After showering and drying my hair—because my mom always said don’t go to sleep with wet hair or you will get sick—I climbed in my bed. I had no more pulled the covers up over my body when my phone vibrated from the night stand.
Kane: Can’t stop thinking about tonight...
Kane. My cheeks immediately pulled up into a smile.
Me neither. <3
I nervously bit my lip, waiting for him to reply. Maybe I shouldn’t have put the heart?
Kane: I can still taste you on my lips, and it’s making it hard for me to keep myself from throwing on my boots and coming to you. What have you done to me Kelsey?
I sighed. Probably the same thing he had done to me. I always hated watching movies where the couple falls so hard and so fast. I had always thought that was too good to be true. Things like that didn’t happen in real life. But here I was so wrapped up in a guy that I had known for a little over a week.
Kane: Get some sleep, beautiful. I just wanted you to know I will be falling asleep tonight thinking about you. Goodnight.
Goodnight.
I reached over to lay my phone on the nightstand beside my bed. The charms on my bracelet jingled as they dangled from my wrist. I wished so bad that my mom could meet Kane. She would have been able to see through all the bullshit from the start. She was always good at reading people. I don’t know where she went wrong when it came to my dad.
My mom had met my dad when she turned seventeen. She had instantly fallen in love with him and she told me about all the sweet little things he used to do for her when they first began their romance.
Right after my mom’s eighteenth birthday she found out she was pregnant. She was still a senior in high school and had to drop out because I would due in the middle of the school year. She and my dad married shortly after, and that’s when things began to change with him. I don’t think we will ever know what changed inside him causing him to become such an evil person. Women are abused by their husband’s every day for no reason. I honestly believe some people are just born evil and grow to be good at hiding it.
My dad was a master manipulator and my mom didn’t stand a chance. He sucked her in then trapped her by getting her pregnant with me. She probably would have been better off had I never been born. Maybe I was the trigger for my dad’s rage. That was something we would never know. That man was dead to me now. As far as I was concerned I hate no father.
I didn’t want to think about him anymore, so I thought back to happier times with my mom. Like when she had taken me to pick out a new charm for my bracelet. It was my tenth birthday and she had made such a big deal about me finally being in the double digit numbers.
She had taken me to the jewelry store and told me I could pick out whatever charm I wanted. I browsed all the glass cases hoping the one I was meant to have would become evident the moment I saw it. I was beginning to think I would never find that special one, when in the very last case, sat a charm of two interlinked hearts.
I knew right away that that was the charm I was meant to have. It had always been me and my mom against the world. She was my best friend. My rock. The two linked hearts were me and her. Always together. Or so I thought.
I drifted off to sleep studying the tiny charms, but sleep didn’t last long before I jolted awake. My body and clothes were drenched in sweat and when I wiped my face, I found moisture there. I must have been crying in my sleep.
I thought back to the dream I was having. I was back in my old house. It was that night again. Only this time my father stood back leaning against the wall with his arms crossed and I was there with my hands wrapped around my mother’s neck, her eyes turning cold and empty all over again. I pried my eyes from the scene and looked to my father, who with a sinister smile on his face, was looking straight at me. Not the me that was in the dream — the me that was watching it all.
“See, sweet pea. You’re just as guilty as I am,” he’d laughed.
I tried screaming no, that this was all his fault. That he did this, not me. But no words would come out, only air. Maybe I couldn’t say anything because there was some truth behind his words. I was just as guilty as he was. He may have been the one to do the deed, but I set the whole plan in motion.
If only I had kept my mouth shut that night. If only I had listened to my mom when she told me to leave, and had not kept standing there fighting with him like I had. She wouldn’t have needed to protect me from him and he wouldn’t haven’t have lost it like he did, and maybe I would still have my mom here.
I jumped from my bed and ran to the bathroom to expel what little contents I had in my stomach. The nightmares had not been this bad in a while. I would go months in between each one but now I was having them more frequently again. The only thing I could think that would have triggered this one was the fact that I had told Kane about that night just a few hours ago.
When the heaving finally subsided, I hunched over the sink and rinsed my mouth, making sure not to look in the mirror as I did, in fear of the eyes that would stare back at me. I made my way back to my bed, but couldn’t find sleep again. I was scared to close my eyes and risk being brought back to that night. So I grabbed my phone and headphones from the nightstand, and listened to music to pass the time until the sun finally came up.
When the sun finally filled my tiny dorm room, I pulled my headphones from my ears and laid my phone back on the table to get ready for the day. I decided to take another shower even though I had taken one the night before. I wanted to wash away the icky feeling that the sweat caused from my nightmare and I figured another quick shower couldn’t hurt.
While shampooing my hair there was a light tap at the bathroom door before I heard it open and then close.
“Um, hello?” I called and my fingers stopped massaging the shampoo into my scalp.
“It’s me, stupid. Who else would it be?” Jessi’s voiced carried over the rushing water of the shower.
“Well you never know these days!”
I finished washing, then rinsing my hair and turned the water off. I blindly felt along the outside wall for my towel before it was placed in my hand by Jessi. After I had wrapped it around my body I pulled back the shower curtain to find Jessi perched on the sink, her legs crossed at her ankles with a smile on her face.
“Spill it, girl. I didn’t bug you for details last night because I was a bit occupied myself but you’re giving me all the juicy details now. Where did you go?—how far did you go?” She waggled her eyebrows at me and I rolled my eyes at her.