The Royal Scandal (editing)

Chapter 10 (edited)

Chapter 10 [Cold Morning]

Nothing but sheer pulsating pain had caused me to jerk in my sleep, rolling around on my bed as I woke up. It was a cold morning and I silently cursed the weather, mildly curious to why I was naked under the sheet but was still heavily sedated with sleep and pain to care. As I rolled side to side hand massaging my temple hoping the throbbing would go away, my skin suddenly came in contact of something just as soft, warm and –

My eyes flew open and I immediately jerked upright, clutching to my chest my rumpled pink sheet. My mom bought it, I hated it.

What effing hell is THIS!?!

‘This’ being the sleeping figure of a boy curled on my bed, with nothing to cover his – everything – sound asleep, hair tousled, breathing deeply. When I had jerked the sheet off him, he grunted softly but rolled on his side, sleeping on.

Clutching the sheet still, I tried getting up without waking him but stopped right away as another sort of pain shot and ripped through the lower part of my body. It was not pain really, but more like a tenderness – like something bruised. Utter panic had enveloped me as on my eyes found my bed cover, the pink cover with white bunnies had been tainted with droplets of blood. Blood! Oh my god no, please no, no, no, no, please God no, no, no, no…

The tears started to fell as I slowly edged away from the bed to a corner of my room, still muttering under my breath.

No, no, please, please no, no, please… please… please…

It won’t take a genius to piece things together to come up with the right answer to the situation. Plus, as I concentrated, flashes of last night’s event came flickering through my curtains of tears that were clouding my sight.

We kissed, went up and while inebriated…

Should I even call it as making love? What I had done was nothing pure, nothing meaningful to even earn the phrase. It was just sex. A drunken sex too, with a complete stranger that I knew nothing about. And I had lost my virginity to him on my bed, on the only night that my mom was away.

My heart pounded in my chest, heart constricting, hungry for the air it was not getting enough of. Bile rose to my throat as I thought of the consequences of this. Were we safe? I never in my life kept a condom and I don’t think he had any on him as well. He couldn’t have been walking around carrying a condom in his wallet. Plus I never remembered a condom being involved in last night’s…

It was not rape, I remembered being fully willing, I was all over him as he was on me. I began rocking myself. I was repulsed, horrified in so many ways, heartbroken that I should lose something so precious on a one night stand.

What kind of a person am I?

The tears poured without a hint of stopping while I wrapped myself with the blanket curled in a corner. I was disgusted with myself, I was disgusted with him. I screwed my eyes shut, silently hoping that this will be nothing but a bad dream but I was proved otherwise when I heard him cursed.

“Fuck.” He breathed. I still had my head tucked to my knees, screwed shut and sobbing. I heard my bed squeaked and rustled movements before complete silence. Was he gone? Gone, just like that? But I was wrong as seconds later, I heard him spoke. His voice was hoarse with sleep. There was a hint of panic as he tentatively asked,

“Are you okay?”

I said nothing but whimper and continued to heave dry sobs.

Aiden POV

She said nothing but to let out a small helpless whimper while she rested her head on her knees, bended to her chest, long hair tumbled down cascaded its full length. She was wrapped in her light pink blanket. I vaguely remembered last night amidst the throbbing headache, a small souvenir from all the alcohol I had consumed.

Hangover is a bitch, but alcohol was sin in liquid form. It made you do things you won’t in a million years. Things that made you regret, like last night. But I sucked every drop of the liquid anyway because the numbing it offered, a sense of escape no matter how short lived. With my life, I take any escape I can get; I was not even a bit picky. I had been chasing an opened window all my life, just to get away: it was the one thing that I had wanted the most as long as I can remember.

But as I listened to her soft sob, I thought that the consequences were not worth the escape I had craved. Not by a long shot. She looked so tiny and helpless curled like a ball like that, covered by pink blanket. It was fitting, she was the tiny fragile thing while I was the big, bad, previously drunk monster.

There were stains of deep crimson marring her whimsical pink bed spread and I felt yet another heavy boulder came crashing on my head. She was a virgin. Holy shit.

I bit my lips and gathered courage to call her once more. But I stopped myself before I can. My gut twisted.

What was her name again?

This is bad, I thought. My eyes quickly flitted around the room, looking at some sort of clue and I was lucky. There was a stretch of a collage pasted at the opposite wall, full of small sketches of dress designs and ripped pages of fashion magazines which on top bore the name Fay L. Addams Mid Term Project.

“Fay... are you okay?” I blurted out. A stupid thing to ask of course, obviously she was not okay. I let out a sigh and buried my face in my hands.

“Get out.” Her small, shaky voice made me look up to meet her red puffy eyes. Her lips were trembling. She wiped her streaming tears but they kept falling; she bit her lips trying to thread herself together again. “Get the hell out.” She said again, her voice was not a bit louder than a whisper. 

“But…” I tried to say something to her, to comfort her. At least I owe her that much but she was not hearing any of it. She shook her head, long hair following the motion.

“Get out of my freaking house!” she screamed, the sound was heartbreaking. And loud. Loud enough to get nosey neighbors to come and investigate. But I was not moving, I shouldn’t. I mean, how could I? My moral compass was not always pointed due north, but I was not the kind of person that leaves right after… what had happened.

She seemed to grow even angrier seeing that I was not leaving. Screaming, she began throwing everything that was within her reach. “Get out! Get out! Get the fuck out!” she punctuated each scream with a hurl of an object.

It lasted for a minute, all the yelling. But now her screams had melted into sobs and rage gave in to another wave grief as hard lines of anger to gave way to more tears. She looked up and our eyes met. Her trembling pink lips moved and the small hallow voice that came out had lost all trace of anger but just deep pain layered with despair.

“Just please, please get out. Please leave.”

And with that I gathered my coat, got up and before I left, I took a good last look of the girl I playfully called ‘bright eyes’ last night and left, closing the door behind me.

It was raining lightly and I wrapped my coat tighter to my body. It was a cold morning.