Page 3 of Enslaved

Maybe I’ll go outside today to dig my toes into the warm sand. Through the pane of the window, the deep blue Aegean Sea beckons.

He’ll never find me here, on a remote island so small it barely qualifies as one; nestled against a smattering of rocks a swim away from Santorini. It’s the perfect place to hide. But I can’t stay here forever. I need to figure out what to do with my life. Who I want to be; where I want to live. But first I need to just do the little things…like function normally.

Maybe tomorrow, I’ll leave this room.

Maybe tomorrow, I’ll take a bite.

Maybe tomorrow, I’ll hate myself a little bit less.

Even now, weeks later, my traitorous body still remembers his touch. I spend hours huddled under my sheets, touching myself; pretending he’s telling me what to do, just like he always did.

He made me do things that would make a call girl blush.

I hated it.

Loved it.

Hated him.

Loved him?

It doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters is surviving the aftermath of what he did to me.

I had considered myself a strong woman. How did I get reduced to this? I grew up with boys. I was playing baseball and riding dirt bikes while the other girls spent their time on hair and makeup. I spent my prom night in the engine room of my neighbor’s fishing boat learning how to fix a broken carburetor.

But who’s going to fix me?

With a shaky breath, I placed the empty coffee mug down. I needed to get out of this room, if I was going to start living again.

I took a hot shower, combed out my long hair and twisted it into a bun. Yaya has been so good to me. She works in her café all day, then sits, teaching me Greek at night. But I need to earn my keep. Maybe keeping busy will help my mind escapehim.

I quickly dressed in the white shorts and T-shirt Yaya gave me. They belonged to her niece who is away studying at a university. I’d be safe right now if I had stayed at mine. But stupid me, thought I was going to see the world.

What a naïve, foolish girl I’d been. Picking up a bright green apron, I fastened the strings and walked down the back stairs.

“Jessie?”

“I’m fine Yaya. As fine as I can be. I thought I might help. Maybe you could teach me more Greek?”

“What if someone recognizes you?”

“How? He never took me anywhere. No one knew we were together…but I guess we weren’t. Not like normal people are, anyway.”

She smiled, patted my hand, and led me over to the coffee machine. “The first thing you must learn is how to make Greek coffee. Everyone thinks Columbia has the best coffee. They lie. It’s us Greeks.”

My lips twitched for the first time in weeks. My light had gone dark since that night in Capri. The night where I saw him for who he truly was and ran like hell.

I grabbed a note pad and began writing down everything Yaya was showing me about how to whip the Greek coffee before adding hot water. But I couldn’t concentrate. A man with dark hair that shined bluish-black in the sun was walking by outside. He was dressed in an expensive suit, and for a moment I thought it was him. But then he looked at me through the window as he swung a giggling toddler in his arms.

“Jessie?”

Yaya, asked me to attempt my barista skills. As I whipped the coffee grounds into a creamy foam that rose higher and higher, making a Greek Frappé, I was jolted back to where it all started. I am so far from the girl I was that day and how I mourn her loss.

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