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I once read somewhere that we mature with damage, not with age.
The girl. The fucking girl who’d been prancing around the pitch was laid out on her back on the grass. A ball lay on the grass beside her. Not just any ball. My bleeding ball! I was horrified, my feet moving before my brain could catch up. I ran toward her, heart hammering against my rib cage every step of the way. “Hey—are you okay?” I called out, closing the space between us. A soft female groan came from her lips as she attempted to get to her feet. She was trying to stand up and failing miserably, clearly startled. Unsure of what to do, I reached down to help her up, but she quickly
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“Are you okay, Miss Lynch?” Mr. Twomey asked, prodding her like she was an uncooked turkey he didn’t want to catch salmonella from.
Lips that were a natural rosy red and kind of looked like she had been sucking on an ice pop
And just like that, I watched my five-minute dream float out the window.
“I’m seventeen—and two thirds.” “And two thirds.” She giggled. “Are the thirds important to you or something?” “They are now,” I muttered under my breath.
“I’m not your babe,” Claire grumbled and tossed another pillow at him. “What if I had been naked in here?” “Then I would die a happy man,” he retorted as the second pillow smacked against his chest. “It’s the cat.” She frowned. “Brian?” “You named your cat Brian?” I chuckled.
I hated humans. They were such a disappointment. And to think God switched dinosaurs for man.
It wasn’t rocking the boat to defend yourself. I knew this, but the problem was, every time I was faced with a confrontation or crisis, my body—and my mind—always reacted with the same broken instinct: freeze. People talked about the fight-or-flight instinct. I had neither. Instead of fighting back or fleeing, I froze.
“Thanks again for offering to drop me home.” “It’s no problem,” he replied. “I figure I still owe you for the broken head, huh?” “You didn’t break it,” I was quick to clear up. “You just knocked my brain around a little.” Johnny grimaced. “I kind of did, didn’t I?”
There was something about the way a dog looked at you; they didn’t care if you were a famous rugby player or a homeless person on the streets. They only cared about how you treated them, and once they chose you as their human, you had a faithful friend for the rest of their lives. I didn’t think humans were capable of such compassion and commitment.
Invisibility was both a beautiful thing and a necessary survival tool sought out by people such as myself.
“I overreacted and handled it badly.” “Maybe so,” I offered, my voice little more than a whisper. “But I didn’t know what playing rugby meant to you then.” “And now you do?” he asked, voice low, tone gruff. “Now you think you get it?” “No, not really.” I chewed on my lip before adding, “But I understand fear, which makes it easier for me to understand why you would feel the need to play through the pain.”
Hope was dangerous to a person like me. I couldn’t afford it. Because this was close. This was way too close.
“Is it normal to be mad at a person because they love you?”
“Yeah, well, I’m your best friend and you put me on the floor,” he shot back with a huff. “The dog gets the foot of your bed and I get the fucking floor.” I arched a brow. “Are you saying that you want to sleep at the foot of my bed?”
Johnny spun around and hurried over to the front door, only to turn around and jog back to where I was rooted to the ground. He placed his hands on my shoulders and walked me into the house.
We were virtual strangers. It seemed wrong to be in his space. Seemed wrong, but felt so right…
I had to fight the smile threatening to break free when Johnny stopped at the top of the staircase to scoop up Sookie and then proceeded to carry the huge, eighty-pound-minimum Labrador down the stairs like she was a baby cradled in his arms.
“Don’t apologize to me for seeing you,”
My feelings exploded inside of me, absorbing the boy and all he was like a sponge that was desperate for water.
It all hit me like a head-on collision in that exact moment and I clammed up, feeling more exposed and vulnerable in that moment than I had in my whole life.
I made a choice and I stuck to it. I had to be really fucking careful with my choices because once I made a decision, once I set my mind on something—or worse, my heart—it was in my nature to follow it through with an obsessive hunger.
When I was anxious, I always asked for a promise. It was a terrible habit I had from spending years of my life living in a constant state of uncertain anxiety.
Johnny said it, though, and my heart was flapping around in my chest like a demented, caged bird fighting to escape.
It made for an awful battlefield of anguish inside of me.
