8
Abigail
Istand in front of my bathroom mirror with puffy, red eyes, wearing nothing but my underwear. I study my splotchy skin with a pathetic sigh. It’s splotchy because I cried after running away from Spencer.
It’s so dumb. I shouldn’t cry. But I’m an emotional idiot, and something as big as…what he did, is surely reason enough to let a few tears fall.
I’m so humiliated, so horrified. Why did I run? Why couldn’t I stand up to him?
Why am I mad?
I’m not even sure.
With shaking hands, I unsnap my bra and let the plain black material fall to the tile floor, only to look back in the mirror and sigh again. I’m too skinny, too shapeless, too scarred, too…
“Gah!” I turn away, because I don’t want to look anymore.
Instead, I step toward my freshly run bath, and shimmy out of my wet panties. I toss them into the hamper across the room and clamp my lips shut, because I quiver with emotion as I rememberwhythey’re wet.
I hate feeling like this.
There, I said hate again.
But it’s true. I hate feeling so weak. I hate feeling like anybody can walk over me and there’s not a dang thing I’ll do about it.
But if I’m being completely honest, weak is the one word most would use to describe my life.
Not my brothers. They would claim strength, resilience, wit, and compassion, but then they’d turn around and baby me. Their words say one thing, but their actions say something else entirely, and that something else undermines my confidence when I want to shake that scared girl off and be stronger.
Is it truly living if I’m always afraid?
My bath smells of frangipanis and lavender, and the steam rising toward the ceiling fills my lungs, and helps distract me from the fool I made of myself tonight.
So what if I let him do that to me?
It felt good. It felt forbidden and so unbelievably naughty, but while he was doing it, while his chest was pressed to mine and his lips covered me, I wasn’t afraid. If anything, I felt empowered.
I was a single woman, a grown woman, enjoying something than many others have.
If I didn’t want him to do that, I could have said no. I could have pushed him away, and he would have gone. But I didn’t, because while I stand all alone in a steam-filled bathroom, when he’s no longer standing right in front of me, looking at me with those eyes, I can admit that I liked it. I liked it so much that I’m humiliated.
“Son of a frick!”
I step up to my bath and hold my arm over my stomach as though to hide, despite the fact no one else is here. Dipping my toes in, I groan at the sting of the heat, but then I step all the way in and bring my second foot over. Holding on to the sides of the tub, I lower myself below the bubbles, and hiss when the warmth hits my most sensitive places.
My vagina hurts from the way he stretched me, which is so dumb, because we didn’t even have sex. It was just a finger. One single finger! And that’s kind of terrifying, since that means the real thing will hurt so much more.
I roll my eyes, because this is just another reminder that I’m fragile and demand special snowflake status.
“It was just a finger. It was just one single finger.”
“Abigail?”
My front door closes with asnickas my eyes shoot wide.
It’s not– It can’t be– No way!
“Abigail?”