Page 149 of Vying Girls
I don’t want to. I still feel lazy from our joint orgasm, her groan echoing around the walls. I don’t want to defile the memory with a worse one. But I will, because this is starting to affect them too.
Eyes on my fiddling fingers, I rack my brains for how to start.
‘We were super good friends at first, me and Nic. Well, after some teething issues. I was used to being an only child and I didn’t really like this man who was suddenly round all the time, shoving his daughter off onto me so he could go fuck my mum.’
‘Understandable,’ Elly comments, her eyes kind but no less intrigued than Haz’s.
‘Yeah, so everything was fine for about a year. Me and Nic became the besties of all besties.’ I smile, letting that sweet memory wash over me. ‘She was totally gay for me, but I didn’t realise at the time.’
Haz snorts. ‘I can believe that.’
‘Seriously. I remember her getting all shy one day. We were talking about kissing boys. Well, I was. There was this one boy on our street who had basically kissed all of us. We used to go into the woods and do it, all of us egging each other on. Then Nic said maybe we should kiss too, or something like that. I just laughed right in her face and went‘ewwww’. Literally no wonder she’s so mad at me.’
My smile falls when I remember that had happened the same day everything went to shit.
‘Things got weird. Not between me and Nic. With her dad. Jack was…I mean, he was totally into my mum but more and more he started seeking me out too. You know, coming into my room for chats, just the two of us. Being super nice to me. Doing things he wouldn’t do with Nic and making sure I knew that. Like giving me secret gifts and other treats. That kind of thing.’
I blow out a breathless laugh, though none of this is funny.
‘I literally couldn’t give a shit. I didn’t like him. No reason, not at first. Just jealous of him changing things between me and Mum. It used to weird me out how much she used to smile and sing and do all this shit she never used to. She was just happy, but my brain didn’t like how much of a different person she was.
‘Mum never noticed anything,’ I say dully. ‘She was so obsessed with our new life. The new house we moved into with Jack and Nic, the new everything. He bought her shit all the time, everything she asked for. Even then I was embarrassed, but Jack didn’t seem to care. He got her everything she wanted. Me too, though I never asked him for anything.’
I can still smell the polish Mum used to use. She never cared for cleaning before, but I guess that was her only way of paying him back. Things didn’t just fall into our laps. Even when they did, the feeling was foreign. The polish was soft and sweet-smelling. Stick-to-your-lungs, make-you-cough type stuff. Mum used to shout if me and Nic ever put our grubby paws on her newly polished banister.
It’s so weird opening the lid on all this stuff again, things I haven’t wanted to think about in years. I soak in the comfort of Elly and Haz either side of me, ignoring how Haz bristles, clearly knowing what kind of fucked-up direction this is all heading in.
‘Babe.’ Elly chucks my chin, thumb grazing my cheek near my throbbing lip. ‘Sure you’re okay talking about all this now?’
I nod against her hand. ‘Sick of keeping it all to myself, to be honest.’
It’s scary, sharing my darkest ugliness with the two whose opinions I care for the most. Ryan never knew any of this shit. There was never a point I wanted to tell him. He would have seen me as some broken thing. No longer his perfect, gloomy, alternative doll.
Elly and Haz already know I’m broken; they found me that way. They didn’t run. They picked me up, determined to put me back together. Because to them, I’m worth it.
Whether or not they think Nic’s still worth it after this, who knows.
‘He never did anything super bad to me. Never touched me or anything. It was just this feeling of discomfort every time he was around, especially when we were alone. Like this heaviness. I think Nic noticed. Her and her dad were close when we all moved in together but after a while, she started mistrusting him just as much as me. Maybe just feeding off my energy. It was kind of like that between us.
‘There were a couple of times he really freaked me out. One time, I was in the bath, and he just came in. He acted surprised at first, like he didn’t know I was in there. Then he started saying all this weird stuff, like how I was basically his daughter now, and how he can probably help me bathe like he does with Nic sometimes.’
I pause when I grow breathless, my heart beating harder. Yeah, this is all really fucked up to remember. It’s crazy how close to that kid I feel right now.
‘I just said Mum washes my hair better and started yelling for her. It was bullshit. Mum had stopped washing my hair by that point. But it got him to leave. After that, I made sure to lock the door even though Mum said I wasn’t allowed. Guess she cared enough to not want me to drown. It pissed Jack off, and I was only allowed to take showers after that.’ I shudder, remembering the crawly feeling every time my back was turned. ‘Hated them. Kept thinking he was right there through the steam, even though I locked the door. It was one of those enclosed, posh showers. Where they get so steamy you can’t see, you know?’
I glance up at the others. Haz doesn’t reply, just stares into my eyes like she’s about to fucking lose it.
‘Anyway. There were other times too. Like when he thought I was asleep, on the nights me and Nic weren’t sharing. He’d come in and just watch. Used to stand in the doorway mostly, sometimes at the foot of my bed. It shouldn’t have been weird. Parents watch their kids sleep, right? But even then I knew it wasn’t that. It’s probably why me and Nic shared so much. Everything was so much safer when she was around. For her too. We kind of relied on each other for different reasons.’
I have to take a break when the memories press in on me, like I’ve teleported back in time just by thinking about it. Like a demonic summoning of the past. It’s hard to reorganise my thoughts, to tell them what they need to know, instead of just everything. It’s all so significant though, it was everything that formed me.
‘It was kind of like that for a while. Mostly normal, some weird stuff on the sides. Nothing too crazy, at least not to a kid who didn’t know shit from shit. Then it all blew up. Obviously. As these things do.’
For a second, I let myself wonder what would have happened if things hadn’t ended. How far would the bastard have gone? Those kinds of things don’t usually stop at occasional perving.
‘Me and Nic were playing. Can’t even remember what, but I know we were looking for stuff. Stuff we shouldn’t have been. Adult stuff, boring stuff. I was in Jack’s office. The door was unlocked for once, so I was taking full advantage while he was at work. Not sure where Mum was. She kind of left us to it when Jack was out. It was only when we were all together did she want to play happy families.
‘Anyway, I found a bunch of photos. Of me. Mostly they were normal ones. Justloadsof them. All of me. None of Nic or Mum. Some were more pervy. Luckily none of me in the bathroom, just ones of me asleep or getting changed into the costumes me and Nic used to play in, or in my swimming costume. I knew I’dfound something weird. It wasn’t just the photos, it was the fact they were all stuffed in this metal box thing and shoved away somewhere secret. So of course I showed Mum.’
