Chapter 17:
A/N: Okay, I'm back, slowly hah but here we go with the next chapter! I should be writing essays and doing projects right now… but who needs those:P! hah. And more Mindy stuff this chapter, or maybe next? I don't know until I write it haha. I picked out my glasses today haha I shall look funny with them. Anyhow… I keep forgetting this is a CHRISTMAS fiction! I shall try and focus more on Christmas now, or at least mention it:P. AND all the stuff I am writing about 'graduating' into communities and that is completely made up haha.
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After another hour of arcade games, the kids, and Calleigh and Eric, were ready to head home, and possibly out onto the slopes. Dropping the three children off at their hotel room to two very grateful parents, they were thanked, hugged and then back to their own room.
"Do you realize that tomorrow is Christmas Eve?" Eric asked Calleigh who stopped walking momentarily.
"It is!" She exclaimed, hitting her head. "I honestly forgot! I've been having so much fun… wow!"
"Yeah. I forgot too, until I saw this flyer," He pointed to it, as they were passing an elevator, which had a bulletin board beside it.
"Christmas party." Calleigh read aloud, "After dinner on Christmas Eve in the ballroom."
"Ballroom?" Eric crinkled up his nose.
"Ballroom." Calleigh confirmed, as they resumed walking again. "Do you know how to ballroom dance?"
"Yes." Eric nodded, almost in shame.
"Really?" Calleigh hadn't been expecting him too. He seemed more like a wild dancer, not a ballroom dancer.
"My mom made me take lessons when I was younger." He admitted, a slight blush rising to his cheeks.
"I learn something new every day." She smirked.
"And you? Do you know how to ballroom dance?" Eric returned the question.
"Yeah." Calleigh nodded. "But I haven't had to in a long, long time." By this time, they had reached the door to their room, and went inside.
"Why did you have to learn, or did you do it voluntarily?" Eric inquired.
"I had to learn for my 'graduation' into my community." Calleigh sighed, not wanting to go down memory lane, but a part of her was telling herself that opening up to Eric, being honest about her past, would be good for her.
"Graduation into your community?" Eric raised his eyebrows. "Sounds serious." He joked.
"It was, sort of." Calleigh shrugged. "In the part of Louisiana where I lived, when you were fifteen years old you "graduated" into the community which was sort of like becoming an adult. Mostly the whole town came, we all had dates, and we had to go to weeks of ballroom and classical dancing lessons beforehand. The music was all picked and we had to wear white dresses, sort of like a prom just all white, and the guys wore black tux's."
"Sounds… fun?" Eric knew that that wasn't the whole story behind it, but was reluctant to pry. "So how was yours?"
"It is in my top five worst days of my life." Calleigh sighed, willing the tears not to fall down her cheeks. Not yet anyway.
"Aw, I'm sorry Cal." Eric told her.
"It wasn't your fault." She replied.
"Can you tell me what happened?" He hoped she would. She nodded silently, deciding how far back to being.
"A week before the graduation, I came home from dance practice completely exhausted, as my date was, although very good looking, a hopeless dancer, and we had to stay later, and work harder, than any of the other groups. My brothers were never around anymore, I hadn't seen Todd, who was the oldest, in well over a week, Chris, the second oldest in at least four days, and Brett who was fourteen at the time, basically lived at his friends house. My Mom was never around; she lived in her own part of the house in her own fantasy world. My Dad, well, he was at work a lot… and when he wasn't at work, I was finding out why my brothers either forced me to stay in my room, or made me go out most of the time."
"What do you mean?" Eric was almost positive he knew, but it didn't have to be that… it could have been something else?
"He was always drunk." Calleigh continued, staring off into space in a way that was making Eric feel very uncomfortable. The look of pain on her face was as if she was back in Louisiana reliving it all instead of in Ontario with him, on vacation, having fun. Nearly all of him wanted to pull her to him in a hug, to tell him it was all right… but he was correct in guessing this was the first time she'd told anyone about what happened to make her childhood, or teenage years, so traumatic.
"And when he was drunk, he wasn't the same man he was when he was sober. He was angry; he hit them. They wouldn't let themselves hit back, I think Brett tried once. I think, coincidentally, that was the weekend he fell down the stairs and we spent the rest of it at the ER while he was stitched, and casted. I didn't do anything wrong either, I walked in, like I did every night, to find him sprawled out in the living room… I thought he was asleep, so I planned on tiptoeing past him to the kitchen to get a snack. I was in the midst of doing so when he stumbled into the kitchen yelling obscenities at me for making a mess, which I had planned to clean up." Calleigh was blinking back the tears now as he remembered how angry he had looked, and how fearful she had instinctively got. "I tried to tell him that I didn't mean to make a mess, and that I'd clean it up right then, but when I turned around to do so, he grabbed my wrist and whipped me around to face him again. He told me that I shouldn't have made the mess in the first place, and that's when I smelled the alcohol on his breath. I knew he was drunk. He wasn't my Dad anymore, he was an alcoholic. That was the first time. The second was the day before the graduation. I had just come home from my fitting, and I laid my dress out on the sofa and I was going to upstairs and try it on again because I felt unbelievably beautiful in it, and my Dad was yelling at me when I turned around. I was scared that he'd grab my wrist again, I still had a bruise from it, and had to explain it to everyone already, I said I smacked it when I tripped over clothes in my room, I don't know if they bought it or not, but they didn't ask any more questions so it was okay. I ignored him, he was yelling so angrily, so loudly, I couldn't even understand what he was saying. I stepped around him, and tried to make it to my room where I could lock the door and ignore him some more, but this time he not only grabbed my wrist but he hit me across the face, then again and I ran upstairs as fast as I could. My dress, which I had unfortunately taken out of the bag already had blood droplets on it, it was ruined. My face was rapidly swelling. It wasn't bleeding too badly, and I didn't need stitches, so I stayed in my room. I called my friend who was to be driving me to the event the next day, and told her I had come down with the flu. I'm not sure if she suspected anything, I doubt it, she had no reason to… I never got to go to my graduation. It was supposed to be one of the best days of my life, and instead, I was sitting in my room, crying on my bed, wishing my dress didn't have my blood on it, and my face wasn't swollen to a size where I would never consider leaving my room. I was almost angry enough to go to the police and report it. I knew I should, but then he knocked on my door, and he was sober. I let him in, still hostile because of his behaviour the previous day, but he was almost in tears. He asked me why I wasn't at my graduation, and I told him. He cried Eric, my Father cried, and apologized and begged for my forgiveness, and that's when I realized it wasn't him… this was my Dad, the man who had hit me the night before was someone else… And from then on, I took whatever he gave me while he was drunk, and cleaned up after him in the morning, and reassured him everything was okay. I still have to, you know."
"He ruined your life Calleigh." Eric told her, desperately wanting to hold her now, to wipe the tears off of her face, to replace them with a smile. He wanted to make the memories go away.
"He didn't ruin my life Eric…" Calleigh told him, "I'm still here, with you, right? I still have a great job which I love." Eric didn't know what to say. Calleigh was still the victim of an abusive childhood, she still cleaned up after her father even to this day, he guessed. It wasn't long ago her father thought he hit someone with his car while he was drunk, and he guessed that the cycle hadn't stopped since then.
"Yeah." Eric nodded, not wanting to argue. He finally gave into his urge and pulled Calleigh into a hug. The tears, which she was beginning to control, started up into sobs again at this. Eric wrapped his arms tightly around her while reassuring her, "Everything'll be okay Cal, you've got me.
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A/N: Past time? Okay. So yeah, hah sorry that the graduation into the community thing was a little weird, but yeah. What did you think of that one?