And She Was Strong.

Lily didn’t want to open up her phone.

She had taken it out of her pocket after having returned home from Matthew’s house that afternoon and set it down on the counter, allowing it to rest and be silent.

Except that it hadn’t been quiet. In fact, it had been quite the opposite. It had rung more times than she could count, and what was worse was the fact that she knew exactly who it was. It wasn’t her mother or father, she knew that much, and the only person who would be that persistent on a Friday night was Jeremy. She felt a pinching in her chest as she thought his name, and her cheeks fanned red.

It was supposed to be every Friday.

She knew that when she next saw Jeremy, he would not be happy. Maybe there would be some way of coaxing him down to being calm; Lily told herself that things couldn’t be all that horrible, all the while staring at her cell phone that had gone off that morning while she laid in Matthew’s arms.

And she felt guilty about it. She knew that she couldn’t tell Jeremy that she had spent the night with Matthew; although nothing had really taken place, there would be no calming him from that.

So she stared. For a good while, it was that way; her parents were both out, perhaps with friends or shopping for groceries.

It took her fifteen minutes to work up the nerve to grab her phone back and open it up. She held it, and as she did, the metal seemed to burn her palms. She felt like a bad child, one that had gone against the will of their parents and knew that they would be punished.

Thirteen missed calls.

She took a deep breath, scrolling through all of them to find they had come from the same place. And she just felt so guilty about everything; guilty for not being home the previous night, guilty for not allowing Jeremy to have her one more time. She even felt guilty for having so much fun with Matthew and the boys. Deep down, she knew it was wrong of her to expect better things, that it was wrong of her to have had those few beers the other night and staying over at Matthew’s house.

What was worst of all, however, was the fact that she had not left Matthew’s arms when she knew that she was not supposed to be there. She knew that she had crossed a line that had been drawn by Jeremy as soon as he began to force her into doing things she didn’t want to do.

She’d crossed that line, plain and simple. And she was ashamed of herself.

The sequence of events that followed was somewhat of a blur; from her hitting the ‘dial’ button and calling Jeremy back, from the shouting in her ear through the receiver and from the accusations that he had screamed back at her. From the wordlessness that spilled from Lily’s lips and from Jeremy leaving his apartment and driving over to Lily’s home.

And from Jeremy not ringing the doorbell to him storming toward her and hitting her hard across the face.

Lily had known what was coming. She wasn’t quite sure why she had just let it happen, but she did know that she had brought this upon herself. She knew that she deserved what she was getting. She deserved it all.

And from being dragged up the steps by her arm, and from her feet tripping over themselves as they marched upstairs to her bedroom.

From there, it was a blur. From there, Lily wasn’t sure herself what was happening. She did know that there was a pain that was worse than she had ever felt. It wasn’t even what he was doing to her that was what hurt; instead, it was that longing for a peace she had known that morning that brought her the suffering. And that suffering wouldn’t leave her.

She couldn’t help but thinking of Matthew the whole time that Jeremy fucked her. She couldn’t get his face out of her mind, or the warmth that his arms had given her from remaining stagnant. She felt dirty, remembering everything that had been. She felt dirty and disgusted with herself as she tried to made herself understand that she wasn’t Matthews: she was Jeremy’s.

Lily missed him so badly.

Jeremy pulled out and said to her:

“Well, what did you expect?”

She realized then that she had been crying.

For the first time, she had cried in front of Jeremy after the pushing. He had stuck around long enough to witness her acting out like a disobedient child. She was letting herself cry and cry and let herself be shown to him so openly. She had sworn to herself in silence that she would never allow him to watch her like this.

And just like that, he had seen everything she had been hiding from him. He had seen that insecurity and pain that poured itself from her eyes like hot rain.

Tears stained her cheeks and he just stared for a moment. He just watched her and how wounded she had become.

He watched for a minute before he pulled his clothes back on and left the room.

Lily listened through her choking and huffing as the wheels of Jeremy’s car churned around and around, pulling out of her driveway. And she listened to the gas being wasted, blowing out the back of the car as he took off down the street.

Everything that happened with Jeremy was a blur to Lily, but what she did know with utter clarity and understanding was what she felt in his absence.

She was cold.