Her best friend was no longer talking to her. Her (now ex) best friend caught her sleeping with her boyfriend one night—the ultimate betrayal any girl could ever commit against another. She planted seeds of lies and deceit between her brother and his girlfriend so they would break up. And they did, but now her brother no longer acknowledged her existence. And she called her mother so many names that now, she couldn't look at her daughter without crying.
And now, she was trying to tear him down. She was trying to air out all of his dirty secrets in front of his friends. She had one too many Long Island Iced Teas and now she was regaling them all with tales of the women he had betrayed. She recounted, with particular relish, the time he impregnated his high school sweetheart and broke up with her the minute he found out.
So that didn't exactly put him in the best light. But he was sixteen, after all. He panicked. He didn't know what to do, so he did the only thing he knew how to do in that situation. He ran.
But he wasn't running this time, especially since he knew what she was doing.
He watched from a distance as her fingers trembled over the straw of her drink, laughing mirthlessly, not noticing the awkward glances his friends exchanged. And despite her inebriated state of mind, she told her dirty stories with a certain grace and aplomb that only she was capable of. She was a storyteller. She always had been, she always would be.
But he knew what she was planning, and he wasn't going to let her get away with it.
Because he had known her since she could walk. He knew how she thought. He knew what made her tick. He had been there with her through thick and thin. And he knew.
He saw the scars a few weeks ago. And he noticed the dead look in her eyes soon after. That was around the same time she started breaking all the relationships that held her together.
She was working so hard to get everyone to hate her as much as she hated herself. She wanted everyone to rebuke her and ignore her so they wouldn't notice, so they would be too preoccupied with their anger and hatred for her to see what she was doing to herself. She wanted them to stop caring about her so that when she killed herself, they wouldn't miss her.
He saw it all, though no one else could. And he knew that she was counting on him to run, like he had so many times before. But he wasn't going to this time.
So when all his friends finally left, he grabbed her by the arm and dragged her back to his apartment. And there, he hugged her. He hugged her so hard, like he was trying to crush her. She struggled at first—she pushed and kicked and flailed her tiny fists, but he was too strong for her.
Finally, she gave up. And when she did, she clung to him and wept.
***
Ciao.
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