Fractured

Tammy

It was one of those dead Saturdays where nothing feels real. I’d been sent to the supermarket with a list and strict instructions to “stick to the budget.”

I was halfway down the fruit aisle when I saw him.

He was standing by the weighing machine, peeling apples out of one of those pre-packed selections and dropping them one by one onto the loose fruit scale. I watched as he printed a label for exactly four apples and stuck it over the original price.

It wasn’t even smooth. He just looked… bored. Like this was a perfectly normal thing to do.

“Isn’t that stealing?” I blurted before I could stop myself.

He glanced up. Tall, wiry, with this lazy confidence that made my stomach knot. “Only if you think supermarkets are saints.”

I should’ve walked away. But he gave me a half-smile, and I stayed rooted to the spot.

“Let me guess,” he said, looking at the basket in my hand. “Shopping for your mum?”

“My dad.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Strict?”

“That obvious?”

He shrugged. “You look like you’d get grounded for breathing too loud.”

I laughed, and hated how much I liked that he noticed.

I moved on, but somehow he kept reappearing in every aisle.

By the time I was at checkout, he was already there, leaning against the counter like he had all the time in the world.

“Tammy,” he said, holding out his hand.

“Sarah.”

I should have walked away. But he had that lazy, lopsided smile that made you feel like you were in on a secret and I was starving for secrets that weren’t mine.

We talked for maybe ten minutes. He told me he played in “a band” (later I’d learn this meant he and two friends made noise in a garage after getting high). He gave me his number, scrawled on the back of a cigarette packet.

“What kinda music do you like? Doesn’t matter. You should come hang out sometime,” he said. "I'll show you some real music"

I didn’t realize then that he’d also show me how far down I could go without realizing I was falling.

“I thought Tammy was exciting,” I told Christina during therapy.

“He was older, he had his own place, he didn’t care about rules. I thought that meant freedom. Really, it meant he had nothing to lose.”

It started small. Coffee runs, late-night phone calls about how “life had screwed him over” and how “people just didn’t get” him.

Then came the sneaking out. The first time he picked me up, his car reeked of weed and stale fries. There was duct tape holding the side mirror on.

“You smoke?” he asked.

“Sometimes,”

“Good girl.” He grinned, showing slightly yellowed teeth.

It made my stomach flip, and not in a good way, though I didn’t know how to tell the difference yet.

His friends were older too; people who always seemed between jobs, their houses littered with beer cans and ashtrays overflowing with half-smoked cigarettes. Someone was always passed out on the couch.

One night, he handed me a little green pill.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “It’ll make everything better.”

I swallowed it without asking again.

Christina looked at me carefully. “Did he pressure you?”

“Not in the way you mean,” I said. “I didn’t need convincing. I just wanted him to like me. So when he said, ‘Come over,’ I came over. When he said, ‘Try this,’ I tried it. When he kissed me, I kissed him back and when he stuck it in me abruptly that night, I flinched, I made it obvious I didn’t want it but at the same time, I felt like there wasn’t much I could do

Sex with him felt like I could barely keep my eyes open. The ceiling spun and I felt like I was underwater.

We lasted months. Months of hugging toilets to vomit, parties in rooms that smelled like sweat and mold, waking up on floors with my cheek stuck to the carpet.

He liked me best when I was out of it. Easy to keep close, easy to keep quiet.

The incident with his cousin was disgusting, but I still stayed.

Then one day, he stopped answering my calls. Blocked me. Like I’d been an expired coupon.

“That’s when I thought maybe my dad was right,” I told Christina. “That maybe I was just… built for this. To burn out early.”

Her voice was gentle. “Or maybe you were still learning what love isn’t.”

But I didn’t go looking for love next.

I went looking for noise.

The night that really broke me didn’t even involve Tammy. It happened on the street in broad daylight. I had made the mistake of wearing shorts that were too short apparently and it drew the attention of the unwanted.

It wasn’t long before over ten of them had surrounded me. I don’t know what would have happened to me if the police hadn’t been doing a drive-by at the time.

After that, I got sharper. Meaner. To myself mostly. I stopped caring what happened to me as long as something happened.

I went through a string of nameless guys and half-forgotten nights. I didn’t care who they were. I just wanted the rush.

Christina’s pen starts scratching again. The sound driving me insane because I can't see what she’s writing. I imagine it’s something like deflection again or avoidance pattern.

She tilts her head slightly. “Sarah, you skipped over a few months after Tammy.”

“I told you,” I say, leaning back, “I just… went out a lot. Parties. Trying to forget.”

“Parties are important here.” She leans forward, her eyes patient but sharp. “Because you’re still avoiding the first time you saw him.”

"And by him, she means Nero" I said to myself in my head. My stomach flips. The name alone feels like a loaded gun under the table.

“I don’t know what you want me to say. It wasn’t special.”

“Then tell me exactly what happened. If it’s so ordinary, you won’t mind.”

I hate her. I hate her so much in this moment. And I hate her even more because she’s right. My hands twist in my lap and I let myself slip back.