Stopping, my shoulders fall and I blink my eyes and inhale. But I don’t want to turn around. I don’t want to see her like this. I don’t want to feel this pull—the one dragging me back when my instincts are screaming for me to walk away.
But I do anyway.
She’s standing in the exact spot I left her. Except she looks smaller and weaker like a flower wilting.
“I…” she starts but her voice gives out.
I drag a hand down my face trying to hold onto something solid. Anything. “Please,” I say, I beg. “Just give me something.”
She swallows hard, eyes veiled with tears.
“Something that makes me understand.” I take a few strides toward her because God I love her and want her to say something that makes sense out of this. “Because right now, I don’t understand how you could do that.”
Her hands tremble at her sides and her breathing is fast and shallow. And for a second, I think she’s just going to shut down. I wonder if she’s repressed some of the memories and just closes herself off when pressed. I know this. This is her area of expertise and she explains all the time how the brain can shut off what it feels is threatening.
But then, she breaks.
She reaches for my hand, and I let her take it to ground her in hopes she gives me a reason to stay or at least think about staying. Because despite everything, I want to be the person she runs to. The person she trusts most in life.
Her voice falters. “He… he.” She folds into herself. “He said he would kill me. Was I wrong to believe him? I was a kid,” she chokes out.
“I know.”
This time she looks me directly in the eyes and says, “No, you don’t. Not like this.”
Tears spill over her lids and run down her face. Everything in me wants to make her pain go away, but I don’t wipe them off.
I just wait and listen.
Her voice cracks as she continues. “At first it didn’t feel wrong. I was embarrassed but I don’t remember thinking my dad is molesting me.” She slaps her tears away between every other word.
My stomach does that twisty thing like when you’re on a roller coaster preparing for the next upside-down loop.
Her gaze drops somewhere past me. She’s not even here anymore. This is her saying out loud what she has never said to anyone.
“His finger would slide over my lips,” she says in a hushed tone. “Just like that. And when I’d pull away, he’d laugh and say I need lip balm.”
My hands curl into fists. My body locks. I couldn’t move if I tried.
“And I believed him,” she chokes. “Because he was my dad.”
She uses the word Dad. Not coach. Not monster.
She continues, voice shaking harder now. “He’d come into my room, sit down on the edge of the bed and ask questions that didn’t make sense at the time.”
I force myself to stay still and listen even though myheart feels shattered for both what she and her teammates went through.
By someone who they trusted.
By someone who should have been their protector, not their molester.
She gasps out a breath. “When I started my period, he… knew before I had even told my mom.”
My mouth goes bone dry, every trace of moisture gone.
“He gave me my first tampon.” She closes her eyes and inhales. “Said I needed to get used to having something inside me.”
Jesus Christ.
