Kiss Me Like You Mean It: A Novel

by J. R. Rogue

  “That seems like a really sad way to enter into a relationship.”

  “It is. That’s why I never told anyone what I felt I knew he was doing, and I never want that confirmation. I never let anyone know what I was doing. I wanted us to eventually even out, to stop lying to each other.”

  “And did you?”

  “It took a few months, but yes. One day he told me he loved me and he was different. He was the guy from two and a half years before. The one who adored me and worshipped me. He never left my trailer. He cooked for me. He made love to me and he told me he loved me every morning and every night. He would text me in the middle of the day. So in my heart I told myself that even though May was on the calendar, August was in my heart.”

  40

  You Tried

  It's been so long since I’ve shared a space with someone. Three years since I moved out of the house I shared with Avery. My trailer is too small for Connor and me, but we want to be together all the time. It’s like a switch has been flipped. He’s different. I wanted to tell him I loved him right away. I was in love with him for two years but I was sitting on the words. And there’s this other part of me, the one that wants a guy to say it first for once, that is winning. I am tired of loving more. I’ve thrown my mother’s advice out the window and it’s always ended badly. I'm glad I waited. I'm glad I let him say it first. I think he loved me back then. When we were on that dance floor in the bar, years ago, before I ruined it all, I saw it in his eyes. And it can't compare to the way it felt to hear it from his lips.

  I was not a good cook. I never learned. My mother worked hard when I was an adolescent. She still works hard. When she got off work, the last thing she wanted to do was cook for her kids. Now that I am adult, working hard at my job, coming home worn to the bone, I get it. I don’t want to slave over a stove either. And I saw this praise for the women who did. I heard what wonderful, beautiful women they were because even though they were tired, they cooked a meal for their family. It wouldn’t be the first time I lined myself up to an invisible measuring stick. It wouldn’t be the first time I measured my worth as a woman upon dated ideals.

  Anxiety was a foreign word then. I didn’t know why I found it so hard to focus, why I rushed through things. Why the directions of a recipe made me anxious and sweaty.

  I just wanted to eat a bowl of cereal for dinner. To heat up leftover pizza for breakfast. There were things I missed from the years I spent alone. I mourned them, but it was worth it to be with Connor. I reminded myself of that as I stared down at the hot grease in the frying pan on my stove.

  One of Connor’s favorite foods was fried chicken. I told myself I would make it for him for his birthday dinner, despite the gnawing in my belly. I would rather bake something, set a timer, let something marinate. Anything but this. I looked at the directions twenty times as I lay in bed after work. I knew I was going to fuck it up. I always did when I was trying to make something on the stove. If the day ever came when my eggs over easy didn't have to be turned into scrambled because I fucked them up, I’d probably keel over and die.

  I stared at the chicken thighs on the countertop, determined to pick one. I couldn’t stand over the hot grease forever.

  When the hot oil hit my forearm, I let out an unearthly cry, inhuman. My skin went pale white, then red. I ran for my phone on the dining room table, the linoleum slick beneath my feet. More grease had fallen there.

  “Hello?” Connor’s voice on the other end of the phone was a salve for most hurts these days, but not for the current one.

  “Hey,” I grimaced, “I burned myself making the chicken. Can you pick up some bandages?”

  “Are you okay?” I heard the music in his Range Rover muffle, the sound of his blinker.

  I looked down at my arm. The skin was bubbled up. How many degrees was that? How bad would the scarring be? “No.” My voice broke. The numbness of my arm ricocheted into a blinding pain skittering over a dull ache.

  “Okay, I’ll be there as soon as I can.” My forearm would forever wear a scar the size of my palm. Connor cleaned and bandaged me up. I apologized and cried. I only wanted to give him a gift for his birthday, one that couldn’t be bought with money, since I didn't have much.

  Connor finished his own birthday dinner but I didn't have much of an appetite, and I didn't like fried chicken much anyway. I made it for him.

  “I don’t care about the dinner,” he said in bed later, running his fingers over my collarbone. “I appreciate the thought, that you tried. That’s what I love about you.”

  Years later, when I turned to stone and apathy, he would bring that night up. He would refer to it as one of the nights I still loved him. When I still tried, when I wanted to impress him.

  Those first two years were a blur. Connor moved out of the house he shared with his friends and back in with his sister in Lafayette Square, but it was as if he moved in with me, and his room there was just a storage space. My trailer was too small for him to fit all of his belongings in anyway.

  I still worked at my same, draining job. I worked hard and found myself at the end of promotion after promotion. Connor would be proud one minute, taciturn the next. He didn't like me working for Joe’s family, and with Joe. He didn't like me going on trips with Joe. But that relationship was now strictly professional. We weren't even friends and never had been. When the sex faded away, we were left with nothing.

  Connor loved bringing home potted plants for me. I collected them, watered them, let them die. I was never good at nurturing. The only time in my life I had a knack for it was in those beginning years. I nurtured Connor, and he nurtured back. I still miss those moments.

  41

  Broken Glass

  Connor

  “I bought a house today, two actually,” I said it casually. Like it was no big deal. But it was, and I was excited. I probably should have told her, but it just sort of happened. I was having lunch with a friend when an old college buddy of his walked into the restaurant. He was a realtor and he joined us. We started talking about our jobs and these great listings he had. The next thing I knew, I was meeting him after work, looking at places. Gwen had been sick and I wasn’t seeing her that night.

  When I signed the papers on the house, I didn’t wonder if she would get pissed that she hadn’t been a part of the process. I didn’t even know if I wanted her to move in.

  We had been together for two years, and I was practically living in her trailer. I spent at least five nights a week there. The other two I was at my sister's house. I needed a place of my own.

  I could see her excitement mixed with her fear. We often went to bed with words lodged in our throats. Part of me wondered if I was only telling her because she would find out eventually.

  Some days, when she wasn’t working, she never left her bed. She hated doing the dishes, that task often fell on me. I reminded her that her scuffed linoleum needed mopping.

  On the few nights I stayed at my sister’s place, I felt a calm rush over me. My sister stayed home with her children, her house was pristine. She even cleaned my bathroom. Gwen kept her trailer tidy, for the most part, but the deep cleaning was neglected. It was done after my urging, after I helped. It wasn’t even my place. I would never live in a trailer. Not for real, anyway.

  I almost left in the beginning, a year in. I couldn’t figure out her mood swings. The way her brow would furrow. The way she could spit fire. I was ready to leave and then her car broke down. I always had a deep compulsion to take care of her. No one else was. She wasn’t even taking care of herself. I felt like I needed to be the one to do it.

  I felt like I needed to make sure she never became broken glass again.

  42

  Thin Ice

  I want to write something here that I will remember fondly for many years to come. But I can’t. Connor bought two houses without telling me. He said it was a spur of the moment thing, he went to look at a house and it was a great deal so he bought it. Then the realtor found
another great deal, so he bought that one, too. Here I am, not sure I will have enough money to buy him a birthday present, and he buys two houses. I was pretty damn excited about it all, but he didn't ask me to move in with him. He started to talk about a couple of guys he may ask to be his roommates. I couldn’t even hide my anger. We’ve been together for two years, I want to marry him, and he isn’t even sure he wants me to move in with him. He didn't say it, but talking about roommates is the same thing as saying it. I told him straight, that if he didn't ask me to move in, we were done. It’s embarrassing. Over two years together and he wants to turn his new place into a bachelor pad? I'd rather be alone than be that girl. So he asked me to move in. I should have felt bad about giving him an ultimatum. But I didn't. He should have felt bad about putting me into that situation in the first place. Just when I thought we were getting somewhere, I get slapped in the face with the reality that I am on thin ice with him. That our commitment could fall apart at any moment. I know I have to step it up at the new place. Keep things tidier. Be more like his mother and his sister. I hate doing the Betty Sue homemaker thing, but I'll do it at the new place. The excitement I feel about getting out of my trailer, I can't contain it. I'm finally close to having a life worth bragging about again. Worth being proud of. I just want to live life unashamed of my home. To be able to give my address out freely, without worrying that the person I’m giving it to will know I’m in a trailer park on the north side. It always comes back to this. The same shame.

  I thought about the boys who had made fun of me, called me trash in school. The same boys who wanted me as an adult.

  The one who pushed himself inside of me three years ago. I still haven’t told anyone. I still haven’t figured out what that was.

  It happened over the summer, the first time I shook. The first time I trembled. Connor and I were in bed, touching and tasting. We were tender one moment, rough the next. He pinned my arms above my head, ran his tongue down my throat, and I moaned.

  When he touched me, I forgot other men. I forgot other half lovers and leavers. I forgot who I was.

  But that hot night was different. The window next to my bed was open, I could hear a car alarm going off in the trailer park. My skin was sweaty, slick.

  My moan turned into a whimper. A salty tear fell down my cheek and I pulled away from Connor.

  I was a hot coil, wound tight.

  I had found myself day dreaming at work, boiling over. I still worked on the sales floor from time to time, despite my promotion. When white haired men would watch me walk by, a sickness took root in my belly. I couldn’t find a name or a word for the feeling I got. But a seed was planted, and I started to wonder. To pull at the recesses of my mind.

  It was there on the fringes. I just needed to reach out.

  Connor pulled away from me, worry woven into his brow. “Are you okay? What’s wrong?”

  He pulled me to him and I wept. It was the first time I let the dam break, but it wasn’t the first time I wanted to pull away from him.

  I had triggers. Arms pinned, nipples rose and wet from his tongue. Things that had turned me on, now turned my belly sour.

  I didn’t say much that night. I let him pull it out a little.

  “Did someone do something to you?”

  It occurred to me then that he had seen my turning before, the way I had started to dull myself.

  “I think so,” I whispered, to his chest, to his heart.

  When your innocence dies, sometimes, you barely see it. I couldn’t see it. It was shrouded in mist and the mind is a masterful thing. I couldn’t pull any memory up. I went back and forth, questioning myself. Half believing and half damning my own heart.

  I barely talked to my stepfather. What would I lose by writing him out completely? I would be the bad daughter, the bad sister. Could I risk all of that on a memory that I couldn’t even pull up?

  In the fall, my mother came by my work. She was getting lunch nearby and wanted to talk to me.

  “You remember your cousin Arya in Miami?”

  “Yes,” I replied, pulling one of her fries from her plate. We were sitting in the lounge, where our customers could go sit when they stopped in off the interstate.

  I didn’t know my cousin. I hadn’t seen her since we moved to Missouri in 1992. I was nine when I left Florida. Arya was a year younger than me. She was a cruel little girl, much like her mother, who was my stepfather’s sister.

  One day my mother had to pick me up from their house because I was crying. Arya had told me I didn’t even have a dad, that her uncle didn’t even want me. I had learned just two months prior that the man I thought was my father was not in fact my father. He had come into my life at such a young age, I didn’t know him as anything else.

  “She’s saying your stepfather did something to her.” My mom took a bite of her burger, looked me in the eye.

  My heart thundered in my chest. I wanted to spit out the fry that was in my mouth, but I couldn’t give myself away. I wasn’t ready. I couldn’t ruin my mother’s world.

  “Oh yeah?” I swallowed, reached for her drink. I should have felt relief, knowing I wasn’t crazy. I didn’t make anything up. Instead, I felt a hollow hole in my chest start to open up. I was not the only one he hurt.

  My mother and stepfather moved us to Missouri to escape the big cities, the crime, the drugs. I learned that Arya had fallen into some of those traps. Miami was blamed, but what about the man? What about the man who hurt her? The one who hurt me?

  When I got home that night, I told Connor what I had learned.

  He never questioned me, not the way I questioned myself. He took my words as truth, saw the reality written on my face, felt it in my shaking limbs.

  He believed me, but he ended up failing me, too.

  43

  Resentment

  “How would he fail you?”

  I find a worn spot on the cover of the journal in front of me, press my thumb into it, and think of all the ways. “He didn’t know how to talk to me back then. He would change, eventually, but it took me leaving to do that.”

  “What couldn’t he talk to you about?” She knows, but this is her way.

  “What my stepfather did. Or, not what he did, how it made me feel. He couldn’t understand my grief, the lack of rage. That would come, later, but I wasn’t there yet. I mourned the loss of the only father I knew. I remembered the good times. When he would play games in the living room with my me and my brother. It was like someone had died. It was more than a memory dying. He was dying inside of me, and who I was, she was dying, too.”

  “It’s hard for people who haven’t been abused to understand it.”

  I don’t want to understand, I am pulled back to all the resentment I had for Connor. “I know. He wanted anger. I didn’t have it yet. And when I did, Connor was the first one to get it. For not understanding. For not knowing how to make me feel better.”

  44

  Just Sad

  I feel like I’m running in a vat of glue. I am stuck and still. I can’t move. Confessions are supposed to set you free, right? Especially when you haven’t done something wrong? Sometimes I wonder how everyone in my life would carry on without me. How easily it would go. My employer would hire someone from the stack of applications on the front counter. My friends would mourn for a while, but eventually, my seat at the bar would be filled. My family would cry to one another. They would keep living. Connor would find someone new to love. Someone who didn’t have ugly things to tell him in the dark of her bedroom. I just couldn’t do it anymore. I couldn’t keep flinching when he touched me. I couldn’t hide it. He tensed when I tensed. We mirrored each other and the lump in my throat was getting so hard to choke down. I wanted to die. I would have taken that over speaking my truth out loud, making it real.

  Life did not care for your plans. I saw that now.

  I had a new home. And it felt like a home. A two-story white house. Red shutters. Crown molding. Hardwood floors.

&nb
sp; I said goodbye to my trailer, didn't look back. I felt a peace wash over me when I walked into my new home after a long day at work. A slow peace, a fading peace, a peace that could not last.

  My life was a paper life, easily crumbled, often ripped.

  Connor was rarely home. He worked all day, then went over to the other house he bought, the fixer-upper. He wanted to bring in extra income, turn it into a rental. But he didn't have a lot of extra money to hire someone to do all the work. His family offered, but taking gifts from them hurt his pride. He wanted the life they had, but he wanted to build it for himself. It was one of the things I admired about him. The way he worked.

  Now, that trait in him that I admired, was hurting me.

  Depression, much like anxiety, was a foreign word to me back then. We didn't talk about those things. My family never did. My friends never did. If you were down, you were just sad. No one spoke of a deeper meaning.

  I was falling deeper and deeper into a hole that I feared I would not be able to crawl out of. Only one person knew what my stepfather did to me. Connor. And he was never home, never around.

  Maybe he didn't want to see the way I was losing weight, losing the color in my face.

  The weight of my secret was eating at me. I was making it all up, I knew, but it was still real.

  No one expected me to keep in touch with my stepfather that often. So when I decided to write him out of my life, the world did not shift. No one alerted the press. The alarm was all in my head, eating away.