Easy Girls

Jen had learnt a long time ago that regret doesn't absolve your actions. Still, as the silence filled the space between them, she felt hope. 

It might have been her own tendency to forgive; the desperate need to appease others. But she thought it was deeper than that. It was a belief that if everyone else was as messed up as she was, there was no need to feel guilt. After all, if she didn't cause the pain, it opened her up to being hurt herself. 

Still, heartbreak can't be soaked up like spilled milk. It isn't a bad day for your mother to soothe, or a scraped knee for your father to kiss. Rather, it is a wound that cannot be sutured; it has to bleed, scab, reopen and then finally scar. Even then, on cloudless days, you would always feel the rain approaching from that familiar throb. 

Jen's mistake hung heavy in the air. He still refused to speak, choosing instead to stare out across the crowded cafe that seemed to exist outside of time. She debated running; how could a silence be so deafeningly loud? Every second that went on seemed to just make the words she had spoken grow louder. Like a sign on the table read I slept with him and the words were running off and multiplying over every surface. Her skin was being consumed by black ink repeating the same four letter phrase. Just say something. 

"Why?" He finally said. 

She had not planned for that simple question. When she ran over it in her mind she imagined anything but that calm response. Her mind had almost skimmed over the inevitability of the hurt in his eyes. 

Goddamn it, why? Was it because he had called her beautiful? That was a part of it that concerned her, reminded her of her sister spitting 'easy girls get it hard, Jenny!' when Missy Evans went away for a while when they were 16 and came back different. Did the guy that Missy lost it to call her beautiful too? Was that all it took for everyone?

That couldn't be right. It wasn't allowed to be. 

So it had to be something else.

She knew herself too well to think it was the drinking. That was a part of her life all too familiar and it begged the question: if I never did this before, why did I do it now? 

What a hoot! Her sister cackled in her head. Are you forgetting something? That it was the first time you went out without that foolish little man in front of you there to hold you back? 

Jen forced herself to look at him. He didn't seem foolish to her; he seemed more like a man being swallowed by a mistake. She once again thought of how it would have been to simply not tell him, but it is impossible to make amends for a mistake if you can't admit to it. 

It occurred to her that the mistake made hadn't been hers. She could say it was the drink, or a whispered 'I just think you're so beautiful'. She could beg him to understand that sometimes people have to do things they don't want to if it will make life easier. 

"Why? Because if I am alone with a man and they ask me to jump, I say how high? That's why, babe, because no matter what happens I'll never have to jump as high as I did for my father. I'll never let myself get there, and don't you know the road to hell is paved with good intentions? Don't you know that sometimes being easy is the only way to make sure you don't get it hard?" 

She could've said that, but it wasn't a good reason. It was too steeped in suppressed pain, and Jen wasn't sure it was true. 

If she had said that he might have accepted it, and he might have forgiven her, but it would not change that deep longing inside her for chaos. It would not change the fact that she would probably do it again. Although the consequences of the night may not have been her fault, her fear of rejection, of being deemed a ‘tease’, was. 

Still pitying yourself are we? Need I remind you that it happened 15 years ago, Jen? 

Who doesn't make mistakes? You can torture yourself with asking 'why' all you want, but I think it's gonna get a hell of a lot easier when you tell him what's really going on in that fucked up little head of yours. 

"Because I'm sick," she said finally. 

"Yeah, I think you are," he replied shortly. 

The silence had been breached but she felt no closer to peace. The words on the table were threatening to suffocate them both. She felt that familiar regret - should've just left it in the box, Jenny.

Jen wanted to tell him about what had happened before the mistake. How she had gone out to comfort a friend who had spent her workday brushing off the advances of her co-worker. How they had talked at length about the horrifyingly simple fact that there was nothing they could do. They weren't the only ones - the pub was filled to the brim with sad stories that were too familiar, and Jen had soaked it all in and sworn to herself that she was different. But she wasn't. 

"It was a mistake," she said, "I didn't even mean to do it - I didn't really want to do it, but you know how these things are!"

"No, I don't," he folded his arms, "I can't think of the last time someone has come onto me and I haven't turned them down. It's nice to be wanted, Jen, we all like it. But why am I not enough?" 

That was his mistake, she thought. Believing it boiled down to a matter of attraction and attention. It wasn't that Jen was weak, she knew that, it was that she hadn't been taught how to be strong. 

They fought. First at the café, then on the bus, then finally in their once welcoming flat as he packed his bags. Ultimately the issue still remained; Jen could not make amends, no matter how hard she tried. Because the mistake was never hers to make. 

It was that stranger at the bar who said "well I've come all the way here now - what did you think was gonna happen?"