Broken Pieces (2 page)

I seized that opportunity to take my free hand and land a punch to the side of his face. It didn’t do much, but he backed away. He was more in shock than hurt, I believe. As soon as he let go, I try escaping. However, I didn’t get more than a step before I was jerked back by the hair, making me lose my balance. I stumbled to stand, the grip he had on my hair was almost unbearable. It felt like he was going to rip the flesh clean off of my scalp. Before I could say anything, he threw me back up against his mustang.

I look up to meet his cold blue eyes piercing back down at me. “So, you want it rough, huh?”

Oh, no! What is he thinking? That I really sneaked out of my house just to screw him? I have to try and talk him down from the dark place he’s in right now. I have seen him drunk, but not so out of it that he wasn’t acting like himself.

“Jeremy, look at me. I know you don’t want to hurt me so let me go. I’ll go home and you can go home, get some rest and sober up, then we can talk tomorrow, okay?”

He just stares down at me like he doesn’t know me. He finally says, “You’re not going anywhere. I don’t want to sober up, and I want you … NOW!” He said the last word through his gritted teeth. He puts both my wrists in his one hand, and tries to take my shorts off with the other.

Realizing that he was serious and determined to keep to his word, I start trying to struggle out of death grip he had on my hands, but it was pointless. He’s stronger than me, but I was not going to just stand there and let him do what he wanted. I try to knee him in the groin but, even in his drunken state, he registered what I was doing and dodged the blow. With his free hand, he backhanded me across my right cheek, making my head snap to the left. I probably would have fallen to the ground with as much force as he used, but his hands still had a death grip on my wrist. I have never been hit before and, holy shit, it hurt! First there was excruciating pain, then came the burn. He grabbed my jaw, holding it so tight that if I didn’t already have a bruise from the blow, I was definitely going to have one now.

“I don’t know what you’re thinking, but that was not a very smart move, sweetheart.” He sounded confident that he had the upper hand in the situation. Who was I kidding? He did, but I wasn’t giving up that easily. He should know that about me, especially after how determined I was to work on our relationship after the second time he cheated on me. Love … more like lust … is blind.

I refuse to give up, refuse to think he’s won.

I feel his hands loosen. He’s so sure of himself, thinking I was just going to give in and have sex with him, that I take advantage. I pull my hands from his and take off toward the road. I make to the front of his car, where the headlights still glare into the darkness, when I feel his hands on my back, shoving me to the ground. I land on the rocky gravel and I feel his body holding me down. He goes to get up, but only enough to turn me on my back. The sharp pointed stones are digging into my back as he leans his weight on me, ignoring my wails.

“I want to see you while I make love to you!”

This is not making love, I thought, but I didn’t dare to speak.

He grabs my wrists in his hand again. I try to use my legs to push him off of me, but it is useless under his body weight. For the first time, I think that he’s going to get by with it. No! I can’t give up, can’t let him win. I have to keep telling myself that. As he shifts his weight to pull my shorts down, I try to escape again. He slams me down, making me cry out in pain. Before I realize it, he had ripped my panties free and was unzipping his jeans. He leans up to open my legs and I try to push away from him, screaming and pleading, “JEREMY! No! Please! Stop!”

His fist connects with my face, knocking me back down. ”SHUT UP...stupid bitch!”

I open my eyes and see a blurry outline of his car and the bright lights glaring in my face. I can barely see the outline of a person I don’t know anymore. I cry out in pain, as he forces himself into me. I don’t know if the pain was the rocks cutting into my back, my face pulsing from when he hit me, or him slamming into me. I just lay here, knowing that no one could hear my screams and he was not going to stop. I stay mute because I will not giving him the satisfaction of hearing me cry out. Every time, he slammed into me more forceful than before, grinding my raw back against the rough gravel.

It seemed like a lifetime that I lay here, praying that he was going to stop soon, but it really only lasted about five minutes. All I can do is think about all he had just taken from me. He got done, stood up, and said, “It wasn’t even worth the fight.” His words don’t even faze me. I feel like I’m broken, no words could compare to the pain I feel after what he had done.

I try to slowly sit up, knowing I just had to get as far away from him as I could right now. While he was putting himself back together, and not knowing if my legs would cooperate for me to stand, I try to move any way I could to just get away. All I can see is darkness beyond the tree-lined back road.

Suddenly, he grabs my upper arm, hauling me up so fast that I get dizzy. I thought he was done! Oh no! Why … what is he going to do with me now? “I’m taking you home.”

He hands me my shorts, talking like he would talk to me every day, like nothing had just happened. Is he kidding me? I do not have the energy to fight anymore. I stand and try to put on my shorts, but the muggy heat of the summer night makes it more difficult than it should be. They cling to my legs in my attempts to drag them up my tattered legs.

He leads me to the passenger side of his car. I surrender, not knowing if I could resist him anymore. He opens the door and blandly puts me in the seat. How can he act like this after what he had done to me?

I sit with a numb feeling, while I watch him walk around the car to get into the driver’s seat. That’s when I notice that the car is still running. He climbs in, puts it into drive, and punches the throttle so hard that it throws me back into the seat. I want to cry out, but I make no sound. I don’t have anything left in me; he has taken it away. I am broken pieces now, and they are scattered on the side of some back road.

When I get home, I absentmindedly crawl into my bed. My comforter hugs me, as though it knows what I need. I don’t know if I’m trying to process what just happened, or try to pretend it didn’t happen. I have heard of having an out-of-body experience before, but I honestly never believed that it was as true as it sounded. I know I’m lying on my bed, but it seems as if I’m not here anymore. The pain on my face and back reminds me that I’m still alive. I would take this pain over the pain inside that he has made me feel any day. I don’t know how I will ever be able to move on or be whole again.

My pesky roommate will be the death of me. For some reason, after we have lived together this whole school year, she now wants to coax me into going out with her. Really? We don’t even communicate unless it deals with our room. However, here she is going out of her way to make … what? Amends? It’s Friday night and I haven’t been out with other people, besides classes and work, since high school. There is no way that this will go well. What the hell am I thinking?

I sit on the edge on my decrepitude dorm bed sweeping my feet across the icy floor, staring at my roommate’s perfect figure, perfect hair, and listening to her outgoing personality. I start to rethink my decision. “Lauren, I really think you should just go and have fun tonight. I don’t want to be a burden,” I say, hoping she falls for it.

Crazy how you can go to school for three years and not know anyone, except the person you had to share a room with or people you worked with. It was easier that way, not letting anyone break down the walls that I had built up. At school and work, it was easy to act like the person I wanted to be, no one ever thought twice about it, but I stayed away from the friendship or personal level. Knowing that, if anyone found out about my past, the only thing that would come out of it would be pity. That was the last thing I wanted. That’s why I opted to keep to myself after that night.

Everyone around me knew something had changed, but I guess they knew better than to ask so they all just backed away from me. The fact that it was that really easy for them to walk away told me all I needed to know. Sometimes I wish they would have pushed me to tell them, but they didn’t. I’m sure no one wanted to deal with the drama, or maybe it was the way I turned into a zombie my last year of high school that made no one want to deal with me. Even my boyfriend at the time, who I thought would have been there for me through thick and thin, turned away and wouldn’t let me finish telling him the story after I said I went to talk to Jeremy. He threw his hands up and said he was done with me, and that was all because of the rumors he had heard when we first got together. After that distinct rejection, I didn’t try to tell anyone else.

The slightest aroma can bring that night back to me in heartbeat. The summer air, pastures filled with wild flowers, a dirt road, and the undeniable smell of car exhaust. I should have known, by the feeling of unease when I went to sneak out of my mother’s house that night, that something wasn’t right. Of course I blew it off and told myself that I was crazy to think that something bad was going to happen. Nothing ever happened in small towns like this. Plus, he was my ex, even though I had no clue what we still had to talk about.

I must have zoned out because Lauren is waving one of her little black dresses in front of me. I shook my head and said, “Uh … no way, Lauren. I am not wearing that!”

Hand on her hip, and dress in the other hand, she says, “Yes! You have the perfect body for it, Kara!”

Besides thinking it was a good idea for me to go out with her in the first place, now she wants me to wear
that?!
I do not have the legs for that dress; plus, the few extra pounds I’m sure I need to lose would not look good squeezed in there. She’s still standing there, her soft blue eyes pleading. I really wish I knew why she was so insistent that I go out with her tonight. “Fine! I’ll try it on, but if it looks stupid I’m not wearing it,” I snap, rolling my eyes when she can’t see me.

I stand in front of the full-length mirror, staring at my short pale legs and the little bulge in my stomach area that really stands out in the dress. I have no clue what she plans on doing with this chestnut-colored mess of waves on top of my head. As almond-shaped, boring brown eyes stare back at me, I wonder how she is ever going to get rid of the dark circles floating underneath them. There’s just no hope for my heart-shaped face and small lips, but I do have to say that the dress is gorgeous, minus me in it. It has a sweetheart neckline that flows into the beaded waist where the satin meets up with the beads at my hip. I hope the dress being black will help disguise the extra pounds.

“Get your sexy butt out here, Kara!” Lauren is banging on the other side of the bathroom door, as I stand there trying to pull the hem of the dress down. It doesn’t make sense. Lauren is three inches taller than me. I don’t know how in the world she wears this.

I take a deep breath and blow the loose strands of hair out of my face. Reluctantly, I open the door. She squeals when she sees me, “Oh, my gosh! That looks so much better on you than me! You have to wear it!” she says doing her happy dance, clapping her hands, making me smile at how excited she is.

“Okay. Fine. But no heels, and I get to put something over the top.” Not only was I shorter than her, but my chest was bigger and the dress seemed to show that more than I would have liked. I am such a pushover.

She didn’t miss a beat and said, “Okay, that’s fine. I have this perfect little shawl to go around your shoulders, and these cute sandals!” I started to think maybe tonight wouldn’t be so bad after all; I can still have a normal life. The whole reason for moving away was to get a fresh start.

After arguing with her about my make-up and hair, but her still getting her way, I slide into her expensive beige leather seats, hoping I didn’t look too much like a
stuck up bitch,
as my mother would say about the little rich girls we would sometimes see when we would come to the city to go shopping. I can remember her telling me, “They aren’t really as happy as they look. More than likely, it’s those people that are more miserable than you and me”. I can hear her voice in my head as she says it. I really should call her. Ever since I moved here, neither my mom nor my sister wants to talk to me because they say “I left them”. Of course, I know they are really mad at my father, who left when I was little. I learned to deal with it and move on. It was his loss, right? However, my mother and sister still seemed to dwell on the fact that he left so when I left, they basically disowned me that first year.