were and you wouldn't let me help you. I just... I felt helpless and I was so afraid that something had happened to you that no one would be able to fix." He rants, his brows creased together in worry. "I was on the tour bus when I got a phone call from you, I couldn't come to you even if you knew where you were and told me. I couldn't drop everything and get in my car like I wanted to."
"Shannon... my life is complicated and as much as I want to let you in I can't... especially after tonight."
"So you do remember what happened?"
"No, I don't remember the fight, or the things leading up to the fight, but... he said some pretty nasty things to me... things that brought back unwanted memories and I can't just whisk them away because you care, or because you were afraid."
"--You're lucky to have a friend like Alisha who cares about you like a sister without actually being related to you."
"I know, she's a god send." I whisper. "I'd probably be living on the streets if it weren't for her, with my pimp in the distance."
"Alice-"
"No, please. Please, I'm begging you not to pity me. I don't need your pity, I don't want it because then it means you care and I can't have you caring for me when I can't care back."
"What happened to you?" He whispers, looking at me sternly, like he's trying to figure it out himself.
"I can't tell you." I breathe shaking my head. "I can't open up to you. I just told Alisha after years of knowing her... and I don't want you waiting around for me because I may never tell you."
"You'll tell me when you're ready." He says sighing before he picks up my clothes. "Come on, let's get you dressed so we can get you out of here."
"Yeah, that's a good idea, I hate hospitals." I say slowly standing up, but the sedative still coursing through my body. I stumble, holding onto the edge of the stand beside the bed to steady myself, Shannon on the other side of me, holding me steady.
"Easy, they had to knock you out." He says helping me stand up. I nod slowly before getting dressed with his help. The nurse comes in with the wheelchair and they force me to sit in it, they wheel me out to the lobby where the other's wait.
"Yeah, right." Alisha says shrugging as she bites her lip to keep from grinning.
"Guys I can walk." I complain.
"No, no, stay right there." The nurse says shaking her head. "Can you go pull the car around?" The nurse asks Shannon, who looks at Alisha for the keys.
"Subaru Forester." She says tossing him the keys and he goes to get it. He brings the car around just as Alisha takes Makayla from Jared, waking her. She instantly starts to cry, wiggling in her carseat so she can't buckle her. I sit beside her trying to help, but she won't sit still, eventually we get her fastened, and Alisha hands me her bottle to help her fall back asleep. "There, all quiet." She whispers making me chuckle. Despite what she thinks and what Anthony thinks, she's a good mom. She trusts in her instincts, she doesn't let other people get in the way of her and her baby. She know what she wants when she cries. She tells me that she wasn't like that in the beginning, that she got used to it as she went, but I think it was a lie. I think she was a natural right from the start. When she gets out the three of them look at her. "Well, um, thanks." She says awkwardly holding the door open still.
"What do you mean?" They all look at her confused.
"We're coming with you."
"You are?" She looks at them skeptically as Jared goes around to the passenger seat. "I don't have enough room for you all to stay with me." I can see her panic a little.
"We'll figure it out." Shannon says waiting for Tomo to climb over the seat to get in the trunk.
"Um, okay, I guess." Shaking her head she closes the back door and gets in, taking everyone to her apartment. We blow up the air mattress and we somehow come to the conclusion that Jared's sleeping with Alisha, Shannon and I get the air mattress and Tomo takes the couch. I wanted the couch, we fought for a good ten minutes over who get to sleep on the couch, Alisha even argued to take the couch and let the brothers have her bed, but in the end Tomo won. I lay on the stupid lumpy air mattress that you can only ever get comfortable one when you're alone because you can feel every little movement your partner makes. Sighing Shannon looks over at me, his caramel eyes looking deeply into my hazel ones, my strawberry blonde hair pushed to the side.
"-I think my brother has a thing for Alisha." He says trying to make conversation, while staying quiet enough not to wake Tomo who was right on the other side of the couch. The idea makes me chuckle, and when I look back up at him, he's smiling too. "You think it's crazy too right?"
"I think they're too much alike, but they're so different at the same time."
"Yeah... He's really taken with Makayla."
"She's so good, she's like the perfect little angel sometimes."
"Alisha's so good with her for being so young."
"Yeah, they've been through a lot... she's always wanted kids... but Anthony... he was such an asshole, but one of the good ones you know. The ones that slip right under the radar."
"-How long have you known her?"
"She was about six months along when we met in the cafe, so a little over a year I guess."
"I thought you've know each other for a while."
"We have. We met online actually, she was a friend of a friend and through connections we got to know one another, and eventually started talking online."
"So was the guy? Was she with him?"
"Yeah they were together, for a year I think."
"How old was she?"
"Eighteen."
"Sorry, I don't want to put you in the middle of this."
"No it's fine, she's not afraid of people knowing, she owns up to it, she's not the bad guy at the end of the story. He tricked her into believing that they were gonna be a happy family, he had a good job, even though he was young, he had her believing it was going to be okay, and all it took was one time. He was happy and she was ecstatic, I remember her telling me about and I knew it was too good to be true, but I let her be, because who was I to step in her way? Her parents threw her out the second they found out so she lived with his family who she couldn't stand, and he showed up one night with plane tickets and that was the end of that. They moved out here to live with his sister, but once Alisha got a job, and started putting money away, Anthony freaked out. He told her it wasn't her job to be putting money away for their future, that he was plenty to take care of her and the kid, that he didn't need her help, that anything she made at work was spending money for her and the baby. She hates being told what to do, so she left him. My parents let her and the baby stay with us until she find an apartment, so my parents are Makayla's grandparents on Alisha's side instead of her own parents."
"Does he see Makayla?"
"Yeah. He gets her Friday through Monday."
"Did they go to court?"
"No, they decided together since he has off weekends and that's when she was the busiest it worked out better. He's still bent on being with Alisha, but she wants nothing more to do with him."
"Has she heard from her family?"
"Not a peep, she told them when she had her, and that they named her Makayla, but she never got a response. That's the only thing she ever has a hard time talking about."
"That's such a shame too." He says clicking his tongue. "You know our mom hates us for not having kids." I laugh lightly.
"Why don't you have kids?" He shrugs.
"Maybe I do somewhere." He laughs.
"Really though."
"I just never felt the need I guess."
"Yeah, I get that."
    "You're only nineteen, you'll change your mind."
"Doubtful."
"You will, you're good with Makayla. It'll come." He brushes my hair back before giving me a gentle smile. "Night Alive."
"Night Shannon." I give him a grateful smile before yawning.