Brown-Eyed Girl ♥
My brown-eyed girl.
The remnants of the echo of his voice lingered in my mind as Grayson chattered eagerly about nicknames. The meaning of people’s names. Their histories and stories. Connecting the dots.
I had tried so hard to not let my face grow sad when he asked me if I had any nicknames. If I liked to be called by anything else than my name. I had just tried to brush it off by saying no and then deflect by asking him why he was into that topic.
It had only made the echo stronger.
With every fiber of my being, I fought to scrub his memory from my brain. But it felt impossible.
Him.
I couldn’t even say his name. Or think it.
The pain was too great, the fear that gripped my heart as I saw his hands coming toward me in my mind’s eye.
Are you called by anything else?
No, just Penelope.
Dream weaver. That’s what my name means.
It was funny because I was only good at weaving nightmares.
•••••
I had cursed my bleeding heart the night I had waited on Christina and Jackson. How it had immediately gravitated toward him and fancied him.
The last thing I needed in all of Ridge Rock was a boyfriend, especially considering that practically the main reason I had left Crestline was because I was trying to escape my ex-boyfriend.
But here I was all over again, falling for a doe-eyed boy.
My brown-eyed girl.
I could picture his face as he sang that song to me in the cab of his truck, driving along the highway with the windows down, crowing our lungs out. I could still smell the mingling of our sweat after we rode horses in the summer, fooling around in the barn as the dust motes swirled in the shafts of sunlight that slipped through the cracks of the wooden roof. I could still taste the husky sweetness of his beer breath as we kissed long into the night after his parents had gone to bed, quiet in the coziness of his cabin-like home. It had been pure bliss for quite a while.
And then, like in the suddenness of a lightning strike, it had all gone wrong. It had all caught on fire. It had all burned down. All that remained of our two-year relationship was my broken heart, sleepless nights, and self-hatred. Wishing I could tear my skin off.
I remember one night when I was lying wide awake and mindlessly scrolling I had come across a post that had caught my eye.
Today my professor told me every cell in our entire body is destroyed and replaced every seven years. How comforting it is to know that one day I will have a body that you will have never touched.
One of the replies read: Important especially for victims of abuse, remember your body is yours and it heals in more ways than you realize.
I had nearly burst into loud, rib-racking sobs when I had read it.
It had only been a few months since that night.
That one night, one touch, one small nervous laugh, one question, what should have been one single plea to please stop.
Please stop.
Please stop.
But he hadn’t.
The siren song of that moment had once again pulled on my heartstrings and beckoned me to enter the den of those memories. It was a pit that would swallow me whole like the Cave of Wonders from Aladdin. This time around, instead of wallowing, I had tiptoed in, stolen the magic lamp, and booked it for the exit. And out of that heist, I now had Christina. She was the genie who had unknowingly agreed to grant me three wishes.
One: friendship.
Two: an escape.
Three: a distraction.
And that distraction’s name was Jackson.
I felt guilty and disgusting for even thinking of using Jackson as a means to scrub the remaining fingerprints of my ex off my mind. When the plan had hatched in my heart, I had stared in the bathroom mirror at work for quite a while, analyzing every inch of my face. I felt so, so, so repulsive. So wrong. Just when I had almost broken down, Cristina had appeared from one of the stalls and I had tried to act calm. We talked. She told me that Jackson was single.
If your heart is into him, then that’s just the way it is. Feelings don’t have timeframes.
Those were her words.
Feelings don’t have timeframes.
Was that true?
Was I actually interested in Jackson, or was it just my fragile, frivolous heart trying to find something else to feel emotion towards? Someone to sink its hooks into, reel in, and then release once I felt better about myself, when I was good and done?
After all, I was just a user. Or more like the used.
Jackson would just be the target where I could pin my past.
And then I would leave him behind, too.
At least, that was what I thought would happen.
Until I met him.
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