Page 6 of Empower

When I turned eleven, I lost my mom to cancer, and this was when my world seemed as though it was titled on its axis but in ways that are unimaginable unless you’ve experienced it.

Byron was there holding my half-sister's hand and mine, letting us know he was there if we needed anything.

Later that night, after my stepfather, who I refused to call father any longer, not after the news my mother shared with me right before she passed, held a wake for her, Byron and I were sitting in the gazebo behind my parent’s house under the stars in the winter.

I’m not sure why he did it, but he kissed me right smack on the lips. Maybe it was the moment or heck maybe he was dared too; I would never know until it was too late.

Something else I noticed that had my skin crawling the following years, my stepfather looked at me differently.

Staring at my body for too long. Asking me to watch a movie with him, and when I started to get sleepy, he let me curl into his body and ran his hands through my hair.

… Or when I got ready for soccer.

I had started dressing in my bathroom because I had a lock on that door.

Why did I start doing that instead of dressing in my bedroom?

Well, he had a habit of walking into my room while I was getting dressed. And one too many times, he caught me in my underwear.

And no, I never missed him licking his lips every time he closed the door.

Yes, I had gone and bought a doorknob with a lock that first time with the lunch money I had saved up, but when I got home from school, I noticed it was taken off.

The reason for that, well, that was brought to light the day before my eighteenth birthday, but we aren’t there yet.

Now, back to Byron, I mentioned a Ken doll, here are some more reasons why.

He was seventeen and already six foot two at two hundred pounds with dark blonde hair that seemed all he had to do to it was run his fingers through it and let it fall where it wanted to.

The prettiest blue eyes I have ever seen and unblemished tanned skin.

You could even make out the cuts in his six-pack, washboard abs, how did I know that? Because he always wore tight-fitted t-shirts that showed it off.

Compared to my five-foot-one frame and weighing in at one hundred and eighteen pounds he could squish me like a pancake.

Where he had that dark blonde hair I had black hair, almost midnight black, he had these stunning blue eyes, whereas I had green eyes that my mom always told me looked like emeralds.

My half-sister always said she wasn’t jealous, but I knew she was.

See our mom had wavy black hair, whereas mine was pin-straight and couldn’t hold a curl to save my life.

Every time Karly walked by me in the house she sneered at me, well, not at me, but at my hair. She got her dad’s mussy brown and our mom’s hazel eyes.

What had me snickering sometimes, was that Karly dyed her hair a midnight black color, but every week after she washed it, the color faded.

One night, I snickered when Byron pulled up to the house, ignored Karly, and asked me if I wanted to go see a movie with him.

Our first date in my eyes at least, he took me to see the new Transformers movie when I was fourteen, he then took me for a ride on the back of his motorcycle around the block, we didn’t go far.

And I even got a kiss on my forehead after he dropped me off.

Anyway, Byron sounds pretty awesome and drop-dead gorgeous; right?

And through the next three years, he did little things like kissing me on the forehead and chucking me on the chin when he passed by me at school. I thought he was biding his time until I turned eighteen.

What a crock of crap that was.

It was the day before my eighteenth birthday when I got home from school and checked the mail.