Breaking the Bully

I don’t know what to do.

I had a plan. Use Moore’s help to get the paperwork I need from his guidance counselor aunt. Figure out a way in through the side door to get myself to college. Make something out of myself. Follow my dreams of being a meteorologist. Leave the pain of the past in the dust.

And I’m rapidly forgetting that Moore was…is part of that pain.

If I kept him in my life, what would that say about me? That I could so easily trade one bully for another? Is my body in control? My heart? My mind?

Stiff with conflict, I pick up my duffel bag and settle it on the kitchen table, unzipping it to take out my sandals. Rooting through the contents, I take out a chemistry textbook I don’t remember packing. Maybe I should ask Moore to return it to the school for me, since I won’t need it anymore. I’m surprised by a wave of nostalgia that for me, high school is essentially over. For old time’s sake, I flip open the pages and a note falls out onto the floor.

It seems to flutter in slow motion, coming to a rest near my feet.

Something sharp lodges in my gut when I recognize the handwriting on the note. It’s Moore’s. He’s left hundreds of these notes in my locker, backpack and textbooks over the last two years and seeing one never fails to make me lose my breath, tension gathering in my middle.

“Allie…” His voice is strangled, coming from the kitchen. “Don’t read it.”

I stoop down and pick up the piece of paper, unfolding it, my brain telling me it’s the right thing to do. That it’s the momentum I need to leave without ever looking back. A cold, hard reality-check.

You are pathetic.

That’s all it says.

I stare down at it, ice crawling up my arms, until Moore snatches it out of my hand and rips it down the middle. He tosses away the scraps and starts to pace, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Jesus, I didn’t mean that, Allie. You know I didn’t. I was just hurting and lashing out. You are the furthest thing from pathetic. I knew that. I was just trying to…make you feel an ounce of the ugliness I was feeling. And I could die now, knowing I ever wrote that shit down and left it for you to find. I’m sorry.” He comes toward me unexpectedly, crowding my against the table and taking my face in his hands, planting kisses everywhere, my numb mouth and cheeks and forehead. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

Somehow I find my voice after being knocked sideways from the blow. Of having the boy I love say such a callous thing to me, even if his voice was echoing from the past. Oh my God. I do. I love him. “I forgave you yesterday, remember?” I manage around the hazardous racing of my heart.

“You didn’t forget, though.” His thumbs trace my cheeks. “How could you?”

There have been many times that I’ve wished for my mother—and this is one of them. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know if staying with Moore makes me weak. Pathetic. If loving him makes me twisted after everything he’s put me through. My heart tells me Moore is nothing like my father. That there is an explanation for his past behavior, but oh God, doubt creeps in. It creeps in. I remember how he looked behind me last night, the things he said.

I asked for those things from him.

But what does that mean about me? Is there something wrong with me?

“I just need some air,” I manage, disengaging from Moore. His hands drop lifelessly to his sides, all animation leaving him in a great gust. With a sharp lump in my throat, I leave the cabin. I sit on the back steps and fumble through the process of putting on my sandals, the note seared into my mind. Love waging a war against the sting.

Yes. I’m in love with Moore.

I loved him that night in the field, loved him through the two years of hell and now…oh now, that love is like an ocean liner cruising toward an iceberg. What if I keep sailing toward him and he sinks me? I’ve already spent most of my life trapped at the bottom of the ocean.

I have no idea how long I sit there, riddled with indecision on the back porch. My head comes up when I hear the creak of Moore’s boots behind me. Through gritty eyes, I watch him walk to his bike and come back with something in his hands, kneeling down in front of me and searching my eyes. Whatever he sees there makes him swallow hard, his face paling. “This is a flare gun, baby.” He sets the black metal object down near my feet. “If something is wrong, you fire it off. I will see it. Okay?” I hear him swallow. “I’ll be back as soon as I’ve got your paperwork, okay?”