And Then There Was Victor

Chapter 24

Yara slept for hours and hours until I thought she would never wake, would never stir, would never be herself. Eventually, I fell asleep next to her and woke when she did. She looked a shell of her former self, small, vulnerable, her lips chapped, and the curl of her lashes diminished.

"I don't want to talk about what happened," she said.

I rubbed the sleep from my eyes, it was already evening, the sky outside was dark and my belly rumbled in hunger.

"Mom let your mom know where you were," I said.

Yara turned sharply to me, her eyes capturing for a second the same vibrancy they once had. "Why?"

"Because they're mothers, they work in a different frequency than we do just like we work in a different frequency than they."

"And Victor?"

I watched as she spat his name, her lip curling, her eyes becoming slits in her pretty face giving her an ugly look.

"What about him?"

"Him? Out of all people, Becka?" She turned from me, looking out the window though she could not see anything because it was pitch black.

"I trust him," I said, and I realized my voice sounded defensive.

"Ha!"

"What is that supposed to mean? He drove out to fucking nowhere to get you," I stared at her thin shoulders.

She turned and looked at me, a snarl on the tip of her pretty lips. "He didn't come for me, Becka. He came for you. Don't get it twisted."

It was as if she'd hit Victor and I flushed in anger.

"At least he didn't leave me stranded with nowhere to go after losing his baby," I snapped.

I regretted the words before they left my lips. But there they sat, fat and poisonous between us. I didn't even understand why we were fighting. We never fought, didn't we? Or maybe we never fought because I constantly seeded to her, what she wanted over what I wanted.

She stared at me with wide manic eyes then looked away, her fist clenched and unclenched on the bed.

"Every guy wanted me," she hissed and sourly spat. This wild expression of her eyes was new to me. "Do you know what that feels like? To be able to control most men with a smile, with turn of your hips?"

She looked me up and down.

"No." Her lip snarled. "You don't know that yet. You've always been the smart one, the one with the witty reply, you didn't need to be pretty to drive guys crazy. But you've changed, the outside of you and maybe the inside too. Now you have guys like Victor Manning crossing a state with the sound of your tears."

I felt as if ocean water had gotten lodged in my ears and I felt tears prickle my eyes.

"I would've killed to look like you." I ground out.

She smiled, a joker smile, deranged. "Would have. Not anymore. I'm a wash-up."

I stood from the bed, angry when the sheets tangled themselves in my ankles, shoving at them with impatience. "Feel sorry for yourself, Yara. You deserve it after today. Sleep on it. But tomorrow you're shaking yourself off. And don't take out your shit on me, don't shit on those that were there for you! I stood by you, in the rain, while the 'love of your life' left you. Dumped you."