The back of my scalp is onfire, the reminder of the failed conversation I tried to have with Craig last night. I don’t like having unprotected sex with him. Despite that, I can’t conceive a child since I had Pelvic Inflammatory Disease when I was fifteen, I don’t like not having the protection a condom offers.
If I felt that he was being honest about the monogamous relationship we were in, I don’t know if I would see it as a big deal or not. I tried. I tried so hard to keep ignoring it and to keep letting it go. I tried so hard just to be agreeable until I couldn’t take it anymore.
I said no to him, I refused to let him touch me. I told him my suspicions about his infidelity. When I tried to walk away from him, he grabbed my ponytail, refusing to let me peacefully leave the argument. I hate myself for not fighting back, for not insisting on the word no.
He didn’t care that I was crying; he didn’t care that I didn’t want him to touch me—he got his way in the end. I focused on the sound of the rain on the windows, trying to ignore how it felt to have him inside me, counting down the seconds until itwas over.
Chapter twenty-two
The Phoenix
September 30th 2023
I was completely and totally one hundred percent fucked. Last night with Daxton confirmed that I deserved to be in a mental institution. The biggest problem was that I couldn’t bring myself to regret a single thing. My face was still flushed from our encounter when I met up with Kendi at dinner. The walk down from his office was heavy with the fog of lust still surrounding us both. I could still feel his mouth on me as I tried to concentrate on eating my dinner, ignoring my lingering arousal on my inner thighs.
Never in my life had I felt like someone saw me for who I really was and didn’t cower away from what I had to offer. The way he had looked at me, almost through me and into everything beneath the surface, was intense in a way I couldn’t find the words to explain. He didn’t just see me for my body, flawed as it was; he saw me for who I was and didn’t want to change me or control me. I wasn’t sure how to face that feeling.
Kendi could tell something was different, but she didn’t push, not in front of the rest of the group or the nurses. She was beginningto read me like a book after the short amount of time we had spent together.
I hadn’t fought her much as she asked what had happened. She was the yin to my yang and had done nothing to prove I couldn’t trust her. In fact, she had been encouraging my interactions with him made me even more confident that I could completely confide in her.
She had squealed like a teenage girl, wanting every detail and hanging on every word as we sat on her bed after dinner. Not once did she scold me or tell me that it was ethically wrong; I had reprimanded myself enough. Instead, she had encouraged me, reminding me that the stay was temporary and I was allowed to have something that made me happy, even if the way it had come about wasn’t normal.
“We aren’t normal, so we aren’t going to live normal lives,” she had said, taking the guilt off my shoulders and letting me enjoy myself for once.
Kendi had been attached to my hip most of the day today, and I to hers. Neither of us had individual therapy today; we only had art therapy with Nadia and an educational seminar that expanded on what Jessica and Daxton had spoken with us about. Support systems and how to find them. They provided us with pamphlets on local groups to fit a variety of addictions and behavioral problems.
It had been a fairly easy day, as long as I didn’t let myself overanalyze what had happened with Daxton. Even Brandon seemed to be calmed down—almost to the point of seeming withdrawn. Kendi had suspected they finally upped his medications to make him easier to manage, but I had my reservations about that theory. He didn’t have that glazed-over distant look that most of the patients had when they were heavily medicated, though it didn’t definitively rule out the possibility.
He looked like the devil was lurking, waiting for the opportune moment to make his appearance. Thomas continued to shadow the pervert, so as long as he was still around, we didn’t have anything to worry about.
Kendi and I had settled into the lounge after dinner, both of us with the books we had started earlier in the week, while Thelma, Andrew, and Tyson started another movie. Thomas had escorted Brandon elsewhere after we left the cafeteria, and one bothered to ask where he was going.
We didn’t talk about Daxton around the others. The clinic had enough rules about even the patients keeping in touch after they left the facility, and neither of us wanted to risk anyone else catching on to what happened. Kendi and I had already secretly exchanged numbers, writing them down in the books we were leaving with, just in case they searched our belongings upon our discharge.
Our plans once we left this place were honestly none of their business. For all their talk about support systems and finding people who understood what you went through when you were locked away in a mental institution, you’d think they’d encourage these types of friendships.
About half an hour after the movie had started, Shemar came into the lounge to start handing out mail. Since they had frequent visiting hours, no one staying in our wing usually got anything from the regular mail. Tyson was the only one who received anything regularly, since his wife lived a bit further away and wasn’t able to visit as often.
This evening however, Shemar handed me a plain manila envelope. Placing my bookmark in my book to hold my place, I set it down between Kendi and me on the couch to accept the parcel from him.
“Thanks,” I muttered, slightly confused as to who would send me mail when Michelle was my only visitor. If she needed me between visits, she had the number to the phone in our hallway; snail mail wasn’t a typical form of communication for her.
“Were you expecting anything?” Kendi asked, placing her own book down when I shook my head.
“No, and there’s no return address,” I flipped the envelope over to show her the front. My name was scrawled across it in sloppy handwriting—one I didn’t recognize.
“Maybe your sister?” She guessed, equally as curiousas myself.
“I doubt it,” I said, eyeing the envelope with hesitation. “Typically, she’s just brought me photos during her visits.”
“Well, we won't know till you open it,” she gestured for me to hurry up and open it.
Without another word, I tore open the top of the envelope, dumping its contents onto my lap. Photos landed face down against my legs, four in total. The same sloppy handwriting was scrawled across the backs of the photos. I didn’t pay attention to the words as I turned the pictures over.
My heart dropped to my stomach. The first photo was of the front of my house on a sunny morning, the leaves were a bright orange hanging from the tree in my front yard. Only my sister had her back turned to the camera, locking my front door as she left my house.
The second must have been taken a few seconds later, she had turned and was half-way down my walkway, almost to her car, wearing the same clothes as she had in the first.
