ELI
It's been days. Maybe a week. Maybe more. I honestly stopped counting the moment we left the hospital.
I feel hollow. Like someone scooped out everything inside me and left the shell to stumble through the walls of this cold house. My room has become my prison. It used to be a comfort, my own little world where I could dream, listen to music, scribble on paper, anything. But now, even the walls feel like they resent me.
Dad hasn't looked at me the same way since.
Every time he walks past, he either mutters something under his breath or pretends I don't exist at all. But it's the words that cut the deepest. "Shameless." "Slut." "You threw yourself at a man old enough to be your father."
He says them like he's brushing dust off his shirt, like they mean nothing. But to me, they mean everything. They stick. They sting. And no matter how many times I try to remind myself that I'm not disgusting, not broken, not some dirty little secret, still feel it. His voice lives in my head now, louder than my own.
And Damir… he hasn't called. Not once. No texts. No gifts. No notes slipped under the door. Nothing.
I don't blame him. I wouldn't reach out to me either if my best friend punched me in public and told me I ruined his son.
But I miss him. God, I miss him so much. It aches in places I didn't know could hurt. My body remembers his warmth before my brain can catch up. My fingers twitch like they still want to reach for his hoodie sleeves. My lips burn with the memory of that night. That morning.
He looked at me like I was something fragile and beautiful. The only one who ever did.
And now? Now I'm just the reason he disappeared.
Dad comes home late most nights now. I can hear the jingle of his keys as he throws them on the table. Sometimes I hear him sigh. Other times he kicks the furniture. And on rare nights, he stands in front of my door. Silent. Like he's about to knock, but his hand won't let him.
He never knocks.
He just walks away.
Food sits untouched on my desk. He started cooking . He started plating it for me. But I can't eat.
I try. I really do. I lift the spoon, stare at the steam curling from the rice, and all I see is that night replaying again and again. Damir's smile. His fingers brushing my cheek. The cold slap of reality when my father found out. The humiliation at the hospital.
The doctor saying the word "semen" in front of my father.
I can't eat. I can barely breathe.
My body still aches sometimes. Not from that night, not anymore. From the weight of silence. The pressure in my chest that won't go away. The tension in my throat from swallowing everything I want to scream.
I wish I hadn't said anything. I should've just lied. I should've let him think it was anyone else. Anyone but Damir. Maybe then things would still be okay.
Maybe Damir would still smile at me.
Maybe Dad wouldn't look like he wants to spit every time he sees me.
Sometimes I wonder if I ruined everything. No, not sometimes. Always.
I try journaling. I write things I can't say out loud. Like how I still replay the way Damir tucked my hair behind my ear, or how I still sleep in the oversized hoodie he gave me because it smells faintly like him. I write how my heart pounds when I think about him walking through the door again, eyes soft, mouth gentle, forgiving me without saying a word.
And I also wrote about how much I hate myself.
I write about the moments I catch my dad looking at family pictures, eyes dark and distant, like he doesn't recognize the boy beside him anymore.
Me.
The silence between us is the loudest sound in the house.
It hums in the hallway. It screeches at the dinner table. It pounds like thunder when I wake up crying, trying to muffle the sound in my pillow so he doesn't hear.
He wouldn't care anyway.
Or maybe he would, and that makes it worse.
The guilt is eating him alive. I can see it in his slouched shoulders, in the way he sometimes stares at my door like he's trying to say something through it. But the guilt doesn't undo the names. It doesn't unshatter my heart.
And Damir…
Where is he now?
Is he thinking about me?
Does he hate me for everything?
Is he sitting in that huge house alone, cursing the day he ever laid eyes on his best friend's son?
I hope not. I really hope not.
Because I never hated him. Not for a second.
Even now, when everything has burned to ash, I still hold onto the memory of his arms around me like a life raft.
I just want to sleep and wake up in a different world. One where I didn't break my own heart. One where Dad doesn't look at me like I'm something filthy. One where Damir didn't vanish into silence.
But this is my world now.
And it hurts.
It hurts more than anything.
I lie on my side most nights, curled up so tightly it feels like I might fold into myself. My stomach growls from hunger, but I don't move. My lips are dry, but I don't drink.
What would be the point?
Everything good I had …my peace, my confidence, my connection with Damir, it's all gone.
And every time Dad slams another door, every time his voice rises in disgust, I feel like a piece of me shatters all over again.
I didn't mean to fall in love.
But I did.
And now, I'm the villain in everyone's story.
Even in my own.