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“Fuck.” I rubbed my forehead, cursing myself for being an asshole as I listened to her pee the water she didn’t remember drinking. “Why am I such a prick?” I pushed off the blanket, then grunted in discomfort while shifting my legs over the side of the bed. After the toilet flushed, I called out, “I’m sorry.” There was no reply, just the faucet turning on. “You hear me?”
Patting her hands on my t-shirt she was wearing, she came out. “Lynx, you never have to apologize to me. You can do whatever you want to me. My feelings are not a factor.”
Blink. Blink. “What the fuck are you talking about?” I braced my hands on my thighs, trying to ease my gut throbbing.
Her head tilted. “Have you not been listening to anything I’ve said today? Are you clueless as to who you are trying to ‘rescue’?” She made quotation marks with her fingers in the air.
I snarled. “I’m not stupid.”
“Nor am I.” She turned to walk away but stopped when noticing the dresser in front of the door that led outside. “Why is that there?”
Jesus H. Christ. I waved a hand in the air, not sure how to answer this. “You, uh… had a… nightmare.”
Losing all anger, she grabbed her chest. “I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
Elle faced me, fear in her eyes. “Interrupting your sleep.”
“Babe—” I was going to tell her that she was being ridiculous, worrying about my sleep when she was suffering during the nightmare, but I was distracted when she started looking around the room in a panic. “W-What are you doing?”
She was short of breath. “Looking for a—Oh, good.” She rushed to the bed, grabbed a pillow, then froze. Holding it up, she asked, “Can I take this?”
“W-Wait, where to?”
She put it back down. “That’s okay. I’m sorry.”
“Babe! For what?” I watched her hustle to a closet. “Where are you going?”
She opened it. Stepped inside, then shut it.
The. Fuck?
Grunting in pain, I got on my feet and went to her, shocked to shit when I opened the door to see her on the floor in the fetal position. “Elle, baby, what are you doing in here?”
“Sleeping so I don’t wake you.”
I think one of the most beautiful parts of our love story is all we had to go through to get to where we are today. Would it have been easier if we were two perfect people in a perfect relationship? Maybe, but it would’ve lacked the heart and gumption we shared, even in the tough times. In fact, all this made ‘normal’ tough times seem easy.
With Elle, and my asshole ways, we worked hard to find the peaceful moments. In between those, we suffered, we fought, we tried to be patient, to understand some things, and to take our time. Like trust. Especially when a heart has been mistreated and neglected. Or when a body has been through such physical torture and horrendous sexual abuse, the mind is now fractured.
Leaving the door open, I went to the bed and grabbed more pillows and the blankets. Then I sunk to the floor, carefully putting a pillow under her head. I placed mine next to it and adjusted the blankets over us, then lay there facing her.
She began to cry, “I’m so sorry.”
My eyes welled. “Me too.” I took hold of her hands. “I’m so sorry that you didn’t have more people to love you. I’m so sorry your da and Lorenzo didn’t see the jewel that you are.”
Tears falling to her pillow, she whispered, “I’m just a slave.”
Those words hurt more than the hole in my stomach. Tortured by her anguish, I choked out, “No. You are so much more. You are a woman who is so incredibly kind that she still gives when all she knows is how to be robbed.”
Her lips parted.
I nodded. “Yeah. Babe, they just took and took.”
Her thumb rubbed the top of my hand. “You give.”
I chewed on my upper lip and said, “I’m sorry for calling you Girly-Girl. I wish I could say I won’t ever be an asshole again, but it would probably be a lie. Put me in my place every time, Elle.”
