Sky rested on her bed, lying on her side, her heavy head on the pillow that was wet from her tears. Her head ached, her breath came uneven as if her lungs were too used to sobbing, and didn't even remember how regular breathing worked.
The room was dark, only her small bedside lamp gave some light, but more than that, it created soft shadows that filled the bed, the room, the world.
Dad was sitting on the bed next to Sky, leaning his back against the headboard, his long legs crossed at the ankles. He was wearing the pair of funny Squidward socks Sky had gotten him for his birthday. The cartoon figure was staring back at Sky with disapproving eyes, but Dad's hand on her shoulder was warm, it was comforting, it was the the only thing that kept her sane.
"Are you going to break up with him?" Dad asked, his voice as soft as the shadows that surrounded them.
Sky shrugged. "I don't know yet."
She had told Dad what Hawk had done - or a version of it since Dad really didn't need to know what they had done in the janitor's closet. But the details didn't matter - what mattered was that Hawk had broken her trust by telling their intimate secrets to his stupid friends and turned it all into some kind of a dirty joke. That much Sky had told Dad, and that had been enough to make him understand why Sky rushed home sobbing and tears running down her face.
"Maybe you should sleep on it and talk to him tomorrow." Dad suggested. "It's not good to make big decisions when you're this upset."
"Yeah, maybe."
Dad was right, of course. Because right now Sky felt like she would start screaming if she'd ever have to talk to Hawk again - but she also knew that no matter how badly he had hurt her today, her love for him was far from dead. She needed to think this through before doing anything she'd end up regretting.
She let out a trembling sigh and wiped her cheeks, but the salty film of half-dried tears wasn't going anywhere. Nor was the weight on her chest, the dagger in her heart.
"Do all guys do that?" Sky asked, turning her sore and swollen eyes up to look at Dad. "Talk to their friends about… intimate stuff?"
"No, Sky," Dad sighed. "Not all guys talk like that. What Eli did was very stupid and very disrespectful."
"Then— then why do I only fall in love with assholes?"
She started crying again, soft, silent tears falling down her cheeks. She cried for some time, and Dad sat by her side, his hand on her shoulder, rubbing soothing circles to her upper back.
Sky thought about Hawk. About their encounter in the closet. The way he had held her, how he had breathed words of love and need into her ear, how he had made her come with his long, skillful fingers, how he had clasped a hand over her mouth when he had fucked her hard like he would die if he didn't have her, like she was the fucking oxygen he breathed.
Had all his declarations of love, all his kind words been a lie? Was her body the only thing he wanted from her? And she had been so willing to give him fucking everything - just so that he could boast about it all to his stupid friends.
Just like Matt.
It hurt. It hurt so much Sky could barely stand it. The pain in her chest was agonizing, the tight iron band around her lungs made it impossible to draw in a breath.
It was driving her mad.
The pillow under her cheek felt like the old leather couch in Matt's living room. She was cold, her head ached. The blanket she had pulled on top of her before passing out was gone, and so were her panties—
No, no, why am I remembering that now?
Sky drew in a shaky breath, forced her eyes open. She was home. In her room. She was still wearing her jeans and her hoodie, and Dad was here, next to her, his hand on her shoulder.
Matt was gone. He couldn't hurt her anymore. It was her who kept holding onto the pain of these memories so that they would keep hurting forever and ever and ever because that was what she deserved for letting Kat die.
Sky took a deep breath, as deep as she could, and let it out slowly. She could almost feel Kat's hand in hers, hear the sound of her voice. She had promised to be strong for Kat, she had promised to live. To fucking live. But She hadn't known how fucking hard it would be.
"Can I tell you something?"
"Of course. You can tell me anything. You know that."
"Okay."
But the silence fell between them again, and it lingered on for some time before Dad spoke again.
"Is this about Eli? Has he done something else—?"
Sky shook her head. Her throat was raw and hurting from all the crying, and what she wanted to say weighed a thousand tons on her chest.
"No."
"Then what is it?"
"It's about Matt."
Dad's hand froze on her shoulder.
"What… what about him?"
"It happened… maybe a couple of weeks before… before I left him." Sky started. Her voice was weak and silent, she wasn't sure if Dad could even hear her. But the words felt like they had a will of their own, like now that she had decided she would talk, there was no stopping this, they would pour out of her mouth with or without her will. "I told you I was staying the night at Kat's. But I wasn't. Matt had a house party, his parents were away, and… And I got drunk."
She paused to take a breath, then another. Dad waited silently, his hand was still on her shoulder, he was motionless. Only the sharp rising and falling of his chest told of his emotion.
"I passed out on the couch."
The couch, so cold under her barely covered body. The soft, dark leather against her cheek. The expensive merino wool blanket she had pulled on top of her, one of Matt's Mom's. The room had been spinning, Sky had felt like she was falling, falling, falling.
She'd had no idea back then, that she would still be falling, more than a year and a half later.
"I don't remember any of it." she breathed silently. "I don't know if it's for better or worse that I don't remember. But… when I woke up, I…"
Dad brought a hand to his mouth, pressed his fingers tightly on his lips and Sky realized he was holding back tears, that he was fighting not to let his pain show. And Sky's heart was breaking for him. Maybe she shouldn't have said anything. What good could come out of this? What kind of a daughter told this kind of messed up shit to her dad?
Dad would never look at her the same way after this.
But she couldn't stop now. The memories were a tight band around her lungs, they had been choking her ever since that morning she had woken up on that couch, but finally, she could feel that band breaking. Every word she let out made a tear in it, and once she was finished it would snap, and she could finally breathe. She would finally stop falling.
"I woke up without my underwear. Matt had… he had raped me."
Saying it made it true. She stopped falling just to be smashed against a concrete floor.
"Oh Sky," Dad groaned, his voice thick and broken. Sky realized he was crying. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry I didn't know."
"I didn't want anyone to know. I told no one, not even Kat."
"I wish you'd told me."
"He said no one would believe me." Sky breathed and glanced up to see Dad. "He said I deserved it."
Tears kept running down Dad's face, but he looked like he didn't even notice them. He did nothing to wipe them away, and they streamed down his cheeks, all the way to his neck.
"He told his friends," Sky spoke silently, breathlessly. "He'd taken pictures too. I heard later… that he'd sent them to his friends. They'd all been laughing about it. They thought it was a great joke or something."
Those pictures had been spread wide on the net, Sky knew. On social media. After Kat had died and Matt had been sent to prison, people had kept sending those photos to her anonymously, with cruel messages calling her a whore, telling her it was all her fault, that she was a slut, a stupid, crazy slut.
That she deserved it all.
It had only ended when she had changed her number and all her social media accounts after they had moved here. But still, she was sometimes scared that it wasn't truly over. That some of Matt's old friends found her and sent those pictures to her again - or even worse, to people around her. To her friends. To Hawk—
As if reading her mind, Dad asked: "Does Eli know?"
"No." Just the thought was mortifying, it filled Sky with horror and shame. It was one thing to tell Dad, but Sky knew she could never tell Hawk.
Though now it hardly mattered. He treated her like a slut anyways, he had talked about her like she had no worth, and that hurt even more than the memories of what Matt had done.
Maybe Matt was right. There is something wrong with me and Hawk saw that too.
"I— I didn't want him to think about me like that," Sky continued, forcing the words out of her mouth through her burning throat. "But— I— I couldn't change it. He only liked me because I'm easy—"
"Sky, no—" Dad interrupted her. "No, darling, that's not true."
"How— how can you know that?" She was sobbing now again, tears were filling her eyes. "The things he said to his friends—"
"He is a stupid boy and I would strangle him if he was here now, but Sky—" Dad paused as if to weigh his words carefully before letting them out. "I saw how he was after you got hurt. No matter what he said today, he does love you."
Sky wiped her nose in the sleeve of her hoodie in the lack of tissue and turned her eyes up to Dad again. He looked tired, tired and sad, and angry at the same time and Sky felt like the smallest person in the whole world for dumping all this shit on him. Dad deserved better. He deserved to be happy with his new lady friend, he deserved better than to have a nutjob daughter rushing home with some stupid drama time after time, ruining his life.
She had poured all this shit on Dad and still, she couldn't breathe, she was still broken and hurting and wrong and it would never end, it would never get better because Matt had been right all along.
She was broken beyond repair.
If only I had died this summer. Dad never would have found out about this.
"Sky—" Dad's raspy voice broke through the fog of her mind. "I'm sorry I didn't know what you were going through—" his voice broke mid-sentence, he had to take a deep breath before he could continue. "When— when you were born, I promised to take care of you, to always protect you. I have failed, miserably, and for that I am sorry."
"It's not your fault, Dad," Sky sighed, closing her tired eyes. "It's my fault. All of it."
"None of it is your fault!" Dad let out, his anger bursting through. "It's Matt's fault. You are not to blame, and I don't want for one second you thinking you somehow brought this on yourself, because that's not true."
Sky didn't answer, because what was there to say? Dad could say that 'til the end of the world but Sky was just as tainted, just as broken as before. There was no place in her body that wasn't hurting.
"Dad?" She sighed, letting her eyes close.
"Yeah?"
"Will you stay?"
"Until you fall asleep?"
"For the whole night?" Her voice came out strangled, silent, raw. "I— I don't wanna be alone."
Dad laid a hand on her head, brushing his fingers gently through the mess of her hair, pulling the tear-soaked strands that were glued to her face back behind her ear.
"Of course, I will," he said. "My darling girl."
Things got dark again. Sorry. :(