Your Turn to Suffer by Tim Waggoner (free romance novels .TXT) 📗

quickly gone inside, and shut the door before Aashrita could reach the porch. But she didn’t want Aashrita to see her awkward movements as she reached for the crutches and tried to get to her feet, so she remained seated.

Lori tried to read Aashrita’s face as she approached. She saw several different emotions there – fear, hope, anticipation, guilt, shame, defensiveness – all swirling together in an uneasy mix. Like Lori, Aashrita was also dressed in T-shirt and shorts, only her shirt was the one given out by the Oakmont Recreational Soccer League. Had she worn the fucking shirt on purpose, intending to mock her, or had she simply been unaware of the ramifications of wearing it to visit the girl whose knee she’d fucked up so badly it’d had to be replaced? Either way, it was a pretty shitty thing to do.

Aashrita came halfway up the porch steps and stopped, as if reluctant to come any closer. Maybe she felt she needed permission to step all the way onto the porch. Maybe she wanted to keep her distance to avoid getting an up-close look at the damage she’d caused to Lori’s body.

“Hey.” Aashrita’s voice was tentative, the word almost a question. Are you willing to talk to me?

Lori did not want to talk to her, wanted to tell her to turn around and get the hell out of there. But she found herself saying hey back, her tone neutral, noncommittal.

“How are you, uh, doing?” Aashrita asked.

Lori felt grim satisfaction upon seeing how uncomfortable she was. Bitch should be uncomfortable.

“I’m all right. Getting better every day.” She spoke these words with a cold edge that she didn’t bother trying to hide.

“Good. Glad to hear it.”

Lori didn’t respond to this. She just looked at Aashrita, watched her grow ever more uneasy as the silence stretched between them. She liked seeing Aashrita this way, liked seeing her hurt. If only a little.

“I’m sorry I didn’t come over sooner. I…was afraid you wouldn’t want to see me. You know, because of the accident.”

Was it an accident? Lori thought. Or were you tired of not being the best on the team, so you decided to take out the competition?

Lori knew this wasn’t fair of her. Aashrita had never shown any sign of being jealous of her before, and honestly, had Lori really been the best player on the team? She’d been good, one of the best, but the best? That was debatable. This was a reasonable way to look at the situation, an adult way. But she didn’t want to be reasonable. She was angry, and she wanted to lash out at the girl who had robbed her of her future.

With a magician’s flourish, she pulled the blanket off her legs and tossed it aside.

“So what do you think? Pleased with your handiwork?”

Aashrita flinched as if Lori had slapped her.

Lori continued speaking, her voice becoming louder and angrier as she went on.

“I’m never going to be able to play sports again – not unless I want to risk fucking up my new knee. Hell, right now it’s all I can do to walk up and down the street a couple times. It still hurts like a bitch, too – especially if I use it too much. My physical therapist says it won’t hurt forever, but I think he’s full of shit. I think it’s always going to hurt. Maybe not as much as now, but I think the pain is never going to not be there. I’ll have it – and the scar – to remind me of you for the rest of my life. Better than signing my senior yearbook, right?”

Lori knew she was being cruel, but she couldn’t stop herself. And part of her didn’t want to stop, wanted to keep on hurting Aashrita.

“Don’t know what I’m going to do about college now that a soccer scholarship is out of the question. Maybe I’ll get a job at a fast-food place after graduation instead. ‘Would you like fries with that?’ How’d I do? Think I got what it takes?”

She thought Aashrita might get angry and lash out at her. Lori wanted her to, wanted to get into a shouting match with her, wanted to yell and scream and cuss her out. But Aashrita said nothing. Her eyes shimmered with tears, but they did not fall, not yet.

“I’m sorry, Lori. It was an accident. I didn’t mean it. I’d do anything to take it back.”

“Well…. There is one way you could make it up to me.”

Aashrita wiped the nascent tears from her eyes and gave Lori an uncertain half-smile.

“What is it?”

Lori’s words came out of her mouth like daggers of ice. “Go kill yourself, you brown bitch.”

She shocked herself, perhaps more for the racist barb she’d hurled than for telling Aashrita to commit suicide. She was deeply ashamed, but at the same time she felt dark satisfaction at knowing how much her words had hurt her friend. Her former friend.

Aashrita’s eyes went wide and the tears came now, flowing fast and free. She looked at Lori for several seconds, mouth open as if she might say something. But then she whirled around and ran down the walkway. She kept running when she reached the sidewalk and didn’t look back.

Lori almost called out for her to stop, almost shouted that she was sorry, that she hadn’t meant it. But she remained silent and watched Aashrita go, not knowing it was the last time she’d see her friend alive.

* * *

Lori fell out of the memory and found herself looking into Aashrita’s face – the version of the woman whose exposed intestines had a life of their own. They were still almost nose to nose, and the loops of organ still wrapped tight around Lori and held her above the ground. The loop coiled around her throat had loosened a little, just enough so she could breathe, but only shallowly. A cloud of flies still buzzed around them.

“You didn’t know depression ran in my family,