21/28 | 2.21.18 | February Writing Challenge

21/28 | February Writing Challenge

21. Write about a time you said no.

My mouth couldn't find the word -- it had escaped my brain by that point. I dug through files and files, dictionaries and thesauruses, desperately trying to find the word I needed.

My mouth just couldn't say it -- that two-letter word, that word that could've helped or could've not, that word that I needed the most and still need to this very day. 

I said it in other ways -- "I want to go home" or "It's getting late."

Pushing my shirt down wasn't enough of a sign, neither was getting up to leave. But both of these actions were met with his own version of the two-letter word -- pulling my shirt back up and wrapping his arm down around me, leaving me unable to get up. 

It doesn't matter that moans slipped out of my lips while words couldn't, while my eyes stared out the window, dead and afraid. My body was working against me and my brain wasn't cooperating. All I could do was lay there, paralyzed with fear and anger, desperately wanting this to be over.

But it didn't end as soon as I wanted it to, and even after, there was a reluctance to take my synonyms for the two-letter word seriously. 

That car, that parking lot, that person I consider a stranger will continue to haunt me.

I didn't say the two-letter word -- but I wish I fucking did.