Page 56 of Fallen Petal

My arm is trembling as I stretched out to the left, pointing to the sofas in the living room.

“The images were clearer than any I ever had before,” I add. “It was a memory, the clearest I ever had, and it was of you and me—”

“You and me doing what?” he interrupts me with a question. “I didn’t say I never touched you before, Petal. Because I did. And I never said I didn’t kiss you before. Because I did.”

A shadow is cast over his stern expression as his voice goes lower, laced with something I’d call sadness if I didn’t know any better.

“So we... it’s true?” I stutter. “I was here before? With you? Doing... stuff? In this room?”

He nods along as I go through my list. It’s the first time I’m faced with confirmation at this magnitude. I’m finally allowed to see, allowed to ask—and he confirms everything without leaving me in doubt.

“But something happened,” I go on, bracing myself as I step further, diving into more painful territory and an array of images that were not as clear visually, but all the more penetrating when it came to the emotions they brought up.

“Something happened, and it turned ugly.”

Again, he nods, avoiding reciprocating my probing gaze.

“I stopped it,” he says. “And you didn’t take it well.”

“I was hurt,” I recall. “Very, very hurt. And ashamed. Disappointed. Angry. It was... terrible. And a lot.”

I shake my head, furrowing my eyebrows as I try to make sense of the things I saw and felt as I was touching the sofa. They are still accessible to me and no longer hidden behind that damn wall, but their impact is not quite as forceful as it was a few minutes ago.

I can still see and feel the memories, but only if I choose to go down that path.

“When did it happen?”

My voice is thin and sounding robotic, as if it belonged to a stranger. “How long ago, Jayson?”

He clears his throat. “A little more than four years ago.”

I suck in a sharp breath of air, my back crashing with the backrest of the chair as I fall back, astonished. More than four years? That long ago? It felt so close, so immediate.

“Why did you stop it?”

“Because I thought I should,” he says, finally looking at me with a faint crease between his dark eyebrows.

“Why?”

“Because it wasn’t the right time then.”

I can’t stop myself from rolling my eyes at him, despite knowing that it’s a risky move, potentially angering him enough to refuse any further conversation in this matter. It’s been that way before.

But it’s not anymore. A short display of disapproval kisses his expression, but it’s gone as quickly as it appeared.

“Why was it not the right time then?” I probe, my heart speeding so much that I feel its beat must be visible from the outside. Of course, it’s not, despite my nakedness. But my chest heaves in more vivid motions, pulling his gaze and kindling a spark of lust in his hazel eyes.

“You were too young, and on your way to better things,” he says, surprising me with a direct answer.

It strikes me with frightening force that I don’t even know how old I am. I never thought about it before and only thought about my age in relation to him. The girl looking back to me in the mirror looks young, younger than he is for sure, but not by that much.

“How old was I then?” I want to know, circumventing the embarrassment of asking him about my current age.

A smile plays at the corner of his mouth.

“You were eighteen, Petal. A recent high school graduate,” he says.

“So that makes me...”

I want to finish the sentence, trying to grasp the triumph of learning something so mundane, yet so meaningful about myself.

But he beats me to it by revealing something that strikes me even more.

“Today is your twenty-third birthday.”

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