CHOICES (Completed)

WILD DREAMS

You shouldn’t have played the wife.

I hate it when people tell me what to do.

 

Hardin. His happy face stares at me through the photograph and I feel a weird sensation within me.

He left me. There, alone. What would I have done if Trevor hadn’t reached? What couldn’t have happened?

Was he not drunk, at all? Hardin… set me up? No.

Bile rises in my throat and I feel hot tears streaming down my face. There is a fire of anger and pain mixed. My knees give away and I slide down, against the wall, wrapping my arms around myself.

“Tessa! I told you to sit-whoa, whoa, hey. What happened?” Trevor crouches down in front of me and holds my arms. I look up at him, his concerned eyes and it makes me cry even harder.

“I, wanted water.”

“Didn’t I say I was bringing that? Here, drink this.” He holds up a glass to me and I shake my head.

“Not this. Just water.”

“Alright, alright. Here.” He grabs the bottle and helps me gulp a few mouthfuls.

I sense it moving down my throat and into the empty pit inside my stomach and it feels better. I wipe my mouth with my sweater sleeve and look up to him.

“I’m such an idiot. I never should have gone there!”

“Hey, you need to get some rest, okay.”

“I’m always causing trouble and you’re always having to clean it up for me.” I sniff through my tears and my voice comes out as a painful choke.

Trevor holds my face in his palms and speaks to me slowly, as if to a cornered child.

“Tessa, you have had a tough night, you should get some sleep.”

Hardin’s words keep replaying in my head and I try to figure out what he meant. I drift back to the club and that guy touching me. How powerless I had left, how hopeless and vulnerable. I had had no control of my body. A chill of fear runs through me and I start shaking in panic, imagining all the ghostly possible ways in which tonight might have ended.

“I can’t even imagine what would have happened if you didn’t co-“

“Tessa, nothing would have happened to you. I was there and so am I now, alright. You’re absolutely fine and get that off your mind.”

Trevor’s voice rises a notch and I just shake my head. It still hurts so bad. I am never drinking again. He’s always here. Of course, he’s always here. Every time I need someone, he’s there.

And I have done everything in my capability to hurt him. I’ve fought with him, pushed him away, and all for someone who just left me there.

“I’m so sorry.” I choke out and he runs his thumb over my cheek gently.

“There’s nothing for you to be sorr-“

“You have the semi’s tomorrow and I just dragged you into all this mess and now you’re all unfocused and disturbed and it’s all because of me-“

“That’s the least of the worries right now, okay. Game’s not important. You have to be fine. How much did you drink? And why?”

I hold his hand with my shaky ones and focus on his wrist watch as I try to calm myself down. Just one.

“One.”

“Tessa one drink never knocks you out this bad, I’m guessing it was drugged.”

My headache just intensified a hundred degrees higher. Trevor was always right. And now that I think about it, he was this time too.

One drink can never affect someone this much, even if it was a non drinker like me. I had had alcohol at the fundraiser, and more than one glass. Yet I had control. The drink had to be drugged.

And what made it worse was that Hardin- No, he can’t. Hardin wouldn’t drug me. He was drunk himself.

But he didn’t sound drunk when he left me after saying that I was- Playing the wife?

I feel nauseous. The way he had said it, made it sound like it was such an abuse, the word. It’s like his voice had suddenly turned icy, vicious.

But no. He couldn’t do something like that to anyone, let alone me. Still, all the odds added up.

But you’ll hate me.

 

I felt sick. Betrayed. Why would he do something like this? I feel so hurt, so angry. It’s like I’m back to last year when he had rejected me. I feel the same want to hate him.

Even if there is a ten percent chance that he didn’t drug it, he at least made me drink it. And it is no comfort. This is happening because of him. I feel dizzy all over again.

“Who were you with, Tessa? How did you end up there, and alone?” Trevor’s voice brings me back and I blink at him, as my shaking worsens now.

“Hardin…” He stares at me for a second and his faces turns contemplative, before almost getting up violently.

“I’m gonna kill him.” I hold him by his t-shirt and pull him back to me, burying my face into his chest. Too afraid to be left alone again.

“No, no please don’t leave. Stay, please. Pleas-e.” I close my eyes, as Trevor holds my head with one hand and rubs my back with another. He’s still angry, I can tell, but he stays nevertheless.

I'm reeling with too many emotions and everything I’ve done suddenly scares me.

Hardin, most of all.

Trevor pulls back, slightly and gazes at my face softly.

He gently wipes my face with his t-shirt sleeve and I notice it’s the same bluish white one, the colour I had loved so much that I wanted one for myself, one day before the elections.

When things were a lot easier. The cloth is soft against my skin and I close my eyes as he rubs it against my face.

“Remember how I said you have a red nose? You have it right now.”

What the- This is his voice. This is- I look up horrified, and there he sits, looking down at me, full of concern. I blink repeatedly, and lift my finger, lightly touching his cheek. What is he- how-

“It’s alright, Russo.”

I HEARD ADO. DAMMIT I HEARD RUSSO.

“Yes we all heard Russo, stop shouting.”

BUT HE WAS DRUNK.

“Was he?”

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