Watermelon Sugar

16

Flashback

I wake up feeling groggy. I sit up rubbing my eyes and looking over at the clock seeing that it's 6 am. The alarm is still beeping so I quickly smack it and it turns off... time to get up for school. Great.

I get up, instantly feeling the ache in my back and walk to my closet. I usually don't wear anything fancy and today I feel like leggings and a big t-shirt. I never wear anything that remotely shows my skin at all since I'm so insecure about being overweight. I mean, who would want to see that anyway.

When I finished getting dressed I hear stumbling outside my door. "Amberrr"
I instantly have that feeling. Goosebumps fill my skin and my heart starts to race

"Damnit Amber!" My door flies open and my dad is stood there, drunk off his ass. I never know what to do when he's like this. You can't get through to him but at this point I'm used to it. "You lazy bitch!" He yells. I just stand there, staring at him frozen. I think back to what I could possibly have done wrong and I can't think of anything.

"You think you're entitled to do what you want?" He laughs but in a condescending way. And I have no idea where this was coming from.

"What did I do?" I bravely ask him back

"What do you ever do?" He comes at me full force and grabs me by my hair, throwing me against the wall.

"Don't ever talk back to me again! Understand me!" He brings his elbow back and swings his fist to my face, hitting me hard on my cheekbone

"Paul!" My mom comes in "you need to keep it down" she whisper yells. I slide to floor, wincing and holding my cheek. He needs to keep it down? Not, he needs to stop hitting his daughter?

He looks down to me and mumbles "Why don't you do something with your life, you worthless fat piece of shit" then leaves the room without another word.

Present

I remember everything clear as day. How long it took me to get up off the floor. How hard it was to cover up the bruise that was already forming and how hard it was to stop the tears from showing at school all day that day. I remember wondering what I could have done to make him hate me so much but I guess he just got a kick out of seeing me hurt.

"Baby" Harry breaks me out of my trance and look at him, his face full of worry. He wipes the tear on my cheek that I didn't even know was there.

My mom had hung up a minute ago without me saying another word. She told me that she wanted to see me to talk about it but when I didn't answer back she told me she'd call me later and hung up. I think she was disappointed but hearing her talk about it again just brought back bad memories.

"I'm sorry" I tell Harry and he pulls me into a tight hug, his arm wrapped around my shoulders and the other one holding my head to his chest. "Why are you sorry?" he asks me.
"Because I brought you into this whole mess and I understand if you don't want it because I wouldn't." My voice cracks at the end of my sentence and I start crying. Being in his arms and feeling the way I do right now just breaks me down.

"Shhh, hey. You did not bring any mess to me, okay? I love - I love who you are and I'm not leaving when things in your life get hard." He runs his fingers through my hair as he talks to me and it soothes some of the anxiety and slows down some of my tears

"Shh, it'll be okay" he kisses my head. "Where did you go just a minute ago? I kind of lost you."

"I was just reminded of one of the times my dad hit me." I tell him and he squeezes me tighter. "Do you want to talk about it?" He asks