The thought was a little sobering.
“Rox?” Adam said, reaching over and taking my hand, threading our fingers together and resting them between us on the couch.
“So one night Craig wanted to ride with me to the video store. I was secretly thrilled. He—” I glanced up at Adam, not sure if I could really be honest.
“You can say anything, sweetheart,” he whispered.
“He always looked at me like I was the only girl in the room. Like he noticed I was more than friendship material, you know?”
He nodded.
“For a girl who’d never really gotten any attention from guys before, being singled out like that really meant something to me.”
“So he went with you,” Adam said.
I nodded. “He went every time after that. We’d sing along to the blaring music, roll the windows down even in the winter, and wear hoodies to stay warm. Sometimes we’d eat Fritos out of a giant bag. We were friends… but there was more between us, you know? We had this chemistry. It was almost like we were magnets always being pulled together, even in a room full of people.”
“Sounds intense,” he rumbled, stroking his thumb over the back of my hand.
“Yeah,” I said, thinking about it. “It was. It was fun and light… but underneath it all, it was very intense. Sometimes even our friends would comment on the chemistry that seemed to pulse between us. Looking back, I see how dangerous that was… how much power it gave him over me. I wasn’t prepared for that at seventeen. It was way too much too fast.”
“You loved him.”
I nodded, looking away. “I loved him a lot. More than I ever realized you could love someone.”
This heaviness descended upon my chest. It sat just below my ribs like a carnivorous pit in my stomach. Loving someone so much like that… it was consuming. I used to lie in bed at night and worry about what would happen if it ever went away, how I would live without that kind of connection with someone.
My fears turned into my nightmare in so many ways.
I felt Adam’s stare but still couldn’t bring myself to look at him. I mean, I can’t imagine what he was thinking, to hear the girl he’d just said he wanted had been so in love with someone else… to hear her tell him about all the best times we had.
I cleared my throat and kept talking. Now that I had started, it was like I couldn’t stop. “I finally got to go to a dance. He took me to my senior prom. He missed the prom at his high school so he could bring me to mine. After the after party, we ate Taco Bell at one in the morning, and I wore his baseball hat in the car.”
It hurt to remember these things. It was like mourning someone who died. Someone who just wasn’t there anymore, someone you genuinely thought would be there forever.
“I was a virgin when we met,” I told him. “And I stayed a virgin for about six months after we started dating. We made out constantly. It got pretty heated sometimes, but he never pushed me into anything I wasn’t ready for. When I finally asked him…” I flicked my gaze up. “When I told him I was ready, he used protection. He always treated me like I was important.”
“This is fucking hard to hear, Rox,” Adam said, his voice gravelly.
“It’s hard to say,” I admitted. “It’s hard to feel.”
“The thought of you with him, it makes me crazy. I hear what you’re saying—hell, I even understand—but then I look at you and I see the marks on your neck… and goddamn it, Roxie, the side of your face is still red. He hit you, didn’t he?”
I chewed my lower lip and nodded.
Adam let loose a string of curses and pulled his hand out of mine. He jumped off the couch and paced to the window and stood with his back to me, staring out over the waves. By this time, the sun was going down, sinking behind the water, and the sky was dusky, the room growing dim.
“Maybe I should go,” I said, getting up from the couch.
“No,” he said but didn’t turn around. “Finish.”
I hesitated for a long time, but then I started talking again. “Things were good for a while after we started sleeping together. He treated me really good. But it started to change.”
“Change how?” Adam asked, still not looking at me.
“Craig’s friends liked to party. Everyone knew it. Hell, most everyone in that town liked to party. It was the only way to blow off steam. When he wasn’t with me, he was with them a lot. Some of his friends didn’t like me because he spent a lot of time with me. I think they were jealous.”
I stood up from the couch and paced to the other side of the room, careful to give Adam space. “Craig started drinking. A lot. He started using drugs. I don’t know what kind. I never asked. When we’d go out with friends as a group, he’d drink beforehand. He’d scrutinize what I was wearing. Sometimes he’d throw a fit and tell me I was dressed too provocatively. Sometimes when we were out, he’d yell at other guys he said were checking me out. When we played pool, he’d stand behind me when I bent over the table so no one else could check out my ass.”
Adam grunted. I didn’t know what that meant and I didn’t ask.
“We started fighting. He grew distant. He’d come around smelling like a brewery, and he’d say the most awful things to me. I’d get angry and hurt, but then he’d sober up and apologize. He’d take me in his arms and tell me how sorry he was, that he loved me, and that he needed to get the hell away from his friends and all their influence.
“I was an idiot,” I said, knowing it was true. “I loved him so much that I wanted to forgive him. I thought everything would go back to the way it was.”
“It didn’t,” Adam said.
“No. It never did,” I echoed. “We spent maybe one good year together. The rest of these years have been nothing but pain and heartache.”
“Rox,” Adam said, the word etched in pain.
“I threatened to break up with him, more times than I can count. But by then, he’d owned a piece of me, a piece I thought I needed. I’d distanced myself from some of my friends. I didn’t see them nearly as much, and I didn’t confide in anyone about our fighting and his drinking because I was terribly ashamed. Ashamed that I could be with someone who treated me so horribly. And also, if I’m being totally honest, I wanted to protect him. I loved him, even though I shouldn’t have. I still loved him. I didn’t want anyone to think badly of him.”