Cry Until You Bleed

36- More Secrets

*Here's the extra update because CBJ won tha game tonight, and it was the most intense game I've ever seen like wow*

On the next day, Monday, I stand at the phone bank, at the phone on the end where I usually stand, and I dial my dad’s number since it’s been a while since we’ve spoken.

“Hello?” Somebody answers on the other end, but it isn’t my dad. It’s Penn, who I haven’t called in almost three weeks, since he started yelling at me about hanging out with Niles. Sure, I missed talking to him but he was mad at me and I was mad at him so I wasn’t eager to talk to him.

“Hello?” I repeat back to him, unsure of what else to say.

“Hey, Ana,” He greets me. “I haven’t talked to you in a while.”

“Yeah, I was actually looking to get ahold of Dad,” I tell him although I’m pretty sure that he can already get that part considering I called Dad’s number and not his.

“I’m aware. When he saw that it was a South Carolina area code though, he gave me the phone,” He explains to me. “Because you’ve been avoiding me.”

“It isn’t that hard to avoid somebody from here considering you have no way of contacting me unless I call you,” I say, not denying his accusation because it’s true, I have been avoiding him. I don’t like confrontation and so if we had a confrontation, the best way to avoid future confrontations is by avoiding Penn. It’s logic.

“You shouldn’t be avoiding me,” He tells me.

“Yes, I should be,” I counter him. “Because I’m getting better but you’re not helping by telling me that what I’m doing is wrong. It isn’t fair that I can’t be happy sometimes just because you don’t like it. You’re not even my parent and you try to control everything that I do.”

“I don’t try to control you,” He argues. “I’m just trying to keep you safe. That’s what big brothers are supposed to do.”

“Okay, well tell your brother instinct to chill out because I’m across the country and you can’t do anything to protect me from way over there. I’m in a facility where I’m being protected just fine so don’t worry so much,” I tell him with a loud sigh. “Especially not about who I associate with.”

“You’re still talking to that guy?”

“Yes.”

“Are you still going to ignore what I say?”

“Yes,” I confirm. “Like I said before, he makes things better. It’s not just him but he is part of it. I can tell him things that I can’t tell anybody else.”

“Like what?”

“Well, for example, I told him about what happened,” I say. “Everything that I remember. Dr. Lombardi said that if I told somebody, it’d help me get over what happened, so I told him and he listened. That’s all he did, just listened. I told him everything and he just sat there and he listened and he didn’t leave, which I suspected that he might but he didn’t.”

“Okay, but-“

“Stop,” I interrupt him. “Penn, just stop. Please? The bottom line here is that he makes me happy. Talking to him, being around him. He makes me laugh like I thought that I would never be able to again. That’s it. He makes me happy. And if you really care about me then you would want that for me whether it scares you or not. Sure, he might hurt me later but it’s my choice to make and I say that it’s worth the risk. It’s not your decision to make. It’s his and it’s mine and it’s nobody else’s. And I choose him because he makes me happy and that’s the bottom line. So you can keep whining about it if you want to but you can do it to somebody else because I don’t want to hear it anymore. Now, if you want to talk about something other than Niles then that’s totally fine. We can talk about something else but I am done arguing with you about this.”