Because You Loved Me

by M. William Phelps

  There was one more thing, Billy explained before ending the letter. It was something that made him tingle with affection. On the telephone one night, Nicole had pointed out the potential Billy had in life. She brought it up. She believed he was a person who could actually live out his dreams, whatever they were. He had already made it clear to her that he worked at McDonald’s, but insisted he was no cashier or simple line cook. He was a line-cook manager. Big difference—in his mind.

  To that, Nicole said, “You should open your own McDonald’s someday. You’d be great!” Billy had explained how passionate he was about a management position, if even on a small scale. Later, he talked about how he “loved” management. “It took me almost two years to get where I was…,” he wrote to another girlfriend. He said if he didn’t enjoy the work, the “50 hour weeks” would bother him. But they didn’t. People “laughed,” he added, at his quest for a management position at McDonald’s. But “I [am] happy there; I [don’t] let them influence me.”

  “I’m no cook,” Billy told Nicole one night when she sounded confused about his actual job. “I manage the cooks.”

  “Well,” said Nicole, “you could own your own store one day, Billy.”

  “Wow, you really think so?”

  “Yeah.”

  Billy mentioned that conversation in a postscript to one of the first letters he wrote to Nicole. It made him feel important, he said, as if he could truly do it someday. Nicole was empowering him. Making him understand the difference between sitting in your living room talking about a dream you’ll never pursue and fulfilling it with hard work. She gave him a sense of worth and self-confidence.

  In what was a daily ending to their marathon telephone conversations, Billy said, “I love you, Nicole. Call me in the morning before you go to school.”

  “Love you, too, Billy. Talk to you in the morning.”

  CHAPTER 33

  Once Billy and Nicole had a bite of the apple, there was no turning back. They were fooling themselves, however—because they were not experiencing true feelings of love, but the promise of it. They never thought about the sacrament of love or the responsibility that went with it. To them, love was an uncontainable urge, a power beyond their control, out of their hands. They were addicted to it, in a sense. The mere fact that over one hundred miles separated their homes and Jeanne was trying to put a wedge between the relationship early on only made them believe they wanted each other more. Or, as Billy himself described it later, energized what was “108 miles of gravity between us.”

  It was an attraction only they could understand. The more time they spent apart, the more they talked, the more they wanted to be together. The letters between them made it easier for them to express what they thought were true feelings of love. Yet analyzing the letters later, one can easily see lust was more of a factor than individual devotion of the heart. Using the pen and e-mail, as opposed to talking in person, heightened the intensity of their desires. It gave them the opportunity to explore feelings on a much deeper level and say things they were perhaps too shy to say in person or didn’t even mean.

  By July, three months into the relationship, Billy was writing nearly daily. Nicole answered back at the same rate.

  “I love you so much” became a slogan both used as an opening statement and way to sign off.

  “I can’t wait until August,” Billy wrote on July 17, “when I get to hold you in my arms.”

  Counting the days, they set a date to meet in person for the first time. Billy applauded Nicole for helping him “turn his life around.” He wanted to call more, he claimed, but work was taking up most of his free time. He had a week off coming up in August (2002), for which he couldn’t wait to spend with Nicole, but said he needed to work as much as he could—“for us”—up until that date. Nicole had to understand. Whatever he did, although it may not seem as such, was for the relationship.

  Nicole had a tendency to put herself down, saying there was no guy she knew that had ever wanted her, or could put up with her. Billy tried to alleviate her fear and build her self-esteem by saying he was sure there were “hundreds of guys who want you.” The word “beautiful” also became a trademark adjective Billy used to describe Nicole. He was amazed, in fact, at himself for loving her so much without having a chance to meet her yet in person. By this point, Nicole had taken photographs of herself, under Billy’s direction, in all sorts of positions—pants unbuckled, bikini, wearing nothing more than a towel, lying on her bed in a sexually seductive position—and sent them to him. If Nicole seemed down as they talked on the telephone, or unsure of Billy’s love in a letter or e-mail, he’d ladle the charm on with the purple prose of a high-school student.

  “You are like a goddess who came down to earth to make some lucky guy’s life change.”

  Nicole bought into every word of it. She’d perk up. It was as if any time away from Billy’s grasp, even if over the telephone, sucked the life out of her. But as soon as she heard Billy’s voice filling her with compliments and telling her what she wanted to hear, Nicole felt a pang of excitement and relief from the miserable life she described at home now as “the gates of hell.”

  By then, Jeanne was getting concerned. She was Nicole’s biggest enemy. As Nicole fell deeper in love with Billy and moved further away emotionally from Jeanne, Chris and Drew, Jeanne began to worry. She knew it was getting serious and decided to keep a close eye on the relationship. But when Jeanne asked pointed questions, Nicole felt pressured. Speaking of her mother, Nicole entered in her diary that July, “I want you to go away, so I can get away.”

  The plan for Billy and Nicole’s first face-to-face meeting was for Jeanne to drive Nicole to Willimantic, Connecticut, and drop her off for the weekend. But Nicole had just turned fifteen on June 6. Jeanne wasn’t about to allow her juvenile daughter to stay the weekend at a stranger’s house, even if Billy’s mother said she’d supervise the visit.

  “No way,” Jeanne told Nicole when the idea came up. “Not in this lifetime.”

  When Billy, who had a volcanic personality, heard Jeanne was unhappy about their proposed weekend together, he became furious. Not because he wasn’t going to be able to spend time with Nicole, but rather what he believed Jeanne thought of him. For Billy, it was never about not being able to see Nicole. From Billy’s standpoint, the abrasiveness Jeanne displayed over the relationship was a personal attack on his character. He felt Jeanne was questioning his intentions. He hated the idea that someone thought he had clandestine motives. It was as if a complex Billy had about himself grew as Jeanne questioned his purpose regarding her daughter. Billy was incensed by the notion that Jeanne—or anyone else, essentially—thought he was a “bad person.” He despised the mere mention that he was some sort of lasciviously amorous young kid looking to get laid. It wasn’t like that, he insisted. Not at all. It was about love. No one understood how deeply he and Nicole adored each other.

  On July 21, 2002, Billy spoke to Nicole on the telephone. They discussed how upset Jeanne was over their proposal to have Nicole spend the weekend in Connecticut. While they talked, Billy heard Jeanne in the background.

  “Oh, come on, Nicole, he’s a guy and you’re a girl. We know what he’s up to.”

  On the other end of the line, Billy seethed.

  Jeanne and Chris thought Billy was like so many other teenage boys just looking to jump on every girl he hooked up with. Why should he be any different? It didn’t make him a bad person; it only meant he was a hormonal young man, like millions of others.

  That one comment by Jeanne fired Billy up. So, he sat down after the telephone call and, in response to Jeanne’s comment, wrote Chris and Jeanne a letter, explaining his objectives. He said he was “not like other guys.” He called himself “mature and very responsible.” He stayed away from the wrong crowd of kids and had, he explained, done a good job of it. All the decisions he made were “well thought out.

  “I am decent.”

  He said he wasn’t into “sex, d
rugs, violence….” Those were words, he added, that some had used to “describe my dad—and I want to be nothing like that.” Furthermore, he didn’t “wish anything sexual with Nicole.” He just wanted them to “spend time alone together,” perhaps “walking places.”

  Jeanne read the letter.

  “Are you kidding me!” She laughed.

  The letter hadn’t done much to persuade Jeanne that Billy was no different from any other boy his age. In truth, it wouldn’t have mattered who the guy was: Nicole was a minor; she wasn’t going anywhere by herself with any boy. But Billy had now made it personal. It wasn’t. Jeanne was protecting her daughter’s welfare. It had nothing to do with what she thought of Billy as a person.

  When Nicole realized Jeanne wasn’t going to back down from her decision, she retreated into a cocoon of depression and started to once again explore on paper a life she viewed as hopeless. The only difference was that Billy had become the main source of her agony and pain now, simply because she couldn’t see him and had no idea when (or if) she ever would. From that attitude, Nicole needed to pin her unhappiness on someone—and that was Jeanne.

  In theory, Jeanne’s refusal to acknowledge the relationship her daughter had with Billy backfired on her: The more she told Nicole no, the more the child wanted to be with her boyfriend. Jeanne was hoping her decision was going to work the other way around.

  For a teenage girl, troubled by the absence of her natural father, feelings of love can be easily shrouded in codependency: the deeper Nicole got involved, the more her feelings of love seemed genuine—and the more Billy appeared to be someone who could rescue her from herself.

  “I know now there’s a reason for me/I’ve found the love of my life,” Nicole wrote shortly after. “We’re in love so deeply/Now I can throw away this knife.”

  When Jeanne saw how upset Nicole became, she reconsidered. Near the end of August, Nicole made one final plea. Jeanne, perhaps against her better judgment, decided maybe it was time Nicole was allowed to go to Willimantic and meet Billy in person. That one visit might just end all of the nonsense about being in love.

  But there was one little catch: Jeanne would chaperone the visit.

  “No way I’m allowing my teenage daughter to spend the weekend alone with a strange boy,” Jeanne told Chris after discussing it with him.

  “Absolutely, Jeanne,” agreed Chris.

  Jeanne believed the visit might take the wind out of Nicole’s sail. Seeing Billy in person, spending time with him, might just fill the void and remove the building excitement of having never met him. Maybe Nicole wouldn’t like the real Billy Sullivan?

  On August 20, 2002, Nicole and Jeanne took off for Connecticut. A few hours later, Nicole walked into McDonald’s in downtown Willimantic and saw Billy for the first time as he worked the stoves in the back of the restaurant. Billy introduced her to a few of his fellow coworkers. When Billy got off work, Jeanne drove them to Billy’s high school, then the middle school he had attended, before taking them to an afternoon movie.

  During the entire date, Jeanne was there by her daughter’s side, not letting Nicole out of her sight. After the movie, Jeanne dropped Billy off at home and met Patricia, his mother, and Billy’s sisters.

  “It’s time to go now,” Jeanne said after a time. They had spent the better part of eight hours with Billy.

  It was enough.

  “Bye, Billy,” said Nicole. She had tears in her eyes. She could sense a landslide of emotion coming.

  “Take care,” Billy said casually. “Call me when you get home.”

  Billy didn’t seem too torn up over the separation. Later, when he and Nicole spoke on the telephone, he explained that after Nicole left, he went up into his room and cried.

  Nicole said she was sorry. “Soon, we’ll see each other again, Billy. I promise.”

  CHAPTER 34

  Shortly after their first date, Billy wrote to Nicole. He had some bad news—terrible news, actually. It was something he had done. He was sorry. He was sure he had let Nicole down.

  Nicole opened the letter. She was in her room.

  Billy said he was “afraid” of how Nicole was going to react “to what I did yesterday.”

  With tears in her eyes, Nicole continued reading. She could feel her stomach turn.

  “I beg for your forgiveness,” Billy continued. He prayed Nicole wouldn’t break up with him—but not before laying a proverbial guilt trip on her, twisting the situation around, conceivably hoping to shift the blame from himself to the other person involved. He undoubtedly knew how weak Nicole was. How easy it was to manipulate her, especially in the state of numbness she had been in lately. She was vulnerable. Alone. She had no one else in her life to confide in. And Billy knew it.

  “…I don’t deserve you.”

  It would never happen again, Billy promised. He blamed his own inability to resist temptation on the other girl involved. She had pulled “…one of her tricks…and I fell for it,” he swore.

  How stupid of him. How immature. How pathetic.

  “I’M SORRY,” Billy scribbled in big block letters on the top of the page. He wanted to be honest because he felt an overwhelming connection to Nicole. Still, he begged Nicole to understand “a few things” before they moved forward. They needed to talk about his infidelity, he encouraged. Get it out in the open. But Nicole, he warned, had to realize she couldn’t “kill [him] with it all the time.” He needed her to “forgive and forget, or let [him] go.”

  Choices.

  Throughout the fifteen months they were together, Billy displayed an unremitting, if not talented, knack for twisting a situation around—good or bad—to make Nicole feel as though whatever the problem was between them had somehow been her fault. Emotionally, Nicole was but a fragile child. She hung on every word Billy said and rarely took him to task for the things he did. Billy had admitted sleeping with another young girl after an argument he and Nicole had. He said after they fought, he was in a “bad mood.” One thing led to another and, lo and behold, he found himself in his ex-girlfriend’s arms. Whatever happened after that was out of his hands, he said. Writing to Nicole about it, he used the same tired language a cheating husband caught in the act might try to slip by.

  “It wasn’t planned.”

  The truth of the matter was, Billy Sullivan was a player; he had another girlfriend in Connecticut he was keeping on the side while dating Nicole. Although he was honest with the Connecticut girl and explained to her that he loved Nicole, it didn’t stop him from spending time with her and writing scores of the same types of saccharine letters he sent Nicole.

  The pressure of life, Billy claimed, coupled with the argument he and Nicole had the day before he cheated, sent him running to his ex-girlfriend’s house. It was a bad day all around, he tried to explain. He wanted badly to be named Student of the Month and it just so happened, he wrote, “I didn’t win.” The letdown was all too much. He needed someone to talk to and Nicole wasn’t around.

  Poor Billy. It was Nicole’s fault for not being there for him every waking moment.

  From studying Billy’s letter, one gained a glimpse into how his mind worked. He’d start off a letter with perfect penmanship. But as he began to open up and admit his shortcomings, his writing turned into a near scrawl. If nothing else, it proved that what he put down on paper had an effect on him. His writing was shaky: he’d switch back and forth, printing to cursive. “No body…can take me from you,” he ended the admission letter to Nicole. Then complimented her on what “beautiful brown eyes and…gorgeous smile” she had, which he claimed were his “forever.”

  From the day Billy admitted his unfaithfulness, the love Nicole had for him—or codependency, depending on how you look at it—grew. It was as if the worst had happened and their relationship had survived. In a way, both suggested in later letters, Billy’s mistake had made their bond stronger.

  This latest situation instigated a need in Nicole to once again visit Billy. She was certain that
if she lived closer, the cheating episode wouldn’t have happened. She could always be there for Billy. Visiting him now became a stronger urge than ever. She was paranoid and insecure. It was her fault. If she could only get down there and see him, he wouldn’t feel the need to run to another girl.

  Billy’s argument had worked. He had spun the situation on Nicole and she had fallen for it.

  Jeanne agreed to a December visit. But as October came, Nicole badgered Jeanne and demanded she take her earlier. She and Billy were fighting more often. A simple argument turned into a full-blown fight, Nicole hanging up on Billy, Billy slamming the telephone down, telling Nicole never to call again. Because of the tension Billy’s infidelity had caused, Nicole believed they needed to see each other and work it out in person. It was the only way. They could say they had moved on. But until they faced it together in person, it would always be there in the background interfering with every conversation. Jeanne had to understand.

  “You know,” Nicole said later, looking back, “if somebody cheats on you, you just get rid of them. But I wasn’t like that. I wanted to be with him and I thought that, well, we both thought that, we just needed to see each other [more]. And then if we saw each other, we wouldn’t be arguing so much and he wouldn’t feel the need to find some other girl.”

  It was clear Billy had total control over the relationship and was capable, with the poise of a pro, to make Nicole feel as though she was continually doing something wrong.

  A few weeks went by. Nicole made one of two trips to Connecticut to spend the weekend with Billy. Jeanne had finally allowed her, under Patricia Sullivan’s promise of total supervision, to stay over. Nicole, Jeanne and Chris met Patricia and Billy halfway between Nashua and Willimantic, in Worcester, Massachusetts. Billy wasn’t driving yet, as he had said he would be by this point. But he was planning on getting his license in a few months.

  Jeanne was convinced, one of her closest friends later said, that Nicole “was a virgin and was going to remain that way until she was twenty-five. Jeanne was in total denial about what was going on with Billy.”