Ally puts her mug of chamomile tea down on her nightstand, and climbs into her fiancé Austin Moon's bed, and the thoughts of her best friend Trish's trauma and demons race through her mind. Austin notices and asks her,
"You OK, Ally?"
Ally says,
"Yes, but also no. Remember when I went out to see Trish today?"
Austin responds with,
"Yeah. Did something happen to her?"
Ally says,
"Yes. I went to the Emergency room with her because she thought she had broken her nose. She revealed to me that Chuck physically and verbally abuses her."
She blinks back the tears welling in her eyes. Austin pensively stares at fiancée.
"Now that you mention it, something always seemed off about their relationship and I have noticed a lot of bruises and scratches on her arms ."
Ally says,
"Austin, I look at you and know how you treat me so well, and I appreciate that so much. Trish doesn't have that and it breaks my heart for her."
Ally cries silently and wipes a tear from her eye.
"Um, I started thinking that if and when she and Chuck split, we could have her stay here with us until she's ready to get back on her feet."
Austin says,
"I'm on board. You're a good friend to her, Ally."
A few days later, Ally is with Trish at their home, to help Trish break up with Chuck. Chuck is once again, intoxicated, carrying an empty bottle of vodka in his hands, and partially confused, partially angry, he asks,
"What's Ally doing here?"
Trish fiercely says,
"I'll tell you what she's doing here, Chuck. I know how you've been treating Trish. You have no right to put your hands on her or treat her the way you've been treating her."
Anger begins to rise in Chuck, partially because he's drunk, and partially because Ally is confronting him. He is so misogynistic, that he can't stand a woman facing him. Chuck throws the bottle across the room, aiming for Trish but Ally pushes her out of the way, causing the bottle to fly and hit the wall before shattering. He pulls out a gun from the pocket of his shorts, head-locking Trish tightly, and covering her mouth with his hand, and using one hand to take the gun to Trish's neck, tears welling in her eyes and streaming down her face.
"You've lost your privileges to speak, Trish. You know, you take me for granted. All I do is love and care for you; you are ungrateful. Best of luck finding someone who loves you like I do."
Ally pries Chuck's hand off of Trish's neck, allowing her free from his grip, and snatches the firearm from him and shouts out,
"CHUCK! ON THE FLOOR, ON YOUR KNEES, HANDS UP, NOW!"
He stares at the two girls confronting him, stoic yet still angry and intoxicated.
Trish says,
"Chuck, we're over. For good now. I'm moving out, and I'm not taking you back, I'm leaving for good. I'm done letting you treat me that, and I hope for the best for you."
Chuck says to her,
"Don't act so confidently, WHORE. Don't come crawling back to me when you need help paying rent or bills."
Trish smiles confidently, despite being scared.
"I'll be fine without you. I never want to see you or talk to you again."
Chuck asks her,
"Where are you gonna be staying?"
Ally says,
"With me."
Trish says,
"Ally, that's very nice of you, but I can't accept that."
Her best friend puts her arm around her.
"No, I insist. I already talked about it with Austin, he's fine with it, and I don't want you to be alone right now."
Later on, Trish has her suitcases and is in the hallway of Austin and Ally's apartment and Ally whispers to her,
"Trish, I promise you, you're safe here with us."
She says,
"Thank you, Ally."
The two enter the apartment, with Austin casually strumming on his guitar and the second Ally and Trish walk in, he puts the guitar down and goes over to Trish, hugging her and putting her hand on the back of her head as if he was trying to comfort an inconsolably crying infant.
"You OK?"
Trish says,
"I'm traumatized, I'm scared, but I'm so grateful that you and Ally are going to let me stay here. Thank you."
Austin tells her,
"You know you're safe with us."
Trish moves her stuff into the guest room and while unpacking, she hears Ally talking on the phone.
"Hi, Dr. Brennick. It's Ally. I know I see you tomorrow, but I'd like to bring a friend of mine over to our session tomorrow. She just left an abusive partner. I think she needs someone to talk to, and needs help that I can't give her by myself. I'm not going to lie, it was very upsetting for me, too. That's fine. I can sit in, too. Thank you, Dr. Brennick. Have a good evening. Thank you. Goodbye"
Ally knocks on the door, holding a folder. She says,
"Hi."
Ally says,
"Hi."
Trish says,
"This room is so cozy."
Ally says,
"Yeah. If Austin wasn't here, I'd be sleeping down here, too."
Ally sits across from her on the bed, opening the folder. Trish asks,
"What are these for?"
"Papers for a restraining order against Chuck. I just talked to my therapist, Dr. Brennick, and if it's OK, I'd like to bring you to my therapy session tomorrow."
Trish says,
"I'm nervous."
Ally puts her arm around her childhood friend.
"I know. It's scary. It was scary for me, too."
"But I need it."
Ally's therapist, Dr. Paula Brennick, is a slender Lebanese-American woman with long, dark hair, tied in a low ponytail, always in a suit and Converse Chuck Taylors and carrying a pad and pencil. Ally sits beside Trish, across from the therapist. Ally says,
"Dr. Brennick, this is my childhood best friend, Trish."
Trish smiles at the therapist and says pleasantly, if somewhat timidly,
"Hi. Nice to meet you."
Dr. Brennick says,
"Thank you. Likewise. Ally says that you just left an abusive relationship. If you're comfortable, why don't you tell me about that?"
Ally puts her hand on Trish's hand which is starting to shake.
"Yes, I did. I had a boyfriend who I went to high school with. He lost his parents when he was a kid, and he was in a lot of abusive foster homes, and eventually moved in with his uncle, who is an alcoholic and a porn addict and has done time in jail for indecent exposure. This boy was a senior, when I was a freshman. He was very charismatic, which I think he used on me."
Throughout explaining her abusive relationship to the shrink, she starts to mentally process what led to her abusive relationship. Chuck is three years older than Trish, and he hung out with teens who used fake IDs and smoked marijuana. She was very confident, yet very vulnerable. Chuck was damaged himself as well. He had poor role models and hung out with people who drank and used drugs on their high school campus. Chuck was turned away from his family and abused in foster homes.
He got into fights at school, brandished pornography, drugs, and alcohol on campus, faked IDs and went to bars and strip clubs with his uncle and even occasionally participated in threesomes with his uncle, and then he attended college for a semester, and then dropped out of school and never cared about getting a degree or going to night school. Trish was a part of those threesomes and pretended to enjoy them, despite not liking Chuck's uncle. She still loved Chuck, as he knew how to love a girl, and then, things changed. Trish wanted to find herself, and Chuck didn't like that. Chuck's uncle made inappropriate come-ons to Trish, and sent her sexually explicit photos, and even pressured her to drink alcohol when she was a minor, despite her discomfort with it. She never bothered to tell him, because she loved Chuck.
Chuck's uncle, who was a terrible role model, but still the only family he had, started abusing drugs, and eventually died of sepsis, brought on by a fentanyl overdose three years ago, coincidentally when Trish's relationship with Chuck started to go south. She finally admitted that she didn't like Chuck's uncle because he harassed her and didn't care that she was a minor and tried to groom her and abuse her and the abuse only escalated from there.
Chuck has been an alcoholic for years. He has tried to go to AA meetings and rehab multiple times, but always ended up relapsing, and then he eventually stopped going. He was abusive when he was sober, and when he was drunk, he was ten times worse. Trish was the target of his anger and abuse. Ally feels a crack in her heart, watching Trish start to cry upon realizing that she's been groomed and physically, verbally, emotionally, and sexually abused since she was fifteen years old.
Dr. Brennick says,
"We can stop here. I understand if you don't want to talk about this."
The Latina wipes her eyes and tries to breathe deeply, hoping she will at least be calm enough to talk about how she feels. Ally feels a crack in her heart, watching her best friend crying, due to rediscovering all this repressed trauma that she had been holding onto for years and that she probably forgot she had. Trish had always been so strong, confident, tough, guarded, had no filter, and if she had something to say that you weren't going to like, she was unafraid to tell you straight to your face. But Ally feels guilty for being unaware of the hell her best friend has been through.
Trish sobs and says,
"I'm sorry."
Dr. Brennick says,
"You have nothing to apologize for. You're just processing your emotions and you're feeling what you didn't process back then."
Trish says,
"I need to remove myself from the room to compose myself."
The therapist says,
"Take as long as you need."
"Thanks."
She turns to Ally.
"How have you been coping?"
Ally says,
"I'm definitely sad and heartbroken for her, and I'm angry, not at her, at her ex-boyfriend for treating her so badly. Trish and I have been best friends since we were young children. I'm engaged now, and my fiancé treats me well. Trish didn't have that. I love Trish and care about her, and I feel guilty in a way, knowing I have what she didn't have."
Dr. Brennick says,
"Ally, you're a good friend. However, you can't blame yourself for not knowing, nor can you blame yourself just because your fiancé treats you better than your friend's boyfriend treated her."
"I know, I just wish I picked up on the pattern of all her bruises, cuts, and scars, and even her concussion sooner. I would ask her about where they came from, and she would respond with something superficial like that she tripped and fell and hurt herself."
Dr. Brennick says,
"You waited until she was ready to tell you, and you're being a good friend to her. Don't blame yourself, you did all you could."
Ally says,
"Thanks. I brought her into my home with my fiancé because I don't want her to be alone."
"Your friend is very lucky to have you."
I hope y'all liked this chapter. I have to be honest, I love Ally in this fic. She's so caring and such a good friend, also she's so relatable.
If you liked this chapter, remember to favorite, follow, and review! Love you my readers!