Sharing Harper (12 page)

Blackness seeped in,
forcing me into a deeper and darker abyss. My face felt like it was melting off and puddles of sweat were next to me in the sheets around me. My shirt was strapped to me as if it were molded into my body from dampness. The veins in my arms and neck were protruding, beating to the slow hum of my heart.

My heart, on one hand, was beating strong and fast urging the rest of my body to race and move but
at the same time it was slow and the beats were loud enough to be heard throughout the room.

Small cries escaped my dry and chapped mouth and I felt like I was transported to a small blue room that I had thought I escaped.

It was cold with only a small window in the back of the room. There was a full size bed in the center and the walls were a once cream color now tinted with mold and bronze dressings. There was a mural on the right wall of a sky, but someone had drawn rain clouds around the sun and the once shy wall was nothing but a sad place.

There was a single lamp in the corner of the room and the shades were drawn on the window. I was in the center of the room on the stark bed that only contained a single black top sheet that was stained and matted around the edges.

“Hello?” I barely squeaked due to my dry throat. I needed something to drink before the pain in my throat raided my mouth.

I slo
wly tried to get out of the bed but I felt like I had bricks on my feet. This place felt too familiar, yet I wasn’t sure where I was. I thought I fell asleep in my own bed? Had I transported somewhere else?

I heard two large feet stomping down the corridor outside and in barged a boy who was over six feet tall. He had dark black hair and large facial features wh
ich contrasted with his small eyes. His hands were covered with tattoos and his right hand donned a landscape of Chicago, which you could tell by the large well-known skyscrapers. He was only wearing a pair of dirty red and white plaid boxers. On his chest was a tattoo of my name written in cursive over his heart. I could recognize that tattoo anywhere. Only one person had my name on them. It had to have been
him.

When I suddenly realized where I was
, I felt like I was choking on my own tongue trying to scream but knowing that if I started I would be punished.

“I told you to stay
in bed you stupid fucking slut,” he barreled at me with two glasses of water in his hand, “I was trying to be nice and get you a glass of water, but there you go disobeying me again.”

His hands rose as he dumped the ice-cold water down my face sending an innate shiver through my spin. I huddled on the bed, not wanting to make a peep in case something more was going to come of this. Instead, I grabbed my knees and pulled them into my chest holding tightly hoping whatever punishment I was about to incur would end quickly.

Just as the large figure approached, he screamed, “I was just trying to be nice to you. I fuck you all good and tell you to lay in bed while I get you some water and you can’t listen to me. Why won’t you just let me take care of you?”

His body came running towards me rushing to sit n
ext to me on the lumpy mattress, which was stained with pale yellow and brown spots around it.

“I’m s
orry, I was just really thirsty,” I peeped out still very much aware that my throat was cracked and dry craving some water.

“Why won
’t you ever just let me take care of you?” He repeated over and over until his hands started shaking next to mine. I glanced down at his hands moving towards mine and noticed the small blue and pale yellow bruises spotted along my arms. I looked up towards my shoulder and noticed a baseball size bruise that was purple, which indicated a fresh bruise.

When he noticed I was looking at the damage done on my arms, his hands started to move towards my wrist and tears rolled down his face, but his expression never once faltered from the anger he displayed earlier.

“You deserved them, you know? It’s your fault they’re there. I would have never done that to you ever if you didn’t push me there.” He kept repeating these phrases over and over again still clutching the glass in his hand.

“You are just a stupid bitch for bringing this up again. I thought maybe we could move on. I never wanted to hurt you.”

Every time he repeated one of these phrases, his voice raised an octave. He was drowning my thoughts in my head with his voice; pushing me down emotionally. My brain suddenly clicked off and anything I was thinking shut down knowing all too well something bad was on the verge.

As a blank slate
covered my own thoughts, masking them from both the outside world and myself, a large arm hovered over my head with a small 8oz glass in hand.

Suddenly, there was an earth-shattering screech as the
glass fell from his hand and broke onto my chest and legs. Pieces of glass were thrown from opposite ends as the pressure of the glass erupted. It was like someone placed a bomb next to me and set it off. The shards of glass ripped through my skin as I embraced the pain that was about to set in. I never uttered a word, but curled in dire distress.

Once the glass settled into my skin, I started extracting shiny bubbles of shard. I noticed blood that seemed to stream down from my navel towards my legs. Fortunately, most of the gl
ass broke when it hit the floor but there were patches of blood that were incurred in battle. As the blood started to puddle on the stained mattress, I noticed him standing in the corner crying violently and shaking as if he was having a seizure.

I went to move my left leg, but a piece of glass fractured deep down in the muscle and the unbearable ache of the broken and stuck glass was too much too bear. I had to find something that would allow me to go deep into the wound and extract the glass.

I searched almost desperately for something that would allow me to take the glass out that didn’t require me moving much on my left leg. I finally found a pair of dirty scissors in the wooden nightstand drawer.

I leveled the scissors square with the wound and grabbed the mattress with my left hand as I dug the scissors deep into the wound. There was an undeniable agony that erupted like a volcano when I dug around for the piece of glass, but I had to be sure to take the glass out as a whole to prevent going to the hospita
l. When I was able to locate it I grabbed it with the scissors and yanked it out letting out a small whimper, hoping that he wouldn’t hear it and start screaming again.

When I pulled out the small shard of glass, I realized that I was unable to be sad or angry
with him. Someone just knocked an entire glass at me as it broke around my chest and legs, yet somehow I still felt bad for the little boy in the corner who was unable to control his anger. I was able to grab some paper towels and wipe down some of the blood, which was now a short and slow stream.

I walked over to him
and he trembled underneath my touch. He was on the floor in fetal position clenching himself as tears of regret seeped down his face. He wasn’t crying for me or for what he had done. He was crying because in his selfish way he knew I would feel sorry for him.

And he was right. I did feel sorry for him. I wanted to comfort him and console him. I wanted to tell him that everything would be okay. I wanted to make him feel better before I fixed myself. He commanded my attention first, and so I gave it to him.

Small whimpers escaped his voice as he cried over the pain he was causing me, frightened that his actions would have consequences. He needed that reassurance from me that everything would be alright. I am too broken to not comfort him. Maybe next time it will be different…

I opened his arms and crawled into his body and tangled with him in a blood embrace on the brown
, moldy, and smelly carpet.

***

“Harper! Shit, Harper, wake up!” A booming voice bellowed over me as I struggled to open my eyes, disoriented from what just happened. As my eyelids struggled to flutter open, I begin to notice small pools of blood around my hands seeping into my light pink sheets. My eyes viciously sprang open to find the source of the blood and realized that I had marks all across my wrists as if someone skidded across them with their car, except these marks were done by my own two hands.

I struggled to make sure it wasn’t the man from my dreams in my room and sighed deep
in relief when I noticed it was Ryder who was now desperately running to get towels from the bathroom.

I felt
disoriented from the entire situation, not sure of what the appropriate response was suppose to be. On one hand, I knew I was supposed to display the appropriate amount of fear and trepidation that came from slitting your own wrists with your own hands, but I felt nothing but complete numbness. I wasn’t sad or even concerned that blood continued to pour in trickles out of my wrists.

Moreover, I was worried that somewhere
Ryder was bringing about these nightmares from my past. Moments of my life that I have never relived, nor wanted to, had finally broken apart as soon as I met Ryder.

Hurriedly, I panicked and looked down at my legs to notice the small little square that
was now scared over. I slowly traced the scar with my bloody wrists remembering that time years ago.

“What the fuck are you doing? You’re getting blood all over the
place Harper.” He was angry, not because of what I had just done to myself, but because he wasn’t sure of how to respond or what to do to make everything better. He began to methodically wipe the towel over my wrists as I held them out towards him. As he slowly wiped away the evidence of my past from me I started to feel a spark inside my body. The memories of my past were moving towards my mind and turning on the stuff I had worked so desperately hard to turn off.

My heart began to race and suddenly I realized that being close to Ryder and connecting with him in such a way wasn’t going to be easy, not that I expected it to, but being wit
h him would unleash my feelings, thoughts, and emotions. Being close to Ryder was going to be the hardest thing I would have to go through and I wasn’t sure if I wanted that battle to be fought.

I quickly pushed him away wh
ile he was bathing me, slowly bringing the washcloth to my face and wiping away my tears.

“You
don’t have to come to my rescue,” I mumbled as he began to wipe my cheeks and forehead.

“I want to Harper,” was all that came out of his mouth.

“Please stop. I am begging you. You have to leave,” I cried trying to force him away and off my bed.

“I will never leave you…ever. You
’re too beautiful and broken for me to just walk away and never look back.”

I was getting angry because he didn’t get it. He didn’t understand that by staying here with me he was actually hurting me more. The two times I had
seen him were the two times I experienced nightmares of my past. I didn’t want to relive those moments again so I tucked them away in a neat little box in my head, but why now? Why did I have to deal with this now? I left home because no one wanted to deal with me. I left home because my parents didn’t believe it was possible their innocent daughter could have done what she did. I vowed over and over again to myself and to my grandpa that I would never ever allow myself to become that person again. And here I was, becoming that person and reliving those moments with a man I hardly knew.

“You don’t get it,” I uttered in a hush tone, “you can
’t be here, not because there isn’t a part of me that wants you here, but because you are killing me slowly.”

His face dropped and a look of utter disappointment and pure pain fell across his
face. He shuffled with the washcloth in his hand, not sure of what to say. He mumbled a few inaudible words, but he looked nervous.

Finally
, when he was able to speak something that I could understand he said in a hushed tone, “There is only one woman out there other than you that I truly love with all my heart.”

“Evelyn?” I interrupted.

“Yes. She is the light of my life. Harper, I don’t even know you and you’re the second woman on that list. Evelyn is irreplaceable.”

I was shocked that he actually uttered her name from his lips.

“But you, you’re something else. You have this beauty that comes from within you and my god, you are the most amazingly stunning woman I have ever seen on this planet. Your body curves in the right places and your mind is something I desperately want to explore. You, Harper, are something that words cannot describe, something that makes me want to live life like it was suppose to be lived. Someone who makes me want to forget about everything that has ever gone wrong and create a new path for myself…for us.”

Tears started welling in my eyes
and I quickly tried to blink them away. There was no denying that Ryder was going to make a mark in my life regardless of whether or not I wanted him to. He was going to captivate me. I don’t think I could continue thinking that he was just a good lay for me. He meant more to me now than just a fuck. He had witnessed two nightmares and had helped me through them. I was scared out of my mind. I couldn’t do this.

“You just don’t seem to get it Ryder. I cannot be near you because you bring out something inside of me that I don’t want to revive. I want it to go back where it came from; deep within me
, not to be touched or remembered again.”