Page 103 of Tiny Fractures
She takes a deep, shaky breath as if to brace herself as she talks about what I’m beginning to understand is a traumatic part of her life. “Adam and I started dating last fall. He is… was… the star quarterback of my high school’s football team. He got a full-ride scholarship to play for Duke this fall. His team was going to play in the state championship. Big deal, you know?” She looks at me, and I nod for her to continue. “Anyway, he asked me out—I was so flattered,” she says, rolling her watery eyes like she was stupid for enjoying the attention. “So, we started going out. He took me to all these parties and stuff. He’s really popular; everyone loves him because, you know, football and all that. But pretty much right away he started pressuring me to have sex with him.”
Her voice becomes thinner as she continues to tell her story, and I’m suddenly acutely, uncomfortably aware that I’m not wearing a shirt. So I reach for it off the floor and put it back on, needing to provide her some comfort that I’m not like this Adam guy.
“I’ve never had sex,” she continues without looking at me, her attention directed at her hands as she picks at her nails. “Before Adam, I had never even kissed a guy, and he was just pushing me. It was always about that. But I didn’t want to.” She stops picking at her nails and looks at me again. “I didn’t want to with Adam.”
There’s a brief moment of silence as the meaning of her words fills up the space between us.
“A couple weeks into our relationship, we started to have fights about it; he would accuse me of leading him on. We’d go to parties; I’d have too much to drink,” she says, ashamed, “and we’d make out. But then he would inevitably do something that I didn’t want, touch me where I didn’t want to be touched, or whatever, and when I asked him to stop he would get mad at me.”
More tears roll down her cheeks, and I can feel my body reacting to her story, feel my shoulders tense as anger starts to build in my chest.
“He would end up yelling at me, calling me names, and accusing me of purposely leading him on. He would call me a slut and say that I’m sleeping with other guys. He was so mean.” A heart-wrenching sob breaks from her chest.
I reach for her hand and am relieved when she allows me to hold it. Her eyes close as the steady stream of tears flows down her rosy cheeks.
“The fights got worse and worse the more often we had them, and then, a few weeks into our relationship”—I know what she’s going to tell me even before the words escape her mouth—“he became physical.”
It takes everything in me to keep my composure, to stay neutral as animalistic rage twists my insides. “What happened?” I urge as gently as I can, still holding her hand in my right while my left is balled into a tight fist by my side.
“At first it was just a push or a kick, maybe a slap, and only when we were by ourselves. But then he became more violent and he would do it front of his friends, especially when he had been drinking, which was pretty much every weekend.”
I squeeze her hand to remind her I’m here, still listening.
“Then he took me to the winter formal last February and afterwards we were at his friend’s house. Adam was wasted, and, honestly, so was I.” She looks at me, her tears falling hard and fast, and I detect more unwarranted shame in her eyes. I brush my thumb over her cheek, trying to convey that she has nothing to be ashamed of. “I thought, okay, maybe this is the night, maybe I can just suck it up and have sex with him. Everyone does it after these dances, right?”
She looks as if she’s waiting for me to answer the question, but when I don’t, she continues.
“Adam and I were in a room, making out, and…” She trails off for a moment, and I think she’s purposely skipping over some information, but continues, “He just… He started to push up my dress, grabbing at my legs. He was so drunk and it all felt so wrong. He was on top of me and it felt like I couldn’t breathe, so I asked him to stop. He didn’t; he just kept going and I kept telling him to stop and then it was like instinct took over and I tried to get away from him, kicking him and hitting him to get off me, and he finally did, but he was so, so angry.” Her voice chokes as fresh tears spill from her eyes. “He screamed at me that I was a bitch and a slut. He said he should just take what he deserved, and I tried to get around him. He grabbed me by my throat and started to squeeze and then he punched me with his other fist.” She sobs loudly.
I let go of her hand and pull her toward me, encircling her with my arms, holding her tightly against me. She grabs on to me like a lifeline, burying her face against my chest, and it’s honestly a good thing because a murderous desire to find this guy and beat the living shit out of him is boiling in my chest. But I know that, for Cat’s sake, I need to stay calm or I risk her shutting down on me. So I hold her, forcing myself to take deep, steadying breaths.
“How did you get away?” I ask after several minutes, when Cat’s breathing has normalized a little.
She loosens her grip on me but doesn’t move her head away from my chest while she continues her story. “Adam had pushed me against a dresser in the room while he was choking me, and the commotion got people’s attention. Someone burst into the room and then Adam finally let go. Julie took me home. I was such a mess. My parents of course saw the bruises on my throat and in my face; I couldn’t hide it anymore. So, I told them everything and my dad called the cops. Adam got arrested that night. He ended up getting like six months of probation. He was kicked off the football team and lost his scholarship to Duke.”
There’s guilt in her voice. I pull back, forcing her to lift her head and look at me. “Baby, you know that none of this was your fault, right? You did the right thing here.”
She shakes her head. “But why doesn’t it feel like I did the right thing?” She searches my eyes for an answer to the question that I now understand has been haunting her for way too long.
“Because this asshole made you believe this whole time that you were the problem. Because he kept telling you that you were wrong for setting boundaries, that you were wrong for telling him no,” I explain to her. She nods, but I can tell she’s unconvinced, that there’s more to her story, though she’s obviously not ready to tell me everything. And who am I to press her when she still has no idea about what happens in this house when she’s not around?
“Basically, the whole town turned against me,” she finally says, her voice small. “I kept getting prank calls and threatening messages; school was horrible. My parents pulled me out and started to homeschool me in March, but that didn’t help. My car got trashed; the calls kept becoming worse and more frequent. So, my mom made the decision to move me to New York,” she finishes with a sigh. “When I went to visit a few weeks ago, I ran into Adam at that party I told you I was going to. He grabbed my phone and read your messages to me. But he seemed okay and said he just wanted to talk, so we talked, but then things ended up being the way they always were.”
“Did he hurt you?” I ask, trying to keep a steady voice, but I swear to god if he touched her I’m going to find this guy and beat him to a pulp.
To my relief, she shakes her head. “No. I mean, he started yelling and then I thought he was going to hit me, but he didn’t. He just calmed down and I ended up walking away. And then Adam started calling and texting me.”
“What does he want?” I ask, trying to figure out what to do about this guy, pissed that he fucked with her when I was already in her life, sorry that Cat didn’t feel ready to tell me about him earlier.
Cat hesitates for a long moment as if she’s battling with herself, and I hope she trusts me enough to open up to me. “I don’t know,” she finally says, and I squint at her because I’m pretty convinced she’s holding back. “The first time he called, he said he wanted an apology for me ruining his life. He kept calling, though. It’s an unknown number, so I just don’t answer, and he doesn’t leave messages. But sometimes he sends a text message. I delete it every time, but I can’t block him…” she says, her voice tight, uneven. “I had changed my phone number before I came to New York, but he got it somehow…” she trails off, defeated.
I nod at her, frustrated that I don’t have a way of tracking this guy down, but vowing to try to let it go for Cat’s sake unless an opportunity somehow presents itself.
“Do you hate me?”
Her question forces my attention away from my urge to hurt this guy, and I once again take Cat’s tear-streaked face into my hands, making sure she understands the full force of my words.
“Of course I don’t. Baby, you did nothing wrong. The only one who fucked up is this Adam guy.” I search her eyes for acceptance of what I’m telling her before I move my hands from her heated cheeks and pull her in toward me again. “Can you promise me something, though?” I ask as she conforms her body to mine, allowing me to hold her. “Can you promise me that you will let me know if I’m ever doing anything that makes you uncomfortable, or that you don’t want me to do? Because I don’t want to hurt you; I don’t want to make you do anything you don’t want. But I have to be honest here, I can get carried away when I start touching you and you’re touching me. So I’ll need you to let me know when to stop, okay?” I make her promise because I don’t ever want to be like Cat’s asshole ex. I know what it’s like to have shit done to me, to have somebody hurt me, and I’ll be damned if I ever hurt Cat, even unintentionally.