Scarred Souls: The First Collection Read online

  ‘Is this why you can’t go home?’ He stared. His hand held mine, and it was warm and big and firm, but his eyes stared at my mutilated skin. It made me antsy.

  ‘Part of it, I guess.’ My voice had dropped to a whisper. ‘I have my reasons for doing this. I’m not proud of it, but I can’t stop.’ I pulled my arm out of his grip and did a poor job at rewrapping the wet and bloody gauze.

  He still stared at my arm.

  ‘I didn’t mean to offend you,’ I continued when he didn’t say anything. ‘I’m used to people wanting to shag, you know? People don’t help me without wanting something in return, and all I can give is sex. That’s all I know.’ All I’d ever known.

  ‘I don’t want that.’ He said it firmly too, driving the words in deep.

  ‘I’m sorry for thinking you did.’ I bowed my head, mortified and embarrassed and so incredibly sad. He was a handsome bloke. He’d been nice to me, he’d offered to let me stay, but he didn’t want more than that. He didn’t want me.

  ‘Can I change your gauze?’ He was still staring at my arm.

  ‘Okay.’ I didn’t want him to see my arms in full, but the gauze was uncomfortable. He offered to help me, and I would take whatever he had to give.

  I followed him into the bathroom, where I sank down on the edge of the tub. I’d hung my wet clothes up to dry on the clothing lines above it and water dripped from them.

  He rummaged around in a drawer and in the cabinets. He came up with clean gauze, a washcloth he wetted under the tap, and antibacterial.

  I unwound the old gauze, just to have something to do. Both arms were bared to him now. The horror of what I’d done to myself. I was ashamed he’d seen it in the first place. If he hadn’t forced the issue, I would’ve gone to sleep with the wet gauze and dealt with it being uncomfortable. But when he offered help… I couldn’t not take it.

  ‘Does blood bother you?’ I glanced up, curious.

  ‘No.’ He shook his head for emphasis as he crouched down in front of me. ‘Doesn’t bother me at all. What does is that you do this to yourself. They’ll never go away, the scars.’

  ‘I know.’ I stared down at my own arms. I turned them over, showing off the undersides. They looked even worse. The thin skin over both my wrists was even more a mess of criss-crossed scars than the rest. I could see his eyes trained on the deep scars there. ‘That’s how I tried to kill myself.’

  I hadn’t meant for that to slip out. I didn’t want him to think I was mad, though he probably thought that anyway. I didn’t want to confirm it, but my mouth had decided to prove just what an unstable person I was without my consent.

  I could feel my face burn in shame.

  He didn’t say anything, just started to clean me up.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said after a while.

  ‘For what?’ He dabbed antibacterial on the washcloth, and I hissed as he ran it over my fresh cuts.

  ‘For being so nice. No one has ever been this kind to me before. Not when they don’t expect anything. Which you don’t. Not even then, really.’

  ‘No, I don’t.’

  There it was again, the confirmation that he didn’t find me attractive.

  ‘Why not? Why don’t you want it? Are you in a relationship?’ I couldn’t help but press the issue. If he was in a relationship, I could understand why he would reject me. No one liked a cheater.

  ‘No, I’m not.’ He wrapped new, clean gauze around my right forearm. ‘I just… I just don’t want it, is all.’ He started in on my left arm, and I hissed again once the antibacterial came into contact with fresh cuts.

  ‘You’ve done this a lot? You seem very good at it.’ His fingers were long and slender, and they patched me up with an ease I never showed when I did this myself.

  He glanced up at me.

  Our eyes met and held for a second.

  ‘What’d you mean?’

  ‘This.’ I lifted my right arm up. ‘You seem really good at patching people up. So have you done it a lot?’

  ‘No.’ A brief shake of the head. ‘I’m starting medical school. I want to be a surgeon.’

  Oh, wow.

  I didn’t even know what to say to that.

  ‘Medical school, huh? You must be real smart.’ So lame. That was the lamest thing I’d said until now. I should’ve just kept my mouth shut.

  ‘I do the best I can. It’s what I want to do.’

  ‘You’re lucky then. I don’t know what I want to do. I’m just a big mess.’

  ‘You’ll figure it out.’

  ‘I want to help people. People who struggle. People who’ve been through what I have. But I’m a complete mess myself, so how can I even begin to help someone else?’ My voice had a bitter tone to it now. Not knowing what I wanted to do with my life was galling. Sometimes I was resentful that I even had a life.

  ‘Going to uni is always a good start,’ he commented as he wrapped gauze around my left arm as well.

  I snorted.

  ‘And study what? Psychology? When I don’t even understand my own? That wouldn’t go over well. Besides, I’ve failed my A-levels.’

  Once he finished of the gauze, he leant back so he could look up at me properly.

  My eyes zeroed in on his lips, but I knew he would just push me away again if I tried to kiss him. I wasn’t setting myself up for another bout of rejection. I wasn’t sure I could take that. Not today.

  ‘Better?’ he asked.

  ‘Yeah.’ I bobbed my head. I felt over the new gauze. Dry and soft and clean.

  ‘Now can we go to sleep?’ He pushed himself up on his feet and put away everything he’d used. He threw the old gauze in the rubbish and headed out the door.

  That had me moving. I followed close to him, back into his bedroom again.

  ‘So what side do you want to sleep on?’ He wasn’t looking at me when he asked.

  I looked towards the bed. From the way it was positioned against the wall, as well as the books and mobile phone on the nightstand, I took a guess that he slept close to it.

  I got on the bed and scooted over to lie close to the wall. I slipped under the duvet, thankful that he had two in his bed. I didn’t think he’d want to be any closer to me than he had to be.

  I could tell he was nervous as he slid in beside me.

  ‘You never shared a bed with anyone?’ I couldn’t help but ask because it was so very obvious from the way he was acting.

  He shook his head.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why do you have two duvets then, if you always sleep alone?’

  He shrugged awkwardly.

  ‘I usually use both. I get cold at night.’

  That was a logical explanation.

  ‘Don’t worry. I won’t try anything. You made yourself clear.’

  He licked his lips nervously.

  ‘Good.’ He reached over the bedside table to turn off the lamp.

  It plummeted me into total darkness at first, but once my eyes adjusted, it wasn’t all that dark. I could still see him next to me though his features weren’t that clear to me anymore. I didn’t think he would appreciate me looking at him though, so I kept my eyes trained on the ceiling.

  That’s when I realised something.

  Something important.

  ‘I don’t know your name.’

  ‘Damian,’ he answered shortly.

  Damian.

  ‘That’s a nice name. I’m Josh.’

  His head turned to me, and I could see his frown. I was pretty sure he was trying to decide if I was mad or not. The first wouldn’t be far from the truth, actually.

  ‘I don’t know how to repay you for this.’

  ‘You don’t have to repay me. I didn’t ask you here to get anything in return.’

  ‘But that book you gave me, that seemed expensive. I’ll pay you back for that one, at least.’

  ‘No, really, it’s okay. Don’t. I wasn’t going to use it anyway.’

  I turned over on my side and curled up. ‘You’re real
ly kind.’

  ‘No more than anyone else.’ His head was still tilted towards me. Our eyes met and held.

  ‘More than anyone I’ve ever met.’

  He frowned again.

  ‘Then you can’t have met many decent people.’

  ‘Maybe not,’ I agreed. My chest squeezed tight at the thought though. It squeezed and it squeezed until I felt like I was going to explode. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to cry or rage—maybe both at the same time.

  ‘I couldn’t leave you out there,’ he said, breaking into my thoughts. ‘If you feel like you can’t go home, you can always come here. I know what it’s like to feel that way.’ His voice had dropped to a whisper on the last sentence.

  ‘Did you have it tough when you lived at home?’ My thoughts were easily diverted, and that’s exactly what his words had done: diverted my thoughts from my own trauma to his.

  ‘I used to. Way back. Not so much now. I love my uncle and aunt and my cousins. But it’s difficult.’

  ‘What’s difficult?’ I wasn’t sure why, but it made me feel a tiny bit better to know that I wasn’t the only one with a messed up life.

  ‘I don’t know. Everything. Nothing. It shouldn’t be difficult because all they’ve done is be there for me, but it is. And it’s all on me, I know, but I guess that’s just who I am.’ He let out a deep breath then turned his head away from me. Maybe he was embarrassed.

  ‘I think you’re wonderful,’ was all I could come up with. It was the truth though. No one had done for me what he had, and for that I would be eternally grateful.

  He chuckled but didn’t say anything.

  ‘I’ll go home tomorrow. I just needed to get away for a while. Maybe tomorrow it’ll be better.’

  ‘What’ll be better?’

  ‘Everything. I don’t know.’ Nothing would be, I knew, but I had to go home. My mum must be beside herself, for sure. So must the rest of them, for that matter. I hadn’t brought my phone with me when I left, only my journal, so they wouldn’t be able to get a hold of me.

  Maybe it was shitty of me to stay away for the night without letting them know, but I needed space.

  ‘A little bit better, at least.’ Saying that would perhaps make everything feel better.

  I reached out tentatively, under the duvets, and fumbled for his hand. When I found it, I squeezed it, trying to pour all my gratitude into it. Hoping to show him just how much it meant to me.

  He didn’t squeeze my hand in return, which saddened me, but he didn’t move his hand away either.

  I reckoned I could count that as a win.

  2

  Sleepless Night

  Damian

  I couldn’t sleep.

  Josh lay beside me.

  We weren’t touching, but he wasn’t far from me either. I could feel his warmth, and his breathing was slow and even. He was fast asleep.

  I turned on my side. Slowly, so I wouldn’t jolt the bed and wake him up. He was lying on his stomach, his head facing me and with his arm curled under his cheek.

  I reached my hand out to run my index finger over his bandaged forearm. The sight of those arms, sans the gauze, was branded into my brain. I couldn’t believe that people would do that to themselves. That they’d hurt themselves so bad, in such a way that they would always bear the scars afterwards. Josh would never be rid of them—they’d always be there, on his skin, always a reminder.

  Josh’s face was relaxed. He looked adorable, and I ran my hand up his cheek. His skin there was soft, so different from his arms.

  I moved my hand around to his neck, to play with the soft hair at his nape.

  I couldn’t seem to get enough of looking at him. Even if the curtains were closed, there was still enough light in the room from the summer night outside to see him. Not quite clear, but not far from it.

  I’ve only known him for a few hours and already I can’t get enough of him.

  What was wrong with me?

  This was unlike me. I didn’t get attached to people. Yet Josh had managed to get under my skin. He’d kissed me. I’d never reacted to anyone before—but I had to him. What was so special about him?

  I pulled my hand back. I didn’t want to wake him, not when he was sleeping so soundly. I suspected he didn’t always, not with all those scars on his arms. Something made him do that to himself and I suspected it mostly happened at night. Night was the loneliest time of the day, after all.

  I inched out of bed then tip-toed out of the room and into the bathroom.

  I turned the tap on and splashed some water on my face. When I looked up into the mirror, I met my own eyes; I couldn’t help but ask myself what I was doing. I wasn’t fit to get close to anyone, yet that was exactly what I felt was happening. What was more, he seemed to be more unfit for it than I was.

  A knock on the door drew my attention, and I grabbed a towel to dry my face before answering it.

  Silver pushed it open before I could say anything though, and he shut if softly behind him before walking over to sit on the edge of the tub, just like Josh had done earlier.

  ‘You all right?’ he asked, his expression serious. His grey eyes were intense as they took me in.

  ‘Yeah.’ I eyed him in return, not sure what he was getting at.

  ‘You’re having a sleep-over.’ That sentence sounded like a mix between a statement and a question.

  ‘I guess.’

  Sleep-over? That sounded so juvenile. It wasn’t like we were doing anything other than sleeping though.

  Except that kiss.

  But I’d broken that off before he could’ve taken it any further.

  ‘It’s not what you think. He doesn’t have anywhere else to go.’ I wiped the towel over my face again, mostly just to have something to do besides fidget under Silver’s stare.

  ‘You brought home a homeless bloke?’ Silver raised a black eyebrow.

  ‘He’s not homeless.’ I glared at him. ‘He just can’t go home right now.’ I wasn’t sure why I was defending Josh so hotly, but Silver had sounded scandalous at the thought of him being homeless and now in our home.

  ‘Okay.’ Silver nodded, slow and thoughtful, allowing me to calm down. ‘I thought you were asexual.’

  I put the towel down on the sink and scratched awkwardly over my chest.

  ‘I am. Was. I don’t know.’ I shook my head to get rid of all my fluttering thoughts. It didn’t help. ‘I don’t know what this is.’

  All I knew was I couldn’t get enough of looking at him; I’d liked his kiss even if I’d pushed him away, and his hand squeezing mine underneath the duvets had been good.

  ‘How long have you known him?’

  ‘Couple of hours.’

  ‘What? Hours?’ Silver was incredulous now. I couldn’t blame him. ‘When you do get out there, you really do it properly, don’t you?’ He whistled.

  I flushed in embarrassment and grabbed onto the sink for support.

  ‘I haven’t done anything. I just offered him a place to stay tonight. He was sad and alone and soaked through.’

  ‘So you haven’t done it?’

  I glanced at him in confusion.

  His face was split into a grin, and I realised in an instant what he was talking about.

  ‘No!’ My face heated up further.

  ‘So what then? You’ve found yourself another asexual?’ Silver was getting more and more confused. As was to be expected, considering just how confused I was by it all.

  ‘No.’ I turned around and sunk to the floor, resting my back against the cabinets under the sink. ‘He offered, but I declined.’

  Silver’s eyebrows inched up his forehead again.

  ‘You declined sex? Who declines sex?’ I glowered at him, but it didn’t shut him up. ‘I thought you’d get over the no-sex thing once you met someone. I though the asexual thing was just a joke. I’m sorry.’ He was being sincere now.

  ‘What are you sorry for?’

  ‘For not taking you seriously, I guess. I mean,
I know you haven’t been interested in these kinds of things before, but I always figured it would change once you met someone. It was shitty of me to assume that. You know your body, your sexuality, better than anyone.’

  ‘No, not really,’ I cut him off before he could continue. ‘I thought I did, but I—I don’t.’ He didn’t have to apologise. I didn’t understand myself, so how could he?

  Not even my uncle and aunt understood me, though they did care for me. My cousins, they were just kids. My aunt’s sister thought I was a freak, though she’d always used to tell me so in an affectionate voice. They all cared, but they didn’t understand me. I was too different from everyone I knew, even my best friend.

  Silver leant back slightly and crossed his arms over his chest. His face and eyes were dead serious as they looked down on me.

  ‘I couldn’t help but notice the bloody gauze in the rubbish bin. You hurt yourself?’

  I shook my head mutely.

  ‘Has he?’

  I wasn’t sure if I could tell him. I didn’t know what the proper way here was. I’d only had one friend in my entire life, and he was sitting in front of me. I wasn’t sure if Josh’s cutting was a secret or not.

  But Silver had an attention for detail—he had to, being a tattoo artist.

  ‘Self-harm,’ I muttered.

  ‘Oh.’ Silver’s expression didn’t change. ‘Do you think it’s wise to get involved with someone so messed up? Self-harm… There’s got to be some heavy underlying issues there, mate.’

  ‘But haven’t I got that too?’ I propped my elbows on my knees and buried my hands in my thick hair. ‘I haven’t got the amount of scars that he has, but mine’s a heck of a lot bigger than any of the ones he had.’

  Silver’s serious expression softened.

  ‘Maybe two scarred souls can make each other whole.’

  ‘That was deep,’ I said drily. ‘And oddly poetic.’

  Silver grinned.

  ‘So how is it that my asexual best mate finds himself a boyfriend before I do?’

  ‘He’s not my boyfriend.’ Not even close. He wasn’t even my friend—not yet anyway.

  Silver was right, anyway: Josh did have a lot of issues. Lots more than the cutting, for sure.

  ‘He’s sharing your bed,’ Silver pointed out. ‘You don’t have the biggest bed, you know, and you don’t even seem to mind that he’s there.’