by Anna T. Pope
She was tired and irritated and all she wanted was to go home and sleep. And to make things even worse, Brian had picked that day of all days, to sit next to her and flirt and try to bring Aria into some sort of a conversation for the past two hours.
She finally had enough by the end of the lesson, so as soon as the teacher dismissed them, she turned to face the blond boy.
“Brian, I had been patient with you but enough is enough. I am not interested in you. I was never nor will I ever be interested in you, so could you please, for the love of God, leave me the fuck alone?!”
Aria knew that she had hurt his feelings, without even having to look at his stumped face, and she also knew that Brian had done nothing wrong except liking her and being slightly annoying about it, but at that moment she couldn’t care less, as she grabbed her bag and ran out of the classroom, leaving the hurt boy behind.
After taking a quick nap, which was thankfully nightmares-free, she took a quick shower and got ready for work. Tonight, would be her first time back at ‘The Echo’ after taking an impromptu time off after the date, and she was praying for everything to go smoothly.
Meg had assured her that she could take as much time off as she needed even when Aria wouldn’t tell her why she was unable to come to work, but it had been three weeks since then, and she knew that it was time to put on her big girl panties and deal with the consequences of her actions.
The club was packed as usual, and for the first time since she had started working there, Aria was grateful for it. Keeping busy kept her newfound depression at bay, and she slowly relaxed after what felt like a million years.
“Hey, Ari?” she heard Ash, another waiter, calling her from the other side of the bar and turned to look at him.
“Could you get these drinks to Meg? She asked for them a few minutes ago but I am swamped since Isaac took the night off. Please?”
Aria grimaced at the thought of leaving the bar and mixing with, but in the end, she just nodded, not wanting to come off as rude and flat out reject the guy. So, in the end, she took the tray and started to walk toward the VIP booth and as she got closer, she spotted Meg, sitting with some guys she had never seen before, joking and laughing, so she approached them slowly, with her eyes glued to the ground and her anxiety skyrocketing.
“Aria, what are you doing out of the bar?” Meg asked her as soon as she saw her.
“We are short one waiter tonight, so Ash asked me if I could bring you this myself.” she said and seeing that Meg was still worried for her, she quickly set the drinks on the table anxious to leave as soon as possible.
Just as she was about to excuse herself something caught her eye. She saw a woman, which she had never seen before, sitting to her left in a man’s lap, which was anything but unusual at ‘The Echo’.
No, the thing that stopped her in her tracks was the man in question. She raised her eyes slowly for them to be met with cold, green ones, and her stomach dropped.
She could feel something in her chest that she wasn’t even aware was there breaking into a million tiny pieces and her eyes started to water so she quickly tore her gaze away from his, pulling herself together and trying to act like nothing was wrong, even though she knew that everyone could see the turmoil written across her face if they cared to look closer.
“Do you need anything else, Meg?” she managed to say without having her voice waver to her great relief and when Meg said no, she immediately turned around and ran to the closest bathroom.
The Fight
"Hello Aria, it’s Will again. I just wanted to let you know that this will be the last time I call. It has been three weeks, and I am getting tired of talking to your voicemail. I wanted to say that I am sorry for whatever it is that I did wrong. So, if you don’t call me by the end of the day, I will respect your wishes, and you’ll never hear from me again, but I do hope that you will.
Goodbye, Ari.”
She didn’t call.
Will sighed while looking down at the phone in his hand, silently willing it to ring even though he knew that it won’t. He was seriously tempted to call her again, but he managed to resist.
Aria didn’t want to have anything to do with him, and Will would just have to suck it up like a man and keep the promise of not bothering her again.
His phone suddenly rang and he felt ashamed by how quickly he snatched it, but the hope that sparked in his chest, quickly vanished when he saw that it was Jenna, a woman he met a few days before in a meeting, who was calling. He was acting like a silly little school girl waiting for some guy to call and Will hated himself for it.
Jenna wanted to know if he was up for a drink or two, and the word ‘no’ was already on his lips when he stopped himself.
He realized that he was about to turn down a beautiful woman, who was by the sound of it, interested in him and all that because of what?
A girl, more than a decade younger than him who wasn’t even interested in him, so much so that she refused to return his call if just to tell him off for bothering her.
He shook his head at his own stupidity and accepted the offer, all the way ignoring the persistent voice in the back of his mind, telling him that he was making a big mistake.
~
William listened as Jenna prattled on about this or that, not really paying attention to any of it, as his mind kept going back to the girl at the other side of the club that he only caught a glance of before making his way to the VIP booth.
Meg was surprised when Will appeared with Jenna in the beginning, having heard nothing about her until that moment, but she soon warmed up to her, and they now appeared to be the best of friends, by the way they kept trying to talk over each other and laughed about it.
But Will felt nothing.
Sure, Jenna was gorgeous, and only a month ago William would have been all over her, but now, all he could think about, as Jenna sidled closer to him, ending up in his lap, was how he wished Aria was there instead.
Will was still lost in thoughts when none other than the girl currently on his mind appeared with their drinks.
She was talking to Meg, seemingly not even noticing that he was there and then, just when she was about to excuse herself, she froze on the spot.
William could see her checking out Jenna and then saw her eyes traveling slowly up to his face and connecting with his.
He willed every ounce of his being to appear nonchalant as he looked at her coldly, but he soon regretted that decision when her blue eyes filled with unshed tears and her bottom lip started to tremble slightly, before she looked away, excusing herself and did the thing she seemed to love doing; she ran.
William felt guilty for a moment because he knew that from her point of view it looked like Jenna was his new girlfriend, but then he got angry because he had absolutely nothing to be guilty about.
He had been trying to talk to the girl for the past couple of weeks and all he’d gotten in return was silence.
But still, the crushed look on Aria’s face kept repeating in front of his eyes, until he found himself standing up and going in the same direction that she did, leaving Jenna and his sister confused by his behavior.
Just as he turned around the corner, he saw Aria going into the bathroom and slamming the door shut, so he quickly followed her to the door and knocked. There was no answer, not that he had been expecting one, so he knocked a couple of times more, but when his attempts were once again met with silence, he felt the anger return in tenfold.
“Aria, open the fucking door!” he shouted in the harshest voice he could muster and waited for a couple of seconds without an answer. Just as he was about to leave and be done once and for all with the infuriating girl, the door opened an inch.
He immediately went inside and slammed them shut, turning to find Aria crying silently and backing up in obvious fear. He instantly regretted shouting at her, since the last thing he wanted was to scare her, now that he had finally managed to get her in the same place with him.
&nbs
p; “Are you all right?” he asked and started to approach her but the glare Aria threw his way stopped him in his tracks at once.
“As if you care! Why don’t you go back to your girlfriend and leave me the hell alone!?” the girl shouted out loud and if Will had been just a bit less angry, he would have stopped to gawk at her unexpected reaction, since he didn’t think he ever heard her raise her voice. But he was angry, so much so that he felt his control snap and all the things he wanted to say bubbled up to the surface.
“She is not my girlfriend, but even if she were that would still be none of your business! You made sure to let me know that you didn’t want anything to do with me, or did you forget that little fact? I kept calling you, trying to talk to you. And what did I get in return!? Nothing! So, don’t you dare blame this on me, since I am not the one who had a fucking meltdown over a stupid kiss. That was all you!”
William felt livid and all he wanted at that moment was to bend the girl across his knees and spank her ass until it was blue.
But then he looked at her and instantly regretted bringing up their failed date, especially in the way that he did; belittling something that was obviously a big issue for her. Meg’s words from what felt like forever ago, about her reluctance to be in a relationship flashed through his mind and he shook his head at his stupidity.
Aria was looking at the ground and silently crying before she finally collected herself and looked up.
“I am sorry. You are right, it is my fault. I am sorry for ignoring your calls, but it was the right thing to do. We could never work out William. You are you and I am nothing. I am a broken, silly little girl that doesn’t deserve you. I’m sorry for reacting this way and I promise you that this will never happen again.” she said as Will watched her in complete shock, feeling beyond confused with every word that came out of her mouth.
“What makes you think that you are not worthy of me?” he managed to say, as his head continued to spin.
“That’s not important. You’ll just have to trust my word for it, okay?” she whispered while looking down to her tightly squeezed hands.
“Trust me, once you see me in all my glory you will want nothing to do with me.” she whispered sadly as all the fire from before seemed to have left her body.
She then looked at him with so much sadness in her eyes that it made him want to hug her and never let her go because Aria should never look like that. She should be happy and smiling and not crying in a dirty bathroom.
“Try me.”, William said, taking her by surprise, as her eyes widened a fraction.
“Because I know that you are wrong, Aria. There is nothing that will make me change my mind about you. You are beautiful in my eyes, and if anything, I am the one that should be feeling unworthy of you. So, try me.”
She looked at him for a few long moments, the silence around them broken only by the sound of her harsh breaths, before she suddenly nodded to herself reaching a decision.
He waited to hear what she would tell him, already preparing what he would say in objection to whatever her reasons for thinking like that of herself would be, but then all thoughts flew right out of his mind at the sight of her hands pulling her shirt over her head.
He blinked a few times, feeling completely confused at the sudden turn of events when his eyes fell on the marks carved into the pale skin and he thanked all the deities out there for giving him enough strength to catch himself before his knees had the time to give up under him.
The Scars
She could feel Will’s eyes traveling all over her naked form, and every ounce of her being screamed for her to cover up and run away in shame, but she persisted.
Will needed to see why Aria was doing all of this; why she had pushed him away. Maybe then he would realize that she had been right all along, and leave her alone.
So, she continued to stand there in silence and tried to think about something, anything, other than the fact that this was the first time since her escape that anyone had seen her like this. Not even Nura was allowed, seeing as Aria always went into another room to change when they spent time together.
Which was possibly highly hypocritical of her, as she knew everything that had happened to her friend in her equally challenging past, but even though Aria knew that Nura would never think badly about her, for whichever reason something still stopped her from sharing everything. And yet, here she was, sharing this hidden, shameful part of herself with a man she met barely a month ago.
There were exactly five scars on Aria’s chest and abdomen. Two were long, perfectly-symmetrical slashes across her breasts, starting at her collarbones, disappearing inside her bra and ending just before the nipples. One of the two on her abdomen was a compliment of a knife, its ridges jaded and uneven, the other a patch of burned skin just beneath her belly button, and the smallest and yet the one that Aria hated the most was lying over her heart. The name ‘David” burned into the skin, left there to remind her every day of exactly whose she was and will always be.
She stared at Will’s face, waiting for the signs of disgust, but they never come as the man just stood there as if frozen in time, his face so white that Aria worried he would black-out.
When he did finally raise his eyes to her face, all she could see in them was pity, and that, perhaps, hurt her more than any words of disgust ever could.
“Jesus, Aria… what…I don’t know what to say.” Will finally managed to say, his voice barely above a whisper.
“It’s okay. I don’t expect you to say anything.” Aria said quietly, desperate to be done with this whole situation and just go home.
“Who did that to you?” he suddenly asked, just as she reached down for her shirt, the material slipping from her hand and pooling back on the ground. Aria closed her eyes for a moment as his face appeared at the forefront of her mind, praying away the anxiety attack that was dangerously close to the surface.
“It doesn’t matter.”
“It doesn’t matter!? Are you insane!? Of course, it matters! The monster mutilated you, for fuck’s sake!”
The silence after his outburst was deafening, the only sound in the room, Will’s harsh breaths as he tried to calm himself.
Aria kept her eyes closed, vowing to herself that she was not going to cry even as tears pooled at the corners of her eyes. She felt silly for reacting this way, as his words were what she had expected since the moment she took of her shirt. But it turned out that there has still been a tendril of hope somewhere deep inside of her that thought that Will would see behind the scars.
“You think I don’t know that? You think that I don’t remember every single thing he did to me? Jesus, even if I tried to forget, these” she said while moving her hands in the air in front of her body, “will always be there to quickly remind me.”
“Ari, I am sorry, I didn’t mean…”
“Yes, I know, Will.” she quickly interrupted him.
“I know what you meant, but I also know that it was me who had to go through all that, and I say that it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter who he was or where he is, the only thing I care about is that it is over. Maybe that makes me insane, or a coward but I don’t care.
After everything, I just can’t make myself care anymore about the opinions of others. Because they didn’t have to live through all that, I did, and I just want it to be over.” Aria said, feeling more tired than she ought to be as she slid down the wall and sat on the ground, pulling her knees close to her chest and hugging them.
Her eyes were tightly shut, unwilling to look at him any longer, but she still heard him shuffle around and a thought that he was about to leave crossed her mind. The feelings of both relief and deep loneliness descended upon her until she felt a presence beside her. Then there was skin, warm, soft skin pressing against hers and just like that she was in his arms.
“I just want it to be over.” she mumbled, her voice breaking under the weight of her emotions.
“I know, darling.” he whispered in
to her hair, and the words served as a breaking point. She hid her head into the crook of his neck and wept.
~
“Ari?’ Will said after a while, breaking the quiet that had settled upon them after Aria’s breakdown.
She had cried for what felt like forever, big, devastating tears sliding down her face and soaking up Will’s shirt, grief that made no sound and yet told a thousand words at the same time.
But even those eventually stopped, and the weight that had been lying on her chest for the past years, gave a little. It was still there, of course, would probably be there for the rest of her life, but it seemed to her that it was now a bit easier to bear, at least in his arms.
“Yes?” she said while forcing herself to rise her head from his shoulder and move away a bit so she could see him.
“Are you alright?’ he asked, and Aria unable to stop it, let out a small giggle at the question.
“Right. That was a very stupid question.” Will said and shook his head, his stubbed cheeks pinking up a bit in shame.
“No, it’s fine.” she snorted with a small smile, “I am okay now. Thank you for staying with me.”
“Of course. I couldn’t just leave you there, especially after being the one to cause your distress. I am sorry for that; I shouldn’t have pushed you.”
Aria nodded once and then got up to put her shirt back on, realizing that she was still half-naked, as cold air made goose bumps erupt over her skin once she was outside the warmth of William’s presence.
“So…” Will said once she was dressed, as he stood in the middle of the bathroom and looked at everything else except her, looking much younger than his years, so insecure at what to do now that his comfort wasn’t needed anymore.
Aria sighed, and stepped closer to him, catching his eyes that finally slid up to hers, and then extended her hand toward him.
