Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
When Wren woke up again, the sun was fully up outside and Sebastian was nowhere to be seen. He'd covered her with a blanket, it seemed, and there was a note on the table in front of her. She picked it up, smiling at his messy handwriting.
"Wrenny, Shit, does anyone call you Wrenny anymore? I don't know. Sorry if you hate it but now I've written it and this pen doesn't erase so there's no going back.
Anyway, I'm going out to get breakfast and do a little grocery shopping. Feel free to do whatever you want around the apartment. My clothes are in the dresser and closet in the bedroom if you'd like to change or anything and there's plenty of food in the kitchen if you're hungry before I get back.
Or, I guess, you can go if you'd like too. If that's the case, I'll never forget last night. It was one of the best nights I've had in a very long time and I hope more than anything that you're okay wherever you end up out there. Anyway I think this probably just got weird so I'll see you when I get back if you're here (which I really hope you are, not gonna lie) and if not, I guess I'll see you around. -Seb"
She laughed out loud, setting the note back down on the table and closing her eyes, leaning back on the couch to think.
In reality, even if she did want to leave Sebastian's apartment (which she didn't if she was being honest with herself), she didn't have anywhere to go.
Her parents had moved to Florida upon retiring and her sister had moved to Oregon to be one with nature or something like that, and she hadn't talked to any of them in years. She didn't have phone numbers for any of them on her. She did, of course, somewhere in the apartment she'd shared with Josh but it wouldn't have shocked her at all if he'd thrown all of her belongings away when he'd gotten home the night before. Plus, she couldn't have been sure those numbers were even still their numbers anyway.
She didn't have any friends. She didn't have anyone, except for, apparently, Sebastian.
She finally decided she'd have the conversation with him when he got home. She'd lay everything out on the table and see what he said. She'd make sure he was fully aware that he didn't have any sort of responsibility over her and he didn't have to help her at all and didn't have to feel bad about it if he didn't.
In the meantime, though, she decided to explore his apartment because, well, why not? He'd told her she could, after all.
She wandered around, taking in the fantastic view of New York from the windows in what seemed to be his office, running her hands over the smooth marble countertops of the kitchen, looking through the countless dvd titles (most of which she'd never heard of because Josh hadn't liked her to watch tv for fear she'd find a man other than him attractive) on the media shelf to one side of the living room, taking the soft fabric of the king-sized comforter in the bedroom between her fingers, and ending up running her fingers over the various clothes in his closet.
Eventually, she went to the dresser and pulled out an old-looking and well-worn but super soft t-shirt and a pair of basketball shorts, going to the on-suite bathroom in the room he'd set her up in the night before to shower again. She felt like she could shower every ten minutes for the rest of her life and it wouldn't have been enough to get the memory of Josh off of her skin.
This time, she let herself look at her body. It was littered in scars and bruises. Her thighs and upper arms were the worst; he'd always known to hurt her where it was easily hidden. She ran her fingers over the multiple burn scars on her thighs from when he'd figured out that he thought it was absolutely hilarious to use her as an ashtray. She moved to her arms, running her fingertips over the various scars and marks he'd left on her body, ending on the bruises on her neck that had been ever-present ever since she could remember. His absolute favorite thing was to choke her, holding her up against a wall until she was almost unconscious.
Closing her eyes and letting the tears that had formed there fall, she sat on the cold tile floor hugging her legs and letting the hot water of the shower run over her.
She sat there so long that her skin felt like it was on fire and then finally reached up to turn the knob off, wiping her tears on a plush towel. She dried herself, slipping into the clothes she'd picked and tossing the ones from the night before into a laundry hamper in one corner of his bedroom.
She then perched in a chair on his small balcony, listening to the city beneath her. She breathed deeply, not sure of the last time she'd felt so at peace.
