No More What Ifs (DreamNotFound)

12. Conflicted

I woke up Monday morning cuddling my pillow closely. I briefly thought I had to get ready for school, but then I remembered that they made today a professional day for the teachers, so I quickly relaxed back into my old position. 

At first, I was only sad that the pillow wasn't actually George, but the second I thought about him, the weekend's events hit me like a truck. My emotions quickly overwhelmed me, and I shed a few silent tears into my pillow, gripping it tightly as the painful memories washed over again.

After a few moments, I finally took a deep breath and sat up in my bed, instinctively grabbing my phone. There weren't any new text messages, but most of the ones from yesterday were still unanswered. Emily had texted some time after everyone else, but I refused to even open her messages.

Despite all of them being unanswered, I didn't respond. I just clicked off my phone and lay on my bed, trying to push all of the thoughts out of my head, but they didn't go. I was tormented with thoughts of George and Nick - the things George said, the image of what they did, it all just hurt. 

I eventually decided to at least let them know I was at least holding up, snatching up my phone again. Just as I was about to respond to Bad, though, there was a knock on my door.

"Clay?" my dad called softly.

"What?" Unlike him, my voice was harsh. He had been bothering me all day yesterday about why I wasn't talking and I quickly got sick of it.

"Can you come down?"

I scoffed. "I told you I didn't want to talk about it."

"I know you don't want to talk. I... um... I made you breakfast. You need to eat something because you didn't have anything yesterday."

"Oh." I felt bad at snapping at him now, and as if on cue, my stomach rumbled. Ever since returning to my house yesterday, I was cooped up in my room and missed lunch and dinner because of it. "Okay, I'll be down in a bit."

"Alright."

I was still wearing the clothes I was wearing yesterday, which I definitely needed to change because the sleeves were covered in dried tears and snot. I would normally never wipe my nose on my sleeve, but I ran out of tissues and had to resort to that. Regardless, I needed to change, so I peeled everything off and tossed on some new clothes. 

Getting some new clothes on made me feel a little bit better like I was shedding a little bit of yesterday's pain. My rising mood was immediately crushed, though, when I went to the bathroom and looked in the mirror out of habit.

I still had a dark brown spot on my neck.

I clawed at my collar and sure enough, the other one was still there as well. Why did I have to be such an idiot? If we hadn't done... that, George would have probably not brought the lube and condoms to the party. Then I wouldn't be nearly as upset with him for being a drunk idiot and we probably wouldn't have had that argument yesterday. Maybe I could have been at his house, doing some homework together before collapsing onto his bed and snuggling for an hour or two like we did on days off. The hickeys were a constant reminder of him, of what he did, of what he took.

I quickly made my way to breakfast to get my mind off of George, grabbing a hoodie to cover the shameful mark. I looked like a stereotypical angsty teen with my hood up, but I didn't really have another alternative besides asking my sister, which I refused to do because I knew she'd pester me about George.