Love Song (LGBTQ+) (COMPLETED)

14. Suffer

"What are you doing here, Lynn?"

I kept my head low, keeping clear of all eye contact. What was this feeling? It was like I knew as soon as I looked up, I was going to be met with a face loaded with judgement. She was going to look at me with disappointment, just like the one Brian gave me. Shame, had I been feeling shame? Embarrassment, maybe? I respected her, even if we hadn't known each other all that well. I always held respect for people who weren't afraid of being themselves, for people who never cared about other opinions. What I respected in other people was precisely what I always lacked in myself.

Within shallow, compact steps, she made her way over to me. She looked exactly the same, just with longer hair and paler skin. Her body was just as 'healthy' as it had been the last time I saw her, and she still hadn't been afraid to show it off in front of anyone who looked, or wanted to look. Of all the people I could've possibly ran into, I never quite expected to see her there. What could have made someone like her end up in a place like this?

Unlike myself, she looked fine. She still looked like a model, and her smile had still been that of every man's dreams. Meanwhile, I looked like I had just run a mile buried in goth makeup.

"What? You're not going to talk to me? That's fine, I'll just force you." she was clearly speaking through her teeth. "I'm gonna borrow her, Becky. We won't be too long."

Before I could realize she was doing anything, I suddenly felt myself being ripped and tugged through the doors that I had been looking at when I first entered the room. As soon as the air hit my skin, I had caught just how fresh and cool it had felt compared to Ely. Both were filled with nature, and the pollution was always kept to a minimum, so why had it felt so much cleaner here? No. That hadn't been it, it wasn't that the air was cleaner. It was the toxicity of the people that was missing from the air surrounding me.

Ely, behind closed doors, was an evil, judgmental place. Everyone was nice to my face, but I knew that they all had their piece to add about me once they got home and sat their fat fucking asses into a couch. Depending on the night, maybe it had been Brian or maybe it was how I would follow in his footsteps on another. It wasn't just me, either. Even my own parents had partaken in the festivities of late afternoon shit talking.

What had I done? As usual, I kept a fake smile on my face and kept my mouth shut. Did I have any place to speak up to them, or to anyone for that matter? I had hid the fact that I was dating a girl from everyone until it all got exposed and we stopped hiding. How would people have reacted if I told them that their town hero forced himself on and in me? How would they feel knowing that he stole a freshman girl's body for his own empowerment and pleasure?

They wouldn't have felt a damn thing, because I wouldn't have been believed. I was the little sister of a criminal who had caused nothing but trouble his whole life in Ely. He was Ely's golden child, he was going to get into a top football school like LSU or Ohio State and shock the world. Everyone was so sure that he was going to go places that any wrong he did would be swept under the rug and forever forgotten, grades and all.

I had already been destroyed inside and out by Devin. Anything more would have ended me.

"Okay, Lynn, we're alone." she led me down the steps and onto what looked to be an unused dock for small boats. "I really thought we were going to end up being friends, but you disappeared after that party. You and Nathan rarely ever showed up to school, and when I did see you there, you were leaving."

". . .Sorry, Joanna." I glared down into the dark, murky looking water below my feet. She just had to bring me here. "It didn't really have anything to do with you."

"I think it does, especially since both of my friends are involved." a finger hooked my chin and lifted my face upwards. "By the looks of it, something did happened. Did Nathan do something to you?"