The Scars She Hides

Part 15 - Eyes and Eyebrows and Thumbs... Oh My.

CHARLOTTE

I didn't want to watch Holden's face as he saw my scars for the first time... but there was really no helping it.

Kind of like how when you are up somewhere really high, and your brain keeps chanting at you - don't look down, don't look down, don't look down - but you look down anyways?

It was something like that.

I watched as he opened his eyes, meeting mine first, and then slowly moving them down to my exposed shoulders.

That was where the damage started.

Littered over my pale skin were small clusters of discoloured and raised circles. Two small circles on the nights that he was feeling generous, or the nights he got bored quickly. Three or four if he was in a particularly sour mood. Those nights were the longest. The nights where he would drunkenly ramble about how I had ruined his life, how he would have been better off if I had never been born.

When he was really sloshed, his favourite phrase was, "You stole her from me." Over and over again. I could still hear his slurred speech, slow and heavy from all of the beer he had consumed. Her, meaning my mom I was assuming. Considering I was born before they had even met, me knowing my mom for 17 years compared to his 1... didn't really make sense.

But how do you talk sense into a 200 lbs man holding you down and using you like an ashtray during his alcoholic rage?

You don't. I learned that the hard way.

Holden had already been sitting still, but he had gone even more stiff, if that were even possible. It was like he was carved out of stone. The only part of him moving was his eyes. I watched them as they slowly tracked the unorganised burns from my shoulders down to my elbows, and over my forearms.

The scars were no longer a vivid red like they had been when I first moved here. But they were also far from the final pale white colour I was promised by the dermatologist. The scars were somewhere in the middle of a long healing process, currently a dark reddish brown.

Holden searched my other arm, finding not quite a mirror image, but something similar enough on my opposite side. After his eyes had marked every burn vidable, he returned his stare to my face.

I knew that without the high neck of the jacket Holden could probably see the scar on my face and neck peeking out from beneath my hair. Holden had most likely seen it that day in the nurse's office, I guessed, after he made painfully obvious efforts to keep his eyes away from my neck. A for effort. 

Even with the assumption that he had already seen the large gash on the side of my face, the only thing that had my hand pushing my hair behind my ear and off my shoulder was the look on his face.

Holden's face was entirely blank. Not closed off in a secretive way, but held emotionless as if to say, "Truth accepted. Next." It was that immediate acceptance that kept my hands from trembling as I revealed the side of my face.

Like I had expected there was no surprise in Holden's eyes as he took in the jagged cut. He looked at it, followed its length from one rough end to the other, and then let his gaze jump back to my arms.

While his easy acceptance to one of my ugly truths was comforting, it was gut wrenching as well. How hard had I worked to keep these to myself? I had gone through painstakingly difficult measures to make sure my grandparents saw as little evidence of my past as possible, and my classmates even less. Now I was offering them up on a silver platter to my tutor / newly turned friend / guy I may or may not have repressed romantic feelings for? And when I say repressed I meant repressed, compressed, denied, and unthought of feelings. I was more sure that said feelings were the result of some desperate need for positive human interaction than actual romantic interest. Yes. That was it.