The smile stuttered.
“I don’t know how to connect with anyone,” Amara told her new therapist, a nice middle-aged black man with an office close to the university campus. “People always ask why I can’t speak normally and I can’t really tell them that I screamed too much now, can I? I don’t think torture is a part of the polite conversation!”
Dr. Nelson watched her quietly, letting her vent the acid out.
“I can’t go out without the bracelets or scarves because one time this boy saw my wrists and asked me what happened. Can people not see it’s something traumatic? Can they not be more sensitive? I miss being myself. I miss being able to just be myself without feeling that I’m broken.”
She stared at the ceiling, watching the fan move slowly, heart thundering after waking up from a nightmare. Her studio apartment was dark, and she was alone. Anyone could break-in. Anyone could take her from her bed. And she wouldn’t be able to even scream for help.
She watched the ceiling, wondering why she was even there, wondering how high the fan was from the floor, wondering if it could hold enough weight.
Then she flushed those thoughts out.
“Do you want me to come to visit you?” Nerea asked on the phone. “We can have a weekend of fun. You can show me around the city.”
“I’d love that, Nerea,” Amara whispered into her phone. “You’ll like the museum here.”
“Do I look like someone who’d enjoy a museum?” Nerea chuckled.
They made plans. Nerea came to see her and for a weekend, Amara felt amazing.
On Monday, loneliness encroached again.
She woke up, went to classes, came back to a dark apartment, studied, and slept.
Rinse and repeat.
Some nights she woke up shaking with nightmares, some she fell into an exhausted sleep. She always aimed for the latter, working and studying and tiring her mind.
A noise made her pause, her key in her door, her hand on the handle.
The noise came again, from behind the plant at the side of her door.
Amara bent down, hitching her bag higher on her shoulder, and placed the books in her hands on the floor, her bracelets jingling with the movement, and noise came again. A mewl.
She looked behind the plant to see a tiny little cream-colored kitten with the biggest olive green eyes mewling quietly.
Her heart melted. Picking her up carefully in her palm, Amara brought her up close to her face, a true smile on her lips after so long.
“You lost, baby?” she asked in a small baby voice. “How did you get here?”
The kitten blinked up at her, mewling again, before putting her head on her hand in a motion that made Amara a puddle.
She straightened, unlocked the door, and brought her companion in loneliness home.
“So, what do we call you, huh? Pixie?”
Stare.
“Pogo?”
Stare.
“Stardust?”
Stare.
“Lola?”
Stare.
“Lulu?
Meow.
“Lulu it is.”
Months passed.
It wasn’t easy living alone. It took her some time to get used to the idea. Having Lulu helped.
Amara hadn’t realized how safe living on the compound had made her feel. She missed her mother, missed her best friend, and even missed the bastard who had broken her heart. Though she still loved him for everything he had been through with her, she was glad to not see him since that day in the woods months ago. After the breakup of a relationship that had never been, Amara had swallowed the bitter pill, asked Vin to drive her to Dr. Das, and cried like a baby while the older woman had listened to her vent without any judgment.
‘You’re brave to open your heart to him after everything you have been through, Amara. While it is sad that he doesn’t reciprocate your affection, it could be a good thing. You’ll be able to explore more once you go to university.’
Yeah, the only problem with that? Amara couldn’t trust anyone for shit. She gave the men a wide berth, somehow always wary if one of them would pick her up and put her in a truck. The girls she didn’t know what to do with. There were a few who simply ignored her, and the few who had tried to talk to her Amara realized were normal girls. They hadn’t lived their whole lives on a mafia compound, with a best friend who was a mafia soldier, and an ex-something who was an underworld prince. Her normal and their normal did not match and Amara couldn’t find herself talking beyond a certain point with anyone.
The only good things about her new life were the accelerated classes that she really enjoyed, Dr. Nelson – the therapist in the city Dr. Das had recommended, and Lulu, the fluffy little thing who had immediately curled up against her with such trust, Amara had fallen in love.
Amara looked at Alex, her TA who kept asking her out until she said yes, as he danced against her. She had given him every excuse in the world, especially the fact that with her accelerated modules she had to finish in two years, she didn’t have time to date. He had been persistent.
The lights in the club he had brought her to flickered neon all around her, the music loud and throbbing and all wrong. Amara had thought he’d take her out to a restaurant or something for the date. Instead, he’d brought her to the hub of hedonism and it wasn’t her scene.
She swayed on her heels, not accepting any drinks from him no matter how much he tried, to the point she started getting annoyed. “Dance, Amara” he shouted over the music, stepping into her personal space. Amara involuntarily stepped back, hitting a wall, her nerves shot but pasted a smile on her face.
He stepped closer to her, backing her into the wall, and her palms started to get clammy. She didn’t like this. “Step back, Alex,” she said but her voice got drowned in the music. He leaned closer to hear her, the scent of vodka strong on his body, and Amara’s gut churned.
She just wanted to go home to Lulu.
“Gonna kiss you, yeah,” he said, caging her in.
“You’re not owed a kiss for a date,” she told him, inhaling deeply to keep her nerves at bay. “I said step back.” But it was fruitless. The music was too loud. She gave him a shove, clearly indicating her displeasure, hoping he’d give her space.
He didn’t. Evidently, entitled assholery afflicted men out in the normal world too.
Amara kneed him in the groin in a move Vin had taught her, pushing him off. Alex cupped his balls, gritting his teeth, his face turning red. “What the fuck!”
She ran to the side door, pushing bodies out of her way, and exited into a narrow, secluded side entrance of some kind. A red bulb hung over the wall, lighting the stairs that led up and out into the street hopefully.
Amara leaned against the wall, holding her stomach, trying to catch her breath. She didn’t have anyone she could call in the city, who would drop everything and pick her up and take her home. She was a big girl but she didn’t trust people. The cab she got into could drive off the path. The driver could be a psycho and take her somewhere else. Scenarios like that always ran through her head, making her anxious, and she needed to keep calm.
The side door opened, and Amara looked at it, suddenly alert, ready to run up the stairs if need be.