Shattered Rose (26 page)

I saw Jake looking in my room at me. He had a smug look on his face, and I was sure he misread Parker’s quick exit. I got up and shut my door. He was the last person I wanted to see.

It took me less than fifteen minutes to get ready to go, opting to pile my hair on top of my head with a clip versus trying to do something with it. I locked my door and turned to see Jake leaning against the sofa with his arms folded. He had showered and changed and looked like he was waiting on me.

“Trouble in paradise?” he asked looking disturbingly pleased with himself.

“No…not that it’s any of your business,” I retorted.

He stepped towards me and grabbed my arm so hard it almost scared me. Our faces were close to touching and his eyes looked dark, almost dangerous. “He’s never going to be enough for you,” he seethed. “You belong to me…and no matter how much you deny it, I can see it every time you look at me.” His voice was getting softer and his grip lighter, but I still felt frozen by his words. We stared at each other defiantly for a long time until he finally walked out the door, shutting it far harder than was necessary.

Issy was still at the bar and put up her hands in surrender when my eyes searched her for some explanation.

“Don’t look at me; I told you he was complicated,” she said flatly and went off to her room. The worst of it was that I had caused this. I had let Jake see that he could still get to me—that I hadn’t fully let him go. I sat on the couch, trying to get my beating heart to settle before I met Parker at the car.

He was leaning on the car hood, messing with his phone, when I finally came down the stairs. My walk was tentative as I felt I owed him an apology. I wrapped my arms around his waist and pressed my cheek to his hard chest. “I’m sorry.”

He kissed my head and h
ugged me back. “Don’t apologize; it’s not your fault. I know better than to put myself in situations where I can lose control.” He tenderly lifted my chin and kissed me as if to confirm he wasn’t upset, then opened my door so I could get inside the car.

“S
o now can you tell me where we’re going?” I asked after he had pulled off campus. “The suspense is starting to get to me.”

“Ok, my impatient girl.
I have a friend whose parents own a cabin just a half hour from here. It sits right next to Pisgah National Forest and has unbelievable hiking trails. Anyway, I called in a favor, and it’s ours for the day,” he shared grinning.

I reached over and kissed his cheek, thinking this was exactly what I needed today.

The cabin sat four miles from the Blue Ridge Parkway where Mount Pisgah could be seen in all its glory. The cabin itself was small and very rustic with a mix of horizontal logs and stone for its façade. The gray stone fireplace must have been added on later because it jutted out of the house, offering character and charm to the small cabin.

Inside, most of the walls continued to be made up of large horizontal logs, and those that weren’t were covered in rich wood paneling. A large oval rug sat on the wood floor in the living room, where there was only one oversized red couch and a brown leather recliner in the small room. The rustic
feel continued in the kitchen, where bar stools were covered in a southwestern pattern of reds and oranges. I noticed one bedroom with a bathroom that sat just off the living room, but no other doors except the one to the back of the house where a large deck was overlooking the amazing views.

Parker didn’t say a word as I absorbed the space and the atmosphere, but looked pleased that I could appreciate it. I walked out back to enjoy the fresh mountain air and felt invigorated by its beauty.

“This is unbelievable.”

“I knew you’d love it,” he said affectionately as he wrapped his arms around me. Every time I was in his presence, I felt safe and loved, and each time I was without it, I’d forget how amazing it made me feel.  Just last night Jake had tried to hold me the same way, and while familiar with him, Parker’s arms felt stronger and right…so right. I leaned back into his chest, absorbed in how perfect this moment was.

“The trail starts over there, and it’s a six mile hike round trip. It may take us a few hours, so we should probably get going so we get back before dark.”

“Sounds great!” I exclaimed, excited to go, but secretly disappointed when he let go of me.

He gathered all we needed in his backpack and took the lead up the trail. At first the path was pretty easy, just basic forest bedding and a few stray branches, but about a mile into the hike, the elevation started to pick up and we were navigating through large boulders and steep cliffs. It was physically challenging, but I was never scared because Parker was at my side with each step, helping me through any obstacle that came my way.

It took us two hours to complete the three mile ascend, but the beauty that awaited us at the top was totally worth it. We stood on a stone ledge and overlooked the mountain range; I had never seen anything so beautiful in all my life. A few feet away was a large water fall that fell to at least one hundred feet below us. The sound of the rushing water made my pulse quicken as I thought about the power behind such a wonder of nature.

We found a safe place to rest and sat in silence, enjoying the view and the light mist that came up from the falls. I reflected on the journey I taken with Parker, how he found me so devastated and broken, yet now I sat at the top of a mountain ridge, with the world awaiting me. The tears hit me with such a force that I couldn’t hold them back, and Parker quickly came to my aid, asking what was wrong.

“Nothing’s wrong,” I assured him, smiling through my tears. “I just feel free, like genuinely, fully free, and it’s a little overwhelming is all. A month ago, I didn’t know how I was going to get out of bed, and now…”

He wrapped his arms around me and held me while I cried. He was so good, so honest and perfect, that I knew in that moment I had to tell him. My heart started pounding as I searched for the words, my mind trying to convince me not to do it. But I wanted him to know, even if it meant he’d never look at me the same. Somehow, being up there gave me the strength to open up fully to him. I felt I owed it to him, to be completely honest about who I was, when he had given me so much.

“I have to tell you something,” I said tentatively, turning my body so that we were facing each other. He looked concerned, almost nervous as if I was about to drop a huge bomb on our relationship.

I put my hand on his cheek softly to reassure him and began telling him my story. I could feel my hands shaking, and every part of me screamed to stop for self-preservation. I almost changed my mind, but one look in his genuine eyes, and I knew it was time.

“Parker, there is a lot people don’t know about me. I’m kind of a closed book in a lot of ways. But you are always somehow finding ways to read me and break through the barriers I set up to keep people away. It scared me at first, but now I feel like I can tell you something I’ve only told one other person in my life. It’s something that I never share because I know that if I ever told the truth, people would look at me different, see me as the fraud that I am.” My voice caught as I said the last word, and Parker grabbed my hand, encouraging me to go on.

“The reason this matters is because feeling in control is vitally important to me. My family were pros at avoiding conflict, so whenever there was one, nobody seemed to know what to do. I learned very quickly that feelings were best left to myself, and that’s what I did every time I felt anything. I would swallow it and put on a smile, determined to be as strong as I appeared.

“But I wasn’t strong, and I found at an early age that I could find solace in eating. That it would calm my nerves or ease my pain if I needed it too. It was something I could control when nothing else was going right. The end result was that in junior high I got really heavy. And while it didn’t bother me that much, it just about killed my mom. She started putting me on diets and making me exercise with her, all trying to get my weight under control.

“Eventually, kids started teasing me at school and soon it became very easy to believe the things they said, which were that I was ugly and fat. Between my mom’s need to change me and the teasing at school, my self-worth started to revolve around what I looked like, and every time I looked in the mirror, I hated what I saw.”  Parker reacted to that admission and moved closer to me, taking just a moment to caress my cheek while he listened. 

“A few years later, my body started to change, and I lost a lot of the fat I was carrying and even developed in a way that made boys start to notice me. It was the first time in years that I felt good about myself and started to obsessively diet and exercise to ensure that the weight would never come back.

“Unfortunately, since I had already wrapped so much emotion into eating, I found it really difficult to eat in a healthy manner. I would start to sneak food when my mom wasn’t looking to get the comfort I needed. But the weight started to come back, so I thought I’d try something I had heard people do, which is to make yourself throw up so you wouldn’t gain weight.” I stared down at my hands, not wanting to go on, but Parker continued to encourage me with his eyes letting me know he wanted to hear more.

“It worked for a while. I would diet for days or weeks, depending on my will power, and then when it got to be too much, I would go on a binge and throw it up. I had convinced myself that it was the perfect weight maintenance plan and never realized how much it was starting to consume me. I had convinced myself that I was controlling it, not the other way around, and when I got to college, I thought it would go away. I believed that being here would somehow heal me of all the issues that had plagued me being home. So, I stopped…for about four weeks. Unfortunately, I realized in that time that my body image had become so distorted that I needed the process to feel better. When I looked in the mirror, I could only see the flaws and somehow throwing up would make me feel better about it, and then worse again, creating this vicious cycle.

“Soon, it would make me feel better about a lot of things, a bad grade, a hurt feeling, a bad conversation with my mom. You name it, it became my coping mechanism, and I realized that I couldn’t stop. It was starting to control my life.

“I never told anyone. It was my secret
, and I knew as long as no one knew, I could continue to do it, but I started to see how it was effecting the rest of my life. One, I spent most of my freshmen year in isolation, not participating in events or with other students, because I felt so insecure about how I looked. I was constantly comparing my body to other women and always came up short.

“It was overtaking my life, and I wanted it to stop. So, I told my best friend
, and she was great about it. She would call and check up on me and would be there for me when I was struggling. This summer, I hit a milestone. I had gone two months without throwing up until the day I stepped back on campus, and then the stress and pressure hit me like a ton bricks.

“That night in the quad wasn’t just about Jake or my school, but it was also about this. I was in a shame spiral and had just spent weeks indulging in it every day…for hours at a time. I got to the point where I couldn’t even look in the mirror without crying, because I hated what I saw so fiercely.”

I took his hand, and stared up at him, wanting to convey all the emotion I was feeling towards him. “And then I met you, and somehow it got better. Somehow, I started to believe how
you
saw me more than how
I
saw me. I still mess up, but for the first time in a long time, I feel like there’s hope for healing, and I know you’re a part of that.  You always say no secrets, so I’m telling you this, because I wanted you to know I trust you.”

My heart was still beating so hard that it was almost hurting my chest, and I kept my eyes away from him as he processed all the information I had just thrown on him. This was always the moment I dreaded, the one that had previously kept me from sharing my secret. The moment when they would look at me for the first time and despite how hard they tried not to…they would see me differently. I tried to mentally prepare myself for it, for the loss of adoration that always seemed to be there when Parker looked at me.

I felt his hand on my chin as he brought me up to face him. My eyes were glassy and I knew I was hanging on by a thread. He lovingly caressed my face and then declared, “I love you, Avery. And not despite this or because of this; I love you because you’re you. That will never change.”

I felt myself exhale as I lost all composure and cried in his arms. I believed him, and I wanted so bad to say it back, but I never found the words. Instead I held him close, hoping in some way he knew how precious he was to me.

When I had calmed and wiped my eyes, Parker took my hand and squeezed it. “Avery, I know I’ve failed when it comes to talking with you about what I believe, but I think now more than ever, I need to explain why Christ is so important to me. You see, He is the one who has shown me how to love because He loves us even though we constantly mess up. It’s important you understand this, Avery, because I know that I can only offer you a small glimpse into the unconditional love that Christ has for you.”

I watched Parker’s eyes light up with passion and intensity. I knew he fully believed what he was telling me. I wanted to believe it too, but it felt too easy.
If there was a God, he certainly wouldn’t find me worthy of his love. I didn’t want to talk about it any more so I just smiled at Parker and said, “Thank you.” As usual, he sensed the conversation was over.