“Old enough to know better. Old enough to know something was seriously wrong with my parents. Old enough to know I was different from all of my friends.”
Old enough to know my parents used to fight over me.
Old enough to be forced to make a choice no kid should ever have to make.
Old enough to know I’m the reason my father never speaks to me.
“Kasey, that…”
I wait for it. This is the part where James will offer me his pity, his sympathy, and pretend he knows what it’s like. This is the part where he’ll tell me it’s not as bad as I remember, that I was just a kid who didn’t understand, that things are different now.
This is where is he tells me that everything is going to be okay.
This is the part where he pretends to understand.
“That sucks, Kasey. I’m sorry you went through that.”
What?
He doesn’t offer me sympathy. He doesn’t pretend to understand. Is it weird that I kind of love him for this? Even Bailey, as much as I love her, always offers me weird pieces of advice that I can’t really use. She always means well, of course, but I think if you haven’t gone through something dark like this, you can’t really know what it feels like. You can’t really know the pain that squeezes your soul until you can’t breathe.
“Me too.”
“Should I try to cheer you up?”
“How would you do that?”
“Would it make you feel better to know how much you turned me on during our date?”
“It was a date?”
“Don’t play coy with me, Kasey. We both know it was a date.”
“I know,” I whisper, even though I barely let myself believe it. It was a date. It was totally, absolutely, completely a date. There’s still part of me that thinks it can’t be real. Part of me believes that James couldn’t possibly like me.
Isn’t that how these things work?
No one wants a broken doll to play with when they can have a brand new one. No one wants a damaged person when they can find someone who is in pristine condition.
Maybe James isn’t looking for perfection, though.
Maybe he wants someone who understands what it’s like to hurt.
I definitely understand what it’s like to hurt.
“Were you turned on?” He asks.
“A little.”
“Try again.”
“A lot.”
“Me too. When you said you like to suck cock, I pictured you on your knees beneath the table, blowing me right there in the restaurant.”
“But would you have pulled my hair? That’s what I want to know.”
“Fuck, Kasey. Hell, yes, I would have pulled your hair.”