Falling Daisies

Chapter 10

I hated the colour red. Despised it. But it was all I could see in Jason's stupid oversized room. It was like an ode to United in there. Stupid red walls. Stupid red rug. Stupid red bed sheets. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Stupid me...

I was sat up in the bed, trying to create as much space between me and Jason as possible. I hugged my legs tight to my chest and wiped my hot, tear-stained cheeks onto my knees and rocked softly, like I was trying to cradle myself to sleep, like a parent did to their child when they'd had a bad dream. Because this is what this was. A nightmare. One I couldn't seem to wake up from.

Jason lay oblivious and fast asleep next to me and I glared at him with distain. He was unattractively sleeping with his mouth open, a small dribble escaping from one corner and he was snoring loudly, grunting every so often like a pig.  

I noticed one of his discarded socks at the bottom of the bed, clearly an accidental slip off, because he never took his socks off. I had an overriding temptation to grab it and shove it in his mouth then watch him choke on it.

But I didn't.

Why did I do it? Why did I put myself though it time and time again? Reliving old wounds that I should have put a stop to when... But I didn't. I kept going back because I was weak. I was strong in too many parts of my life for others, but he had always been my weakness.

We had an understanding, Jason and I, that I could sleep for a bit after if I was tired but I had to be gone by the morning when he woke up. I didn't mind that, seeing his face in the morning was like a reflection of my shame and god it was ugly. Unfortunately it was masked behind a pretence of a pretty face, a polished beauty I couldn't help but cave into.

We didn't kiss either, or at least not on the lips. I'd watched a movie once with a prostitute whose golden rule was that she didn't kiss clients on the lips, it was too personal and implied that there were feelings involved. And this wasn't about feelings, it was about sex.

I suppose that's what I was really, a prostitute. After all, I traded sex with guys for them to give me something in return, that missing feeling I craved. A feeling of being wanted, of being needed, of being loved... Because that's why they call it making love...right?

But I didn't feel loved. I felt sad. I felt sick and scared and sad.

I needed to breathe.

I flung off the sweaty covers from my naked body, slipped on my soiled wet, discarded knickers then went inside the on-suite bathroom, adjacent to Jason's room; his parents were loaded, something to do with the government, hence why they were never home much.

I fumbled around on the wall, blindly finding my bearings in the darkness then, locating the little plastic button, I flicked on the light switch, cursing under my breath as it hummed into life. I turned around sharply to see if it had woken up the Sleeping Beauty.  

But no, there he was snoring away, he could sleep through a hurricane for sure. I pulled the door closed behind my however, just in case the light disturbed him and thus, my temporary solace.

This bathroom had more products in it than the entirety of my modest cabinet back home, which I shared with three other people - and that was including Tess, who'd just subscribed to TeenNow magazine and evidently required every product it advertised in its glossy pages.

I opened the mirrored cabinet in front of me, fingering over various bottles and lotions, until I came to one that nearly made me sick.

What was he doing with flavoured lube?

He'd sure as hell never used that with me and he promised that whilst we were casually hooking up again that there were no other girls.  

We weren't even using a condom for god sake! I was on the pill but that didn't stop... Other things.