The Dress

“Owch!”

It started with a dress.

“Ah…Oh no!” Blood trickling down my leg, I winced uncontrollably. It stained my mother’s beautiful yellow sundress, its ripped edges becoming even more withered with wetness. I looked up at him, shocked.

“This was my mother’s…you know how important she was to me!” The backside of his hand silenced me, and knocked me off of my standing posture as well, ripping my mother’s only record of life left even more, to a point of no return. Water slid down my cheeks as the horror grew inside me. I lied there on the ground, breathing heavily, and not wanting to move. The edge of the dress was caught on a single chain link, and I did not want to ruin it any more than he already had.

“You said you’d changed…” I choked out.

“So did you.” He said fiercely. He knelt down to me and gripped my face in his hand, without an ounce of gentility within him.

“You love me, right?” he demanded. Another tear ran down my face, but I stayed silent.

“Right?” he rose his voice, and tightened his grip on my face. It hurt me, and forced me to slightly squirm. I jerked my leg into the crevice of my waist, forgetting that my mother’s dress was desperately hanging on to the edge of that fence. The sound of the tear rang in my ears.

“Yes…yes, I love you. I do.” I answered, barely able to contain my emotions.

“Then don’t say no.” He said, not a bit of feeling going through his expression.

“I told you, I’m saving myself for marriage. It was my mother’s final wish.” He grabbed me by the shoulders, and lifted me up to my feet. He forced me against the fence once again, the chain links stabbing me in the back.

“Enough about your god damn mother, girl! She’s gone, you hear me? You have me now. If you love me, you’ll do what I say, got it?” he screamed at me. I cringed, and looked away from him, completely and utterly bawling. I refused to answer him after he had insulted my mother like that. He smiled a sarcastic smile and loosened his grip on my body.

“You foolish wench. I could easily find another whore to fuck, and you just sit there.” He waited. I stayed silent.

“Well? Are you going to just let that happen?” I looked at him, clearing away any emotion from my face. I said nothing. I could see the fire burning up in his eyes, and I knew what was coming, but I stood like a statue. I would take anything necessary for me to take, but I will not take this any longer. Shredding my mother’s dress and swearing her name was the final straw. I prayed to her in my head to keep me safe, and watched the fire grow.

He smacked me across the face very hard, and it knocked me to the ground. The chain links had betrayed me again, tearing up the remaining fabrics of the dress.

“Worthless.” He muttered, and left me there all alone, with nothing to comfort me but lonely pieces of yellow cotton.

—-

I’m thankful that my last time with Andrew was at nighttime, as I was forced to travel home in just my underwear.

It’s now morning, and the sun has never shined so bright and dark at the same time. I’m so thankful that I don’t have to return to him anymore. Mother always told me that love is a virtue. Love is kind, forgiving, and is never selfish or boastful. It’s the only lie she’s ever told.

This bright and sunny morning has clouds that are unseen to anyone but me. I’m walking down the street with a box containing the remaining pieces of my mother’s dress. I’m wearing my baggiest jeans and an old beatles t-shirt. My hair is a mess, and tied up into the sloppiest of ponytails. All that’s on my mind is Andrew, and how I could not believe that he was capable of doing something this horrible to me.

I stood still and silent at the edge of the dumpster, balancing the box on the edge. Tears started rolling down my face again, and I wiped them away quickly with the back of my hand.

“Hey girl!” I heard a voice from across the parking lot, and darted my eyes to the source. A young man, about my age, with long shaggy hair, a straw hat, and jeans as baggy as mine was coming closer to me.

“Is that box bothering you?” He asked, in a thick country accent. I wondered what he was trying to pull, but moreso what a country boy was doing in the suburbs. He look like he came straight off of a farm.

“Uh…no. I’m fine, thanks.” I said, without looking at him. I thought I was a little rude, but I thought nothing of it. This boy was meddling into my business when I was going through such a rough time. He has no idea who he’s even messing with.

“Name’s Noah.” He held out his hand. I stared blankly at it, and then met his eyes. They were strange color, like a honey brown. Almost hazel, but not quite.

“Excuse me?” It was hard not to chuckle at him. He was so straightforward.

“Th’ name’s Noah, ma’am. Say, whatcha’ throwin’ out all that fabric there for?” He seemed interested in the pieces of the dress. I gripped it tighter. I had this vibe that he was up to no good.

“It’s a dress. Well, was a dress.” I looked at it sorrowfully, playing with it in my mind. Noah walked over to the dumpster and leaned on it, leaning on his hand with his elbow on the same ledge my box was balancing on. He looked at me like he knew me. It was discomforting.

“Not yours, ain’t it?” I looked at him curiously. His eyes seemed innocent, but I knew he couldn’t have been. My breath seemed to be missing, and it was hard to find my voice.

“Wh…what?” My eyebrows made a crinkle in my forehead as I raised my voice at him.

“Well, yer lookin’ at it like yer givin’ up a baby, miss. It ain’t yers.” I opened my mouth, but no sound came out. I closed it and looked at the ground, shaking my head. I looked into his eyes, and they were mellow. They sparkled in the sunlight, and I felt lost in them for a split second, before remembering my words.

“Look, I don’t know you and you don’t know me, so how-“

“I told you my name was Noah. Ya already know me.” He cut me off. I wanted to glare at him, but I stayed as respectful as was possible. A name doesn’t define a person. I started to say something again, but stopped myself. I just grabbed my box and walked away.

“It was yer mother’s, wasn’t it, miss?” I stopped. How would he know that? Have I met this boy and I just forgot? Is he psychic?

I slowly turned around, and stood there for a few seconds contemplating what to do. I walked back to the dumpster and placed my box back on the ledge. That’s when I notice that he hadn’t moved, nor had his expression changed at all.

“How did you know that?” I inquired.

“So it was yer mother’s.” I hesitated, but then let go. I don’t know what came over me in that moment. All the protection, the walls over my heart, they collapsed in that moment.

“Yes, it was.”

“Tell me ‘bout ‘er.” His eyes sparkled again. I didn’t think.

“She died two years ago, right after I graduated college. My mother was naive. She believed in love, and she thought it could conquer everything. She and my father had divorced when I was a child, and ever since then, she had all these crazy thoughts in her head about finding the ‘right one.’ She thought she had. She met a man, a sailor, one day, and she thought she fell in love with him. She went on all his trips, followed him everywhere, and he betrayed her. He took her for everything she had, and then left without a trace. She couldn’t handle it.” I looked down, ready to cry, but I didn’t. I felt shocked. This was the first time I had ever told my mother’s story without crying at the end. Noah chuckled, and I looked at him angrily. I couldn’t understand how he could laugh after hearing something like that.

“She ain’t naive fer fallin’ in love, ma’am. She’s naive for killin’ ‘erself!” I stared at him in disbelief, trying to take in what he just said. He didn’t know what he was talking about. I’ve learned from my mother that love is nonexistant, and I hated him for calling her out on her suicide.

He looked as if he was reading every thought in my mind. I looked down at the contents of the box again, and began to tilt it in the direction of the trash. Noah’s arm stopped me. It held the box in place, keeping it from spilling the fabrics.

“Why’re you throwin’ out her dress?”

“Isn’t it obvious? It’s completely shredded.” He looked at it, seeming deep in thought for a moment, and then looked back at me.

“Well if yer just gonna throw it out, can I have it?” I raised an eyebrow, but thought nothing of it.

“Uh, sure, I guess.” I handed him the box, and he carried it back to a faded red pickup truck. He really did come straight off of a farm. He dropped the box into the passenger seat, and then turned to me again.

“Hey, ya never told me yer name!” I literally had to think of my name, as I had forgotten it. I had no idea why. I frantically searched through my brain, wondering why I had to in the first place. It was my name.

“Umm…Allison. My name’s Allison.” He smiled at me, and took off his hat.

“Nice to meet ya, Allison. I’ll see ya around some time.” He climbed into the driver seat of the truck, and drove off. It was then, that I realized I was just standing there, staring like an idiot.

On the walk back, I found myself wondering if Noah was even real, or if I just made him up in my imagination.

‘Of course he was real.’ I thought. ‘If I made up a man, I wouldn’t have made him so rude, and definitely not a country hick.’ I felt wrong for insulting him, but I couldn’t understand it.

When I went home, the house felt very empty. I normally like the isolation, but now it just felt so…lonely. I felt the need to socialize. I never want to socialize. I just needed to calm down, that’s all.

I went into the kitchen and grabbed a mug to make myself a cup of coffee. The mug had a cow on it, with some tall grass and a scarecrow. Instinctively, I threw it against the wall.

The sound of breaking glass startled me. What did I just do? I sighed, and cleaned up the pieces, trying my best not to cut myself. I felt so uncomfortable with myself. In fact, I didn’t even feel like myself.

I went outside, and decided to go get a cup of coffee at a coffee shop. As I walked down the road again, I hated being alone with my thoughts. Some about my mother’s dress, some about Andrew, but most flickered to Noah. Noah. A boy straight out of the fields of Nebraska, stealing the pieces of my mother’s dress, calling suicide naive, Noah. I felt like I spoke too soon.

I passed by the park, and he was all of a sudden in front of me. I stopped dead in my tracks, and blinked, surprised.

“Hey, Allison.”

“Hi…Noah. What were you doing at the park? And where’s my mother’s dress?”

“I like the trails.” I noticed that he avoided the question about the dress. He probably fed it to a horse, or something.

“Say, ya wanna go out with me?” I felt this weird feeling in my gut when he asked that question. Go out? Like a date? With him? Out of the question.

“Sure.” I said, without any control. I meant to say ‘what?’ I meant to ask if he meant it to be a date. But all I said was ‘sure.’ He smiled.

“Then it’s a date.” The weird feeling was back. I’m guessing because this was wrong, and I was going on a date with some weird guy I had just met an hour ago.

He linked his hand with mine, and walked with me. I believe I blushed, but I’m not quite sure. I’m not familiar with the feeling of blushing, and I’m not familiar with the feeling I’m getting right now.

We came up to a lake. It was beautiful. I imagined him pulling out a picnic basket and wanting to eat on the edge of the water. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe this would actually be a fun date.

“Take your clothes off.” Or maybe I was wrong.

“Excuse me?” He ignored me, and took off his shirt and pants.

“Wh-what are you doing??” I exclaimed, but he ignored me again. He ran and jumped off the dock into the lake, yelling as he plunged into the water. I just looked at him. He came up to the surface, and pushed back his wet hair.

“Well, what are ya waiting for?” I still could not understand how this was considered a date.

“What are you talking about?” He came to the edge of the land near me, and looked up at me. His eyes had that same sparkle again, and they looked twice as gorgeous shimmering off the water.

“Take yer clothes off and get in!” He yelled at me. He was smiling real big. I couldn’t help but smile too. I shook my head at him.

“I don’t know…”

“If ya don’t get in, I’m gonna have to drag ya in.” He raised his eyebrows at me, and I gave him a smirk. I stripped off my shirt and pants, letting them carelessly hit the dirt. I walked along the dock, and then let myself fall into the water. It was cold. So cold, I had forgotten it was even summer. I came up to the surface, and rubbed my arms with my hands in an effort to warm myself.

“A-aren’t y-you c-c-cold-d?” I stuttered. He seemed so comfortable, but I was shivering like no tomorrow. He walked over to me, and towered over my shivering body. He came so close that our noses almost touched, and I felt my heart beating faster. It must have been that cold. I started breathing heavily, and I felt uneasy. It was a strange feeling, but I felt content.

That was, until he splashed a huge wave of water all over me.

“What’d you do that for?” I yelled, but he just started laughing, and did a backstroke to keep his distance from my rage. I then found myself laughing as well.

We were swimming and splashing at each other for what seemed like forever, until the sun started to set over the horizon. He got out of the water and started putting his clothes back on.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Movin’ on to the next part of our date, of course. Unless ya wanna walk in public in yer underwear.” He smiled, but I was revisited by an unwelcome flashback; walking home after Andrew shredded my mother’s dress. As I got dressed, I wondered what had happened to my mother’s dress, and then I remembered that Noah fed it to a horse. Or something.

I followed him through a trail in the woods behind the lake, and realized that I probably shouldn’t have worn flip-flops today. Then again, I didn’t know that I was going on a country version of a date today either, so I excused myself.

We came to a meadow of wheat stalks. Yes, wheat stalks. This was the spot for the rest of our date. No cinema, no cafe, no fancy diner. A field of wheat stalks.

He walked to the middle of the field, and then looked up, squinting at the sun. His hair blew in the wind, already dry, looking so soft. His eyes sparkled like no other. I had that feeling in my gut again, the content feeling. I stood still, and felt like I couldn’t move, nor did I want to.

He looked at me with his sparkling eyes, and motioned for me to come next to him. I walked next to him, and followed where his eyes were. He was looking at the sunset, and so I did as well. I gasped. I witnessed the most beautiful sight I had ever seen. The sunset hovered over the deep blue lake, with forest bordering it. You could clearly see the dock we jumped off of, and the trees created a pretty silhouette. You could see everything, and it was breathtaking.

He put a hand on my cheek, and I noticed he had turned himself to face me. I did the same.

“Allison, did ya know that you were beautiful?” I blinked, not knowing what to say. So, I leaned up, and kissed him. I didn’t know what was happening, and I didn’t know what I was feeling, but what I did know, was that this was what I wanted to be doing.

Everything I’ve ever known changed in that moment. My mother was not naive, I was.

—-

I’ve never woken up from a smile, until today. Last night, Noah kissed me goodbye on the front porch of my tiny little house, and made fun of me for my suburb lifestyle. He was so strange and frustrating. We kissed many times that night. After that first kiss, everything just got better. I couldn’t sleep for about an hour, due to thinking about everything. My feelings, my actions, my thoughts.

I came to one conclusion; love exists, and I feel it for Noah.

It’s crazy to think that I’ve spent my entire life thinking that love was just a fairytale found in movies, and within a single day that started out to be the worst, my entire life’s philosophy had changed.

I had my heart set on today since last night. Ever since I came to that conclusion, I’ve been set on telling him today. I took a shower, got dressed, brushed my teeth, all in the course of 30 minutes, which is so fast for me. I left my house, and took a walk down the road again.

He told me where he lived last night, as if he knew that I was planning on visiting him the next morning. I had a feeling that he probably did. Somehow, he just knew everything. That was another thing that happened last night. We stayed in that field and talked for hours, and he didn’t seem shocked by a single thing. Not by Andrew, not by my total disbelief in love, nothing. He accepted me for everything that I am.

It seems like my assumptions have always been right. When I came up to his house, it was a tiny house with a huge yard, built of tall grass that couldn’t have been cut in months.

He was leaning against the side of his house, looking out into the sky. I walked across the yard a little, and he turned around at the sound of my footsteps. He smiled when he saw me, and ran over to me.

“There’s something I have to tell you.” I said. I took a deep breath, and looked deep into his eyes. They seemed so happy, and I smiled at the thought.

“What is it, dear?” My heart fluttered at the word ‘dear,’ and I felt like a school girl all over again. I smiled again, and closed my eyes, taking another deep breath.

“I love you.” I proclaimed, and it felt so good inside after I had finally said it.

“Can ya wait ‘ere a sec?” He said, and not waiting for me to answer, he went inside his little house. My smile disappeared, and suddenly I was angry and sad at the same time. Did I scare him? Did he lead me on?

Before I could tear myself apart too much, he came outside to meet me. He held it in his hand, and I put my hands over my mouth in disbelief. I ran over to him and hugged him as tightly as I could. I erased all my thoughts from before. There was no way he was leading me on. I knew he loved me when I saw it, all completely together. I could not believe he did this for me.

It ended with a dress.