Again, he looks to me. I try to warn her. I say, “Care—”
But she doesn’t listen. “That trip. Just last weekend. She told you no and you forced yourself on her while she was sleeping.”
“Did she tell me to stop at any point?”
Claire glances at me. “No, but—”
“So what’s your point here?” He turns to me. “And what the fuck have you been telling people?”
I’m angry now. Angrier than I planned to be. “You hurt me, George. You know what you did.”
He laughs again and I find myself flexing my fingers as if to keep control of them. If I don’t think very consciously about keeping my hands still, I don’t know what they might do.
“Just because you like it a little rough sometimes—”
Hands move quicker than my brain does, a palm striking him across the cheek. Stupid, I know. He immediately lunges forward.
“How dare you—”
Claire steps between us, hands pushing his chest back. Well, as much as her small hands can. “Oi, back off.”
Hands move quicker than my brain does, George taking Claire by the shoulders and throwing her to the floor. She yelps and I want to cry again. The shove is rough, her body slamming into cabinets and rolling across the tiles. The tears are starting. I’ve done this to her; it’s my fault.
No.
It’s his.
My hand finds the segment of glass on the counter and I lash out with it. I make contact. I wasn’t expecting to make contact. There’s an angry red line across George’s cheek and shock on his face. He’s stepped back once as a reflex to the pain, but once he sees my paltry weapon, he simply smacks it out of my hand.
“Care?” I ask.
She’s groaning, but angry. Body rocking like she’s aboard a ship, but rising nonetheless to throw herself once more at George. George, in turn, is ready to lunge. I try to thrust myself between them, but George simply gives us both a rough shove with each hand. My back cracks against the counter. I’m so focused on stopping George in his tracks that I don’t see Claire’s head make contact with the corner of the kitchen counter, hard.
Her crumpled body is still.
I can feel that George is ready to leap. My hand roves behind me over the kitchen counter looking for new help. The knife block. I’ve found the knife block, and I’ve found a handle, and George is suddenly lunging at me. I draw the knife out. George draws his fist back. I feel the blow before I see it.
In fact, I’m not sure I see it at all.
The next thing I know, I’m coming to, my temple throbbing. I can feel the cool tiles of the kitchen against my face, cold seeping through my clothes and into my bones. It takes me a few seconds, but I manage to sit up, and when I do, I can see that George is right in front of me, slumped against a cabinet, the knife buried to the hilt in his chest.
25
Now
“And how is everything?” the waitress asks.
I try to blink away images of George’s lifeless body as I root around for an answer about the overpriced and underseasoned eggs in front of me. The bright, brassy decor of the restaurant fails to push away the dark memories.
It’s the reason Claire finally upped sticks to LA and left me here, I’d found myself explaining to Dimple.She was tired of sacrificing for me. And who could blame her? I was dating another douche, and this time, he hadn’t just hurt me, but hurt her, too.
My mother was livid, of course. Called me every name under the sun. It’s why I stopped seeing her. Why we don’t talk. And then Emily…She heard what happened. Reached out to me. It was a hard phone call when we finally spoke. She told me I needed help. Guess there were too many dead boyfriends around me to ignore.
So that was it. The Big Fallout.
It’s why I wrote the letters, why I started to see Dr. Foster. I wanted to make sense of things, break the pattern, make healthier choices. Had to at leastprove to Claire that I was willing to do the work so she’d let me back in again. It took time. But we got there.
Even after all these years, I still hate him. George. Hate him for what he did and hate him for filling me with so much hatred. So much that it’s pushed out many of my happier thoughts and feelings to make room for itself. At the very least, he made the story I spun of him attacking me easier to swallow. Turns out he had quite the rap sheet: aggravated assault, harassment, stalking. I’m not stupid; I’d looked him up online, but he’d given me a fake surname that hid his history, and given his socials didn’t use his surname, I’d no idea he was living a double life. His list of charges included cracking his mother’s jaw when she refused to give him a larger share of his dad’s will after cancer killed him. Some nonsense about George being head of the family, deserving to manage the funds. His family’s testimony also helped me out in the end. Someone ought to arrest the podcasters George was poisoned by, too.
