ONC 2024 SHORTLISTER || After two opposites find comfort in each other and have an instant connection but can't be together, they collide again months later and get a second chance at love || August Walker and Jasmine Kelly are complete opposites...
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Somehow, the only thought that swirls in my head as August still snores beside me is how on earth Abby was sober enough to text coherently. She sounded so freaking drunk on the phone, and the text had no spelling mistakes or anything. Was she planning it? Had she had the text pre-written for a while? Or is she just good at texting while drunk?
It's just before nine in the morning. He's supposed to be at work right now, but with this shit, I got him to phone in sick. Reluctantly, he knew it was the right thing before he finally got to sleep at two in the morning.
Normally, I would be the person to side with someone in Abby's shoes here: why would anyone lie about the father of their child? Why would anyone do any of the things she did to August?
A girl I lived with before I met Josh went out with me on a night out. She was ridiculously sober during the night, only drinking fizzy drinks. The next morning, we noticed a guy walking out of her room, and she told us she'd been assaulted. We got her to go to the police, did all of that, supported her and everything. The day they took the guy in for questioning, I overheard her on the phone saying she'd lied about the sexual assault.
Along with the yelling at her for lying, throwing the stats and how it devalues any real sexual assault survivors, and wasting police time, the one thing I wanted to know was why. She never answered, and my other roommate wondered if she was mentally ill and seeking attention, or just seeking attention. She ended up going to prison herself and having to pay a large sum of money to the guy she accused.
To this day, I never found out why she did what she did, and sometimes it haunts me because why, in a world where victims are rarely even given their day in court, let alone given justice and believed, would someone lie about that?
As August sleeps, I think about the fact after he reacted, he thought she was lying. I don't know Abby, as I told him, but as a woman and as someone who's seen women lie about men before, I want to believe her.
Is that wrong? To believe a woman simply because she is a woman? I see it all the time on social media, people who side with women because in general, things like domestic violence and sexual assaults are done to them. Girl power and all that is extremely prevalent. Surely I should be on August's side with this because, well, he's now my boyfriend.
But that's the thing; no matter how much I think why someone would lie about this – which his reasoning of maybe she wants back in with him would make sense – I just cannot get on board with it. Maybe that's me being mean, or maybe it's logical, I don't know.
It just makes me sad that if he is a father, he's been deprived of knowing his child for however many months the child is. Even if their relationship was bad, he shouldn't have been kept from his child.
If she is lying, I don't understand why. Even if she wants him back in his life, I just don't understand. There are so many different ways to get someone back, and if he finds out that he's not a father, then why would he even want her back?
