The Proposal

by Jasmine Guillory

  How could anyone ever trust someone again after someone they loved had made them feel so isolated and doubt their own instincts?

  She certainly never had. Well, she’d started to trust Carlos, but that had been a mistake.

  “I’ve had a lot of therapy since that time, and now I know there is such a thing as ‘emotional abuse.’ But I’d never heard that term then. So when my friends and family told me there was something wrong, it would just make me frustrated and mad at them. He never hit me; everything was fine! How could they think I was one of those poor, beaten-down, abused women? That wasn’t me. Didn’t they know me?”

  Tears poured down Natalie’s face.

  Nik pulled a packet of tissues out of her bag—she always came prepared with them for interviews, just in case—and handed a stack to Natalie. Natalie took a deep breath and started again.

  “I wasn’t abused. It was just that my husband loved me more than anyone had ever loved me, and he wanted all of me. And if he got mad at me sometimes because he wanted fish for dinner and I’d made chicken, or if I went to the wrong gas station to fill up gas for his car, or when I miscarried but didn’t lose the pregnancy weight right away, it was only because he wanted me to be perfect. He wanted me to be the best I could be; that was all.”

  Now Nik wasn’t sure if she wanted to cry or if she wanted to take her new punching skills on the road and knock this man into oblivion. Maybe both.

  “How did you realize what was going on? How did you decide to get out?”

  Natalie looked down at her desk for a long moment.

  “I wish I could say it was one thing, but it wasn’t. The first time I remember consciously thinking ‘This is not the life I want’ was when I went running one day soon after he’d told me to lose weight after the miscarriage. All I wanted was to stay home under the covers, but I knew he would know if I didn’t exercise—we both had those fitness bracelet things, and he could see my activity all day. It made me feel like I was constantly being spied on.” She looked down at her bare wrist. “I guess I was. So I went running because I had to, and I hated every second. I hadn’t talked to my family or any of my friends in months, so I didn’t know where to turn.”

  Nik hated Natalie’s husband, all men, and all of society for making Natalie feel like a relationship like the one she’d been in was normal.

  “About a month after the miscarriage, I went to my doctor. The whole point of the visit was to see when I could start trying to get pregnant again. But when I was sitting there waiting for her, I realized that the idea of getting pregnant and having his baby and that baby tying me to him and that life forever made me feel panicky. I got up and left, and I told him the doctor said we shouldn’t try for a few more months. A few days later, I logged in to an old email account that I’d had from before I got married, one that he didn’t know I had. And that day I emailed Kiki and my mom. I didn’t say anything, really, just hi, and asked how they were doing, stuff like that. They both responded right away, and I started emailing them more and more. And one day, I went for a run with Kiki. I didn’t quite tell her everything, but I told her a lot.”

  God bless Kiki. She had to remember to give Courtney and Dana extra-big hugs the next time she saw them.

  “How did you get out?”

  Natalie pulled another tissue out of the packet.

  “After weeks of emails, Mom ended one of hers with something like ‘What do you think about coming home to visit? I have to drive down that way for work next week, and I can pick you up?’ I said yes right away, and I told her that I’d meet her at Kiki’s office. I spent the next six days terrified he’d see that email somehow or suspect something, but he didn’t. That morning, I left my phone at home under the couch cushions and I took a taxi to Kiki’s office. I took that fucking fitness bracelet off in the taxi and left it deep in the back seat, and I’ve never worn one since. When I got there and saw Kiki and my mom, that’s when I really broke down for the first time.”

  Nik wished Kiki and Natalie’s mom were there so she could hug them, too.

  Natalie opened a drawer and pulled out two bottles of water.

  “Want one? I’m thirsty after all of this crying.” Nik took one and took a long sip. After that story, she would have even taken green juice.

  “I guess that got kind of far away from why I started this gym. Except that I can’t really tell one part of it without telling the whole of it. I lived with my parents for a while afterward—working at a local gym, getting more comfortable with myself, and going to lots of therapy. I let all of the money from my divorce settlement sit in the bank. Luckily for me, my mom is a lawyer and called in a favor with one of her divorce lawyer friends who took my case.”

  Nik smiled.

  “Good job, Mom. Okay, let’s go back to my initial question: where did you get the idea to start this gym?”

  Natalie grinned at her.

  “One day, I had an appointment with a client, and she came in spitting mad. She’d been on the treadmill before meeting me, and the guy next to her started lecturing her about her form. She was a marathon runner, mind you. And I thought of how great it could be if we had a gym for women of all shapes and sizes, where we could learn about our bodies and how strong we are without having to be on display to men while we did it. A place for all women: black and white; gay and straight; Latina and Asian; cis and trans; athletes and couch potatoes; and everything in between. And then I thought about the money I had in the bank. And after about a year of research and planning, Natalie’s Gym was born.”

  This story was going to be so good. Her editor at O magazine was going to love it.

  “What about the boxing classes? Did you teach those before? Did you always know you wanted them when you decided to start the gym?”

  Natalie nodded.

  “I never taught them before coming here, but I took them at a few different gyms after the breakup and really loved them. They were one of the first things I knew I wanted at this place.”

  “What was your goal in teaching these classes? Why were they important to you?”

  Natalie made a fist, flexed her hand, and made a fist again.

  “Women who know how to fight hold themselves differently. I’ve seen that in the women who’ve taught me, in the women who’ve taken my classes, and especially in myself. You walk into any situation with an attitude that you’ve got this, you can defend yourself, you are strong. My marriage sapped me of a lot of my strength, and what made it worse were the constant messages I got from society that women are weak, women should be afraid, women should settle for whatever they can get. And I want the women who walk into this gym to know that women have power and agency and deserve great things in life.”

  “Amen,” Nik said.

  Natalie high-fived her.

  “And it starts so young!” she said. “I really want to do a program for teenage girls. They need more things to counteract the messages that they get that there’s something wrong with being a girl, that they should hide the things about themselves that make them unique and fun and strong.” She grinned. “That’s why I called the class ‘Punch Like a Girl’—there’s this constant message that to do anything like a girl is weak. I wanted to turn that on its head.”

  Carlos’s teen clinic would probably be really into the idea of partnering with Natalie’s Gym on a program like that, especially after things he’d told her about some of his patients and the abuse that they’d suffered.

  She tried to shake off thoughts of him, but it was impossible. She had to ask Natalie the question she’d been wondering the entire time they’d been talking.

  “This is a personal question, and I understand if you don’t want to answer, especially since Dana is my friend. But how did you learn to trust people again after what happened to you?”

  Natalie shook her head slowly.

  “It was really hard. I b
eat myself up for a while after my marriage ended. I blamed myself for trusting my ex, for letting him control me, for giving in to everything. I didn’t trust my own judgment for a long time. The whole time I was researching the idea for this gym, I kept second-guessing myself, thinking it was a terrible idea. But I was right; I did have a good idea, and even just doing all of that research was me learning to trust myself. Once I learned to trust myself, my instincts, and my emotions, trusting other people was a lot easier.”

  Nik drove home a few hours later, after lots of time hanging around the gym, and even taking one of those cycling classes that she always mocked Dana for loving. She couldn’t stop thinking about everything that Natalie had said, but especially that last part. Did she trust herself? With her work, definitely. With anything else? She had no idea.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  . . . . . . .

  When Carlos’s phone rang on the way home from the hospital on Saturday night, he grabbed for it.

  Drew. Not Nik. Why did he keep doing this to himself? She wasn’t going to call him. Not after what he’d said to her.

  He sighed and answered the phone.

  “Hey, man, what’s up?”

  “Hey,” Drew said. “How’s the baby?”

  He’d texted Drew right before he had left the hospital on the night the baby was born but hadn’t talked to him since. He hadn’t really been in the mood to hear stories of relationship bliss. And he really hadn’t wanted to deal with telling him about Nik. But he couldn’t avoid his best friend forever.

  “Still in the NICU, but doing pretty well. I’m on the way home from the hospital right now, just spent a few hours hanging out with her and Jessie.” Jessie had been released on Wednesday. Her blood pressure wasn’t quite normal, but it was getting lower every day. But little Eva still had at least another few days in the hospital so her tiny lungs could improve and she could gain weight.

  “I’m on my way to the hospital. I’m on call and just got called back in. How’s Jessie?”

  “She got released on Wednesday, but she’s only left the hospital to sleep. She’s at Eva’s side all day. But all of the signs are good. Such a relief.”

  “Great. I bet Jessie won’t relax until Eva’s at home, though.”

  He thought of Jessie’s anxious face and how Jon kept trying to force her to eat.

  “Not one bit.”

  Drew coughed.

  “So I have some news.”

  Uh-oh. That could be anything.

  “Okay . . .”

  Drew laughed.

  “You sound so suspicious. We have a wedding date! Mark it on your calendar in bright red, et cetera.”

  A wedding date, of course. He should have expected that.

  “Great, when is it?”

  Drew laughed.

  “Here’s the thing: it’s in October.”

  He counted the months in his head.

  “This October? Four months from now October?” He grinned. “Wait. Do you have other news to tell me?”

  “What do you . . . oh God, no, Alexa isn’t pregnant! We’re moving fast, but not that fast. Our favorite venue had a cancellation, and after Alexa had pulled some strings to get us to the top of the waiting list, we couldn’t say no. Alexa’s already been frantically looking for wedding dresses with her friend Maddie. And apparently, I need to start frantically doing something—I’m just not sure what that something is. So I figured I’d call you, because you’re really good at telling me what to do.”

  Carlos laughed. He was indeed really good at telling Drew what to do.

  “You finally acknowledge this now. You spent years complaining about it.”

  “Look, I always did what you said . . . eventually. Anyway, I think we need to find tuxes or something? You want to come up again some weekend soon and we can sort that out?”

  Carlos got off the freeway exit for his house. A trip up to the Bay Area sounded like the break from his life that he needed.

  “As soon as the baby’s at home with Jessie and Jon, I’ll drive up there. I was just thinking that I needed a long solo drive.”

  “Perfect. Tux shopping sounds basically terrible, but at least we’ll get a fun weekend out of it. Oh, and please text me how to spell Nik’s name so we don’t get it wrong on the invite.”

  Shit. He couldn’t dodge this one.

  “Actually . . . you don’t need to know how to spell her name. We broke up.”

  He heard a horn honk at the other end of the line.

  “What? I almost ran a red light. When? What happened?”

  It felt so depressing to say it out loud, but he had no real choice.

  “Last weekend. Sunday morning, the day after Jessie had the baby. We were at the hospital together . . . long story, it’s not important. Anyway, I told her I was in love with her and . . . it didn’t go well.”

  “Catch me up here: you’re in love with her? I thought you gave me some bullshit about how it wasn’t serious.”

  He sighed.

  “I guess you realized that was bullshit sooner than I did. But it doesn’t matter; she doesn’t feel the same way.”

  He’d only told this terrible story twice and he was already sick of it.

  “Oof. She was at the hospital when Jessie had the baby? So she met your family?”

  Thanks, Drew, for narrowing in on one of his sore spots.

  “Unfortunately. Get this—she sent cupcakes to Jessie at the hospital on Monday.”

  He had been both touched and furious when he’d walked into Jessie’s hospital room on Monday to see that Cupcake Park box. He knew, even before Jessie had told him, that they’d come from Nik.

  “That was so nice of her,” Drew said. “I bet you wanted to smash every single one of those cupcakes with the bottom of your foot.”

  “I wanted to throw them out the fucking window.”

  He heard the noises from the other end of the phone that signaled that Drew had driven into the parking garage.

  “Do you have to go?”

  “Nah, I have at least three or four more minutes,” Drew said. “The staff parking is way on the top floors. It’ll take a while to get up there. What do you mean it didn’t go well? I’m guessing she didn’t say it back?”

  Carlos pulled up in front of his house and turned off his car, but he didn’t bother to go inside yet.

  “Not only did she not say it back, she said it would be better if we could pretend I’d never said it, which wasn’t exactly the reaction I’d hoped for. So I got mad, said some not great stuff to her, left the house, and drove away.” He sighed. “You don’t have to tell me that I didn’t handle it well. I already know that.”

  He looked out the window while he was talking. Damn, he really needed to mow his lawn.

  “Have you talked to her since?” Drew asked.

  Carlos sighed again.

  “No. I want to, but I don’t know what to say. I don’t know if there’s anything I can say.”

  He’d thought about texting her, especially after Jessie got those cupcakes. He’d wanted to say thank you and to apologize for being such an ass. Mostly the latter. But after he’d seen all of those texts from Fisher after their dramatic breakup, he sort of felt like he should avoid texting her anything. He didn’t want to be that guy.

  “Hmmmm,” Drew said. Carlos heard him get out of his car. “I can think of a few things. I seem to remember a certain conversation last year right around this time . . .”

  “That was different—you hadn’t told Alexa how you felt,” Carlos said. He should have known Drew would throw his own advice back in his face.

  He’d be lying, though, if he tried to pretend that the only reason that he hadn’t texted Nik was because of Fisher’s crazy texts. The real reason was: what if it didn’t make any difference?

  He’d obviously
sprung the whole thing on her too fast, which had been a big part of the reason everything escalated like it did. He should have done it all so differently. He’s already thought of at least five or six better ways he should have told her. He wanted another chance to talk to her about everything. About them. But it all still felt so tender. He wasn’t ready for her to reject him again.

  “I know, I know. Sorry, forget my advice. What I should have said was, that fucking sucks; do you want to come up here this weekend and get really drunk with me? We can pick out some incredibly ugly tuxes for the wedding if you want.”

  Carlos laughed.

  “Alexa would skin me alive. And really, man, thanks. I would, if the baby wasn’t still in the hospital. But as soon as she’s home, I’m on my way. I’ll keep you posted.”

  A weekend getting drunk with Drew sounded like exactly what he needed.

  “Awesome, I’m looking forward to it. Okay, now I really do have to go.”

  “Tell Alexa I said hi.”

  He hung up the phone and got out of his car. Talking to Drew had helped in some ways and made it worse in others. He was so happy about marrying Alexa in just a few months that it made the breakup feel even worse.

  Oh well. He walked up his front steps and unlocked his door. Drew couldn’t sit around in his underwear on his couch and eat pizza and drink beer all night like he could. Who had it better, huh?

  He tried not to answer that.

  * * *

  • • •

  Nik jumped at the noise outside on Monday afternoon. Did people really need to set fireworks off in the middle of the afternoon? The Fourth of July wasn’t even for a few days. The amateur fireworks got earlier every damn year. She stood up to get some water and realized she couldn’t remember the last time she’d left the house. Oh right, for her last self-defense class. Four days ago. She’d been buried in work all week—or as her friends claimed when they tried to get her to go out to brunch that weekend and she’d refused, she had buried herself in work.