Angel's Secret ✔️

[THIRTY]

•AVIANA•

Kahli and I went to our old park where we'd always be.  We'd stay there to have conversations, picnics or when we just didn't want to go home.  Returning there with her had made a swarm of memories rush into my mind. 

Memories that I had worked so hard to burry. 
It almost made me cry, but I managed to keep the tears at bay.  I didn't want to cry.  I wanted to be happy. 

She began telling me about how she'd been.  I learned that Kahli was attending Rowan University to be a nurse for a school.  She had one more year to go before she graduated.  I was very happy to hear that she didn't pause her life and that she moved on.  I was proud of her.

"And with college, I also have another precious thing," she looked away to stare at the cloudless blue sky where birds took advantage of.  I stayed silent waiting for her to continue.

"I... I have a baby."

If my jaws were allowed, they would unhinge from my mouth and drop into the grass.  My eyes gleamed with curiosity as I gasped for the right words. 

"A baby?  Like... like little human beings that replicate the people who made them?"

She chuckled softly before gently wiping a stay strand from her face.  She nodded yes and gazed into my eyes.

"She's only two years old.  Her name is Kyla and I love her very, very much.  Being a mother  at 18 was like being a kindergartener with a high schooler's homework.  But I figured it out with the help of my parents."

Realizing that it was rude to keep my mouth open, I closed it thinking deeply.  Kahli, the girl who always had her life planned, who pledged that she'd get married and then have a baby, who I would've never have thought this would happen to, was a flipping mother at twenty. 

"Wow," I needed to expand my vocabulary for situations like these, "how? Who's the father? Are you married?"

Kahli shifted her weight from one arm to the other as she laid on her stomach.  She looked uncomfortable. We stared across at the playground down below since we sat on-top of a hill near an oak tree.  The park kept my eyes glued to it instead of my best friend who I didn't know was a mother.

"Remember Hordyn?" she spoke leisurely, audibly.  I gasped my eyes now totally on her.  She kept looking at the park.

"You. Did. Not!?"

She shook her head yes making me want to slap her across the face.  She broke our one and only rule.  Especially about boys!

Hordyn was the guy who rejected me.  The guy who thought I wasn't good enough for him.  The one who looked right past me everyday.  The one who caused me to gain weight and caused me and Kahli an excessive amount of time in the gym.

"It's not what you think..." she began now laying on her back.  Her lip quivered.  "I was at a party.  And I was just talking to him, I swear! He was asking about you and how sorry he was for not paying more attention, and whatever. I ignored him because he was a fuckboy and you and I both know that.  I was leaving when he gave me my drink back, except I didn't know he slid something inside."

My heart thundered knowing the rest.  It was all to familiar with our world now-a-days.  I scooted next to her and pulled her into my embrace.  I delicately tapped her back for comfort. 

"He raped me.  He used me when I was unconscious.  And I didn't know.  I woke up the next day in Rayna's room.  She told me what happened because she and the other girls saw Hordyn walking out the room without me."