He probably found another girl. It wouldn’t be hard for him
Turner, on the other hand, was everywhere I turned. The first encounter was awkward; neither of us knew exactly what to say, but he finally broke the ice with some pathetic joke that actually put a smile on my face.
When was I going to forgive him? The logical side of me said never. Nash hurt me, a lot. But, I didn’t want to mope around for the next few years.
“Hey little miss fun sucker, are you going to come out from your little cocoon and join the land of the living again?”
I lifted the pillow over my head and glared at my roommate. She had half of a smile on her face and she was staring at me expectantly.
“Or are you going to lie there, hiding from the world, because your heart got banged up a little?”
“I’ve just had a lot on my mind lately and need some time to decompress.”
“So by decompressing you’re going to fail out of school and go home? Is that going to make things any easier, really?” Sabrina scoffed. “He’s just a boy, for crying out loud. You’ll meet someone new next week or the week after that.”
“No,” I said, shaking my head. “I’m not going to find someone new. I don’t want to find someone new. I’m done, worn out.”
Sabrina sighed and crossed the room to sit on my bed. I was fine in high school without a boyfriend. Now, here I was aching for bad boy Nash.
“For what it’s worth,” she said. “He came over the other night… When you were at the library.”
This time I took the pillow off my head and pushed myself up to look at my roommate.
“He?” I asked. “He who?”
“Nash,” she said. “He was looking for you… Well actually he was looking to see how you were. He knew that you wanted nothing to do with him but he decided to come by and ask me. He’s worried about you.”
“Well, he has no reason to be worried,” I said. “You can tell him that the next time you see him. I’m fine...”
“Right. Fine.”
Sabrina started to play with the ends of my hair; hair that could use a good washing.
“If you want to believe you’re fine, Lily, then I’m not going to stop you. But, honestly, if you want my opinion, you are everything but fine. Why don’t you give the guy a chance? People screw up.”
To my horror, tears brimmed in my eyes and I squashed them away by rubbing my palms against my sockets.
“I really liked him, Sabrina. I thought he liked me too… But he kisses other girls and gets pissed at me for stupid stuff. I should have known that. I mean he told me that he wasn’t a one girl type of man.”
“But maybe now that he met you he is a one girl type of guy. Maybe he changed… Or at least wants to change. Did you ever think of that?”
The truth was that I hadn’t. I hadn’t thought much of anything except what Nash said to me during our fight.
“Guys don’t change,” I argued. “They don’t know how to change. It’s their way or no way.”
Sabrina slapped her hand on her forehead and shook it.
“You are so damn stubborn sometimes,” she muttered. “You like to think that the guys are the thick headed imbeciles but you… You’re just as bad.”
“No I’m not!” I exclaimed.
How could Sabrina say something like that? Wasn’t she supposed to be on my side? Shouldn’t she be defending me to Nash, not the other way around? What was this?
“Nice, Sabrina, really nice. So much for sister solidarity. Aren’t girls supposed to stick together; you know, ho’s before bro’s?”
“Yes we are and I would be if a certain ho wasn’t so stuck in her ways when it came to a certain bro,” Sabrina wrapped her arm around me. “What made you this way, Lily? Why are you so hard on Nash, Turner, or any other guy? Why can’t you give Nash a chance?”
Tears spilled down my cheeks and dripped off my chin. I wiped them away as fast as I could but Sabrina and Elizabeth still saw them.
“Lily what’s wrong?” Sabrina asked. “Why are you crying? Did I make you cry? I didn’t mean to. I was just trying to get through to you.”
“Because… I lied to you,” I said, my voice barely above a whisper.
“About what?” Elizabeth asked.
It was the first time she had spoken and she cut the tension in the room with her voice. I didn’t want to tell them, any of them, the truth; the truth that I tried to bury a long time ago. I didn’t want to relive the moments in the cabin by the lake or the feelings that I was left with.
“Lily…Lily, talk to us.”
“I can’t,” I said. “I can’t talk to you… I can’t talk to anybody. Not about this. I don’t even want to think about this, let alone talk about it.”
“Well, whatever it is you’re hiding,” Sabrina said, “it is preventing you from being able to move on with your life. Is this the way you want to be from now on? Do you want to be a shell of yourself; hiding and darting around just so no one gets close enough to you?”
No, of course I didn’t want that. I didn’t want any of that but there was nothing I could do about it. Once they knew there was no going back. I would be that girl forever. I had to break away from it once and that was only because I went to college. How was I supposed to break away from it again?
I hoped that it wouldn’t be like last time. These people… They’re older and would understand more. They wouldn’t try to burn me at the stake…Or maybe they would. But I would never know until I tried.
“I’m not a virgin,” I said.
Sabrina and Elizabeth stared at me, silent and waiting.
“You lied about sex? But why?”
“I didn’t want to tell you the truth because the truth comes with more baggage than I wanted. I didn’t want everyone to know it about me. I… I wanted to start over; I wanted to be a new person.”
“So what happened?”
I wiped the tears from my eyes.
“It happened when I was fourteen years old. It was the very end of the school year and I was about to graduate from middle school. That coming fall I would finally be a freshman in high school, something I only dreamed of being.”
“Okay, and?” Elizabeth asked.
Sabrina glared at Elizabeth as she squeezed my hand.
“She doesn’t have to tell us if she doesn’t want to,” Sabrina said.
She looked at me.
“Seriously, Lily, you don’t have to tell us. It’s okay to keep your secret.”
“No,” I said as I swallowed loudly. “I have to tell you… I want to tell you. If I don’t then I’ll just be living two different lives. I won’t be able to be honest with myself or let anyone else close to me.”
I wanted all my new close friends to know about it so it didn't feel like I had to hold it in and feel so alone. I didn't want attention or anything like that otherwise I would've told people about it a long time ago. But it was to the point where my new friends were beginning to not understand me. Letting them know about my secret would probably help them too.
“Okay, but only if you’re absolutely sure.”
“I am,” I said, wiping the tears from my eyes. “So like I said, it was the summer before I entered high school. There was this boy I met, a seventeen year old. He was cute; you know blonde hair, blue eyes, great body. He was the lifeguard at the local pool and he would always take a minute or two to talk to me when I got there. All my friends were jealous because he was giving me special attention. I liked the attention because no other guy had ever given me any. So I didn’t bother to try to stop it or change it anyway. Why would I, you know? Anyway, one day he asked me if I wanted to go on a date with him. I knew my parents wouldn’t let me so I lied and told them I was staying at a friend’s house. He wanted to take me to his families’ cabin in the woods, right by a lake.”