I wish I’d known then what I knew now.
“I thought the old him was still in there, but now I know he’d lost himself in the bottle and in whatever drugs he was taking. One night he came to me, told me how messed up he knew he was and how badly he wanted to change. He asked me to move away with him, for us to get out of that town and start a new life. We had already graduated, and I figured I could transfer the college credits I already had to wherever we went. I thought this would be the solution to all our problems. So we moved here, to Myrtle Beach. I was supposed to go to college. He was going to get a job. Things were supposed to be good.”
“He couldn’t get out of the bottle, could he?” Adam muttered.
“No. Things were better for about a month. Then he fell in with a party crowd. He started using, drinking, and cheating on me. I was so confused and hurt. All this time, I’d thought my love for him would be enough, but it never was. And now I was here, completely isolated with no one to turn to. I packed my stuff one night and put it in the car. That the was the night he started hitting me.”
Adam slapped a hand on the window and pressed his fingers into the glass until I could see his knuckles turn white. I decided to hurry up and finish, details be damned.
“College kind of fell to the side, and I got a job at the Mad Hatter. It seemed like we always needed money, that Craig always owed someone something. Stripping paid good.”
“He was fucking whoring you out.”
“No,” I said. “He actually hated the stripping, he was too possessive to even appreciate the money. He told me I was trash and a whore. He used it as an excuse to cheat on me more. He said if I could get naked for other men, then he could sleep with other women.”
I took a deep breath. “We were off and on for like the last year. We spent six months apart. I thought we were over, I was starting to breathe again, but then he pulled me back in. There’s no excuse for it. I was stupid and naïve. But I’m not anymore. I broke it off for good right before I moved in with Harlow. I hadn’t seen him since that night in the bar, but then he started coming around again.”
“Do you still love him?” The question ripped from Adam’s throat like it hurt to ask. His shoulders were tense, and I had yet to see his face since he moved away from me.
I thought about the question, letting the silence linger because I wanted Adam to hear the real answer. I didn’t want to just give him a swift denial. I wanted him to know.
“A piece of me will always belong to Craig,” I replied. “He was my first love, and I’ll never be able to forget that.”
Adam leaned his head against the glass.
“But that piece, it’s a very small part of my heart, and I don’t love him anymore. I stopped loving him a long time ago. I realized the only thing I missed was the way things used to be back when I was seventeen. I could never love someone who hurts me the way he does.”
Silence fell around us like a heavy covering of wet snow in the middle of a winter storm. And now he knew. Adam knew the ugly truth of how I stayed with a man who hurt me. He knew how I let it go on and never told a soul. I spared him the ugly details of the holes in the wall from when Craig would go into a fit of rage and punch everything in sight. I didn’t tell him how I used to lie in bed at night and cry because I knew Craig was out somewhere sleeping with another woman. I didn’t tell him how the smell of alcohol made me panicky, how I was frightened of drunk men. I didn’t tell him how ashamed I was and always would be of myself.
The room was dark now. The only light in the room was from the glare of the moon off the ebony waves of the sea. I could make out the shapes of furniture in the room and the solid figure Adam made standing in front of the window, but nothing else.
The longer the silence went on, the sicker I began to feel inside. The pain was incredibly hard to bear. I couldn’t really blame Adam for his reaction. I told myself this was how it would be. In a way that only made it hurt worse. I knew it would be this way, yet I was still here pouring it all out for him to reject.
When would I ever learn that opening up to anyone was a terrible idea?
When my chest grew so tight it was hard to breathe, I knew I had to leave. I could go down to the gate and have the guard call me a cab. I just hoped this little confession of mine didn’t cost me my job. I still needed it.
My bag was lying on the floor beside the sofa, and I crept over and picked it up. I glanced at Adam one last time, feeling my heart constrict, and then walked toward the door.
It was the pain of that moment that taught me something. All those nights years ago when I would lie in bed and cry because I was so afraid I’d never love anyone like I had Craig… I was wrong.
This pain I was feeling, the hurt that threatened to break me in two… I knew it. It was like an old coat I couldn’t get rid of. I’d felt it when Craig and my relationship went down the crapper. And every time he showed up and hurt me, I felt it again.
But it wasn’t Craig that made me feel this way tonight.
It was Adam.
It was the sting of rejection. It was the hope I’d held inside that he might be able to understand and not see me differently.
I thought he might be able to love me anyway.
He didn’t.
But that hadn’t stopped me for falling for him.
So now here I was, once again in love with someone who didn’t love me in return.
20
Adam
I stared at the waves, not really seeing them as she spoke. Roxie had something in common with them. Her life for the past several years had been consistently filled with highs and lows.
And her lows were really low.
I couldn’t look at her. I was afraid she might see. I was a man, a self-admitted alpha male. I owned a sports car, a motorcycle, and a strip club. There wasn’t much in this life I couldn’t handle. I’d been through a serious sports injury that changed my life, four divorces, and building a business.
This was different.
I didn’t know how to handle the shitty treatment Roxie had endured. I didn’t know how to keep the rage that was bubbling up within me from spilling out. I understood the vulnerability I saw hidden in the depths of her eyes. I understood why it was rare that I ever saw her drink.
I was angry with myself for giving her a job as a stripper, a job for which she was ridiculed and treated like shit at home. A job she took to pay the bills of a deadbeat she somehow felt responsible for.
I knew strippers had bad reps. Hell, I even understood why. It was one of the reasons I didn’t date my dancers. Ever. The jealousy meter that was deep down inside me would have blown up at the thought of my woman showing her stuff to other men. Hell, Roxie wasn’t even mine and sometimes it was damn hard to watch her strip.