If "I love you" was a promise

Would you break it, if you're honest

Tell the mirror what you know she's heard before

I don't wanna be you anymore

~idontwannabeyouranymore, Billie Eilish

...

Sherry looked up at  her grandmother with sad eyes.

"I think he's in love with her."

"Well!" Ada stopped washing the dishes and turned to Sherry who looked like she was about to cry. "So you are not dating, but there is something else going on? If you guys are not a thing, it shouldn't bother you that he likes this other woman, right?"

Sherry's lip trembled. She was trying really hard not to cry. She felt like such a fool, an idiot, for feeling the way that she did about Ben.

"I know. We talked about starting over from scratch and being honest with each other yesterday." She had trusted Ben, she had believed that he had meant what he'd said. She truly wanted to believe him. "I just don't know what to think now." 

Ada observed Sherry. She could always tell how she was feeling as she tended to wear her emotions on her sleeve. She really didn't have a good poker face, and also felt emotions deeper. "But what makes you think that he's in love with her? Are they always together, or do they act like they're together?"

"He follows her with his gaze. I don't think she notices that he's always looking at her, but I've seen the way he does. Not creepily, just... different. I don't know how to explain it." Sherry thought back to that day when he'd called her out in front of the pretty redhead. Elena had looked very uncomfortable being caught in between Ben and Sherry, and had left. It didn't matter, Sherry had still caught the way his gaze followed her.

"I'm still not understanding... If you're not dating, why does it matter whether he likes her or not?"

"We have been hanging out for a while. Going on dates and such. It's just strange. I just have a feeling. I can feel it, Mama. I know he does."

"Then forget the man, and move on to someone else. If a man has wandering eyes for another person, they don't like you. If they did, they wouldn't hurt you, baby. You're a beautiful woman, you deserve someone who truly cares for you." Ada patted Sherry on her cheek, cradling her granddaughter's face in her hands as she stared into her eyes. "Self-respect is important, baby. Don't lower yourself and waste your self-respect on a man who doesn't deserve you. Okay?"

Sherry nodded. She bit her lip to keep herself from crying even if she knew that it was what she felt like doing the most.

"Okay, Sherry?"

"Yes, Mama Ada." Sherry agreed and sighed when Ada moved on to look at something she had on the stove. 

"Now, go get some rest. I'll wait for this to be done cooking before I head to bed, okay?"

"Yes, ma'am."

Sherry took off her apron and headed out the kitchen and upstairs to her room, the room she had used since she was about fourteen and moved in with her grandmother.

"It really is a lot easier said than done." Sherry muttered to herself as she threw herself onto her bed, laying on her stomach. 

If not liking someone was easy, she would've stopped liking Ben a long time ago. He kept cancelling on her, the mood swings, the odd glances he would shoot Elena when he thought no one was looking. 

On several occasions that she had been over at the facility, Sherry had been able to catch him looking at the other woman. He had denied there being anything between himself and the redhead, and the woman actually seemed to not care very much for him...

Maybe he liked people being rude to him and not clingy.

Was she clingy? Had she been acting clingy towards him? She tried not to be clingy.

"Ugh." Sherry was an idiot. She knew it. She was a fool and her grandmother would be ashamed of her for letting herself be treated like a fool. She jumped from the bed angrily. Sherry grabbed the pillows and threw them across the room.  Eyes stinging, she shoved her papers off the dresser, watching them all fall to the carpeted floor.

She was about to tip over the tall body length mirror when she noticed it-- the small purple and red round bruise on the top of her breast. She pulled her baggy shirt down slightly and stared at the hickey. Fuck. Had her grandmother noticed that? She must've not because she would have definitely given Sherry hell for it.

Sherry huffed, dropping her hands to her sides. She stared at her reflection in the mirror.

Tall, blonde, with blue eyes. Just another blue-eyed, blonde clone. She wasn't special.

Her eyes caught sight of the hickey again and she felt her lips tremble because she remembered exactly when that had happened-- the last time they had been together a couple days ago.

"Wait, Sherry, are you sure you want to do this? Are you sure you're not drunk?" Ben asked sounding slightly out of breath. He glanced up at her, she who was leaning over his hips, legs dropped on either side of them.  She was sitting there in a her bra and underwear trying to get his pants off.

"What do you mean? I'm fine. You seemed to be having a little problem before, not me." She pointed out and watched him blush deeply. He moaned slightly in embarrassment. 

"I think we should leave this for tomorrow, don't you think?" he commented as his hands dropped to her waist. She frowned.

"Why? I want to do this." She grabbed his hands, raising them to place them on her breast. "I want you."

“Sherry, give me a second. I’m trying to come off my first stupor here.”

She winked at him and reached behind her back to undo her bra. She dropped it off the side of the bed and leaned further over him, catching his mouth in a kiss. She could tell that he was trying to hold himself back, trying to hold himself from enjoying what they were doing. What she didn't know was if he was doing that because he wasn't in the mood or because of what had occurred earlier...

She imagined it was the latter.

Keeping her eyes closed, she continued kissing him, trying to keep all depressing thoughts out of her mind. It was difficult to do so, specially when she could tell he wasn't that into it-- and when she knew there was something else he had on his mind while she had been busy... on him.

When he finally rolled over her, holding her body down with his own, she finally saw his control snap. It was always that way between them, a little out of control at times, but she had always been the center of his attention. It sucked that she had to work for his attention this time, really work for it because he hadn't wanted it before, but he wanted it now.

Throwing her arms around him, holding him tightly, she closed her eyes and tried to enjoy the moment. Her body felt hot, his body hard and heavy on her, it gave her a send of security --of being wanted. She kissed his neck, holding him close with her body and she hoped that he understood that she wanted him, she enjoyed these times between them.

Someone moaned, and she opened her eyes to see his face. He had his eyes closed as he leaned down and kissed her cheek, moving down to kiss her neck, to hold his face against the area between her neck and shoulder. Quickening the movement of his hips, she felt him hold her hips tighter, and she almost smiled, knowing he was as desperate as she was.

Until he groaned, the words a rushed gasp...

"E-Elena..." he gasped and she felt his body sag slightly against hers.

She stopped, hands frozen on his back as she held him. Her eyes snapped open and she tried to look at his face, but he still kept his face on the crook of her neck. All the warmth and desire she had been feeling disappeared, leaving her with cold dread. 

Her emotions came crumbling down around her, anger the only thing that began to flare up instead. When he rolled off her to lay on the spot next to her, she stared up the ceiling, refusing to look at him. If she looked at him now, she would break. She would do something-- probably start crying, screaming, or she'd throw something at him.

Instead, she rolled over on to her side to face the opposite wall. She pulled the sheets up around her body and tried to calm her racing heart.

It took her a minute to realize that he had fallen asleep, relaxed and calm, without realizing he had broken her heart into pieces...

Sherry stared at her reflection, and for the first time in a long time, she felt like that fourteen year old girl with a broken heart from years ago. The girl who craved her mother's love but all she got was the attention of her mother's many lovers.

She had always needed a lot of things that she couldn't get.

Her mother's love. The truth to whom her real father was. She would probably never know who that man had been. 

Eyes blurry, she felt one hot tear slip out and slide down her face. Her mother had never wanted her nor believed her when she told her that her boyfriends kept wanting to grope her. What had her mother done when Sherry had come to her to tell her that her latest boyfriend had "accidentally" come into her room when she was trying to get dressed? She had gotten angry at Sherry and told her that if she hadn't been acting like a little whore, then maybe "Jack" wouldn't have gotten any bad ideas.

What happened when Sherry came to her mother to tell her that Jack had touched her thigh during dinner time? She'd been told that she was imagining things and she needed to stop trying to get people in trouble.

What about when he'd "walked into the bathroom" when she was taking a shower? When he'd "accidentally" grazed her breast when he had handed her a dinner plate? When he'd made some sleazy comment about her breasts, about her derriere, about her mouth? Her mother had literally blamed Sherry for "trying to entice" her boyfriend.

What. The. Hell.

Sherry stepped away from the mirror. She couldn't stand to look at her reflection anymore. If it wasn't because she had to look presentable for work, she would never look at herself in the mirror by choice.

Her blonde "Play Boy" Bunny hair and lips were something she hated. She'd tried to dye her hair a darker shade before, to look like a brunette. She really couldn't do anything about her lips, but she hadn't liked the way that the darker hair had looked on herself. Her eyebrows were too light, almost invisible, that trying to use a darker eyebrow color made it seem like she had taken a Sharpie to the face.

Some people didn't believe that she didn't dye her hair, but her family was the only people that knew that her hair was naturally white-blonde. Her eyes were like her father's-- or so her mother had said. And she hated Sherry for it. She'd never come out to say it, but Sherry knew it was true. 

"Still the dumb blonde h*ck kid, I suppose," she commented to herself as she went to sit at her old desk. The photos on the wall behind it showed various pictures of her and her high school friends. The very rare friends she did have because she had moved so much during the time she lived with her mother. It wasn't until she had moved in with Mama Ada that she finally found some stability in her life. "I guess I am just a dumb blonde after all because I'm in love with someone who's in love with someone else."

Sherry tried to stop crying, what help could tears be? She closed her eyes for a moment and took a deep breath as she tried to calm herself. 

"Hi, sweetheart, how was practice?"

Sherry stopped in her tracks. She was coming home from drill team practice and had her work-out clothes on-- a baggy shirt and leggings, her hair a messy bun on the top of her head.

"Where's my mom?" she asked Jack as she stared past him to the kitchen to see if she was cooking dinner.

"Had grocery shopping to do. Won't be long now. Come in, take that backpack off. Relax."

"I'm going to be in my room." She studied the older man with cautious eyes, noticing that bloodshot eyes and the smell of marijuana in the air. He was holding a bottle of beer in one hand and was smiling at her in that weird dark way of his that made her skin crawl.

She didn't like this one bit.

"Why? Come on, sit with me."

"I-I don't think so-"

"Sit. With. Me."

She gasped, holding her duffel bag tight to her chest. Heart racing, hands trembling, she went to sit on the opposite couch from the one he was on. He was watching some movie on TV and by the looks of it, it must have been R-rated since Lindsey Lohan popped out of the pool without her top.

Feeling horribly uncomfortable, her whole body trembling, she tried to keep her eyes down and away from staring at Jack. She knew that he would find ways to say she kept "checking him out." 

"Did your boyfriend come and drop you off?"

"Huh?" She frowned and gave him a look. "I don't have a boyfriend."

"Sure you don't. A girl like you, no boyfriend? I'm sure guys can't keep their hands off you."

"Excuse me?" Sherry swallowed hard. Was that another of his dark humor jokes? "I don't have a boyfriend," she repeated, trying to keep her voice steady.

"Why not? You're a sexy young thing. I would totally be all over you if I was your age. Heck, even a couple years younger than what I'm now." Jack commented easily and Sherry thought she would puke. She stood up, grabbing her bag as she turned to leave and hide in her room. 

"Hey, where are you going?"

"Hey!" She yelped in pain when she felt him grab her by her upper arm and twist her around. "Ow!"

"I didn't say you could leave!"

"I don't want to sit with you. I'm going to my room to wait for my mom!" Sherry tried to pull her arm out of his grasp. "Let me go!"

"I am your father, you need to obey me."

"You're not my father!" Sherry screamed. She managed to push him away with both hands and he stumbled over slightly, dropping his beer bottle in the process. "I don't have to listen to you! You creep!"

"You little bitch! You made me drop my beer!" He lunged at her, yanking her by her hair when she turned to run.

"Help!" She held his hands to try to stop him from pulling her hair. It felt like he was ready to pull her scalp off. "Let me go! What are you doing!?"

"Teaching you a lesson, you little c*nt. Why do you have to act like such a little bitch?" Jack dragged her back to the nearest couch, throwing her on it. Eyes wide, she scrambled backwards to get away from him.  "I try to be nice to you, I try to be friendly, but you are just so inconsiderate!"

"I don't like your type of friendly!" Sherry yelled back. "That's molestation!"

"Shut up! What do you know of that? You ungrateful bitch!" He grabbed her arms again, twisting one so hard she yelped in pain when she heard a pop.

"Help! HELP!" She screamed loudly, in fear and pain. "Don't touch me! Let me go!" She kicked out catching him on one of his knees.

"OWW! You little c*nt!" 

Sherry winced when she felt his hand strike her cheek. Eyes burning from the sting, she reached for his face with her good arm.

"Help! Mom! Mom!"

"She's not here to help you!"

"Noo!" 

She felt the cold air hit her chest, and she screamed in horror when she realized he'd ripped her shirt in half.

"Now, you're going to learn!"

Oh, God, help me!, she prayed frantically.

"WHAT THE HELL IS THIS?!"