He’d kept me up most of the night, letting me make it up to him. I’d thought that I would be done after the kitchen incident, but I was wrong. At some stage, I’d gone to my happy place and hadn’t come back until he rolled away from me and filled the room with his snores.
I needed a shower and a cup of coffee before I even entertained the thought of what I had to do today.
I stumbled out of bed and into the bathroom, stood in the shower then turned the knob. I kept my feet planted to the bottom of the tub and let the cold water prickle against my skin. All the dirt and grime from last night swirled down the drain. I wished that it could take away my memories too.
Dark purple, finger shaped, bruises wrapped round my arms, the skin so tender and sore. Just lifting my arms to wash my hair took all my effort.
My scalp burned from where Max had gripped my hair, he liked to do that. Lead me wherever he wanted to take me.
I wasn’t in the best shape to go to an interview, but if one thing was clear, it was that I needed to get out of here, even if only for a couple of hours a day.
The walls were closing in on me, I had to have something just for me.
I finished up in the bathroom and went into the bedroom, it had once been a savior from all the other rooms in the house. Nothing ever happened in this room, nothing bad anyway. The only time Max ever came in here was to get clothes or to sleep in the bed on the odd occasion. He’d taken to sleeping on the couch for the last couple of months.
He had never hurt me in this room. That changed last night.
I grabbed some clothes, threw them on and went through the next hour on autopilot. I gave Eli his breakfast, got him ready and dropped him off at Pre-school.
Before I knew it, I stood in the doorway to the bedroom again. It looked so different from what it did just yesterday, I may as well have been looking inside a stranger’s room.
The metal bed that sat in the middle was covered in a mess of sheets, a glass of water sat on the bedside table that had once been a stool. I didn’t recognize it, it looked so…different.
The walls somehow seemed darker, the room smaller. I crinkled my nose at the smell of sweat and grease that permeated from everything. I opened the window as far as it would go and stood back.
This wasn’t how things were meant to be, life wasn’t meant to be this hard. I didn’t know a lot about relationships, I’d only been around my mother and father for the first seven years of my life. But I do know that it wasn’t meant to be like this.
How had I let things get this bad?
I closed my eyes and remembered the way my mom would smile when my dad walked in from work, how she would close her eyes when he kissed her cheek and burrow into his chest as his arms wrapped around her.
It was a happy home. That much I do remember. I would rush home from school every Friday knowing that we would bake cookies. It was time that I got to spend with mom on my own. She always made sure that me and Corey had time with just her or dad.
Dad always took me into the woods on mini adventures, we’d pack a bag then explore for the whole day. Once we even camped in the woods.
I never knew what they did with Corey. Whatever adventure we had been on, I was meant to keep it a secret, but I was never good at that. Corey could get it out of me within minutes of us walking back in the door.
Everything changed when mom was diagnosed with cancer, it was worse than all the doctors had thought. We only had seven of the twelve months that they predicted. But those seven months were full of memories, good and bad.
I shook the past from my head, pulled my cell from my pocket and checked the time. I had ten minutes before I needed to leave. I headed straight for the wa
rdrobe and picked the best skirt and top out that I owned. It was a simple blue stretchy pencil skirt paired with a vest top that I would tuck in to look more professional.
That’s where it stopped, I had no other shoes apart from my black chucks so I shoved my feet in them and slipped my arms into my light gray cardigan to cover the bruises.
I stared at my reflection with indifference, the girl who stared back wasn’t who I remembered. My dark brown hair was tamed into submission, still damp but not the frizz ball that it would become once it was dry.
My face was clean of makeup, that’s how I liked it. I could never do all that fancy shading on my eyes and my eyeliner would always end up with a wobble in the middle.
I leaned forward, popped my eyes wide and stared. My dark blue eyes were dull, the white that surrounded them bloodshot. I took a deep breath and collected my things. Locking the door behind me I noticed Miss Maggie standing in the doorway to her apartment.
“Oh, hey, Miss Maggie.” I pulled my bag over my shoulder.
“You off anywhere nice?”
“For the interview.” I looked down, my eyes refused to meet hers. I was sure that she’d be able to see all the things that I did last night written across my face. The thought of Miss Maggie knowing made me feel sick.
I wasn’t a prude in any way, but some of the things that Max had me do made me feel ashamed. It was for an easy life that I did as he said, which made it even worse because I hadn’t put up a fight. I’d just gone along with everything.