Page 64 of Sugar and Skulls

She shakes her head back and forth frantically. “You can’t make me talk.”

“Let me rephrase. What did you hate most about it?” I place my hands behind my head waiting for her response. I don’t really expect her to answer much today. She’ll fight me for a few days until she realizes we aren’t going anywhere. That’s the difference between me and a therapist. They don’t give a shit if takes you ten years to get all the shit out of your system. Every appointment puts dollars in their pocket.

She bites on her bottom lip battling with herself. There is a natural desire to purge yourself of the poison. It’s embarrassment and fear of rejection that keeps people silent. Predators know this, it keeps their victim’s prisoners in their own minds.

She surprises me by answering.

“I hate that William felt…feels guilty about it.”

Jesse is something else. Always worried about someone other than herself. “What do you feel about it?”

She thinks about it. Her eyes raise to the ceiling as she stumbles around in her memories. “Confused,” she simply says.

I nod giving her space to explore that feeling.

She levels her eyes on me. “What do you see when you look at me?”

This is a question I’ve been expecting. She’s asked Raffe, Dan, Bill and now me.

“What do you really want to know?” I counter.

“I want to know what the fuck you see.” She bangs her tiny fist on the counter.

“No, you don’t. You want to know what it is about you that makes men keep hurting you.”

Her body tenses. Bingo.

“Let me ask this. When you meet a man like the ones who have hurt you do you know before it happens?”

“Not with Rick but the others…yes.” Her eyes bounce over me.

“So, you think since you can sniff them out that they are somehow doing the same to you? That they know you are a victim.”

She nods, the first of many tears begin to pool in those beautiful green eyes.

“You’re a smart girl, Jesse. You know they see the exact same thing everyone else sees. The same thing you see when you look in the mirror. The difference is the rest of us look beyond that. They don’t.”

Her head tips to the side, her lip trembling.

“When those fucks look at you they see a beautiful young woman with curves in all the right places. Big green eyes filled with tears. Tears they love because they know they are for them…because of them.”

She squirms uncomfortably, her arms wrapping around herself to hide the attributes I pointed out.

“Raffe was right though. They don’t see you.” I get up and walk around the bar crouching down in front of her. “You.” I jab a finger in her chest.

“When I look at you I see the beauty they see but I see so much more. I see the way you bite your lip when your nervous. I see the tiny gold flecks hidden in the green of your eyes. The light freckles across your nose, letting me know how much you enjoy being outside. I see the way you study the world around you. I see you noticing colors and lines. I see your mind creating images. I wish I could take a peek in there just to get a glimpse of the beauty you are imagining.”

Her cheeks turn pink at my words. She blinks, forcing tears to spill down her cheeks.

“You are not the problem. They are. You are nothing special to them. They hurt you because you crossed their path. Unfortunately, that’s the way it works.”

“Wrong place, wrong time,” she whispers.

“Or, you could change the way you look at it. Could it be the right place at the right time? If none of that would have happened, would you have been there to save Katie?”

“I didn’t save Katie.” She leans away from me turning her face to stare out the windows. “She got hurt because of me.”

“It wasn’t the priest,” I tell her.

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