Chapter 5 - Chloe’s Perfect Party
Chloe planned our eighteenth birthday party for three months.
She called it our party, but everyone knew it belonged to her.
She chose the colors.
The guest list.
The flowers.
The cake.
The photographer.
The bikinis.
When I asked if I could just wear a dress, she laughed.
“It’s a pool party, Maya. Don’t make it depressing.”
Dad heard her and looked up from his coffee.
“Chloe,” he warned.
She rolled her eyes. “What? I’m trying to help her be normal for once.”
Normal.
That word followed me everywhere.
Normal girls swam.
Normal girls showed their shoulders.
Normal girls wore summer clothes without checking every mirror and doorway first.
I told myself I could survive one night in a robe.
I would smile for a few photos, stay near the edge, avoid attention, then disappear upstairs once Chloe got busy being admired.
But Chloe wanted attention in a different form that night.
She wanted comparison.
Her glowing body beside my hidden one.
Her confidence beside my fear.
Her beauty beside what she believed was my shame.
An hour before guests arrived, Dad knocked on my bedroom door.
He found me sitting on the bed in the blue bikini, robe clutched closed in both hands.
His face changed when he saw me.
Not because of the scars.
Dad never looked at me with disgust.
He looked at me with grief.
“Maya,” he said softly. “You don’t have to do this.”
“I know.”
“She has no right to pressure you.”
“I know.”
He sat beside me.
For a moment, he was not the successful Richard Bennett with the glass house and summer suit and perfect lawn.
He was just my dad.
Tired.
Guilty.
Still carrying smoke in his lungs from a night twelve years gone.
“I failed you,” he said.
I looked at him.
He had never said it that directly before.
“I thought keeping it quiet would protect both of you,” he continued. “But it protected Chloe from consequences. Not you from pain.”
My throat tightened.
Downstairs, Chloe shouted at decorators because one balloon arch leaned slightly to the left.
Dad took my hand.
“If she crosses a line tonight, I won’t stay silent.”
I nodded.
But deep inside, something had already shifted.
I did not want him to save me.
May you like
Not this time.
If Chloe forced the truth into the light, I was going to make sure it stayed there.
