Too Broken to Love

18

I told Bailey everything. Dinner, Lucas, dessert on the dock, the kiss, his mother, how I froze when she asked about my parents. The only detail I left out was the incident in the truck when I was asleep. She had enough to worry about without worrying about my dreaming habits.

"So are you going to tell him? You know about your parents?" She asked as she scrolled through some movies.
"I want too, It's just that it's still really hard to talk about." I sighed.
"Well I think you should, especially if you want this to work out between you both." She responded.

I mulled over her words as we cuddled under a blanket and watched Footloose. It was one of my favorite movies, yet I couldn't focus on the movie at all. All I could think about was all the pain and torment of my past.

Bailey had been by my side through most of it, yet she didn't know the full extent of everything I went through. Not with Chris, My dads death, My mom, she knew just enough to allow her to help me through everything and that was it. I was never big on leaving myself that vulnerable to anyone.

As the movie continued to play I glanced over and noticed Bailey had fallen asleep beside me on the couch. I turned the movie off and laid on the other end of the couch in silence, recalling my past.

It was Junior year in high school. Bailey had talked me into going to a house party that some of the popular kids were throwing. My dad had recently gotten sick, and both he and my mother were lashing out at me a lot as a result.

That night at dinner I had told them that Bailey invited me to a party, and they swiftly moved into yelling at me for being a selfish child. I usually just ignored their yelling, but this night in particular my parents had decided to drop the bomb that dad had cancer.

The pain was debilitating, not only from the diagnosis, but in the form of the lack of compassion they showed me, my mother also decided to throw out that we only had a few months left with dad. That was when I really lost it. I felt betrayed and angry they had kept it from me and ran out of the door.

I ran all the way to Baileys as tears streamed down my face, where she cleaned up my face and promised me a care free night of drinking and dancing. When we got to the party I had clung to Bailey as if she was the only thing I had left. That was, until she began flirting with Zac, which was my cue to find another drink. I had known she had liked him for a while and nothing would cause me to be the reason she didn't get her chance.

I grabbed a beer from the kitchen, and walked outside to the back yard where most of the people were either making out, or playing beer pong. I opted for a bench in the back corner of the yard away from people.

I downed my beer and began sipping my cold one. I had honestly lost count of how many I had actually drank since arriving, but I was definitely feeling the buzz. That's when Chris sat beside me. He was 2 years older and tried to comfort me while I was brooding by myself. By the end of the night he had pulled me into a kiss.

At the time I didn't think anything of it, the fluttery feeling was nice but I figured the whole thing was just pity. A few weeks later after texting back and forth, he found me at lunch after asking me to meet him by the gate and asked me to be his girlfriend. I had said yes, excited that one of the popular kids was showing an interest in me. We continued dating and he stuck by me when my dad died.

My mother became more resilient and angry following his death, until one day she hit me. Chris and his parents insisted I stay with them to finish out school. That arrangement would have worked out well if we weren't horny teenagers. Eventually Chris had talked me and his parents into moving me into his bedroom, which eventually led to us being intimate with each other. He had asked multiple times and finally I gave in.