Lunch was supposed to be simple.
Just… lunch. A plate of food, my two friends, and one quiet hour where I could pretend my brain wasn’t a chaotic battlefield of memories I absolutely did not ask for.
Ferna and Elsie sat across from me, chattering like nothing in the world had shattered.
This was the first lunch we’d managed to have together since Aklan became my personal tormentor, and I was doing a spectacular job of pretending I was fine.
But my fork had been dragging the same stripe through my mashed potatoes for so long that the grooves looked like an artist’s sketch. I kept trying to eat, truly, but each time the fork rose toward my mouth, my stomach tightened. Not from nausea, but from the humiliating, unbearable, pulse-deep reminder of what Aklan had done to me the last time we
