"Jules, please listen to me. I have known you since you were born. Your mother, my sister, died on that lake. Your father was never in the damn picture. I took you in; I raised you. You became my flesh and blood. I would do anything for you. I would die for you. I fucking love you. You're so beautiful."

The sobbing started to come out in wales between the words. The deep inhales stifled by the throbbing pulsating of the temple veins in Roberts's head grew in intensity with each word passed from his lips. His niece stood in her apartment bedroom doorway with a look of horror. She breathed deeply through her nose and out of her mouth quietly. 

"Uncle, I don't know what you mean. Of course, I love you too."The sickening stirring began in her stomach as she held the contents of her lunch inside with all her will. The sloshing veggie wrap was like an open sea in a storm. She stood firm, bare feet firmly planted in the green shag carpet. Her German shepherd dog Bongo stood on his haunches beside her. Tail resting on her foot as his ears pointed at the sound of the uncle's words. The dog's body was tense, and he sensed Jules's uncomfortable body language as the guest continued crying in their home.

"I'm in love with you, Jules. I always have been. I want to be with you. I want to marry you. I will take care of you for the rest of your life."

Jules's skin ran cold. Goosebumps rose high on her arms at his words. Her head spun with a thousand and one thoughts. Her heart sank into the ocean of her stomach, and she was about to hurl forth the contents of her lunch. Her cinnamon-brown skin began to turn pale, and her knees began to shake. She was going to be sick and needed to get this man, this man she knew and trusted, out of her sight.

"You need to leave." She needed all her emotional and mental strength to keep from collapsing on the floor. Bongo stood up beside her, never taking his eyes off the man.

"Jules, look. I'm sorry. I don't know what else to say. I love you, though. Please call me. At least you're not my biological child."

Jules moved towards the front door and opened it, Bongo at her heels. "Please leave now."

Her uncle walked out the front door, head hung low, staring at his beat-up work boots. 

"Goodbye Jules, I'm sorry."

She gently closed the door and bolted it, grabbed the chain, and locked it in place. Franticly, she went around her apartment, closing and locking all windows. She latched the back sliding screen door. At last, she called Bongo to her bedroom and locked her and the dog inside. Gathered under the blankets, she sobbed mournfully as her dog lay warming her body beside her.

After sobbing and sleeping, she woke up the following day and called Edie, her best friend. She explained everything: what her uncle had said, the way it was said, her shock, the nauseating waves of food rotating in her stomach, the rotation of numbness and emotional distress she cycled through every thirty minutes.

Edie encouraged her and told her that everything was going to be okay. Jules understood it would eventually be okay, but it would take drastic change and action. She did not know her uncle, unable to fathom how he had grown and developed feelings for a little girl.

She had only turned eighteen a year ago, and in that past year, he barely reached out to her. 

During that course of the year, she wondered why there was so much distance between them. She, however, also felt relief that she wasn't seeing Robert every day.

As she grew up, it was just the two of them. And she felt his eyes always on her. He let her do what she wanted, but he wanted to spend all his free with her when she was home. Renting movies, listening to new albums, buying her presents each time he was away for work. He would cook for them and would buy her anything she wanted.

Jules loved her uncle like he was her father, for her own never was in the picture. Her mother died in a speed boating accident when she was six. A drunk date of hers turned a corner too fast, and out her body flew. Not knowing how to swim well and being four beers deep, she drowned before her date had time to help her out of the water.

The uncle knew where she lived, worked, her friends, her exes, and her class schedule. He knew how to find her anywhere, anytime he wanted. Her skin crawled at the thought of ever seeing him again.

The deep wound of betrayal festered and bled buckets inside her as her anger began to rise. The woman she is becoming feels rage for the child she once was. The innocent, the vulnerable, the beautiful child she was. It had felt that he stripped all innocence and sense of wonder were stripped from her soul as she ruminated on the words that came out of his mouth on a used couch she had once loved.

That afternoon, she called and quit her job, put in her notice that she was breaking the lease on her apartment, and picked a city six hours away from her hometown to pack up and move to. She had no plan, no job, and no future in mind. It was time to start over, where she would fall in love with herself.

She packed up her car, put Bongo in the back with the windows down, and walked back into her almost empty apartment. The bright orange couch stood solely in the middle of the living room. She pulled with all her strength to maneuver it out of the front door and onto the curb, where she placed a cardboard sign scribbled in black sharpie: 'FREE.' 

Walking back to lock her apartment up for the last time, she stared and the deep imprinted green shag fibers of the carpet. It was the last trace of the life she started here she would take in. She breathed in deeply, bolting the door, to leave behind the indents and begin anew.