Hurt Me: A 'Me' Novel

by Jeri Williams

  “Son?” he asked, rolling into a sitting position and rubbed his bloodshot eyes. A picture fell out of his grasp; he must have passed out with it, and I saw it was of my mother. When I didn’t reply to his question, he seemed to fade out, then back in, trying to focus on me.

  “You look so much like your mother,” he stated even though I was a spitting image of him, except for my hair. I hated that I looked like him and hated more how often people commented on it when I was growing up. I always thought it was my punishment when I was younger and didn’t know any fucking better. I hated him therefore I had to look like him. Now I just saw it as some twisted irony shit. I stood there motionless, taking in his disheveled appearance and the stench of alcohol in the room. Looking around more, there were more bottles than what I’d thought, along with empty food containers from various take out places.

  “What the fuck are you doing, living in here?” I asked, appalled. Yeah, I knew that emotion, because why the fuck would he be in this room, my old room of all places? Royce Kane was Royce Kane; when people said his name it usually had a ‘The’ before it like it was a fucking title or some shit. This wasn’t The Royce Kane, this was…fuck, I don’t even know what this was.

  “Your mother, I knew she never forgave me for how I’d been with you, all the things I’d done. She loved me, but she never forgave me…” he mumbled.

  I got it; he was on some guilt type shit…that’s why he was up here, what his fake ass apology was for the other day. Well, if he thinks I’m going to absolve him so he can go back to being The Royce Kane, he could kiss my knuckle… matter of fact… I moved to do just that when he started fucking sobbing.

  “Susan…” he broke down, calling my mother’s name in desperation. It took me a beat to know what he was now because he was no longer the great Royce fucking Kane. No, now he was just a man who had lost the love of his life, and I wanted to feel hardened to this fact because he should feel pain and maybe he’d know half of what I felt growing up under his rule, but she was my mother, and I’d lost her too. That was the only reason I didn’t tell him to square up so I could fight this… whatever this was out of me, because in a flash of realization it hit me; this could be me.

  This could be me mourning over Harley because I had no doubt that he loved Ma as much as I loved Harley. I would be this shell of a fucking man if anything happened to her; especially if I felt I could have stopped it.

  This fucking epiphany knocked me on my ass and had me taking steps, forgetting about the drunk on the bed and the books I was supposed to get. It screamed at me despite the fact that Harley was far from any help I could offer her; she was not alone. My feet couldn’t hit the stairs fast enough for me to go tell her that. Revelations are funny like that; all of a sudden you see shit more clearly and things make fucking sense when they didn’t before. I was so fucking in love with Harley that I would do whatever it took to help her, including forgiving her and getting over my own shit about her suicide attempt because I’m a fucking hypocrite.

  I got the abuse thing, lived it, but I didn’t get the alone thing because despite all that shit I went through, I had my Ma and, in her own way, she was there. Harley had no one, and I can’t say that had I been in her shoes, with no one to love me, that I wouldn’t have done the same shit she had. And that was what made me gun the fucking gas pedal, trying to get to her.

  If I believed in angels, and I’m pretty sure I did now, because I hit every fucking green light from Royce’s house all the way into town and the motel. Good looking out, Ma. I slammed on the brakes, causing the car to jerk, without a care I was abusing my baby, before I was tearing open the motel door to get to Harley.

  Only the room was empty and Harley…was gone.

  Harley

  (Sia “Breathe Me”)

  I used to live in a state of not thinking, not feeling, being numb because I didn’t want to think about my life. I didn’t want to live my life. There is this feeling you get in being numb, not caring if you get kicked or punched, not caring if anyone would miss you if you suddenly stopped breathing. It was freeing.

  Being numb is freeing; it’s what allowed me to survive for so long. But I didn’t have that ability now because I was feeling too much; it sucked, having to face my life now. It fucking sucks. Having to face the emotions and fall out of my actions, past and present, sucks ass. I didn’t want to think about the cutting, the suicide attempt, the depression, none of it. But the look in his face, the hurt in his voice as he left forced me to. I didn’t know how to deal with hurting him; I’d never hurt someone before and I had never, ever wanted to hurt him.

  I love him.

  I let the plethora of emotion overtake me, hopelessness, despair, sadness. I mean he left me, but I was the one who pushed him away, who sabotaged this whole thing by just being… me. And trust me when I say that alone was enough to have me slumping to the floor the second that door slammed shut. The weight of my actions and dishonesty bought on a new fresh wave of hysterical tears that racked my body so hard I couldn’t catch my breath. I cried so hard and long that eventually my sobs turned into silent ones as I tucked my legs underneath me and stared at the wall, only blinking when my eyes became too full of tears.

  “Harley?” I heard Ember, but it was like I was outside my body watching her come into the room looking for me. “Matt texted that you needed me. I don’t know how he knew to even text…Harley!” I saw her run over to me, saw her drop to the floor and the frantic look in her face. I saw her mouth moving asking if I was okay, but I couldn’t make the words form to tell her that I was defiantly not okay. My heart was breaking and it was my fault. I couldn’t think past the look in his eyes, couldn’t move past the final slamming of the door. I couldn’t do anything but lay there.

  “Harley, please talk to me; what going on?” She was crying, and I couldn’t even tell her not to cry for me because this was something that I had done.

  She got up and, a few minutes later, I heard her talking.

  “What the hell? There is a hole in the wall and Harley is in a ball on the floor crying her freaking eyes out. What did your dick head brother do?” She was screaming, yelling, and a new wave of silent tears streamed down my face because why would she assume it was him? Deklan had his faults, true enough; he was moody, pushy, intense, and an asshole on his good day, but he was also loyal, honest, protective, and mine; I didn’t like that she was blaming him.

  “It wasn’t him.” My voice broke, but it was enough for Ember to come running back over in my face.

  “Harley?” she asked, hanging up on who I assumed was Matt.

  “It wasn’t him, Em, it was me,” I said on a hiccup. Admitting it out loud didn’t help, and my body shook.

  “I don’t understand. Did he hurt you?” she asked, rubbing up and down my arm that was peeking out of the sheet. I wanted to tell her that I hurt him, but it wouldn’t come out. The only thing I managed was to ask her, beg really was for her to take me away from here. I wasn’t sure if I meant here as in this room or just…here. Either way, she helped me up onto the bed, and I sat stoically, not caring that the sheet had come down, exposing all of my nasty secrets for Ember to see.

  “Oh Harley,” was all she said as she found a shirt and jeans for me and helped me into them. I didn’t ask her where we were going as she led me out of the room, all I knew was that if I stayed here in this room, looking at the bed where he’d possessed me so deeply, smelling his shampoo, seeing the image of him sitting in the chair or the doorway, I’d die.

  I wasn’t really seeing anything, but I was still aware of things going on around me, her taking me to the apartment she shared with Matt, and leading me through to the guest room. Her tucking me in and placing a glass of water on the nightstand beside me before climbing in with me and holding me until the darkness that was eating my soul took me.

  **********

  I awoke some time later with the sun in my eyes, disoriented with the start of a pounding headache. It only took me a
second before all the events of last night came back in a rush of gruesome Technicolor.

  Deklan.

  He had left because of me, and I wanted to cry all over again, but I was all cried out as cliché as it sounded. I couldn’t produce any more tears because I was pretty sure I’d shed my body’s weight in them last night.

  Besides, tears weren’t going to bring him back, and I deserved this, this agony, this hole in my chest because I caused this. God, I was so fucking stupid to think that this wouldn’t blow up in my face, and just thinking about it made me want to run to the backpack and get the…except I didn’t have the backpack. It’s at the hotel; all of what little stuff I have was there, including my cell phone. A part of me panicked because what if he tried to call? What if he’s been trying to call and he thinks that I want nothing to do with him because I didn’t pick up, or worse.

  Panicked, I rolled over to a sleeping Ember and tried to wake her. It took me a couple of tries before my voice would work, and when it did it was a little above a whisper.

  “Em.” I shook her lightly, to no avail.

  “Ember,” I said again, with a harder push and she stirred an inch, but didn’t wake.

  “Ember!” I pushed again with all my weight and almost knocked her off the bed. At least, she was awake now.

  “God, what the hell!?” she grumbled, rubbing her blood shot eyes. I immediately felt bad because Ember had been up most of the night with me, holding me, telling me soothing things, and that she had my back, that I wasn’t alone. And everything that I held against her for not noticing my torment earlier melted away because if she truly didn’t care, she would have left me in the guest room, lonely and sad, and gone on about her life.

  But she didn’t. It takes a strong person to watch as someone else falls apart and not fall apart yourself. Instead, being the strength the person needs. Last night, Ember was my strength, and that made me realize that Ember truly did care.

  “I’m sorry,” I said and winced expecting to get the normal response, only she wasn’t Deklan.

  “My phone, I need it.” I had this overwhelming fear that he had tried to call, to get to me and he was going crazy because he couldn’t. The more sane part of my brain was telling myself to calm the fuck down because, hello, he left.

  If he wanted to find me, he would, and that realization made me sad all over again in a new way because I was all the things he wasn’t, needy, self-conscious, insecure, and clingy, but it was like we complemented each other and just, fit.

  “I didn’t grab it,” Ember said, breaking me out of my thoughts. I sighed because I would eventually have to go back for it, but I didn’t think I could take seeing that he had come for his stuff and left mine. That would make it all so final.

  “I need it,” I repeated, trying to calm my overworking heart. I sat up and took a few sips of water to try and calm my racing heart and to find something to do with my hands other than worry them.

  “Harley, what happened last night?” Ember asked timidly and, because I felt guilty and ashamed, I told her everything.

  Everything. I told her everything that I should have told Deklan. I treated her like a priest, and I wanted her to absolve me of my sins. But I knew she couldn’t. Still, it didn’t stop me from telling her how I used to pretend to be something I wasn’t, how much I loved Deklan, how I loved my mom even thought I shouldn’t, my father and what the police thought he had done, and mostly, I told her how I didn’t think I deserved to live. She listened, and I have to give her credit, she didn’t try and hug me like last time, she just gave me reassuring squeezes of the hand and understanding smiles.

  “I get it, Har, I do. More than you know. I have this need to be good at everything and…” She jumped when her phone sounded, cutting off what I thought was going to be a confession, but she seemed almost relived not to have to finish that thought. “It’s just past noon,” she said, after I asked her the time. She began typing something in her phone, but almost as quickly as she had begun, she was done.

  “Do you want to stay in bed?” she asked, and I loved her a little more for suggesting it, but after saying everything out loud, I had a sort of revelation that kinda scared me shitless.

  “Em, can you take me somewhere?” I asked, knowing that if I didn’t ask her now, I’d never ask and I’d be eternally lost.

  Chapter 10

  Harley

  (Apocalyptica “Broken Pieces”)

  I didn’t think I could eat anything, especially when Ember offered to make me a three-egg omelet and my stomach turned. But I did drink a shit ton of orange juice and water. I guess I was a tad dehydrated from crying so much. Every so often, I felt the threat of tears, the body shakes, but I fought them back because I had things I had to do, then I could break down again.

  “Where is Matt?” I asked, not that I wanted to see him, but it was now going on three in the afternoon, and I hadn’t seen him. I wondered if he was with Deklan then quickly dispelled that because, well, they hated each other.

  “Umm, he broke up with me yesterday,” she said, and I looked up at her, shocked. Then I really looked and saw the unshed tears, the puffy eyes that I’d thought were because of me, and the disheveled clothing she had on. I had missed it because well... but Ember was a wreck.

  “Em…I’m so sorry I’ve been…”

  “No, don’t,” she pleaded. “I shouldn’t be shocked; I felt this coming. We’d drifted apart, yes, but he was still there, you know? But yesterday he was just done and no bone in telling me so. It hurts like hell because I love him, but…it is what it is, you know?” She shrugged, trying to play off how upset she was, but I wasn’t stupid; she wore the same shattered expression I did. A part of her soul was missing.

  Now we were both single and depressed and although it was bad to think, I didn’t feel so bad. I mean, I felt bad, but not so bad now that I knew I wasn’t alone in my heartbreak. It only took a second for the negative voice to go in on me about how I was a bad person for even thinking something like that, and I knew that I had to keep moving because sitting too long led to bad shit.

  “We better get this over with,” I said as I pushed up from the table. Ember had let me borrow some clothes, and with me taller than Ember, the shorts hugged me a little too much around the butt. But it was better than wearing clothes that I had slept in to go back to the police station.

  Walking into the police station this time was less intimidating and more daunting. I asked for Detective Keys and waited for thirty minutes before he escorted me back to his small desk and gestured for me to have a seat. I stayed standing since I wasn’t planning on being there long.

  “I’d like you to release my mother’s body to this crematorium,” I announced and handed him a business card of the one Ember and I had stopped at on the way here.

  He took it and looked as though he wanted to say something then thought better of it and agreed. It was the cheapest one we could find on short notice, and Ember lent me the money until money from the selling of the house went through. I didn’t want any of it and was planning to give it all to Ember when it did come. I couldn’t comfortably spend money from that house knowing all the hurt I had endured between those walls; it felt like a betrayal. There would be no service, no final goodbye. The crematorium would dispose of her ashes, and then I’d be able to move on.

  “I’m sorry for your loss,” he stated, and I just stared at him. He was the first person to say that to me, and I’m not sure why he had waited until now to do so, but it felt right for him to say it now.

  “Thank you,” I said and turned to leave.

  “Just thought you’d want to know, we caught Parsons, and he confessed to the whole thing. Said it was retribution or something for the way she treated you.” I don’t know if he was looking for a reaction out of me, but I had already thrown up an emotional rainbow, and I didn’t have any more to give. I was good with not knowing who my father was and pretending that he hadn’t been some deranged man who thought he was
doing me a favor or avenging me. I’d let him burn in the same fires that would take my mother later that day. Morbid but true, they were never my parents, just accomplices in my waning mental state. I thanked Detective Keys for the info and left.

  “Because you’re an asshole.” I heard Ember as soon as I stepped outside. She was sitting on her bumper livid at whoever she was talking to on the phone. I eyed her and gave her a nod to let her know I was done and waited. I assumed it was Matt, and I didn’t want to seem like I was eavesdropping, so I wandered to the back of the car. Not that it helped, she was pretty loud.

  “You wouldn’t dare,” she seethed. Then silence.

  “Fine, asshole, but just for the record, I hate you,” she said then made a big show about ending the call. Wow, she and Matt were really done. My heart tugged at the thought of her and Matt, and I couldn’t stop my brain from thinking of Deklan. My thoughts thus far had only drifted to him four or five times an hour in the last three hours and every time it had hurt. I’d hear a car that sounded like his, and it hurt when it wasn’t. I’d catch a glimpse of someone passing and think it was him, only to breathe in shallow breaths of pain when it turned out not to be him. Everything hurt without him.

  “Let’s go, Har.” Ember broke me out of my wallowing with the slam of her door. I envied her, she was pissed, and I wanted to be pissed. Anger was nothing new to me; I’d dealt with my mother’s anger my whole life so I knew how to navigate around it. I wanted to harness Ember’s anger and use it. Being angry was a lot better than being sad. Anger eventually dies; sadness kills you.

  “Where are we going?” I asked since the police station was my last requested stop. I had assumed we were going back to her place and just wallow and be miserable together. I didn’t have any clear plan other than to curl up in a ball and cry more.