Green-Eyed | Violentine

Part Twenty - Eight | That Was Yesterday

A/N - Possible trigger warning for the first half of this chapter

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LAST AUGUST

"You're what?" he says in abhorrence, lips curled around his stained yellow teeth as he sneers at his daughter. Violet can see her father's face slowly turn red as his anger builds.

Violet takes a deep breath and looks to the floor, feeling all the confidence that previously inhabited her fade away. She was brave enough to say the word once, she doesn't know if she can bring herself to say it again.

"Hey!" snaps her father, "look at me and tell me what you told your mother."

Violet feels small under his stature and the way he's staring down at her with a snarl on his face. He stinks like tobacco smoke and alcohol. The smell lingering around him like a thick inescapable fog. Violet digs her fingers into her thighs, feeling the nails cut into her skin.

"I told mom that I was a lesbian," Violet says, barely above a whisper. She hates being confined in this room, pressed up tightly against the wall. Bundled up with her knees close to her chest as she wishes she was invisible.

Violet's eyes are trained on the singular photo on her desk, it's a younger Violet sitting between her grandpa and grandma. Violet's meant to be looking at the camera but she's beaming up at her grandma instead. The elderly woman was more of a mother to Violet during her childhood than her actual parents. Violet knows that she would have accepted her for who she is. Violet misses her.

Her father leans in towards her, his nose is creased and his eyebrows are furrowed. Violet holds her breath as his looming figure closes in on her personal space. "No," he says in a stern tone as he raises his voice and sneers at his daughter.

Violet winces if though his words have stabbed her.

"I won't accept that behaviour under my roof," he says, spitting the words out. His face turns red and he swears in frustration, turning away from Violet and slamming his beer bottle against the bedside table. It shatters and sprinkles fragments of glass across the room. Violet lowers her head as she realises that her father would have probably liked to have hit Violet with that bottle. Not the desk.

"Look what you've made me do," he seethes as he once more invades Violet's personal space. His eyes are boring into Violet's head but she refuses to meet his gaze. He snorts in derision as he turns and storms out of the room, glass crunching beneath his boots as he slams the door so hard that it bangs on its hinges.

Violet only allows herself to cry once her fathers slammed the front door closed. She sobs as she thinks over his words, her mother's warning of her father's feelings on the matter, the fact that all Violet wants at this moment is for someone to hold and comfort her.

She slides off the bed and steps over the broken glass, grabbing her bag and lifting the window open by her bed, climbing out of it and running through the muddy tracks away from her trailer and towards the main road. She doesn't know where she's going, she just wants to get away. As Violet approaches the street she slows to a walk, shoving her hands in her pockets as she keeps her head down. Violet's vaguely aware that she's not far off Clementine's house. Clementine's a good friend, Violet decides to pass by her house, and hope that the brunette will be willing to hold Violet while she cries.

It's a warm autumn day and the streets are busy, some people give Violet concerned looks as they pass her by, taking in her red eyes and frown. No one is concerned enough to ask her if she's alright. Violet looks up as she approaches Clementine's house and she slows as the windows of the kitchen come into view. Clementine is standing by the kitchen window, washing up pots and swaying slightly to the music Violet can hear through the open window.