Page 57 of Give My Everything
And no amount of pretty words or niceties will ever be enough to fix me.
CHAPTER10
REMMY
I told him I’d be back, said I just needed a minute to myself.
It’s been an hour and I can see him from where I’m cloaked in darkness underneath the pier.
Where I’m hiding.
He’s sitting there, his knees bent, his arms resting casually, his hands clasped together.
Not watching the movie. Not looking at anything in particular. Just…staring off in the distance.
He looks miserable.
Logically, I know Ben’s comment to me was not an intentionally inflicted wound. I know he was just messing around.
But that particular gash in my side—the memory of a time when I worried for my safety and my sanity in equal measure—isn’t something that has healed over neatly.
I don’t know how long it will take me to regrow my skin.
It’s a hard thing to admit to myself, for sure, especially when I like to believe the armor I wear makes me virtually impervious to attacks from others, intentional or not.
I look away from Ben, settling back against the rocks that form the wall surrounding the base of where the pier meets land. My long legs stretch out in front of me, my jean shorts growing more and more damp the longer I sit in the wet sand, allowing the waves to reach up and touch my toes.
Living a few hours away clearly wasn’t enough distance to keep the gossip from churning right down the coast and hitting my hometown. I thought I left that bit of life behind when I dropped out of college.
Clearly I was wrong.
I don’t know how Ben knows about what happened my freshman year, but I hate that he does. Truthfully, I hate thatanybodywould know about what happened, but for some reason, Ben seeing what people really think about me cuts far deeper than I was expecting.
I know what I am.
I know how men see me.
What they want me for.
For most of my life, I made the choice to lean into it.
You want me to be your whore? I’m going to be the best goddamn whore you’re ever gonna have. You’re going to remember your nights with me.
I saw a therapist during my first few months at Alta Mesa, although it was only for a few sessions.
Apparently artistic folks have a lot of emotional problems, so the school has therapists and psychologists on hand to deal with the drama and trauma we’ve all decided to ignore or work through.
His name was Dr. George, and I loved saying his name. It made me laugh. He helped me realize that we often use what the world considers a weakness or a negative—for me, sex; for others, it could be addiction, anger, or a million other things—to cut people out of our lives.
You think you want to know me? Well here are all of my worst qualities. Here are my most negative facets, my shittiest pieces. I’m going to show you my everything to see if you’re really willing to stick around.
I honestly think he’s right.
Because that’s what I do. It’s what I’ve done with everyone I know.
It’s easier to show them my worst and watch them scramble to get away from me than to hold it in and have them abandon me later when I show them my soft spots.
I would have liked to continue seeing Dr. George, but he referred me to another therapist after I fucked him during one of my sessions. He claimed it would be a conflict of interest for him to keep seeing me.
