Crash

Hollie’s hands shook slightly as they connected with Josh’s calloused ones, the momentary silence between them becoming comfortable as the girl prepared herself to speak. She looked up at Josh still sat beside her, only to notice that his eyes were across the room. As she glanced in the other direction, Hollie saw that the guy’s attention was fixated on the waitress coming towards them both, a tray with two steaming hot coffees in her hands. The girl was blonde and thin, around 20 years of age. She gently placed the tray on the table and smiled, leaving Josh and Hollie alone in each other’s company. “You ordered drinks?” Josh asked as he turned to the girl who was curled up slightly into his side.

“Your favourite. I figured it might help.” She smiled, their gazes connecting as Josh pressed his lips to her forehead, pushing her hair out of the way carefully. “Are you sure you’re okay to listen?”

“Of course, my dear. Only if you’re okay to talk about it though.” Josh spoke quietly, turning his body to face the girl’s as he pulled her in closer and she nodded, taking one long, deep breath in as she composed herself.

“Okay. My dad and I... We... We used to have a good relationship.” She paused and Josh felt his heart sink. He knew what was coming next, he’d picked up on the little signs that Hollie didn’t know she was giving off. He squeezed her hands tighter and looked right into her eyes as she continued. “We would do all of the dad/daughter things; he took me to the park whenever I asked and taught me how to ride a bike. This one time, I fell off on my way home and he had no clue what to do. He was always good at teaching me things, not so great at doing stereotypical ‘mum’ things, for obvious reasons I guess.” She chuckled, clearly fond of the memory. “When I was younger, he was the one who read me stories at night time and he would be the only one who could make the monsters underneath my bed go away. I still had him scaring the bastards off when I was 13 because I just knew they were there. He used to call me his princess. I haven’t been anyone’s princess since I was 14. I think that’s when everything changed.” Hollie stopped talking and shuffled, taking a mug from the table and sipping the liquid slowly.

Josh watched her closely, seeing that tears were forming in her eyes. She placed down the mug and turned back to Josh who was already armed with a napkin to wipe away the tears before they fell. “You don’t have to carry on. We can do this another time, it’s okay.”

“I want to. I just miss the old him, that all.” They exchanged sympathetic smiles and Hollie spoke up again. “He got forced out of work when the company he was with shut down. He’d been with them for as long as I can remember and they must’ve lost a lot of money because we never heard anything from them since. He spent a lot of time at home from then on and every time they thought I wasn’t listening, my parents... They would both argue. He never bothered to get a job after that. He was angry all the time.” She cleared her throat, closing her eyes to hold back tears.

Rubbing a pattern onto the exposed skin on her shoulder, words flowed from Josh’s lips into Hollie’s hair, his warmth breath tickling her neck. “I’m here, it’s okay.”

The girl carried on regardless. “He’d hit mum but they insisted they loved each other if I saw what happened. At first they said it was a game but they knew that I was smarter than to believe that. For the first year or so, he never laid a hand on me... Then I got cleverer... Or stupider, depending how you look at it. I saw mum’s bruises. I heard her cry every night. I noticed how she’d only speak when she was spoken to and how she always wore jeans and hoodies whatever the weather. I confronted him one day. Mum was at work; she’d taken on extra hours at the hospital to stay away from him. I asked him why he did it then he hit me too. It wasn’t just once or twice, in fact, I tried to count how many times it was but there were kicks thrown in there too and I’m almost positive that I blacked out when my head hit the edge of the kitchen cupboard.” Hollie leant over, picking up her mug again.

“Hollie, I-...” Josh tried to speak but he was lost for words. He saw the pain in Hollie’s eyes but she quickly interrupted him.

“Josh, it’s fine, let me finish, please.” Her words were soft, not harsh in any way at all and the guy nodded, listening to her every word as he promised he would.

“I never told mum. Not once did I utter a word about him hitting me. I hid the bruises with makeup yet they never seemed to fade. As one part of my skin faded to yellow, it would be black and blue within the next few hours, simple as that. I thought things couldn’t really get much worse. Dad was the only one who remembered my sixteenth birthday. Both mum and I hadn’t given it a second thought - every day was the same to me; wake up, go to school, come home and pray that he might not be angry. My relationship with mum was strained because she knew that she needed help, I guess she was just blinded by love, as cliché as it sounds. Anyway, sixteenth birthday.” Hollie broke off her tangent, getting back to the matter in hand. “Mum was working all day and I’d gotten home from school at around four. He was waiting for me, a box wrapped in silver paper with an absolute stunner of a bow on the top, it was just sat there on the dining room table as I walked in. He said it was for me. Reminded me of the fact that it was my birthday. ‘You’ve turned sixteen now, you know what that means?’ I don’t think I’ll ever forget him saying those words, y’know, it just sticks with me. That’s when he started doing it. He pulled off my blazer, the goddamn awful burgundy and yellow tie...” Hollie’s fingers caressed her neck, the memory so vivid in her mind. “The blouse next, then my skirt. Some of the comments he made, Josh. They make me sick.”

Hollie spoke through rafts of tears as Josh held her tighter than he ever thought possible. The liquid falling from her eyes absolutely soaking the material of his t-shirt as she sobbed against his chest and all he could think to do was try to comfort the girl. Their booth was silent but for her sobs and Josh took a moment to process everything that he had just been told, words buzzing around his head. He knew, he just knew that there was a darker side to Hollie’s past, and he hoped, he prayed that it wasn’t something that would’ve hurt her so deeply. Everything the girl went through, from such a young age too... Josh could only imagine how difficult life must have been for her over the past five years.

Hollie’s tears subsided after a while, Josh breaking the silence that had surrounded the pair. “He’s gone now, Hol. No one will ever, ever treat you that way again. I won’t let them. I know it’s not been long since we got close but I would go to the end of the earth to make you happy and I’d change your past if I could.”

Hollie moved from the crook of Josh’s neck, her eyes red raw and burning. She tried to connect her lips to his cheek, breathing out a soft ‘thank you’ as she got closer, though Josh moved his head slightly, their lips pressing together ever so gently, so tenderly that you’d think it was their first kiss.

Their foreheads touched together lightly as they parted. “You’ll be my princess for as long as you let me be your prince.” A genuinely smile spread on Hollie’s lips and Josh couldn’t have wished for a better sight.

“That was ever so corny, Joshua James, though you could be my prince forever and a day.” The girl looked so much more relaxed now, clearly happy to have gotten so much off of her chest.

---

Hollie lay in bed that night, thinking for quite some time. Her relationship with Josh had quickly blossomed into something that she craved, that she felt she needed to get her through the day. It used to be something she feared; an real relationship – she wasn’t even sure what was normal for a relationship between two people of her age. Josh had helped Hollie realise all of the things that she had once been oblivious to. Lies, threats and abuse were not something that most people had to endure. On the contrary, an English-tutor who just happened to be your crush who also had feelings for you isn’t something that many people had the pleasure of either.