Maddy
“Stop!” Kyler shouted in his sleep.
My eyes shot open and panic held me hostage in place. The darkness in the room hushed around us like an impenetrable blanket. I tried to adjust my eyes to the light, searching for Kyler.
“I don’t want any more candy. I want to go home.”
I turned and looked at Kyler fast asleep, but his body thrashing on the bed, the sheets twisting in unrecognizable patterns around his legs. I turned on the side table lamp, the dim light casting shadows on Kyler’s face. His hair drenched, drops of sweat landing on the pillow, his body glowing with the sheen of the perspiration.
“These movies are weird. I don’t want to watch anymore. I want to go home. I want my mommy.”
The sound of his voice was haunting, not the usual hard edge but more desperate and scared, like a frightened child, unsure of what to do or what to say. His hands clung to the sheets, forming fists around the fabric, his face crushed to the pillow. I listened carefully, but his voice was muffled, muted, but I could still hear soft cries lingering in the room.
The soft cries of Kyler Sinclair in his sleep.
“Kyler,” I said softly, shaking him gently, hoping to wake him out of sleep. I knew with nightmares you couldn’t just throw cold water at someone and wake them. This I knew from the years of my mother’s own trauma. I often woke in the middle of the night to hear my father holding her or talking to her softly. I would pad over to their room, needing reassurance myself, and my dad would gently smile and tell me everything would be alright. This, though, wasn’t the same as my mother’s nightmares, though hers were horrible, this was horrific. “Kyler, please wake up.” I shook his shoulders, rubbing the dampness off his forehead.
“Stop. I don’t like it. Stop,” he shouted, causing the fear to spike in my veins.
Frantically, I started shaking him, his body moving back and forth as I used all the force I could muster. I no longer cared about how gentle I was supposed to be, all I knew was that Kyler was suffering and I needed him back here with me.
His eyes shot open but the warmth that normally lit them was now gone, instead a steel-cold blue in its place. Wherever he went when he slept, it had fortified his walls again, walls that I thought I was finally pulling down.
“Get away from me,” he seethed, voice cold, calculating, and laced with terror. The slow, methodical way he said it let me know that in that moment, there would be no reasoning with him.
I moved off the bed before noticing I was naked and slowly pulled the sheet off him and draped it around me. I turned away, unable to look in his eyes. I knew he was lashing out because he felt like he wasn’t in control, but I didn’t need to let him see the hurt on my face.
“Look at me, little mouse.” His voice was firm, and laced with drops of the unfeeling tone he used to use with me.
“Why, so you can be mean to me? Abuse me?” Keeping my back to him, I started searching for the remnants of my clothing, desperate to keep the tears at bay. I was fucking stupid. I’d opened up. I’d let him in.
I’d even given him my virginity, and this is what I had to show for it.
“Just look at me, Maddy.”
“You’ve treated me like a whore--but you didn’t buy me and I don’t need to listen to a damn thing you say.” I made sure to enunciate every word and leave the feelings out of it as much as possible.
“You’re really pretty all fired up.”
Pretty. Did he have the audacity to call me pretty?
“What’s wrong with you?!” I shouted, my temper getting the better of me as tears stung my eyelids. I flung around, losing my grip of the sheet, letting it fall and pool at my feet. I glanced down and saw the crimson stain, a reminder of what I had freely given to Kyler a few hours ago, and felt my anger rise.
How could someone who was so tender be so cruel? Then I remembered what he’d said in his sleep, and my temper lowered and shame bloomed. I probably shouldn’t have felt shame...I had a right to my anger. I deserved to be hurt and upset. A girl's first time should be sweet and the morning after she should be on cloud nine. No one deserved to feel the way he’d made me feel.
The bed creaked as Kyler got up and walked to me. Completely naked. I averted my eyes from him in all his naked glory. My mind couldn’t help wandering to the sex we’d had not too long ago.
“Why do you keep doing this, Kyler?” I asked, deflated, my head hung down. Kyler took my hands in his and we just stood there, the silence comforting in a strange way.
“Can you please look at me?”
“No,” I said, keeping my eyes fixated on the dark hardwood, memorizing the pattern of the grain. He bent down, obstructing my view, his blue eyes now peering at me. I loved those eyes. They were so deep and ocean blue that I could get lost in them, it didn’t matter if I wanted to or not.
“Damn it, little mouse. Look at me.” Kyler grabbed my arms and forced my head up with the pull of his arms. He stood, towering over me as I gazed up, trying desperately to fight back the tears and failing. “Fuck.”
He dropped his hands and tugged at his hair.
“I’m such a fuck up. I don’t deserve to breathe
