Piece of Work

"It's going to be okay," Olivia promised, rubbing circles on my back.

I had pretty much stopped crying at this point, just kind of sniffling and taking deep breaths to steady myself. Despite all my trying to calm myself, I was still shaking.

"What happened to you, Faye?" This was the first time she'd even asked what happened.

Breathing deeply a couple more times, I finally explained everything, starting from the beginning, when I first met Ben to what happened tonight.

Her brown eyes grew stormier with every word that left my mouth. By the end, she was downright furious. “No wonder he didn’t want you to talk to me,” she understood. “I’d have talked some sense into you.”

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry about everything.” I looked at her seriously, and she waved me off.

“Don’t worry about it. It makes sense now.” She pulled me close to her for a second. As my eyes closed, I relived everything that I’d had to go through since I started going out with Ben. It hadn’t even been that long, but it felt like it had been more than a lifetime. I’d put up with more shit from him than anyone in my life.

That thought kind of made me angry. I had never put up with anyone’s shit before Ben, so what made him so different? It was obvious that we were over, at least in my eyes, so maybe I needed to show him just how over we really were, set him straight…

“What are you thinking?” Olivia asked, seeming to see the wheels turning in my head.

The corner of my mouth pulled up slightly as I turned toward her slowly. Her eyes narrowed in suspicion. But I was too busy formulating my plan to answer her question.

A few minutes later, I got up off the floor. “Faye!” Olivia called after me.

“Can you drive me home?” I turned around and questioned, remembering that I didn’t have a car.

Warily, she followed me. I could tell that she was trying to figure out what was on my mind, but I didn’t want to tell her. This had to be a secret operation. I couldn’t drag anyone down with me, especially not Olivia.

The entire ride back to my house, Olivia tried to find out what I was planning, but I shook my head, trying to silence her. It only worked a couple minutes before she’d start up again, but I never gave her a straight answer, working on being as vague as I could.

“You can go home now,” I allowed. “I’ll finish it by myself.”

“Faye, I’m worried about you,” Olivia expressed. “I can’t just let you do whatever. You’re clearly not in a good state right now.”

“Olivia,” I sighed. For a second, I just looked at her. She was so sweet, so young looking. Easily, she could pass for a twelve-year-old. There was so much that she didn’t know yet, and things that she had heard about, but she didn’t know what it was like to experience. She still hadn’t had her first kiss. Everything about her just screamed naïve. There was no way that I could tell her what I was about to do, since it was so impulsive. At the time, I didn’t care whether I’d regret it or not. It wasn’t about that.

“Faye, please.” I could tell that my behavior was upsetting her, shown by the tears starting to gather at the corners of her eyes.

“I’m sorry,” I expressed before shutting the door and running into the house. I knew where everything was hidden, though I wasn’t supposed to. Hurriedly, I gathered what I needed before stuffing it in the inner pocket of my denim jacket and starting back out the door.

Mom couldn’t question me, what I was doing, where I was going, since she was out with friends for the first time in years. My luck just couldn’t have been better.

About ten minutes later, I was pulled up in front of Ben’s house, gathering my thoughts for a second. Then, after taking a deep breath, I stepped out of the car and walked up the front steps.

I knocked on the door a couple of times, then stepped back to wait for someone to answer the door.

A couple of minutes later, an angry looking Ben opened the door and pulled it closed behind him, standing right in front of me. “Faye? What the hell are you doing here? Do you know what time it is? My parents are sleeping! God, do you have any class at all?”

He back-handed me across the face, and I staggered back a little. But I didn’t run away from him, not this time. The anger in my welled up stronger, more intensely. It was the time when I realized what I was doing just had to be done. There was no turning back now, now that I was so determined to do it.

“Can I talk to you?” I asked.

Sighing, he nodded and we started down his lawn. “You know,” I started, “I really love you. You know that, right?”

“Yeah? So?”

“So…it’s amazing that I do, really. Because all you’ve done, all this time, was treat me like shit.” My hands clamped into fists, and my jaw clenched temporarily. A few seconds later, it relaxed, and I kept talking. “You hit me…so many times. And then you tell me that you love me, and I forgive you. I know that I shouldn’t, but I do. And it’s not going to happen anymore. Because you don’t love me, and you don’t have any self-control at all.”

“That’s not true,” Ben tried to protest, but I shot him an angry glare. Something told him that there was something not quite right going on in my head, and he shut his mouth.

“It is true. And tonight, I tried to take a stand against you. Was it a big stand? Not really. But I tried. What did you do in response? YOU RAPED ME!” Tears were starting to gather in my eyes, but my voice was staying surprisingly steady. “How could you do that to me?”

“Because I wanted you, and you weren’t cooperating. That doesn’t mean I don’t love you,” he tried to soothe, putting his hand on the top of my arm.

I flinched away from him. We were in the middle of an empty parking lot for an old, family-owned restaurant not far from Ben’s house. Then, I reached into my jacket and pulled out my mother’s handgun that she hadn’t used a day in her life. Little did she know that it was about to come in handy.

Ben’s eyes went wide as he put up his hands in surrender and took a few steps back. “Faye…come on. Don’t do that.”

“Don’t?” I gasped out. “How many times did I tell you not to hit me? Not to rape me? Did you listen?”

His mouth opened and mouthed words, but no noise came out. “DID YOU?!” I screamed, getting angrier by the second.

I pulled back the hammer of the gun and aimed it at his chest. “No. The answer is no. You never gave a fuck about anyone but yourself. Never. And now you’re going to pay for it.”

“Faye…please don’t do this. I’m sorry.”

“I would consider stopping if you were serious. Consider us over.” Then, I closed my eyes tightly, feeling the tears finally fall down my cheeks, and pressed the trigger.

A huge noise filled the air, splitting the night. My eyes opened again as the bullet pierced Ben and he crumpled to the ground. I realized that he was dead at the way he lied there, not moving in the slightest.

Slowly, I moved toward what used to be Ben. Looming over him, I jabbed my toe into his side, waiting for a response.

There was none. My heart started to race as I realized that I’d just done the smartest thing in my life. Now…

I was free.