“It’s okay. I know.” She smiles. “But do know, he doesn’t go around giving those to just anyone.”
Once she’s gone, I crash onto the couch and press play on the movie.
I am almost asleep when I hear my phone buzz on the coffee table.
“I don’t want to talk about my day,” I say quietly.
“Me either. I just wanted to hear your voice. I don’t think I can sleep without it now.”
I chew on my cheek and rest my head back on the pillow.
In high school I had dated a couple different guys. Nothing serious. Never anything more than a guy to carry my books to geography class or meet up at football games with. They weren’t smooth or charming. They were hardly kind and usually horny. Straight to the point over text, and quick to cop a feel in the back seat of my friend’s beater Honda Civic.
When I got to college and met Ethan, I didn’t know someone could feel the way he did about me. I would usually wake to a long rambling message about how beautiful I was, how anyone would be lucky to love me and how nobody else would be able to love me the way he did. We had aspecial connection, he said. He talked and he talked, saying anything and everything to get me to believe how much he loved me. Or how beautiful he thought I was. Convincing me to take steps I wasn’t ready to take. Begging me to let him love me better. To give him more of my time. More of myself.
Soon I had no friends, and I was sleeping most nights in his bed at the frat house because he insisted it was more comfortable than my cheap mattress. He said condoms were uncomfortable. He said he loved me. He said he would marry me. But goddammithe never actuallyshowme that he loved me. For months, years, I kept giving and giving until he would give a fraction of what I prayed for. So, when I did get it, it was like an adrenaline high. I was so blind and so in love. Or at least, he told me we were in love.
I was standing at my engagement party alone and pregnant while he was off talking to “our” college friends, when a large broad-shouldered version of Ethan walked up.
“Hi,” the man had quipped and shook my hand. “Sebastian.”
It took me a moment to place the name. “Ethan’s brother?”
He nodded as he considered what he was going to say next. “Ethan’s an asshole.”
I choked on the non-alcoholic champagne that Ethan’s mom insisted I drink to keep appearances up and suspicions of a pregnancy down. “I’m sorry?”
He sighs and rubs the back of his neck. “Be careful.”
“Careful?” I question. “We’re getting married.”
“I know. But are you sure that’s whatyouwant?”
It had been the first time someone questioning me actually broke the surface of the spell I was under. None of my friends were left to question me. My family hardly knew him because it was easier to keep him away than having to explain his behavior. But his brother, standing next to me speaking in hushed tones seemed to step through the cloud of spells and shadows I had been hiding in.
“What do you meanwhat I want?” I asked him quietly, silently begging for him to tell me more.
“Doyouwant to get married? Or does my mom want a wedding to smooth things over, and Ethan is willing to go along with it?” Well shit. “When he said he met a girl, I imagined he found someone who was equally as morally twisted as him, but I have a feeling you’re not.” He gave me a pointed look before hewas joined by a raven-haired woman who wrapped herself around his arm. “Maybe just think about it.”
It felt as if he threw a bucket of ice water in my face and just walked away. Like a baptism, except instead of coming up holy and new, I felt like someone was holding me under.
But it all felt too late at that point. Deposits were paid, venues were booked, and I was having the man’s kid for God’s sake. I was in too deep and I didn’t see a way out.
Paul gave me an attorney’s number at my wedding reception, but I threw it away in the ashtray of the limo on the way to the hotel after. I had convinced myself I would make it work. I had a new resolve to prove to Ethan that I was a good choice. As his wife, I continued to try and prove my value to him. To his life. But you can never prove yourself to someone who has no interest in seeing you.
It took me years to realize I would never want Winnie to stay in a place where she had to work so damn hard to be seen. To be heard. To be listened to.
“I'm sorry Riley did what she did,” I whisper to Tanner on the phone.
“It’s not your mistake to apologize for.”
“No, it’s not, but it isn’t fair. You deserved better than that.”
“So did you.”
“We both deserved better,” I muse.
“I think we still do.” His voice an invitation, one I’ve been fighting since his eyes met mine across that rooftop in Chicago almost two years ago.
