Three's Company

8. Distraction

Heath Callahan was the son of a programmer and an ex-nurse turned stay-at-home mother.

His childhood albeit blessed with wealth and a lack of hardship in momentary terms was difficult to figure out. To put it plainly, he was always trying to figure out the mechanisms of life.

He didn't quite understand how trusted individuals whom a child should feel protected by could end up doing the vilest things. He certainly didn't get how his favourite Aunt could see him in any other light than her beloved nephew.

And he really couldn't understand how no one would believe ten-year-old him when he tried to speak out about it.

Not one person could imagine the handsome and successful twenty-something-year-old having such trauma disguised in his privileged life.

He grew into his early teens to be one of those kids, you know the type to act out at home and school, to never do his homework, and go out with his friends doing stuff they knew not to do.

His later teen years were filled with sex, drugs and plenty of alcohol. He didn't realise he had such a bad relationship with sex until he met his future wife and the raw emotions were out in the open.

Mona was the opposite of everything he wanted. He liked to use girls for sexual pleasure and then ghost them like they never existed to him. Heath was a grade-A fuckboy when it came to dating, and he knew it.

It was how he coped with his sexual trauma, something he knew was shitty to do but he felt like it was the only thing that helped him.

And then this five-foot-five girl walked in through his dorm room door and into his life, and he suddenly regretted every shitty thing he had ever done.

He remembered being twenty, a few months shy of twenty-one when the beautiful Arab first caught his attention.

Friend of a friend. She knew his roommate loosely, which he never assumed she would know in a million years. His roommate, Jason was the campus's loveable stoner, never without a blunt in his hand.

She had unruly curls that were dyed a light golden honey, they seemed to go well with her dark, prominent features.

They went to a frat party together that night, it turned out that she was there because she and her friend had been invited by Jason. Jason was sleeping with her friend and she came along as her friend's moral support.

He didn't even want to go out but decided that in the end, it was the promise of what was to come, and not those wide, innocent brown eyes that made Heath agree to go to the party.

One hour into the party, well no, more like twenty minutes, he was already regretting his decision. There was no way anyone could build any sort of connection with him, not when he was struggling to get those unique features of his head.

Who the fuck was she? All kinds of thoughts whirled through his psyche that entire night.

He couldn't get himself to talk to her, staring at her across the room until the run into the bathroom occurred.

"Hey, it's, uh, Mona right?" It was a pathetic attempt to greet his future wife, one that did not work in his favour.

His stare was intense and those dark eyes too piercing. His focus was on her face and eyes with that gaze binding her in place.

"Oh, crap. I didn't even see you there." Her laugh was short and breathy, turning her head a little to catch his face. "Do you always sneak up on people like a creep?"

Creep. He remembered being taken aback by her remark.

It wasn't as romantic as first meetings went.