“Are you fucking kidding me?” We both freeze and when I look behind me I find Molly standing in the doorway of the bathroom looking pissed.
We’ve been home for two months, the school year is almost over, and my best friend has quit speaking to me. The night she caught us I listened as Molly and Damon fought for what felt like hours.
The next morning he basically said it was time for me to leave so he could try and fix things with Molly. He arranged for my flight to be moved up and I made arrangements for my mom to come get me. Damon didn’t even take me to the airport he just called an Uber and sent me on my way, like I was nothing. Mom tried to get me to open up about what happened multiple times, but I just couldn’t say it.
On campus if Molly sees me she pretends she doesn’t know me, runs the other way, and sits on the opposite side of the room instead of right beside me like before.
My best friend also kicked me out of our apartment which her mom was paying for so she had every right, but it still fucking hurt. My mom was happy to let me move back in with her, and it’s been nice, but I miss Molly. I miss Damon, and I’ve tried calling him but he never answers or calls me back.
I sit on my twin mattress with my cellphone in my hand. I’ve told myself this is the last message I’m leaving Damon and if he doesn’t call me back then that’s it.
It goes right to voicemail and I take a deep breath. “H-Hey Damon it’s me… again. This is the last time I’ll bother you, but I just wanted to let you know that I’m pregnant. It’s yours, obviously, but I thought you should know I-I’m keeping it.” I’m silent for a minute. “I’m sorry things went down the way they did.”
I disconnect and say a little prayer that he calls… he doesn’t
The End or The Beginning???
Chapter One
The Nightmares
“No! No! Get off me,” I screamed at the hooded attacker, over and over again. My voice was hoarse, and my arms and legs screamed out in pain. I didn’t remember a time I had ever worked my muscles so hard in the past, but I knew I had to keep fighting. It was imperative that I get away from the man who was viciously mauling my body; attacking my senses and stealing my innocence. It felt like it was never going to end… but somewhere in the back of my mind, I knew that it would.
There was screaming in the distance, a woman’s voice telling me, something, but I couldn’t make it out. The wind carried the words from her mouth. It was as if I could see the words in bright red hues exiting her lips, and immediately getting lost in the black and white world around me.
Everything around me moved in slow motion, except for the scene taking place on my half naked body. The man moved in the most horrific of ways, raping my virgin body without a care to me or for my wellbeing.
“Help” I screamed again in vain. Swirls of red color and black and white blurred my vision as the man on top of me grunted and moaned, making me sick to my stomach. My mouth watered, preparing for the acidic vomit to flow up and out. I closed my eyes as the man took no notice to the clamminess of my skin, or the way, I’m sure, my face paled.
It was coming. I could feel it travel from my stomach, up through my esophagus. The salad I had eaten on my break was not to be digested, but rather, violently spewed up, in between my body's involuntary thrusting. A brief thought formed in my head. Perhaps it would deter the man rutting on top of me. Maybe he would be so disgusted, he would stop and leave me in peace, in this deserted alleyway.
“I’m going to cum,” the man grunted, twisting my face with his gloved hand and slamming it down on the ground, my left cheek scratching on the pavement.
At that exact moment, my body expelled the contents of my stomach, and I convulsed, my frame tightening up and trembling; bits of romaine and cucumber spilling out onto the street beneath me.
“That’s it, bitch, grip my cock with that tight pussy you got. Fuck me, this is incredible,” he hissed through his teeth.
Even as a virgin, I knew what was happening as I could feel him expand within me, throbbing. My less than virtuous friends had filled me in on the feeling of a man cumming while inside of you, and now, through no desire of my own, I was feeling it first-hand.
The tears ran from my eyes, fleeing my tear ducts, mocking me and my desires to run from this place. The man collapsed on top of me, breathing heavily into my ear.
“What a good little cunt you have,” he grunted, his breath assaulting my nose. He smelled of old spice and bourbon, and I heaved twice more. “Happy Birthday, Bitch.”
I watched as the man rose to his feet, and zipped up his pants, looking down on me. I couldn’t see his face from behind his mask, but I could feel the lust and distaste radiating from him. Involuntarily, my arms and legs curled into a fetal position to protect my insides from figuratively spilling out. The rational part of my mind told me to get up and run, but I was frozen solid in that position. I couldn’t even think to move.
I closed my eyes and prayed for rescue, or for death; my mind debating if they weren’t just one in the same. I don’t know how long I laid there, drenched in my own puke and tears, dripping cum and probably blood from my violated hole, but I knew this street wasn’t frequented much.
With the small amount of self-preservation I had left, I lifted my head and cried out, “Somebody. Please. Help.” I barely made a sound as my head hit the ground again, and my brain finally put me out of my misery and into a black fog of the abyss. Happy Birthday, Hayley.
Chapter Two
The Past
I woke up in a cold sweat and glanced at the alarm clock. Even almost eleven years later, my brain enjoyed torturing me with the nightmare of my eighteenth birthday. It didn’t matter how much I did or did not speak of it. It made no difference, how much I tried to suppress it, or bring it to the surface, every night without question, for eleven, miserable years, my nightmares haunted me.
Sometimes it was the entire act. Sometimes, just bits and pieces. Other times, my cruel mind would reenact me eating the salad I had for lunch, knowing what would eventually become of the meal. But with every version my head played, it always ended with me waking up, sweating and in tears.
Doctors told me, in time, they would go away, but they never did. They tried sleeping medications, hypnosis, acupuncture, and a plethora of other methods, but every night like clockwork, the nightmares came and plagued my sleep. After the first few years, I hated to say it, I eventually got used to them and was able to fall back to sleep with little issues.
Six am. Almost time to get up anyways, I thought. There was no point in going back to sleep for another thirty minutes, when I could get up now and get an early morning run in. The temperature on my window said it was sixty degrees. It was perfect for letting off some steam in my running shoes, if I was running outside, but I wasn’t. I used my mother’s treadmill in the basement normally, but today it would be the hotel gym. No one would attack me there. There were cameras.
I rolled my eyes at myself. Every decision I ever made stemmed from the likelihood of being raped again.
What time should I see this movie so I will get out while it’s still light outside?
Should I take this faster route home even though it cuts through a city I’ve never been to?
Red Apples or Green Apples?
The last example was a stretch, but there were days it didn’t feel like it. Every facet of my life was dictated on my rational fear of other people. More specifically, men. I hated it, but I didn’t have the capacity in my brain to change it. Something was wired down deep and there was nothing to pull me from my current way of thinking, no matter how badly I wanted to.
It was why, even over a decade later, I worked in an office with all women, and the only patients we saw were primarily, also women. Being an administrative assistant at an OB/GYN wasn’t glamorous work, but it was a paycheck. One I had to have.
About five years after my attack, my mom had apparently had it with me and truthfully, I couldn’t blame her. Years of therapy, dru
gs, and sleepless nights had also taken its toll on not only her mental state but also her pocket book.
“Hayley Marie, are you still sleeping?” Mom screamed up the stairs, as I threw the pillow over my head to drowned out her shrill voice. “Hayley?” She called again.
I threw the pillow across the room just as she walked in and sighed at me. “Hayley, that’s it. I’ve done everything I can. We can’t keep living this way. Get up.”
I opened my eyes and looked at her. “I don’t want to get up,” I whispered.
“I don’t care what you want. You have a job interview in less than two hours.”
Her words were enough to have me flying into a sitting position. “A job interview?” I screeched. “I can’t go out into the public. No. No! There’s too many--people,” I stammered.
Mom sat down on the bed next to me, rubbing my back. “Hayley, listen to me. I know the last few years have been tough for you, and as a mother, I wish I could take away that pain, absorb it, make it mine, but I can’t. What I can do though is start pushing you. I know you don’t think you’re ready, but you are. I called in a favor and got you an interview at Doctor King’s office.”
My head snapped up, “The gyno?” I asked.
“Yes,” she nodded. There are no male employees, and the only time you’ll get a male patient is when they come in with their pregnant wives or are being born.
The thought of being around a newborn baby boy should have warmed my heart, unfortunately all it did was make me queasy inside.
“What if I can’t do it,” I whispered.
My mom looked at me with unshed tears in her eyes. “Hayley, you can do anything you set your mind to. You just need a little push now and then.”
* * *
Thinking of my mom on that day always brought a tear to my own eyes. She was so strong. A single mother taking care of a broken child wasn’t easy. I should know what it felt like, but I don’t.
Taking another left turn, my thoughts drifted to a few weeks after my attack. Not for the first time in the past eleven years, I thought about the first time I threw up again after I was assaulted. I hadn’t felt good for a few days, and the thought of food had made me nauseous. I thought maybe it was still just after effects of everything, but my mom had thought differently.
“Hayley. I have something for you,” she yelled from downstairs. I didn’t want to get up, I was still too queasy, but I knew my mom and if she had to come up here, there would be hell to pay.
I slowly made my way down the stairs and found her in the kitchen putting groceries away.
“Look, I know this sounds weird, and I hate that we’re having to do this, but I need you to take this.”
She handed me a familiar pink box. Something I had seen a million times in the store but had never even dreamed of needing.
“A pregnancy test?” I squeaked, my head pounding, my stomach rolling. “I don’t need that mom. I’m probably just getting the flu or something.” I tried handing it back to her, but she wouldn’t take it.
“I could be wrong hunny, and I fucking pray to God that I am, but for my piece of mind, and your own, just do me a favor and go take it,” she pleaded.
She of course had been right, and seven and a half months later I gave birth to a child. I cried, a lot, in those seven months. I didn’t know what I was going to do, what I was supposed to do. And after a lot of counseling, soul searching and talking with my mother, we both decided the best course of action was to give the child up.
That’s what I did. I didn’t even know if it was a boy or a girl. I didn’t know how long they were, or how much they weighed. I only knew it was healthy and it was going to a loving home.
To his day I still think about that child, and I prayed he or she was thriving and doing well. There was no way I could raise the child back then, and after today, I would have two children to raise.
Chapter Three
The Present
“How did I know I would find you in the gym, Hayley Marie?”
I turned and saw my mom approaching me on the left. “Mom!” I screamed, throwing my arms around her. “You’re here!”
“Well of course I am here silly. Like I was going to miss my only daughters wedding!” she said, pulling me in for a hug.
The thought of getting married was still foreign to me. A little over a year ago, I couldn’t even be in the same room with a man, and now I was getting married to the most wonderful and perfect man and would be a step mom to his two children.
Everything had happened on my twenty-eighth birthday. My coworkers at the office had insisted that I go out and have a drink with them to celebrate. I didn’t want to. I wanted to go home and curl up in my pajamas with a book and maybe a glass of wine. It was, after all the ten year anniversary of the biggest trauma of my life, and I deserved at least a little alcohol to celebrate the fact that I had made it. I was still banged up and bruised but I had made it.
The girls at work wouldn’t hear of it. They took me out shopping for a club outfit, did my hair and my makeup, and for the first time in years, I felt, alive. I remembered looking into the mirror and thinking, “Is that really what I look like?” It turned out, it was exactly what I looked like when some effort was put in.
After a few drinks at the club, I pulled all the girls aside and said, “Listen ladies. You all know what happened to me. You know how I’m feeling today, but tonight I want to make a promise to you. From this point forward, I am not going to let my past dictate my future. I’m going to start living.”
What I didn’t know, was ten feet away from me, Gregory stood there listening to my conversation. He had been making eyes at me since we had arrived, and I had always looked away when I would see him staring. He was attractive, very attractive actually, and for the first time since I could remember, I wanted to talk to him.
He must have read my mind, because after the girls and I toasted my new found freedom, he walked right over to me and like a perfect gentleman, asked me to dance. I was worried. My heart beat at a thousand miles per minute, and my palms were sweaty. But I knew I wanted to put forth the best effort I could to fulfilling my promise to the girls and to myself, and so I said yes.
At the time I figured one dance couldn’t hurt, and I probably wouldn’t ever see this man again, but boy was I wrong. Six months later, Gregory proposed to me and six months after that I stood in a hotel gym, hugging my mom, about to marry the greatest man to ever walk the planet. It was as if karma as rewarding me for the past ten years.
“Hayley, how long have you been down here? All your bridesmaids are already in your room getting ready?” My mom asked.
I looked down at my watch. Nine AM. I had been down here almost three hours and didn’t even realize it, too wrapped up in my memories.
“I guess I should get a move on, huh?” I asked her.
“Ya think?” She laughed before handing me a towel and ushering me up the stairs to jump in the shower and start getting ready.
As soon as I walked in my hotel room, I was greeted by rambunctious conversation, a thick cloud of hairspray, and makeup everywhere. It was as if my entire room had turned into a salon/Sephora combo in a manner of a few short hours.
“Hayley!” The girls said in unison. “We thought you had gotten cold feet,” my maid of honor, Heather squealed.
“No, girls, my feet are toasty warm,” I laughed, making the others chime in as well.
“Well, get your butt in the shower, we only have like three hours to get you ready!”
All of the occupants of my room we’re ecstatic and I couldn’t help but smile as I was literally pushed inside of the suites bathroom. Gregory had spared no expense for my room or the wedding. To say he was loaded was an understatement. I hadn’t wanted a huge wedding. In fact, I would have been happy with going down to the justice of the peace, but between my friends, and my mom, that was completely out of the question.
I turned the water on to my traditional lava temperature and steppe
d inside, immediately dunking my head under the stream. Hot water always had a way of bringing peace into my chaotic world.
As I washed, conditioned, and scrubbed, I thought about the past year and the completely different direction my life had taken. From meeting Greg, to the many many dates, to the proposal, and even to when I told him about my past. Every facet was so different than I could have ever imagined it would be when I made that toast with my friends.
Thinking about the night I told him gave me a shiver. He knew I didn’t like flashy and so his proposal, was him and I, on his couch, watching some cartoon with his two children on the floor in front of us. He turned to me, kissed me and in his hand was the velvet box.
“Hayley. In the past six months, I have learned the meaning of being in love. I thought my heart couldn’t grow anymore when my ex gave birth to my daughter, but when I held my new son in my hands a year later, I learned that it could grow, and it did. I thought that was it. It would be the three of us forever and I was content. And then you walked into my life, with your innocent eyes and your fiery spirit, and once again my heart grew, but this time it was a passionate a soul scorching love that you only find when you’ve met your true partner. Hayley Marie Johnson, will you make me the happiest man on the planet and be my wife?”
Just as I had on that day, the tears flowed from my eyes, and then I laughed, remembering what happened next and the look on his face.
“No,” I stammered to him, both children turning around looking at me with confused and hurt faces to match their fathers.
“No?” He repeated, clearly not expecting that.
“Oh, God, that’s not what I meant,” I screeched grabbing his hand. “Can we go somewhere else to talk?”
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