Page 46 of Feathers From the Sky

“I was.”

There’s finally one with Dad in it, and his thick mustache looks absolutely ridiculous. He’s got a wide-brimmed hat on, and he’s holding me like a football while I smile at the camera. I’m a few years older, but the same flowerbed is in the background.

“Who took this picture?”

“Our neighbors, probably. That’s their tulip bed.”

“What were their names?” he demands, sitting up and pulling out his phone, presumably to text Margot.

“You think I remember that? I was, like, six in this picture. We moved a few years later.” Roman scowls at me. “They’re probably freaking dead now. That was over twenty years ago, and they were ancient back then.”

I move to the next page, and the neighbors in question have me squished between them, our faces pressed up against one another. “They made me call them Nonna and PapPap. I…” Trailing off, I lower the album to my lap.

“You what?”

“I thought they were my grandparents. I didn’t have any.”

Roman snorts. “Me neither, baby. Tough luck.” I glare at him, and I’m surprised when his gaze softens. “Why’d you move away from them?”

“Dad said he got a new job, but it was really sudden. I don’t know. Part of me wonders now if it was because he wanted to keep us on the move. That wasn’t even the first house. Just the first one I remember.”

Roman is silent as I continue slipping into the past.

“There she is!” I grin, shoving a photo at Roman, and I don’t know how the hell I’ve gotten so comfortable with him these few weeks. And he’s being kinder now than usual. It’s like the hard edges of him have slipped away while blood drunk, and that niggling little part of me that wonders about things I shouldn’t has grown more bold. This had been part of my plan all along, though, and I’m hopeful it seems to be working.

“How does she look exactly the same?” Roman asks, looking down at the picture of me and Sasha in matching braces.

“She has a baby face. It’s the big brown eyes.”

“You have big brown eyes too, sweetheart,” Roman says, and he’s so close to me, my heart begins to race. I know he hears it, and I watch his nostrils flare. It’s like swimming with a shark. But he’s in my cage with me, and I’m not as scared as I probably should be. I know I need to ingratiate myself with him, even if that means doing and saying whatever I need to. But that’s easier said than done. Though I doubt he has any sort of feelings for me, at the very least, I think he wants to fuck me.

That much is clear from the erection he had in the bathroom.

I can feel my traitor cheeks flush, so I study the pictures, focusing on each one. He watches as Sasha and Angela become an integral part of my life. He laughs at the cringe Halloween photos of me and Sasha dressed up as different versions of Britney Spears. Sasha has her hair in pigtail poofs, the school girl outfit the hottest thing ever when we were fifteen. I’d chickened out at the last minute, not wanting to wear a stomach baring crop top to be “Slave 4 U” Britney and instead had worn a peach-colored shirt and leggings with glitter sprayed all over it. “Toxic” Britney was better anyway, or so I’d told myself back then.

Looking at these pictures depresses me, memories of just how unhappy I was with my body back then. I wish I could climb into them and tell that Gwyn she was beautiful, and that I didn’t need to worry so much what others thought of me. That I didn’t need to accept shitty treatment from people because of my size. It would be a gift if I could keep Past Gwyn from trying to keep friends and significant others who didn’t give a shit. Friends who didn’t invite me to pool parties, girlfriends who would judge me for what I ate, boyfriends pressuring me to go to the gym. I didn’t really figure it out until Josh, who, for all his faults, never once made me feel like my body wasn’t desirable. And then he still turned out to be a terrible person.

Or did he?

Maybe my grief was too big, too consuming. Perhaps I’d expected too much when I thought he’d stay through my lowest points. The way he left me was horrifying, but could I expect him to see me through that?

“Gwyn?”

I blink, realizing I’d zoned out while staring at a picture of me giving Sasha a piggyback ride on the beach.

“Sorry.” I flip the pages again, not paying attention to the pictures and skimming over the note from Sasha in the back.

“No, no. What was that?” He takes the album out of my hands, eyes narrowed suspiciously.

“The note from Sasha? It wasn’t anything.” I try to pull the photo album back over to me to show him it’s nothing of importance.

“Not that. You were upset about something.Tell me.” He’s frowning, and I bite my lip hard. Roman’s frown dissipates and his eyes move down to my lips. I think he must get off on watching me struggle. Sure enough, he smiles as he turns on the bed, leaning back against the headboard. He puts both his hands behind his head, and I can see my blood on the dark grey fabric of his T-shirt. The inside of my thigh begins to ache when I think about it. I’m glaring at him as I fight against his coercion, staring at the underside of his arms. They look enormous from this angle. Truly, everything about him is giant.

I pinch the bridge of my nose, and my eyes water as I bite down harder on my lip.

“Everything you have up there is mine, Gwyn. Don’t make it hurt.”

As if every decision I’ve made the past year isn’t some form of self-immolation.

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