Dare You to Hate Me

“You blocked me.” His face is suddenly serious, expression darkening as he scopes me out. “I’ve had the same number ever since my parents agreed to let me have a phone, and you blocked it. We used to text all the time when I snuck you your first cell knowing your parents couldn’t afford one for you. How didn’t you recognize it?”

He…? “That was you?” My tone is incredulous. Hurt flashes across his face only for a microsecond before he masks it with irritation instead. I shake my head, not willing to explain that I barely remember my phone number now much less the one either of us had then. “Who has the same number for seven years?”

“I don’t let go of things easily,” he states pointedly, leaving the phone on the table where he dropped it between us. It’s an upgrade from the ones we used to have—changed with the times. When he gave me the box containing the prepaid phone one night, I’d been speechless. He showed me how to use it, where he programmed his number, and how to text.

Slowly, my eyes lift to his. “We both know that’s not true.”

His fingers grip the table as he bends forward, eyes never leaving mine as they narrow at me. “For someone who isn’t holding it against me, you definitely seem to have a grudge.”

Doesn’t he get it? “I’m simply stating a fact. That doesn’t mean it’s a hostile one.”

Now he scoffs, a sound I’m becoming a little too familiar with. “Don’t lie. You were never good at it.”

“Excuse you, asshole. Just because you don’t like when I’m telling the truth doesn’t mean you can be a dick to me.”

“Then how about you actually tell the truth for once?” he spits, eyes hard as they focus on me.

“You want the truth?” I whisper, laughing to myself. I lick my lips, only slightly self-conscious that they aren’t covered in lipstick. I only bothered with basic makeup, forgoing my bright lipstick and dark eye liner in favor of something that simply covered the exhaustion from insomnia. “Fine. The truth is, when I asked my seventeen-year-old best friend if he’d run away with me, I hoped he’d say yes. But I didn’t expect him to. He had a good home and a good life in general. Football. Friends other than me. Loving parents. That annoyingly adorable dog that yapped all the time whenever we tried doing something without him.

“Maybe part of me wanted him to try convincing me to stay, but I also didn’t expect that. Because he knew why I hid in his closet, and how many times I locked myself in mine to avoid the bullshit I always had to hear. He knew the missed birthdays, and the cop calls, and the police reports. That boy telling me no was the only gift I’d ever gotten in life. He let me leave.”

Aiden’s nostrils twitch, and there’s a blanket of something damp forming in those icy eyes I used to be obsessed with. “I’m not angry that you didn’t come along with me, Aiden. I was okay with that. Happy, even. It meant that you were going after your dream to play football. You didn’t risk messing up your life like I did mine because I was sick of being stuck in a rut.” My throat gets thick, cramming with emotion that I swallow. “So, no. I’m not holding anything against you. The only grudge I have is that life couldn’t have given me a better home that I wouldn’t have wanted to run away from.”

With that, I lift my shoulders dismissively and stand up when the washing machine stops spinning. Walking over with a rolling basket to transfer my things to the dryer, I try ignoring the eyes I feel on me, and the heat when footsteps near my back as I throw in a dryer sheet, close the door to the large machine, and shuffle through my wallet to gather change.

Before I can put any in, I hear the telltale signs of quarters being dropped into the slot in front of me. Peeking through my lashes, I see long, tan fingers, sliding in each coin slowly before he says, “I waited. I remembered when you’d locked yourself in your room for a day and a half before your parents ever knocked to check on you. So, after two days passed from when you’d said goodbye, I told my parents you’d left, and they went and told yours. I waited.”

He gave me time.

Almost so quietly I can barely hear myself, I say, “Thank you.”

He inserts the last coin and watches me play with the settings until I have it on what I want, then press the button to start the load. It isn’t until then that he takes my arm closest to him, slowly lifts the sleeve, and flips it around to face him.

My heart pounds when his thumb runs over the scar, and it’s a sensation I can’t describe. I don’t like the touch, but I don’t hate it either. I’d rather pretend the markings aren’t there, and Aiden makes it impossible when he does stuff like this. “They grounded me. Said I should have told them sooner because—” His voice grows hoarse. “—something bad could have happened to you. Something bad did happen, didn’t it?”

I can’t look him in the eye, and my energy is low, so I don’t even try yanking my arm back even though he’s close to discovering all the other marks if he moves the sleeve higher. They’re the same ones that coat my inner thighs, outcomes of every stupid choice I made since getting on that bus instead of listening to Aiden or my mother. “What didn’t happen to me?”

“Tell me.”

“No.”

“Iv—”

“You don’t want to hear it,” I snip at him, this time finding the effort to jerk out of his hold and lower my sleeve back down. “You don’t want to hear about the places I stayed, and how I afforded it…” I stop myself realizing that’s exactly what he needs to hear if I want him to leave me alone. He’ll see I’m not a worthy cause anymore—not the same Ivy he took under his wing all that time ago. “I slept with people. Lost my virginity to a 33-year-old when I was only sixteen because I thought why not? Not everybody wanted something from me, but I rarely ever fought the ones who did because I had nothing to lose. I’ve had a lot of sex with a lot of people and done things I’m not the proudest of. Pot, ecstasy, sometimes I’d be offered harder stuff by the people I stayed with and I’d be so tempted to take it if it meant getting out of my head for a while. I managed to say no though.

“But this?” I gesture toward my wrist with my distressed gaze. “This was all me. It wasn’t the drugs or the guys that led me to making this decision. It was desperation. The doctor called it a cry for help.”

His throat bobs. “Nobody told me.”

“I was eighteen,” I expla

in, wrapping my arms around myself. “I didn’t have to tell them anything, so my parents weren’t contacted. I wasn’t even in New York at the time.”

I’d been in Vermont, and the hospital I was brought to only asked the questions they needed to. My I.D. had confirmed my age, and the fact I had no insurance or way to pay for the care I’d received. I had a plan to run in between nursing shifts, but then one of the hospital counselors walked into my room and handed me a pamphlet all about a program that helped cover the cost of hospital visits for people with no insurance. I’d qualified, got to stay an extra day, get fluids, get my bandages changed, but by day three, they’d walked into my room to find nothing but an empty bed, a discarded gown, clean bandages missing, and my personal belongings gone. I wasn’t about to risk anybody finding next of kin to collect me or let them haul me off to some sort of asylum to get help I couldn’t afford.

“I shouldn’t have let you go,” is what he finally says to break the silence that’s thickening the atmosphere around us.

I shrug. “But you did. And I’m glad.”