26
CIARA
After having spoken with two officers for over an hour, only made tolerable by the close presence of Rain, they finally let me leave the interview room and take me to the waiting room where my mother is waiting for me with Patrick and Erin.
I run to her and let myself be comforted in her arms. Patrick and Erin join the embrace around us while Rain and Liam stay to the side, speaking in a whisper.
“They’re keeping him in a cell, they won’t allow me to see him,” she says between sobs.
“I’m so sorry Rain, it’s my fault,” I say.
“I don’t want to hear you say that even as a joke. I’m glad Aaron found you before…” and it would appear that she also can’t say the words aloud.
“Lets go home now, dear. Carl and your brothers are waiting for you.”
“I’m going to take her home and I’m going to stay there tonight,” Patrick says to Erin, who nods in support.
“I can’t… I can’t go back home,” I whisper. “I can’t do it. Not now.”
“Of course, dear. I understand.”
“You can come to our house,” Erin suggests. “You’ll be safe there for sure.” She smiles lovingly.
I nod, looking at my mother.
“I’d like to stay with you too, if I may.”
“You don’t have to ask, Sarah.”
We head outside but Patrick doesn’t follow us. We turn to ask why as he chats with Liam and Rain.
“Honey, aren’t you coming with us?” Mother asks him.
“I’ll be there shortly,” Patrick tells her. “Liam and Rain are going to go with you and Jay and Alex will be home from the pub shortly. There’s something I absolutely have to take care of.”
For a second I’m afraid that Patrick wants to question Aaron about why he was at our house with me, and that he is going to hurt him but his dark, confident eyes tell me I have nothing to worry about because Patrick might be an ass, but he wouldn’t abandon a friend in his moment of need.
•••
We enter the house I left days ago and memories of my last moments with him come back to haunt me, and the fear and sense of shame that I’m feeling tonight are throwing me into an immense, unconsolable pain. I curl up on the floor as soon as I get through the door. My breath gets stuck in my throat and I feel the panic building in my body.
I shake on the floor, feeling woozy as Liam and Rain try to help stand me up, but my legs are not able to bear the weight of the boulders I have for legs right now.
So Liam lifts me up against him, whispering sweet and reassuring things that I can catch only the tone but not the content of. He brings me all the way upstairs to my brother and Erin’s room and lays me down on the bed.
My mother and Erin sit next to me but I don’t want to talk, I don’t want to think. I don’t want to remember.
All I want to do now is sink into the oblivion and sleep until I’ve erased every single moment of this evening, but I realize that’s not possible. I know that quite the contrary, when I wake up it’s going to seem even worse.
I was stupid and ingenuous. I trusted Mark and his kindness. I thought he was a good guy, a friend; I realized he had a little crush on me and I didn’t think he’d misinterpret my interest in him, so he imagined it to be something bigger than it was. I allowed him to buzz around me, I touched his hand, I whispered in his ear. I brought him to the pub. I let him get close to me, to my family and my life. I led him on, he’s right.
I’m just a girl who is unable to recognize good from bad, who trusts people—a dreamer that views the world through rose colored spectacles.
In fact the world is all wrong, it’s all disgusting. People can hurt you. Dreams are just stupid illusions that blind you from seeing things as they are, leading you to make mistakes that cannot be fixed, that drag you further from reality and leave you weaker than you once were.
I was an optimist, an incurable romantic and a dreamer.
And now all I want to do is stop dreaming.
