Page 1 of Our Cracked Pieces
Part
I
Prologue
The shame is like it always is. Crippling.
The revulsion is like it always is. Overwhelming.
The regret is like it always is. Painful.
The sensation is like it always is. Horrifying.
And the nightmare of it all is like it always is. Unyielding.
But what was there to do about it now? I’d made my choices, and though wrong, did I really deserve this? Did I really deserve this as my penance? Was this really the appropriate restitution?
I didn’t think so.
But what did I know? How did someone weigh one person’s opinion over another person’s? Whose opinion matter most? Who decided, in their infinite wisdom, whose word meant more than the other? How was a person’s value determined when we were all so different from each other?
A guy could grope a woman on the bus, and after a slap and a ‘fuck you’, she might just go about her day, as if nothing happened. She might even turn it into a ridiculous story she tells her friends or coworkers over drinks.
But take the same scenario, only the woman inthisstory isn’t as feisty as our first heroine, and after she’s groped, she’s so sickened that a stranger had his hands on her, she runs off the bus, feeling disgusted and violated, and it is days before she can finally wash away all the disgrace.
Who decides the severity of the man’s actions? The woman? The law? Society?
If a husband is guilting his wife into giving him a blowjob when she doesn’t really want to, is that coercion? And if she does it to keep the peace or not get slapped around, is it really sexual assault if she still made the choice to do it?
And what do you do when the perpetrator doesn’t believe he’s doing anything wrong?
What then?
Snapping me out of my thoughts, the fingers stretching me open were bringing on another burning sensation because this didn’t feel good. My body wasn’t enjoying any of this.
It never did.
But he never noticed, or simply didn’t care. As long as this ended how he wanted it to, it didn’t matter what I was feeling. If my feelings mattered, this wouldn’t be happening in the first place. And he was actually convinced that, as long as it wasn’t intercourse, there was nothing wrong with what he was doing to me. I was eighteen already, so it was all good.
No harm, no foul.
Only it was harmful. Even if only to me, it was still harmful.
However, in a moment of panic, I had made a decision that was my own. I hadn’t been able to see past my fear and alarm to realize there’d been other choices besides the one I had made.
Another finger joined the two that were already paining me, and I knew we’d be moving on to the finale soon. The fingers penetrating my body, the dirty words panted in my ear, none of it was for me. They were his work up, his way of getting ready. It was his way of warning me of what was coming next.
Two months.
Two months, and graduation will give me a freedom I so desperately needed. A freedom that was probably an illusion, but I didn’t care.
I didn’t care as long as I never saw him again.
Chapter 1
Rowan~
“Can you believe it? Only two more months, and we’re going to be on our way to college,” Mandy cheered. “We’ll be adults, calling our own shots.”
