"Jayda! Come on!" My mother shouts from downstairs.

"Coming!" I slip my feet into my blue and black air Jordan 1's, then tie them lightly, making sure not to make them too tight because then they will crease easily.

I look around for my phone but then remember that my father has it. It hasn't even been twenty-four hours, and yet I'm going through withdrawals, not being able to talk to Ryder.

"Jayda!" I better get going; the worst thing to do is to keep a pregnant woman waiting. I hurry down the steps and then down the hallways, turning the corner to the front door. My father and I meet at the doorway; I don't acknowledge him; I just walk over to the car and get in, closing the door.

Mom starts up the car and says, "You could have at least said something to him,"

"There is nothing to say,"

We arrive at the dress shop in East Hamptons. You know a place is fancy when it has a glass revolving door with gold hinges. When we go through, a white man in a black and white suit approaches us, "Name?" he asks my mother.

Name? They need the shopper's name? What kind of clothing store is this? I look up at the two-level shop; from up top, you can see down, the banisters are white just like everything else in the store. He writes our names down on a paper attached to a black clipboard and then tells us we can go ahead. I follow my mother to the back of the shop. A tall thin brown skin woman with braids in her hair steps to the side "Oh Mellisa, there you are?"

"Megan,"

They hug each other, and then the woman, Megan, looks at her stomach. "Wow. You're huge. Are you sure it isn't twins?"

"Oh, please don't say that," If my mother didn't already have several ultrasounds, I would say she could possibly be having twins, one because of the size of her stomach and two because twins run in our family, just on my father's side. My father has two brothers who are twins; well, we're twins. Uncle Elijah is the oldest. He was born like a minute or two before Uncle Jayden; he's the one who passed away, and he's also the uncle my father named me after.

I never had the chance to meet my Uncle Jayden; he passed away before I was born. Long before I was born, actually. Mother told me that he was killed when he was only sixteen by a cop—same story as always. Traffic stop gone wrong. One minute he was reaching to grab his license and registration, and then the next minute, he was shot and killed.

My mom says that my father was in the back of the car when he was shot by the cop. He's three years younger than Uncle Elijah, so that means he was only thirteen when he witnessed his brother's murder.

"You are gorgeous!" The woman does a complete 360 around me, eyeing my appearance and figure. She smiles and says, "I am going to enjoy dressing you up." She looks at my mother, "Charity event and a Birthday, right?"

"Yes,"

"Got it; I'll be right back with the first batch," she turns away and then walks over to a rack full of dresses.

"First batch?" I turn to my mother. "How long is this going to take?"

"As long as it takes," She turns and grabs the attention of one of the workers. "Can you get me two sparkling waters, please?" The waiter nods, and my mother takes a seat in one of the cream-white seats, making herself comfortable. We are going to be here for a long time!

...

"Nope, not this one!" I walk, more like waddle down the steps from the dressing rooms. Who's bright idea was it to put the dressing rooms on the third floor and have the clothes down here? I almost died like a hundred times coming down the steps. I'm already a very clumsy person, and walking down the steps in bid long puffy dresses doesn't help any.

"You look beautiful!" My mother ravishes.

"No," I shake my head. "I look like the sun," A walking sun is exactly what I look like wearing this expanding yellow dress. "I don't want to wear a dress at my party,"

"Well, you aren't wearing jeans and a T-shirt!"

"It's my party. I don't see why I can't wear what I want to," I place my hand on my hip. It's my birthday; it's a day dedicated to me, shouldn't I choose what I want to wear.

"You're wearing a dress, Jayda, and that's final. Now you don't have to wear this one; I'm sure we can find you something else,"

"Haven't I tried on everything?" I groan. We've been here for like four hours; I have had to have tried on about a hundred dresses by now. It took me two hours to find something for the charity thing on Saturday. I ended up going with something simple, a dark blue maxi dress. It was pretty nice despite the fact it's a dress. My mom told me she doesn't want me to wear a sweater or anything to cover up my arms since it'll be like 90 degrees on Saturday. Because I'm not going to be wearing anything to cover my wrist all evening, I will have to position my arms in a certain way to hide the nearly faded cuts on my wrist.

Really I will just be trying hard to hide the big ones on both of my arms, but it shouldn't be too hard; I've trained myself to naturally keep my arms a certain way when I am not wearing anything to cover up with, so people won't see them and freak out.

When people see your cuts, it makes them uncomfortable, which then makes you feel horrible because you know that cutting is wrong, but you can't stop. Then comes the anxiety on your behalf because you don't know whether the person is sympathizing with you or if they are thinking that you are an attention seeker. Then you fear that the person will point out your scars in front of everyone.

The top three questions every cutter fears is...

One: "What is that?" they ask while looking at your wrist; you'll quickly pull down the lifted sleeve or fold your arms.

Two: "Why would you do that to yourself?" I don't know the answer to that myself, so how could I tell them.

And then Three: My personal favorite. They ask, "Why are you cutting?" As if I am about to break down my traumatic life story with this random person just so they can know why I started cutting.

"There are thousands of dresses in this store; we haven't even put a dent in the ones on this side," Megan says, and I groan even louder. They both laugh, and then Megan hands me the next dress, and I step off the stool and head back upstairs. While walking away, I hear her say to my mother, "Hopefully, the baby girl you are having, we'll be more in touch with her feminine side,"

"Let's hope," my mother agrees.

I'm slightly offended by her comment and that my mother agreed, but then again, they're right. For my mother's sake, I hope she does get the daughter she always wanted. I'm the failure child; I've come to terms with that. There's nothing I can do to change it except hope this baby won't be anything like me.

...

"I like this one!"

"Oh, thank goodness," My mother places her hand over her heart, "I thought we would have to be here till midnight,"

I run my hands down the fabric; just from the touch, you can tell it's expensive. It's a black dress with subtle shimmer and lines with a low neckline, side cutout, and side pleat detailing. It's somewhat revealing but elegant at the same time.

Megan does another 360 around me and says, "I can hem it here and here," touching two points of the dress, "For a better fit,"

"Alright," I step down from the stool once again. My mother tells me to bring the dress back down once I change so Megan can tailor it. I walk up the steps and lift the dress a little, so I can make it up the stairs without falling on my face. Once arriving at the top, I go over to my private dressing room; I slip off my sneakers and place them in the corner.

I don't immediately take the dress off. Instead, I turn and look at myself in the mirror. I spend a good five minutes just staring at myself, "I'm beautiful," I say out loud. I've made it a goal to tell myself that once every day, dressed up or not.

Affirmations help with self-esteem; if I tell myself good things about myself every day, my thinking about myself will change. Instead of my brain seeing ugly, whenever I look at the mirror, it will see beauty because that is what I have been telling myself I am every time I look at the reflection.

"And I am amazing; I am smart-"

"And you're a selfish bitch who's lying to her boyfriend," The little voice in my head adds. "Stringing him along because you're scared to tell him the truth, knowing he will leave you when he finds out,"

Well, so much for positive affirmations about myself. How can I be optimistic right now with that weighing on the back of my mind every second of every day and night?

I pull the dress off and then change back into my clothes. I then fold the dress nicely and sit it on the bench beside me before putting my shoes back on and tying them. I open the dressing room door, walk out but then bump into someone, "Ryder," I say when I look up.

"Jayda," he smiles. He pushes me back into the dressing room and closes the door behind us.

"How did you-"

"Find you?" he finishes my question, "I said I would always find you. Did you not believe me when I said that?"

"How did you know I was here?" I would say it's because he somehow put a tracker in my phone, but I don't even have my phone. He explains that I said I was going shopping with my mom for a dress and how this is the fanciest dress store in town, so he took a wild guess.

"And then I saw your mom downstairs, but I didn't see you, so I knew you were up here, and your shoes gave away what room you were in,"

I raise my eyebrow, "How?"

"You're the only girl here wearing sneakers," he says.

"Oh," I don't doubt that. Almost every woman is wearing heels or flats, and the few men I saw are wearing dress shoes.

He bends and kisses me; my back presses up against the wall. It's only been a day, but it feels like years since I've kissed him and felt him this close to me. "I missed you," I say.

"I missed you too," he kisses me again and then says, "Let's get out of here,"

"I can't just leave," Only he would suggest such a thing.

"Why not?"

"Because my mother is right downstairs, and I'm still grounded!" My dad sounded very serious when he said I would be grounded indefinitely; I'm hoping to get out of it if I am on my best behavior. And sneaking out with Ryder will do me no good.

"She's not going to see you, and that's even more reason why you should leave; you don't want to waste this perfectly good day," he says, trying to convince me.

I take in a deep breath, "Okay, fine," I say, giving in. He takes my hand, and we walk out of the dressing room; at the top stairs, I spot my mother standing right at the bottom. "So much for sneaking away," I nudge him. My mother must have seen him come in, and to make sure I didn't leave with him, she waited at the only exit in the building. She looks at our connected hands and then at me. Maybe she will let me go with him if I just ask.

"Oh, hello, Jayda," Evelyn walks up. "You're here also. This makes more sense," she looks at Ryder and gives him a smile through pressed lips. "I should've known you were going to be here when Ryder offered to take and come shopping with me. He never wants to shop with me," I smile back at her and then look at my mother. "Are you two going somewhere?" she asks.

"Uhm, n-"

"You can go!" My mother says, and my smile widens instantly. "You've done enough shopping for today," she takes the folded dress out of my hand. "Evelyn can take your place, we will be a while but stay in the area, and I will call you when we are done,"

"Okay! Thank you," I hug her because it seems like the right thing to do right now.

"Have fun," she says to me. She looks at Ryder and adds, "But not too much fun," basically telling him not to have sex with me. He turns his head and looks away; we then both walk out of the shop and stand in front.

"So, where do you want to go?" he asks me.

I hold my shoulders in the air, "Uhm, it doesn't matter," As long as I am with him, I'm happy.

"Do you wanna go get ice cream?" he asks and smiles, knowing that eating ice cream is my favorite thing to do in the whole wide world besides reading and watching TV, that is.

"Yeah," I giggle. "You know me too well," I grab his hand again, and we walk down the street.

We went to the ice cream shop, and I got plain vanilla ice cream with Caramel. I will never understand why people put so many toppings over top of their ice cream and how they get any other flavor other than vanilla; you can't go wrong with vanilla; every other flavor is nasty.

Now we are just sitting in the car not too far from the dress store, in silence. He hasn't said anything since we left the ice cream place; he just looks over at me every other minute. "Are you sure you don't want any?"

"No,"

I eat a spoonful. "Then why are you watching me eat?"

"I'm not watching you eat; I'm just watching you," he declares.

"But why?" It seems like he wants to ask something, but he's holding back. "Do you want to talk about something? Or do you have a question?" anytime there is an awkwardness between us, I immediately worry that he has found out about Columbia.

"Did you tell your mom we had sex?" he comes out and asks.

"Uhm," Well, I wasn't expecting him to say that. "I didn't tell her, but she knows," I told both of them no; I think my dad believed me, but I know for a fact my mom didn't when she mentioned getting me on birth control when we get back. If I really didn't have sex, I would have told her that there was no need to do that, but I didn't, so now she knows.

"If you didn't tell her, then how does she know?"

"I... I don't know the day you dropped me off; she just knew soon as I walked in, I still had your shirt on so, I guess she just put two and two together,"

"And you're dad?"

"I, I think so," I answer. He sighs, rubs his eyes, and then pinches the bridge of his nose. He seems really distressed, knowing that my mom and dad know. Am I missing something? Should I be upset too?

"Great, now I'm sure your dad hates me even more than before,"

"Who cares, Ryder?" The last thing I care about is my dad and his feelings. I would think Ryder felt the same way; he doesn't even like my father.

"I do, Jayda," he forcefully says. "I do. You just don't understand,"

I sit my cup of ice cream on the dashboard, "Then explain it to me. Do you regret having sex with me?" The other night, he said that us having sex wasn't why he was distant, I believed him, but now it seems like that in fact was the reason. "Do you wish you could take it back?" That night was amazing for me; it hurts me to think about him regretting it.

He turns to me, "No. Fuck no, of course not. It's just that having sex with you complicated things, for me at least. It made everything more difficult,"

How are things complicated and difficult now? "I don't understand,"

"I'm going to do something wrong. I'm going to hurt you. And it's going to hurt you even worse because I was you first, and every time I think about you hurting because of something I did it, it-"

I pull myself over the console of the car and straddle his lap. "Ryder," I place my hand on the side of his face to bring him to look at me, his eyes are dark and cold, and I can tell that this is a big deal for him. He really believes that he is going to hurt me. "You aren't going to hurt me,"

"You don't know that," he raises his voice slightly.

"Okay. Let's say you do. If you were to hurt me, I would forgive you, and we will work it out because we love each other and we belong together; nothing can tear us apart," I'm saying these words for him and me, assuring him that nothing he could do would tear us apart and assuring myself that we can get through anything. "I love you, Ryder, and I know you will never hurt me,"

It's true. If anyone was to hurt anyone first, it would be me. Even if I didn't get myself into this whole Columbia situation, I'm sure I would just have found some other way to hurt him.

His hands rest on both sides of my hips, and I wrap my arms around his neck and then kiss him, running my fingers along the back of his neck. His phone vibrates against his leg; he pulls it out of his pants pocket. I decide to kiss the sides of the neck while he reads the message; depending on how long it is, it could take him a minute.

I suck on the side of his neck, biting it gently, knowing that it will quickly leave a noticeable red mark. Thank goodness he's white; I laugh to myself.

"Who is it?" I ask and then kiss the red mark on his neck. I'm getting so much better at this.

"My dad," he says. "He's reminding to remind you about the apartments,"

"Oh," I scratch behind my ear then look out the window next to us. What to do? What to do? I place my hands on the sides of his neck. "Can we do it later?" I whine.

"Jayda,"

I take the phone out of his hand and sit it on the seat, "I don't feel like it right now; I just want to spend the last minutes I have with you making out, not looking at apartments," I tug at his hair, "Okay?". He replies by leaning in and kissing me.

I can't believe I'm doing this; I'm using lust to distract him from LA and keep my secret hidden. Ugh. I'm disgusting; I feel disgusting. No wonder I couldn't even look at myself in the mirror.

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