Page 57 of Peaches

Figuring it’ll hurt less if I stop fighting, I let my body go slack as my hips fall against his. Defeated. Beaten. Crushed with the words I know I will never escape.

“You come with baggage, Grace. It takes a different kind of guy to not give a fuck, and want to be with you, any ways.”

I feel my heart rip open as he thrusts up inside me again and my insides become wet, but I know it’s not with pleasure.

“That’s right,” Tommy groans. “Fuck, it’s so much better than I thought, babe. Now, do your fucking job and ride me like you want it.”

Through tears I do as he says. With a weight laying on my chest, I force myself to comply. But I never look in his eyes. Not once. I give him what he wants out of worry, out of dread that he’s right.

I do come with baggage. And who would ever want me when there are so many fucked-up pieces to shift through.

What’s sad is, I don’t even consider the alternative.

I let him take what he wants on the promise that he’ll give me what I need - love - and never even question if it’s supposed to be this way. If this is really the way love works.

I know I’ve seen the shit storm that is my parents’ marriage. I know I’ve always told myself I’d never end upthatway.

But as fate deals me cards that mirror the only life I’ve ever known, I give into it if only because it’s familiar and I really don’t believe I’ll ever get the chance to have anything better, even if I tried.

* * *

24 years old

My mother fills my wine glass to the brim, proceeds to do so with her own, then sets the bottle down and takes a seat at the kitchen table. It’s midnight, and I should feel some sort of relief in that, but all I feel is sadness as I pick up the glass and chug (not sip) the red contents.

At the stroke of twelve the spell will be broken, right?

My divorce final.

I should feel free.

Cinderella actually got that luxury, why not us girls thatactuallyneed it. The ones whoneeda fairy Godmother and all her bullshithocus pocusto erase every effect of a life I’d rather forget.

Picking up my glass once again, I take another long sip as the wine fog pulls me under quicker than anticipated and I welcome its heaviness.

“It does get easier,” my mother says and I can’t help the roll of my eyes. “From a woman who’s been there, trust me.”

“Mom, you and dad aren’t even legally divorced. I call bullshit on you ever ‘being’ here.”

I watch as my hurtful words cause her to flinch and then decide rather than try and make it right, rather than apologizing, I’ll take another sip of the mind-numbing liquid in front of me and drown in that instead.

“I never wanted you to end up like me, Grace,” she whispers, causing my heart to bleed more than it already is. “I never wanted…”

But her words are cut off as she sniffles back tears and picks up her glass in front of her.

My bleeding heart feels no remorse though. No sympathy for her at all, because in this moment, all I feel is the bleeding regret of my ownstupidheart.

“Like you,” I taunt, as I stand up and stumble slightly to the kitchen sink. Lifting my glass and downing the rest of the wine, I throw it a little too harshly into the basin and flinch only when I see the side of it break before quickly spinning back around on my heels.

“Tell me, Trudy, how did I end up like you?”

She stares back at me with sad eyes, a look of reprimand hanging in them for me talking to her this way. I don’t normally drink. At all, actually. But a shitty decade, the end of a fucked-up marriage, and not knowing what comes next in life kind of drags you to it. I stand silent, glaring at her with deep rooted anger, time stretches, and she still hasn’t responded. Her eyes are as cold as ice, so I continue.

“Was it when Tommy more or less raped me as he took my virginity,” her eyes widen but she doesn’t say a word, “or when he forced me to have an abortion when I was eighteen. Or, let me guess,” I laugh with slight hysteria, “was it when he fucked his way through college before coming home and forcing me to sit on his dick that was still wet from some other slut’s pussy!”

“Grace Olivia!” My mother yells, always the church going southern belle, and never liking when I’m brutally blunt. You’d think my words made her ears bleed. But I’m not anywhere close to being done.

“Oh, I’m sorry! Or was it rather when you all forced me to marry him. You know, after I got pregnant again when I was twenty, only to lose the baby in the second trimester, cementing the hell that I was then forced to live in while he cheated on me with half the town’s whores down at Reds,” she goes to speak but I cut her off, “and then came home and beat me, repeatedly, with his bare hands, Mom, until I’d open up and do the same!”

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