No one in our house will ever wonder if they’re loved. If it matters who or how they love. They won’t be shamed for who they are or the way that they think.
Our home will be a safe place.
We’ll be happy there.
Present Day
“You doing alright back there?” Tripp calls through the speakers inside my helmet with a few pats to my thigh. “Need a pit stop?”
Adjusting my body to tighten my arms around his waist and my knees around his hips, I shake my head.
“I just zoned out for a sec, sorry,” I tell him. “I’m good.”
Truthfully, this back seat – if it can even truly be called a seat – is one of the most uncomfortable things I’ve ever had the displeasure of sitting on. I’m ninety percent sure that it has either been completely lost somewhere between my buttcheeks or that my buttcheeks have actually just fallen off of my body entirely, left behind on the road somewhere, miles away from here.
I won’t tell Tripp that, though. He’s trying to cheer me up; it isn’t the first time he’s done this. In fact, almost every ride he’s taken me on – or dragged me on – has been for the same reason.
I really wanted to like riding with him, to feel the air whip against my skin and watch the world fly past us at incredible speeds. I’ve always been a little bit envious of how refreshed he always seems when he gets home from a meet with his friends or an hours-long ride that lasts from sun down to sun up.
While it may not be the same terror running through my veins tonight that I usually feel, I worry that this feeling is so much worse.
This time, all I can do is cling to the man that I don’t know if I deserve anymore and hope that I don’t fall apart.
When we finally make it home after another hour on the road and a stop at the nearest gas station for a fill-up, Tripp helps me out of my suit and helmet before I trek up the stairs to start the shower.
Standing at the counter as the water runs behind me, my eyes fix themselves to the screen of my cell phone, waiting on the counter like it’s calling to me and to the pit forming in both my heart and my stomach.
I shouldn’t pick it up. I shouldn’t make the call. Tripp would be so angry if he knew that I was even thinking about it. I can’t count the number of times he’s begged me not to.
Against every instinct screaming otherwise, my fingers fly across the keypad as if on muscle memory alone and I pull the phone to my ear as the line trills.
“Cargill residence, this is Michelle speaking,” a woman’s voice says through the phone. There’s more of a rasp to it than I remember; she sounds so much older. I stand, frozen in time until she finally says, “Hello? I know someone’s there.”
“Mommy, it’s me,” I quietly choke. My voice cracks and breaks on jagged edges, and I feel as though I’ve been launched out of this timeline and into another, back to when I was ten years old, sitting at my mother’s feet while she puts on her face for the day.
“Julia.”
Does she sound angry? Surprised? There’s an edge to the way that she speaks that I can’t quite make out. It’s been so long since I last heard her voice, it’s almost impossible for me to decipher her different tones anymore.
“I made a mistake,” I tell her with a quivering voice, battling against the painful sting of tears that prick at my eyes.
The line is quiet, followed by a heavy sigh that spills through the receiver before she finally speaks again.
“You do that, don’t you,” she muses. “What have you done, this time? I assume you expect us to bail you out of it, despite the fact that you couldn’t be bothered to pick up the telephone in how many years?”
My free hand clamps over my mouth as small, sharp breaths force their way from my nostrils, my eyes and throat burning as the first tear drops from the corner of my eye.
It’s been fourteen years since I was kicked out of my house. Fourteen years since I was punished for having the audacity to have myself put on birth control. For trying to make the responsible choice – one that, in my parents’ eyes, made me a slut.
It didn’t matter that I was in a committed relationship. It didn’t matter that I’d only been with one boy or that we were in love with each other. As far as they saw it, I was disgusting.
Used.
Damaged.
It was the worst thing I could have ever done to them.
The worst thing that they could have done to me was pack up my belongings and throw my bags onto the street, not knowing or caring if I had anywhere else to go – all because I’d tried to make a responsible decision and protect myself.
