Bent not Broken

by Lisa De Jong

  I nod, biting the inside of my cheek. “I don’t like it, but at the same time, it is more difficult for me to discount the fact that we are really good together. What’s hard is that I think I would have given him a chance to explain, and I would have tried to listen to him if he had just presented himself as Leo right off the bat.” I frown. “I think.”

  “He didn’t want to count on that though. And he had just spent six months lying in a hospital bed realizing that you were and are the only woman he’ll ever love. He kind of had a lot riding on you accepting him back into your life.” He holds his hands up. “Just playing devil’s advocate.”

  I sigh. “I know. There are just so many different levels of emotion for me. I’m trying to sort through them all.”

  He’s quiet for a minute or two. “You know, I know a little bit about male sexual abuse.” He’s looking at me nervously.

  “What?” I whisper. “Oh my God, Lan, you never said anything.”

  “I know. It’s a really hard topic for me even though I’ve made a lot of peace with what happened to me. I wanted to tell you so many times but it’s just such a hard thing to bring up. I have to give Leo props for talking about all the details of it with you. It’s a really confusing issue for us survivors.”

  “Who was it? How old were you?” I ask quietly.

  “I was fourteen. It was a neighbor who was a few years older than me. Thankfully, he moved away shortly after he started abusing me. But I carried it with me for a while before I finally told my mom. I had started acting out and she was confused, didn’t understand why. One day I broke down and told her everything. She got me into counseling really quickly after that.”

  He goes on, “One of the most confusing parts for me was feeling like I must have wanted it to happen since my body cooperated. It sounds like maybe Leo struggles with that issue too. It’s pretty common.”

  I nod. “Definitely. He takes responsibility for letting it happen, and then letting it continue.”

  “The thing is, perpetrators of sexual abuse are master manipulators at making their victim feel at least partially responsible. That way, they’re less likely to report it. Plus, he had the added element of his abuser being a woman and his adoptive mom.”

  He grimaces but continues, “Talking to an expert would help him see that acting out and being sexually promiscuous is actually really common for people who have experienced something like he did. I don’t know if I would be doing as well as I am without having talked to someone about it.”

  My eyes well up and I take Landon’s hand. “Thank you for sharing your story with me. Just another reason why you’re so incredible, Lan.”

  He smiles. “I know you have a lot of feelings wrapped up in your boy, good and bad, and I know that you’re still deciding if you’re going to be able to move past the things he is responsible for that hurt you. But he’s a survivor too, just like I am, and he deserves a lot of credit for coming out on the other side of that. Not everyone does so well.”

  I squeeze his hand and say, “Have I told you lately that I love you?”

  He grins at me. “I don’t blame you. I’m very lovable.”

  ****

  I spend the next couple of days laying low. I basically go to work, come home and go back to work.

  I spend two hours on the phone with Nicole Monday night updating her, and although re-telling Leo’s story makes me emotional once again, Nicole succeeds in making me laugh as usual. I have such amazing friends.

  When I get home from work Tuesday night, there is a manila envelope under the door of my apartment, and I open it up as I kick off my shoes, arching and flexing my feet to work the soreness out.

  There are two pages inside and I pull out the first. My breath catches as I realize that it’s from Leo and I realize what it is. It’s the letter he had started writing to me when he arrived in San Diego.

  Oh God!

  I fall to my couch and with shaking hands, I start reading his teenage handwriting. He kept it.

  Monday:

  Dear Evie,

  I miss you already. So much, you wouldn’t even believe. Or hopefully you would, because hopefully you’re missing me just as much.

  We flew in over the ocean last night and all I could think of was how much I wanted to be having that experience with you. I keep collecting things in my mind that I want to tell you, show you, experience with you. I’m going to write them all down so that when I come for you in just four short years, we can start on the list. Nothing is as fun or interesting as it is with you. I don’t know how you do that - how you make the most mundane things seem magical. Maybe that’s just what love does. And I do love you, Evelyn Cruise. I love you down to my bones.

  P.S. I put my address and phone number at the bottom of this letter. Write to me as soon as you get this!

  Tuesday:

  E - It’s so weird to call someone else mom and dad, but that’s what Lauren and Phil have asked me to call them - Phil seemed more enthusiastic about it and Lauren looked kind of mad but I think it might just be because she thinks she looks too young to have a teenage son. She’s pretty for a mom, but no one is as pretty as you. When you look at me with your big, brown eyes and you smile that smile reserved just for me, I think my heart is going to beat right out of my chest. I am picturing your perfect lips right now and I want to kiss you again so much it hurts. I keep reliving our kiss and thinking about how it was the best moment of my whole life.

  My mom (Lauren) asked me today if I might want to start going by Jacob, or Jake as sort of a fresh start here. I thought about it and I thought about how it might be nice to leave the person that I was in the past, to leave my life there behind. But then I realized that that would include you and so I said no. Yours, - L

  Wednesday:

  Hi, Evie,

  We went to a restaurant last night where the ocean waves come right up on the glass windows! It was wild, but beautiful. I didn’t want to tell my mom and dad that it was the first “real” restaurant I had ever been in because whenever I say stuff like that, they get these sad looks on their faces and it makes me feel small. I know you know exactly what I’m talking about. You always do. That’s the thing I miss the most about being with you.

  I felt sad in the pit of my stomach when I thought about that last night and so instead I thought about how this was the place I was going to take you when I propose to you. I guess it won’t be a real surprise if I tell you now, but you already know I’m going to marry you someday and so it’s okay if you know the place I want to ask you. I’ll try to keep the ring and the words I plan to say to you under wraps. haha.

  I love you, Evie. I’ll love you forever.

  Your Leo

  I sob, hot tears of sorrow coursing down my cheeks as I picture myself waiting for that letter and I picture Leo writing it, still hopeful, still my beautiful boy, up until that very next day.

  I want to punch something, to throw something and hear it shatter, to make the sound that should accompany the feeling in my chest.

  When I calm down, I sit staring at the wall for several minutes, gathering myself before I pull out the second letter, obviously written recently, in his adult hand.

  To my Evie, the one who knew how to love me before I knew how to love myself,

  I already told you about how I laid in that hospital bed for six months, reflecting on my life, reflecting on all the reasons that I couldn’t stand to be alone with myself long enough to really think about who I was or what I was feeling.

  What I didn’t tell you was what a central role you played in helping me move toward a place of healing. My Evie, the strongest, purest person I’ve ever known. A person who was placed in the worst of circumstances in this life and yet selflessly loved and cared for those around her. How was it that someone so full of goodness and light ever even noticed a person like me? How did you see in me - what I was struggling so hard to see in myself?

  I kept wondering why, all those years, when you looked straigh
t into my eyes, unflinching, seeing the real me, what made you linger and come back? What made you love me despite who I believed myself to be? I thought about that hour after hour, and the only conclusion I could come to was that maybe, just maybe, there was something decent in me, maybe something that was close to good. It was the first time I had ever had that thought and it stunned me just to ponder the possibility.

  All those months, staring at the ceiling and staring into my own soul, you, Evie, you were the miracle that I kept coming back to again and again - that all those years ago, you chose me.

  Please, please, choose me again.

  I will spend my life trying to make myself a person who is worthy of you. I will work until my dying day to give you the beautiful life a beautiful person like you deserves. I will prove to you that forever is not just a word, not just a measurement of unending time, but that forever is a place where I will treasure your heart.

  Yours always, Leo

  Tears streak down my cheeks as I clutch the two letters to my chest. I sit like that for long minutes, making a decision.

  I take a quick shower and pull on jeans and a turquoise peasant top and my brown boots.

  I decide to call a cab. I finish putting on some makeup, partially dry my hair and smooth it back into a low ponytail.

  When the cab rings my cell phone, I run out and jump in quickly.

  I look up the address of Leo’s company and give that to the driver. I lean back as the city goes by, my heart beating peacefully in my chest. I feel sure and calm. I feel like all the pieces have fallen into place. I feel like this was always my path, and now I’m finally back on it.

  I walk into the huge lobby of the mostly glass building. As I’m walking toward the deskman, I spot an all glass elevator starting its ascent. I see an unmistakable pair of broad shoulders among the group riding the elevator, but his back is to me. I rush toward it, looking up at it and catch the eye of a tall, dark-haired man who smiles at me. I start waving my hands and pointing at Leo, and the man finally understands, tapping him on the shoulder and gesturing out to me. He turns around as if in slow motion, and I will never, ever forget his expression, not until my dying day. He is confused at first but as he sees me smiling up at him, I mouth, “I choose you,” and understanding dawns, and a look of raw emotion like I’ve never seen fills his beautiful face.

  He starts pushing through the people to the front of the elevator, and it stops suddenly at the next floor.

  Then he’s running toward the escalator nearest him, even though it’s going in the wrong direction.

  I run toward it as he starts parting the crowd, leaping down three and four stairs at a time to the yells and disgruntled sounds of the people trying to go upwards.

  He doesn’t care though. His focus is singularly directed at me as he finally leaps over the railing close enough to the bottom not to hurt himself.

  We rush into each other’s arms, him spinning me around, his face pressed into my hair as I laugh and cry and continue to chant, “I choose you, I choose you, Leo. Always.”

  We suddenly realize that people are stopped around us clapping and whistling, and he grins at me, his face beaming with love and happiness.

  “I love you, Evie,” he says, his face sobering.

  “I love you, Leo, my loyal lion.”

  “You still believe that, after everything?” His eyes are wide, looking deeply into mine.

  I nod. “Even more. You found the courage to jump through fire for me. You found yourself on the other side, didn’t you?”

  He looks at me for long moments. “I guess I did. But you were the one holding the ring.”

  “That’s the easy part, my beautiful boy. Believing in you is effortless. It always was.”

  He continues looking at me, that fire that I love entering his deep brown eyes. Then he grins. “I’m going to take you back to my den and maul you now.”

  I grin. “Yes, please.”

  And we walk out the door, hand in hand, into our forever.

  EPILOGUE

  Seven Years Later

  I stand on the balcony of our home watching my wife play in the pool below with our boys, Seth, six, and Cole, four.

  As always, the sight of my wife in a bikini has my attention, first and foremost.

  But then I laugh quietly as my youngest tries to dunk his older brother in a stealth attack.

  I walk back into our bedroom, pulling on my swim trunks. I smile as I glance at the laptop, open on Evie’s writing desk. Her first book is almost done and maybe I’m biased, but I think it’s brilliant. She says she doesn’t care whether it’s a hit or not, the success for her is in writing it at all, in stepping out of another safety zone.

  The empty cup sitting to the side of her computer says, World’s Greatest Mom. She bought it for herself.

  I step out onto our patio and my boys shout, “Daddy!” in unison as I run and cannonball into the pool, drawing a shriek from Evie as my splash drenches her. She jumps in too, wrapping her arms around my neck, and we’re both laughing and kissing as our boys shout, “Ewww!” from the other side of the pool.

  Our first born, Seth, is the spitting image of me and yet has the gentle, steady spirit of his mother. He is easy to smile and the first to lay a hand on your shoulder if you’ve had a rough day. He finds the beauty in everything.

  We hadn’t waited long to have him. We were young but our forever was something that we were eager to begin. Time had taken enough from us.

  The day in the hospital when he was handed to me, I looked into his eyes, still shaky and on an emotional high from watching my wife fearlessly bring him into the world, and I saw a depth there that didn’t seem to belong to a newborn boy. He didn’t cry, but gazed steadily at me as if he saw right into my heart. And his eyes seemed to tell me that, like his mother, he was satisfied with what he saw. I promised him that I would never take that for granted.

  His brother, our Cole, looks just like Evie, with dark hair and large, dark eyes and a smile that lights up any room. He came screaming into the world and hasn’t stopped making noise since. I smile. He is my rambunctious cub, always pouncing and laughing, full of energy and life. Fiercely loyal and passionate. My wife tells me she sees me in him and I can only look confused when she says it. But she always did see the best in me. Maybe he’s who I would have been if I had been given the same start in life. More often than not, she has me convinced that there is something to her theory. Because that’s who she is. It’s her gift.

  Everyone tells a story about themselves in their own head. That story makes you who you are, dictating all your actions and all your mistakes. If your own story is filled with guilt and fear and self-hatred, life can look pretty miserable.

  But, if you’re very lucky, you might have a person who tells you a better story, one that takes up residence in your soul, speaking louder than the woeful tale of which you’ve convinced yourself. If you let it speak loudly within your heart, it becomes your passion and your purpose. And this is a good thing, the best of things. Because it is the very definition of love, nothing less.

  Many years ago, Evie asked me about my tattoo, and I told her that I had gotten it on her eighteenth birthday, the day we were supposed to start our life together.

  I had spent months designing it with a tattoo artist using the only photo I had of my Evie, a polaroid she had given me when she was thirteen. On that morning, I stepped into the shop and didn’t step out until it was well after dark.

  Then I had gone home and drank myself into a stupor, trying desperately to shut out the pain and the emptiness.

  She traced every element of it silently, and finally her first question was why the master of ceremonies was cloaked in shadow. I had turned toward her and looked into her deep brown eyes and told her that it was because at the time, I hadn’t known whether, he, the one who orchestrates it all, is kind or whether he is cruel.

  Some days I’m still not completely sure. But other days, I look across at my wife’s
beautiful face gazing at me with eyes full of love, or I watch my sons wrestling together on our floor, filling our house with laughter, and I think that he must be kind.

  All the world’s a circus. Sometimes you choose your act and sometimes it’s assigned to you. I had roamed the arena for far too long, roaring and bellowing, believing that I wasn’t brave enough to leap through fire. But all along, she had stood there, constant and calm. “I can’t make the fire go away,” she had seemed to say. “I can’t guarantee you won’t get burned. But I can hold this hoop for you, I can remain steady and strong, because I believe in you. Because you are mine.”

  And in the end, I had jumped. And the other side was just as glorious as her eyes had promised.

  Fear of Falling

  by S.L. Jennings

  Shit happens.

  I never really understood that saying. Yeah, there were certain situations in life that were shitty, but they were just that; they were life. So it really wasn’t the shit in life that was, well, so shitty. It was life itself.

  Life happens. That was much more appropriate.

  Unfortunately, many of us found that out earlier than some. We found out just how awful life could really be. We found out that monsters were, indeed, real. They walked among us. They looked just like you and me. They came in the form of the people that we loved and trusted the most. The people whose only job was to love and protect us.

  Funny thing about life is that it never turns out the way you want it to. It’s never fair. It’s harsh and brutal. It kicks you when you’re down. It makes you wish you could give up and part with it just to have a semblance of peace.

  I almost felt that peace unintentionally. And if I had known exactly what I was fighting against, I would have succumbed to it. I would have traded my young, shitty life for the peace that came with death.

  I should have. I would have been free.

  Chapter 1

  I needed a drink. A strong one.

  One that could possibly knock me on my ass and make me forget what I had done just 20 minutes ago. This was always the hard part. The guilt, the self-loathing. Sometimes it strangled me. I hated what I did. I hated the pain I inflicted, but it was part of the process, part of what came with being me.