Page 107 - My FlipBook
P. 107

T R A I L O F C R U M B S


              impossibly bright through a curtainless window. Not a single
              sound. Except breathing.
                 Greta had moved her eyes in its direction. Dylan’s loose
              brown waves spread across the pillow, his head turned away
              from her. Bare shoulder and arm over the blanket. She lifted
              the blanket and glanced down at him. Bare back and ass.
              Another wave of nausea, so strong she sucked in air through
              clenched teeth. Maneuvering onto her back, she had tried to

              breathe slow and steady.
                 Her body hurt. Her left knee throbbed when she shifted.
              Some vague recollection of falling down and arms helping
              her up. She was sore. There. She reached her hand between
              her legs and drew her fingers to her face. Blood. She bolted
              upright, tearing back the quilt on her side. Bleeding on that
              bed would’ve been more humiliating than a public stoning.

              Her discarded clothes lay on the sheet, pressed flat by her
              body. Her wrinkled shirt had caught a few drops—the sheet
              beneath still white. She exhaled. She could wear her jacket to
              cover the shirt.
                 Dylan still slept. Some tiny relief in her rattled core.
              Someone, something, had smashed her insides. Every
              organ, every blood vessel, was still there, but fragmented
              and in the wrong spots. If only she could’ve been home,
              alone in her room, to piece it back together. She pulled

              on her jeans—underwear missing—then bra and wrinkled
              shirt. Her jacket hid the stain on the shoulder. She couldn’t
              look at it. A second burst of relief, being covered by her own
              clothes again.



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