Page 37 of Mending Me
“Bailey…” he hushed me as I cried into his shoulder right in the middle of the park. Anyone looking at us would think he was breaking up with me and not that I had just bared the ugliest part of myself to him.
“That’s why, the other night,” I hiccuped, “I haven’t been with anyone since that night. Not like that. I just got scared, that’s all.” It came out as an apology even though deep downI knew I had nothing to apologize for. For a few months after my attack, I went to groups with other women who had been through the same thing. We were often encouraged to accept and believe that what happened to us wasn’t our fault. That we hadn’t asked for it or deserved it. Even now, two years later, I was working on believing that.
“Shhhh, you don’t have to explain.” He pulled away from me and cradled my face in both of his hands, wiping my tears away with his thumbs.
“I understand if you don’t want to see me anymore.” The words slipped from my lips, exposing my deepest fear by sharing this part of me with someone else. That they wouldn’t want to be with me because I was soiled.
Dirty.
Damaged.
The fear that I would be viewed in the exact way I felt after a piece of my dignity and soul were stolen from me.
“Hermosa?1,” his voice was low as he tipped my chin up so I had to look at him, “that’s the furthest thing from what I want.” He leaned in and kissed my tear-stained cheek, sending a wash of warmth over my skin. It was hot and humid outside but every piece of me felt cold and frozen.
“I think about you every day and I miss you as soon as you’re gone. I would spend every minute of every day with you if you’d let me. Knowing this about you doesn’t change any of that.” He was speaking into my hair as he had pulled me into a hug, his arms keeping me safe as they hung onto me. “If anything, knowing this about you makes me care about you even more. You are so strong, Bailey, stronger than I even knew. Thank you for sharing this with me.” I couldn’t help but laugh because no one had ever thanked me for telling them about my attack. Leave it to Hank to continue to be a gentleman, even when talking about this.
“Thank you for letting me share. There aren’t many people who I tell about this, but something about you makes me feel safe. Like I can share anything with you.” I burrowed my nose into his neck and breathed him in.
“Can I ask you one thing?”
“Of course,” I pulled away from him so I could wipe my eyes. We sat facing one another on the blanket and were so close that our knees were touching. He held my hands in his like a lifeline.
“Did they catch the guy? What happened to him?” His eyes were filled with concern. As I studied them closer, I saw something in them I hadn’t seen in them before.
Anger.
I bit my lip before speaking, knowing that my answer wouldn’t be what he wanted to hear.
“I don’t know what happened to him. Once he was done with me he ran off. He was wearing a hoodie and it was dark so I couldn’t see his face. I filed a police report but nothing ever came from it. Ophelia, my roommate, was the one who convinced me to file it even though I knew there wasn’t much the police could do if I couldn’t identify who attacked me.”
Flashes of that night came back to me as I spoke. How the stranger had left me on the ground, my dress pushed up and my tights ripped. How I walked home in a haze, not even bothering to get my stuff from inside the event hall. How, after hiding in my apartment for three full days, Ophelia came pounding on the door and wouldn’t leave until I let her in. When she saw me for the first time, covered in bruises and dried blood as I was still in a state of shock, she forced me to go to the police station. I’ll never forget how her hand trembled in mine as she sat next to me and I told the officer what happened. How her eyes filled with tears as my own slid down my face. The words of the county doctor still ring out in my head from time to time,‘It’s agood thing you haven’t showered, we might actually get some evidence even though it’s been a few days. You’re very lucky.’
I didn’t feel very lucky.
“Hey.” The warmth of his voice and his calloused hand on my cheek pulled me back to the present. “You wanna get out of here? Let’s go back to my place, I’ll give you something to change into and we can just hangout. What do you think?”
I searched his face to see if I could see any difference in how he looked at me now that he knew my secret. His brown eyes burned just as bright as they did before and his smile made me feel just as safe. My fear of him seeing me any differently after knowing what had happened to me was slowly being replaced by a sense of safety and comfort.
He didn’t think I was damaged or broken.
He just wanted to make me feel safe.
“I think I’d like that very much, soldier.”
1 Beautiful
22
HANK
When I heard the words leave her lips I thought my heart was going to stop.
‘I was raped.’
I hadn’t felt so hollowed out since the moment my aunt told me about my mother. Hearing her talk about being attacked gutted me and when she told me the man who harmed her had gotten away, I saw red. I was so angry I had to take a moment and remind myself it was about her, not me, and that getting angry wasn’t going to help anyone. I thought for a moment about asking Malcolm if he wanted to meet up for some one-on-one sparring sometime this week to work it off.
We had been driving in silence ever since I helped her into the car, my hand protectively resting on her thigh. Unlike before, her hand was interlocked with mine, holding it tightly and running her thumb across the back of my hand. Without meaning to, my breath became synced with each swipe of her thumb and it brought me a new sense of purpose.
