Total pages in book: 150
Estimated words: 142818 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 714(@200wpm)___ 571(@250wpm)___ 476(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 142818 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 714(@200wpm)___ 571(@250wpm)___ 476(@300wpm)
He didn’t say anything. He hadn’t said anything except barking about Colby. Maybe I should’ve taken note of his silence and mimicked it with silence of my own.
But I was never good at being silent. Especially not in that moment.
“If only I’d met you before I went to France,” I said, still floating on a cloud, my troubles thousands of feet below me. “If I’d met you, I wouldn’t have been distracted by some smooth skinned, manicured, tanned, snobby Frenchman who got me pregnant and then punched me,” I rambled. Then I screwed up my nose. “Or maybe he punched me then got me pregnant, but I don’t think so because I left pretty much the morning after he punched me.”
My joint was smoldering on the ashtray, I reached down to swipe the bottle of whisky, thankful for something else to do with my hands, because I wanted to continue the kiss, turn it into something more. Though I obviously couldn’t turn it into something more because of what was happening with my body. Then, despite the high of the kiss and the actual high of drugs and alcohol, the self-hatred returned.
Because I was so caught up in my own shit, I barely noticed that Elden had turned into a statue, his hand no longer gentle on my hip. Actually, his grip was tight enough to hurt, but I enjoyed that. I’d been feeling numb for so long, the pain was good.
“It’s funny,” I whispered, staring into eyes that had been liquid moments ago yet were now gemstones of glittering fury. “They say that the cycle of abuse can repeat. That more often than not, it does repeat. A young woman who sees her father beat on her mother, no matter how despicable, terrifying and heartbreaking she might find it, will somehow find herself in a similar situation as a grown woman.”
I took a long pull of the whisky.
“I didn’t see any abuse,” I continued. “None. I didn’t have any inclination that it was there. I knew my father was a misogynist. An elitist, sure. Although I was a daddy’s girl, I was well aware of my father’s flaws.” I shook my head in disgust. “I just thought he was human … not a monster.”
My heart thrummed, speaking of my father, and my throat burned with fury. Fury that I’d been trying my hardest to swallow since I found out. Fury that had been giving me excruciating heartburn. I was chewing antacids daily, even though I knew that treating the symptoms and not the root cause wasn’t going to do shit. Plus, I was probably ruining my kidneys, liver and whatever else drug companies were doing to people.
Treating the root cause would be confronting my father. Speaking to him. Looking at him in the face. And I refused to do that.
So I’d continue to eat twice the recommended dose of antacids and engage in self-destructive behavior.
“But still, even oblivious, I was able to repeat the cycle,” I scoffed, looking up at Elden, who was hanging on my every word. Literally hanging on my every word. My hip was radiating pain under his grip. I fed off that.
“In theory, Jacques was nothing like my father,” I told him, working off adrenaline and the mixture off weed and liquor. “He was French. Liberal. Romantic. Exciting. Passionate.” I rattled off the adjectives, thinking about the rush of lust I’d felt when I first saw him. When he spoke to me in perfect, accented English, his dirty brown hair shadowing half of his face.
His long and thin fingers had continually brushed it out of his face in a smooth and graceful movement.
Those long, thin fingers had balled into a fist and punched me in that same smooth and graceful movement too.
“But it turned out, he was exactly like my dad in all the ways that mattered,” I muttered, shaking my head at my own stupidity.
Still, Elden hadn’t moved. It didn’t seem like he’d even breathed. But I was too far gone to understand what that was, how dangerous he was in that moment. I hadn’t told anyone this. Not even my closest friends … although I didn’t really have those. I had girls I went to school with. Some of whom I enjoyed the company of but had nothing in common with—they were happy to live off their parents, adopt their religions, their political parties, hold whatever beliefs they needed to in order to keep their trust funds. And that was fine, for them. For me, I wanted to travel, I wanted to change the world, I wanted to bring down oppressive systems, bring about change. Anything but live the life my friends’ mothers lived.
Live the life my mother lived.
I’d already lost touch with my friends from high school anyway, and all of my friends in France were Jacques’s friends. I hadn’t been to campus yet and didn’t know anyone there… I’d signed up to be part of a house share with a bunch of girls I didn’t even know.