She was shoved aside without so much of a glance in her direction.
As a skinny 14-year-old kid, he was no match against his father but shot to his feet anyway, sending the chair tipping over just as his father grabbed his arm hard enough to bruise. He was shoved to the back door next, stumbling against the fly screen as it flung open with the impact of him hitting it. He lost his footing on the top step when his father pushed him again.
The ground came up hard and fast. He wasn't sure if it was his ribs hitting the concrete, or the white-hot pain in his right collarbone, that left him breathless. He could feel the blood seeping through his T-shirt where his collarbone had broken through his skin. Slowly and painfully, he pushed himself up before his mother joined his side.
“Stai bene, stai bene. You’re okay,” she said through sobs, cupping his face.
"Like I said," his father drawled from the top of the stairs. "Pathetic."
He was 16 and fixing his bike on the front lawn with the afternoon sun on his back. Tightening the bolts on the frame after replacing the back wheel.
He had needed a distraction, something to keep him busy after what happened today. Charged with car theft and underage drunk driving, the judge said it was “an attempt to get attention”. He just thought the unlocked car with new booze in the back was an opportunity he couldn’t pass up.
His father somehow scrounged up some bail money to get him out but hadn’t been happy about it. The marks on his left cheekbone and ribs said enough.
The one thing stopping him from retaliating (because he knew he could) was the girl who smiled at him outside the courthouse before she went inside. It had stunned him into silence before his father’s fist could. No one ever just smiled at him. Especially not someone willingly walking into a courthouse.
Some girls from school rode by on bikes. Three girls who five months ago hadn't cared he existed. They batted their lashes at him as they went by, giggling and blushing when he gave them a lazy wave. The girl in the middle seemed to blush the hardest after what happened over the weekend.
She was Scotty Richard's girlfriend. He still believed she was a virgin...
The girls rode on, and for a second he was tempted to catch up. His bike was almost finished. But his attention snapped off them and to the sound of glass breaking inside the house. Adjusting the grip he had on the wrench in his hand, he raced inside to the source of the noise.
“You’re. Too. Soft. On. Him,” his father spat.
He had his mother against the wall in the hallway, his blistered knuckles near white as they clamped around her throat. At her feet, a vase of water and flowers had been smashed across the floorboards.
He rushed towards them, barreling into his father's side with his shoulder. It sent him stumbling off his mother, who gasped down air at the release. She clutched at her throat, leaning into the wall.
He didn’t have time to sit with her, not when his father whirled on him. But he swung first. The wrench connected with his father's nose, spraying blood across the wall as his head snapped to the side and he toppled backward, falling hard on his back.
"YOU LITTLE PIECE OF SHI—"
He grabbed the front of his father's shirt, his fingers squelching in the blood pouring from his broken nose, and leaned in close. Pointing the wrench at his face while trying to keep the trembling at bay.
"Touch her again," he said through gritted teeth. "And I'll kill you."
His mother sobbed.
He stumbled up the porch steps, knuckles sore and head burning with a hangover. But the wad of cash in his back pocket and a night of very blurry memories with a new friend made it all worthwhile.
He smiled a little, even if it agitated his split lip. But his happiness was short-lived when he got to the front door. Already open, left ajar.
Time slowed when he entered the house. He knew the spinning room was a side effect of the hangover, but the rotating only worsened when he spotted the pool of blood on the kitchen floor.
He got to the doorway to the kitchen and found his mother, slumped against the cabinets and sitting in a pool of her own blood. She wasn't dead but wasn't conscious either. Her breathing was shallow as she clutched her pregnant stomach, where blood seeped through her shirt.
Everything became a blur until he was staring at his blood-covered, shaking hands. Sitting in a stark white waiting room that smelled strongly of bleach, he was trying to control his breathing to stop the panic attack that was about to override his hangover.
The sunrise cast an orange glow across the front of the house as I jogged up the porch steps two at a time. My lungs and legs burned from running myself a little harder after yesterday — after the memories that conversation had brought back to the surface.
I thought I was good at pushing those things aside, not allowing shit to affect me, but then one mention of that morning and I was pulled right back to when I was a kid.
I couldn't blame Lily. She didn't know.
The entire drive back to her place was silent while I tried to clear my head, but I couldn't shake his face from my thoughts. So, I kept my mouth shut, frustrated at myself as the car filled with a sickeningly familiar tension. The kind he radiated whenever he paid a visit to my room.
It wasn't until we arrived at her apartment that I noticed the way she had glanced at my knuckles (white from the grip I had unintentionally put on the steering wheel) that I realized she was worried. The guilt hit me like a punch through the chest when I saw her face, riddled with confusion, concern, and anticipation of what I might do.
