Chapter 121
I can feel him staring at me as I try to think and impulsively throw a cushion at him in a bid to block him out, unable to have him look at me that way when I know I’m the one being mental. I’m suffocating inside, and my head is so crammed full of conflicting thoughts that I want to rip my brain out.
“Go away.” I snap childishly, tearfully, as the rage dies, and I start to get embarrassed and ashamed of the epic meltdown I just had. I should be apologizing, I know this, and he’s looking at me like I should know this, yet I can’t. There is that tiny little stubborn mini-me who wants to slap him about the head, shake some sense into him and tell him once and for all to make her disappear for me.
“Why the fuck are you punishing me for her calling? Am I answering the fucking phone, Sophie?” He’s getting more pissed by the second, fueled by my behavior and as much as I want to shake myself and tell myself to stop acting this way, I can’t. My heart’s breaking with everything that I have been thinking about in the last month. About sex, about her. Alcohol always makes me more irrational and less able to cope with this kind of shit, it’s why I got so much stronger in myself when I cut out drinking so much. I always end up this much of a mess when I drink, and Arrick always ends up like that.
It’s like the straight-thinking attentive part of him gets replaced with pig-headed and impulsive, quick to anger and a lot less lucid; and right now, we are not a good mix. We don’t gel well with each other when we are drunk and pissed off, we never did. He reminds me of Jake at his worst when he is like this. Jake can be an asshole when he’s drunk too and it’s about the only time I have ever seen him argue with Emma over pointless shit or ever made her cry.
Drunk Carreros are assholes!
“If you don’t know then I’m not telling you. Go away, leave me alone.” I sulk. Being juvenile, deflecting his question because I no longer have a straightforward answer that will hold any weight to explain my behavior. His eyes boring into me and cannot stand it anymore, unable to stay in this airless prison with him. I push past him to leave the room, but he only catches me by the waist and spins me to him.
“So, you get to turn psycho on me, and I’m just supposed to fucking guess? Or wait! Leave my own fucking apartment while you have a tantrum?” He snaps at me, gaining a push in the chest as I try to fight him off. Hating how he’s being, glaring at me with that green infused, cold deadpan of his and reigniting the angry part of me which had started to curl up and hide in shame.
“You always let her ruin everything.” I bawl at him, pushing harder when he only pulls me back for the second time. Not letting me go, refusing to let me storm off and walk away from this fight.
“What am I letting her ruin? We were more than capable of keeping going, her calling changed nothing. I wasn’t going to answer it. I wanted to fuck you, you are the only one stopping that.” He bites, anger rippling, face no longer calm and real angry Arry on show. I really don’t like it and the age-old whimpering kid in me stands up to become the dominating personality. I can feel the tension coming from his body, radiating outwards like heat from the sun yet I glare at him, wounded by his words, stupidly so.
“Don’t call it that.” I slap his hand off me as his grip moves to my arm and I manage to dart away, enough to escape back to the lounge without hands getting hold of me again, but he follows fast on my heels. In rage, dog with a bone mode, and not willing to let this go like I want him to.
“Why? It’s what it is. A fuck … It’s sex, not exactly the be-all and end-all to a relationship. You are overreacting to this crazily.” He doesn’t exactly yell, he angrily snaps in a slightly raised tone, but it has the same effect and I can’t even comprehend how much of an asshole he’s being to me over this.
Who the hell are you?
“How can you say that? Sex matters! It clearly mattered when you weren’t getting enough of it from her. Is that why you have a constant porn channel on your TV?” I throw at him, thinking back to one stupid flick of a button that had revealed a whole porn menu on his TV box not so long ago. Head a tumbling mess of irrational thoughts and trying to piece together some sense in the crazy emotions consuming me. I’m hurt, angry, yet also in pain, like he’s wrenching my heart out by being a completely different person to who I need.
“For the love of God, woman … You realize I have like four mates who stay here regularly, and they all download porn because they are guys and that’s what guys do. You want me to say I have never watched it? I have, big deal, and sex with Natasha isn’t relevant in any way. Sex with you … it was happening, Sophie, you are the only one who flipped out and stopped it. I don’t even get what we are even fighting about.” Arrick is yelling at me now, properly, the way I am yelling at him, completely oblivious to my tears, despite always claiming he can’t stand to see me cry. It just wounds me more in my crazily sensitive frame of mind and I feel real hate for him at the moment. Real blood boiling ‘I cannot stand to even look at you right now you fucking asshole kind’ of hate. It takes me by surprise that I can have this much venom for someone I love so much. He’s making me crazier than anything Natasha could do to me.
“So now you’re pissed because I stopped it? Because you said If I wanted to stop I could, and now you’re getting fucking angry at me. And I’m supposed to feel secure with you?” I sob loudly, wounded, confused, head full of nonsensical chaos and drunken stupidity clouding my thoughts. My words are like daggers, thrown with intent and poison at someone I don’t like very much in my current state. He reacts to the tone as much as what I say, narrowing his gaze icily, obviously feeling the same level of disillusionment with me.
“For fuck’s sake … Don’t twist my words. It’s not why you stopped it. You stopped over some jealous irrational bullshit because Natasha dared to call my cell. Something I had no fucking control over and no intention of answering.” Arrick swoops down and pulls off his sneakers, throwing them across the room angrily as though curbing the urge to hit something, or someone, and buttons up his shirt for no apparent reason. Glaring at me with equal dislike and obviously fuming with a rage that matches mine. I just feel, at the moment, that we are completely broken and falling into disrepair and it kills me inside.
“Go fuck yourself … or her … I’m past caring anymore.” I bite back cruelly, heart ripping in two and I turn to look for my shoes so I can walk out and leave him here. Before the tidal wave of emotion, soaring up overwhelms me and I can no longer function with the pain he can cause me. I know he has the ability, he did it once before.
“Is that what this is? You think I want to go back to fucking her. How many times do I need to tell you, Sophie, I chose you? I’m tired of having to repeat that every time you get jealous like this. It’s exhausting to have to constantly backtrack over this shit.” Arrick sways on his feet again, runs a hand through his hair and sits down on the nearest chair, putting his head between his hands as though he either realizes he’s too drunk or maybe to try and calm his temper. “I can’t deal with you like this. We’re both drunk and angry. I’ll sleep out here. Just go to bed.” He snaps at me coldly, clear he’s decided he doesn’t want to put up with juvenile Sophie and her meltdown anymore. Sitting back to stare right at me with no level of emotion on show and a dismissive wave of his fingers, like I’m an obedient little puppy.
Soooo mixing me up with his ex fucking girlfriend once again!
“Did you leave her because of me, or because you were already looking for a way out?” I blurt out through tears, thinking only of the things the girls said about his sex life with Natasha, about how he never seemed happy. The tidbits of their gossip filtering through and coming back at me out of sequence, as I try to remember what they said exactly. So consumed obsessively with this now that it’s all in my head swirling around, clouded logic, coloring everything.
“What kind of question is that?” He looks up at me completely baffled as to how my mind works, like he no longer knows me at all. Dumbfounded that he thinks I can be so stupid, and it makes me worse as I hate him so much more.
“Anna said that Natasha didn’t have sex with you very often, that she didn’t like it. You obviously weren’t happy with her. If you left her for me … is that what’s going to happen to us?” I sob pathetically, glaring at him insecurely, my heart shredding with this possibility. Not even sure what I need him to say anymore, now my brain is on a one-way road to complete hysterics.
“Arghh!” Arrick roars out angrily, rubbing his face and jumps to his feet, pacing past me while blowing out air and storming to the kitchen, as though he cannot get his head around me anymore. It’s clear he is starting to lose his shit in every way, I know the signs, and when he’s like this I should leave him alone to go simmer and cool down, but I just can’t. Every part of him is tense and rigid, his movements angry and aggressive, his face tight and jaw angular as he grits his teeth. He yanks open the fridge door to haul out a beer and looks for an opener as he bangs things around.
“Answer me!” I scream at him hysterically, really losing the plot and feeling like my insides are caving in, despite all logic telling me to back off and shut up for like ten minutes while he simmers. Arrick slams his bottle down so hard that it overflows with foam and spills everywhere, he grits his teeth harder and turns on me aggressively with insanely pure green eyes that burn into my soul. Two fiery natured hotheads caught in a drunken battle where emotion has tipped it all to volcanic proportions, and he looks terrifying to me like this.
“You think fucking is the issue here? That sex is the problem and solution to this whole stupid mess? Fine, Sophie, let’s solve it right now. If you think this relationship depends on me fucking you, then let’s put it to bed once and for all. Literally. I mean we were practically there anyway. Let’s fuck!” He explodes at me, walks towards me fast, face murderous with a biting tone and hauls me over with him back to the couch by the arm cruelly. Managing me like I’m some weightless toy and not at all like he normally touches me.
He marches me at speed to the couch and pushes me down a little hard so that I fall back and land clumsily on my ass. I’m completely stupefied, heart pounding through my chest as adrenaline rushes me and renders me momentarily breathless and pliable. Shocked into submission at how he’s being.
He makes like he is going to get on top of me, looking like the devil himself. I yelp in fright that he would even manhandle me like this while fighting, that he is acting this way, looking completely disconnected to anything I have ever known about him and regretting not giving him space after all. My anger drops to instant fear and suddenly I don’t even know him at all, no longer safe with this person in front of me and begin to choke on my panic as it consumes me.
“Take your dress off and I will fuck you right now.” He stands over me, tone biting and cruel, looking nothing like the guy I trust and love, caging me in at the couch as though waiting for me to obey. He’s angry and aggressive and completely emotionally detached, eyes fully glowing green and brow furrowed. My heart flips over, terror running cold in my blood. I make to get up, sliding over to get out from his blockade and move away from him, but he catches me and hauls me back to him hard. There’s nothing gentle in the grip he has on me and my blood runs cold in my veins, body beginning to tremble that he means to do this to me
“You wanted to have sex, you think it’s going to fix this fucking mess, so get undressed. You want this, keep pushing me to do it. So I’ll fucking do it!” He snaps coldly at me, his face expressionless and my insides crumble, shaking my head weakly as fear overtakes my voice and I can’t formulate a single word.
My Arry isn’t here, some cruel asshole with a cold look in his eye is telling me that, like it or not, I am about to be fucked and it is doing nothing but making my body recoil in terror, so many conflicting emotions and fears flitting into my brain and colliding like a tidal wave of emotion. My hands start to get clammy; body goes cold as I breathe heavily with the realization that I am on the verge of an anxiety attack. The walls are closing in and the one person I always trusted to help me through, keep me safe, is looking at me like he hates me and is the cause all of this
“You want me to take it off?” He sneers at me, bends down to grab the hem of my dress, and yanks it up as instinct overtakes me. Sudden blinding fear and panic hit me hard in the chest, heart racing, brain crashing, an impulsive, instant response from years of having to defend myself, somehow connects as I start lashing out at him. Blind fury and tears, in a bid to stop whatever is about to happen to me. Lost in the crippling flashbacks of pain, oblivious to my whereabouts anymore and crying out in anguish that I am back there, alone, and afraid and he’s about to hurt me in the worst possible way.
