She does and then hands the glass back to me. I crawl back into bed and hold her until she falls back asleep. The whole time, my mind is just eating away at me. At everything. When she’s finally asleep, I quietly head downstairs because I need a little space to get my thoughts together, but shit is just spinning more and more the longer I sit at the dining room table.
“Hey, dear,” I hear my mom say softly when she crosses the room to sit with me.
“Hey,” I sigh.
“Where’s Candace?”
“She’s sleeping. We’re just gonna head back tomorrow,” I tell her as I look at her from across the table.
“Are you okay?” she asks. “I heard you two fighting earlier.”
Leaning forward in my seat, I rest my forearms on the table, saying, “We weren’t fighting, Mom.”
She shakes her head at me and questions, “Well, is everything all right?”
I normally tell my mother everything, but when I found out about Candace, I held it secret. But I feel like I’m in so deep with this girl, and the stuff I’m dealing with is some of the heaviest shit I’ve ever dealt with. I haven’t had anyone to really talk to about it, and knowing how much my mother loves her, I trust her enough to make this confession that I have had locked up inside of me.
“No.” I drop my head when I say this because I already feel the remorse building inside for betraying Candace by telling her secret, but it’s breaking me, and I don’t know where else to turn.
She places her hand over mine as she says, “Talk to me, sweetheart.”
Staring at our hands, I take in a deep breath and begin, “There’s something I’ve never told you about Candace.”
“Okay.”
“Remember the attack I told you about that happened this past summer at the bar?”
When she nods, I swallow hard and reveal, “It was her, Mom. That girl was Candace.”
“Oh my God,” she whispers as she removes her hand from mine to cover her mouth. She’s in complete shock when she asks, “How did you . . .?”
“She doesn’t know,” I confess. “I didn’t even know it was her for a while. I thought it could be, but I wasn’t sure. I was so confused, thinking my head was just trying to make something out of nothing with her weird behavior. But I honestly didn’t know.”
“I don’t understand. Where did you meet her?”
“I grabbed a coffee from where she works. And then I kept seeing her because she’s friends with a couple buddies of mine. But there’s this tattoo,” I say as I fight to hold back the tears that threaten. “I saw it on that girl, and then after I had already fallen for Candace, I saw that same tattoo on her. I was scared, so I never told her.”
“Ryan . . .”
“We weren’t fighting earlier. She told me that what happened to her was her fault. I was trying to talk to her about it, and she got really upset.” Pressing my palms to my forehead, I tell her, “God, Mom, you have no idea what that f**ker did to her. What she looked like when I found her.”
It’s when I drop my hands that I see the tears running down my mom’s face and that’s what sends me over. I don’t cry, but I feel it stabbing inside of me.
“Honey, you have to tell her.”
“It felt like the right thing to do at the time. That I was keeping it from her for all the right reasons,” I try to explain. “I didn’t want to hurt her, but now . . . now it feels like a lie, and I’m scared. I’m scared I’m gonna lose her.”
“But now things are different with you two, and she needs to know.”
I can feel the heat of the tears welling in my eyes when I ask, feeling desperate, “Do you think she’ll understand?”
She takes her time before responding with, “I think you have a girl that’s been shown, in the most horrendous way a person can be shown, just how gruesome life can be. She’s been stripped of her security and faith in people. It’s awful, and people like that don’t trust easily.”
Dropping my head in my hands, I nearly beg, “What do I do? I love her.”
She takes my hand and pulls it down when she looks at me and tells me to do what I’m terrified of doing.
“You have to tell her . . . You just have to.”
But I don’t want to. I can’t risk losing her. All I want to do is keep her forever, so I selfishly go back upstairs, crawl under the sheets next to her, and hang on to the one good thing that finally came into my life and changed everything about me. I can’t lose her.
Waking up with Candace just didn’t feel right with the dread that has made its home in the pit of my stomach. And seeing how clingy she’s been with me all morning, and now on the drive home, makes the thought of telling her that much worse.
She has kept a hold on my hand ever since she opened her eyes this morning. I don’t question her about it; I just give her the closeness, the security that I’m here and I’m not leaving. I can’t tell her. Not now. Not when she’s vulnerable like this.
Thinking about what sparked the whole conversation with Candace yesterday, I say, “I hate that your tattoo makes you feel the way it does.” I hate the way it makes me feel too. It’s hard for me to look at because almost every time I do, I see the girl from that night, and I can’t stand thinking of her like that, the way she looked lying there unconscious. There have been a couple times in the past where I’ve had to cover it with my hand while we make love because it hurts too much to look at.