Don't Feel Guilty

Chapter Two

Eli woke up the next morning and came downstairs to find me on the couch, swollen faced with a pounding headache. It was Friday morning at 6:45 a.m. and he was leaving for work. 

I barely slept throughout the night and I heard him come down the stairs slowly, allowing his feet to drag a little bit. I wondered if he had a hangover or not. He walked into the kitchen and hit the button on the coffee machine to start it. 

I kept my eyes closed and pretended like I was sleeping when he shuffled over to the living room where I laid down, curled on the couch as small as I could get myself. I could feel him stare at me as he bent down and was just inches away from my face. I had a piece of hair over my eyes and I wanted nothing more but to move it, but I didn't want him to know that I was even conscious. I just wanted him to leave. 

"Baby, what are you doing down here?" He said as he moved that hair out of my face. 

I wanted to shake him sometimes. What do you mean what am I doing down here? 

See, about how he acted in times like this, I never really understood. Did he actually black out, again, or was he just trying to make me think that him grabbing fistfuls of my hair and dragging me after he broke the lock and door of the bathroom last night was actually just all in my head? 

If it wasn't for my head aching, I probably would have thought that I did dream it. 

"Ava, baby, I'm leaving for work in a few. Wake up," he said softly to me as he rubbed my face. Eli worked in construction, like my father, and him rubbing my face was like sand paper scratching me gently.

I barely opened my eyes and looked at him, as if I was just waking up for the first time. He smiled slightly, but I couldn't tell what his real emotions were. And actually, I could rarely tell what his real emotions were. 

"Hi," I squeaked out. 

"I wish you slept in the bed with me," he said. "It was disappointing when I rolled over this morning and you weren't there."

How could I? You locked the door on me. I couldn't even get to my clothes in there. I had to sleep naked, wrapped around an itchy blanket that you had down here.

"Guess I fell asleep watching a show," I said instead.

"I'll meet you back here later?" He asked. 

"Ok. I'll be here," I said. 

"Ok," he said and kissed my forehead before getting up and walking back into the kitchen. 

It's not that I didn't want to leave and run away from his house, which was in Lynn, Mass. But I was trapped without a car, any amount of money in the bank (which all went to rent at my apartment) and no way of getting to the train station unless I walked 45 minutes through the worst area of town from here. I've done that before and was harassed in pure daylight. There were desperate times, but today I was going to just hang tight. 

His house, which wasn't really his house, but his father's house that Eli and his two siblings grew up in. It had light salmon pink paint that was chipping with a silver wire fence that wrapped around the matchbox-sized plot of land it sat on, where the finish was also almost completely fraying off. It had three bedrooms but only one that was filled. The entire place was practically empty. 

His sister and her husband moved out of one of the bedrooms last summer. We helped them move into a beautiful house that was on a hill in Peabody that had four bedrooms and three floors. He worked in finance making well over six figures and she worked in Human Resources at the only company she's ever worked at. Her mother got her the job when she was 17 and she worked from home on Mondays and Fridays. After dating Eli for two years, I hated being around her. She was rude no matter what I did and didn't even try talking to me. 

Their father didn't live here anymore. George was divorced from their mother, Anita, and was remarried to a smart, but quiet woman. Her name was Lisa, and she lived in a blue house on Daniels Street in Salem, just one town over from here. They rented out the downstairs. 

When the house was empty other than from him, and then the two of us on the weekends, away from my four-bedroom apartment with three roommates and each of their boyfriends, I tried like hell to make this place like home.

I painted most of the rooms myself -- picking out the paint with George for his approval before going ahead and buying it. I bought new decorations and framed pictures of Eli's family alongside pictures of him and I. I bought new pillows to go on top go the old, tan leather couch that had black scratches in it that were probably from 15 years ago when he was still growing up. 

"Don't tell Eli," George said one time to me when he slipped me $450 for the paint. It was more than what I paid for it, and he knew it. I tried to protest, but he told me to knock it off before giving me a hug. George was always good to me, and would often call me his second daughter. And, he would stand up for me when Eli would tell me to "shut up" or call me names in front of him. Minor things that were just a slice of the pie that Eli would really give me later on. 

I think George knew that it was wrong of his son to treat me the way that he did-- especially since when I met him, I was 18 and he was 25. I had a lot less life experience than him in general but I had lived more than him. I had moved from my parent's house when I was freshly 18, leaving my small little hometown for Boston - going to college and starting a new life for myself. 

My parents were proud.

Except for my choices in men. They never really cozied up to Eli, and not because of the age difference. 

"He seems like a drinker, to me, " my dad said to me after the first time he met him. 

He wasn't wrong, but I didn't want him to be right so I denied him. 

And as I laid here, curled up on the couch and scared to move, I remembered my father's words. 

 He seems like a drinker, to me.

 He seems like a drinker, to me.

 He seems like a drinker, to me.

 He seems like a drinker, to me.

"Ava, I'm leaving," Eli said as he was crouched down in front of me again with his Black Carhartt jacket on with his travel Yeti mug that I got him for Christmas just a month back, with steaming coffee coming out of it. 

"Okay," I said.

"See you later. I love you," he said as he kissed my cheek. 

"Love you too," I said quietly as he got up and headed toward the door. 

Without moving, I heard him out on his steel-toed boots, turn on his heels and walk out the door into the blistering, January cold. There was a pause as I waited for it-- the thud of each step as he headed down the six stairs down to the street, Kenwood Terrace, a dead-end road in a shitty area of a beautiful state. 

And then I heard it. 

Thud, thud, thud, down the stairs he went. 

And that's when I let out a breath. 

I'm finally free.