by Lola StVil
Yeah, maybe tonight is “Winter’s hang-up-free night.” Maybe he doesn’t have to kiss me because I’ll kiss him first and do some over the sweater stuff. Yum…
I step out of the Lyft and onto the cold sidewalk. I can’t wait to get inside and have Wyatt warm me up. I look up towards his building just in time to see Wyatt with his arm around another woman, walking her up the steps to his home.
My heart is breaking. No, seriously, I think it’s actually breaking in two. I can’t seem to catch my breath. The harder I try the worse it gets. I look around for somewhere to run. There’s a bar across the street, and I run there as fast as I can. I will get warm there. I will put my heart back together and I won’t hurt anymore.
Don’t run to a bar. Call Jana. Talk to someone.
No! Bar! Now!
***
Someone is pounding on my damn door like they are ready to blow it off its hinges. I march to the entrance, not sure what to expect. The person pounds again. What the fuck? I open the door and find Winter standing there, drunk off her ass. Her eyes are red, she reeks of tequila, and she needs to lean on the wall in order to stay upright. Fuck.
“Winter, what are you—”
“Where is she?!” she shouts in a drink induced slur. Before I have a chance to reply, she storms past me and into my apartment.
“Where’s who?” I ask as I follow her. She turns towards me with eyes puffy from crying and her face red with anger.
“You know who I’m talking about! Where’s that bitch? I know she’s here.”
“There’s no one here.”
“LIAR!” Winter says as she stomps into the closest room and busts the door wide. “Ah-ha!” she shouts at the empty room. I lower my head and pinch the bridge of my nose with my thumb and index finger. My lips twitch in frustration, I exhale deeply, and I look up towards the sky. I beg whomever the fuck is up there to give me an extra helping of patience with this woman.
“I know she’s here somewhere. You know how I know?” she demands.
“Winter, you need to come over here and sit down. Okay?” I reply as I guide her towards the sofa in the living room. She pushes my hand away or at least she tries to. She doesn’t have the strength to fight back but she keeps trying.
“Get off of me! I know she’s here. Where is she?” she asks, looking around as if she could have missed an entire person standing in front of her.
“There’s no one here. Sit down, Winter.”
“Then she was here before and she’s gone now. But she was here,” she insists as we make our way down to the sofa.
“Tell me!” she snaps.
“Winter, there’s no one here.” I plead as I try to get her to sit down.
“You think you had me fooled? Acting like a nice guy? Well I wasn’t fooled! And you know what, yeah, you’re hot and gorgeous but guess what? YOU’RE NOT PERFECT! ONE OF YOUR EYE LASHES IS LONGER THAN THE OTHER. SO HA!”
“Winter, you need take a seat so I can make you some coffee.”
“All of you men are liars! You all lie and cheat and break hearts for fun. But I am not stupid. I knew you couldn’t be real! I knew it! I knew it,” she yells.
“Baby, please come sit down,” I beg.
“No! I don’t want to sit down. Get off me!” She wrestles so hard, I fear she’ll hurt herself. I have no choice but to hold her from behind. I apply enough strengthen to keep her from running away but not so much that it hurts her. She wiggles and tries everything in her powers to get out of my hold but it does no good. Finally, after what seem like forever, she goes limp and sobs in my arms.
“Did you fuck her?” she asks in a broken whisper.
“No, baby.”
“Please don’t lie to me. Okay, you can tell me if you fucked her. I can take it, but don’t lie to me. Please, okay? I can’t…I can’t take another lair. I don’t think I will survive if you’re like him. Please. Please don’t be like him…” She begins to cry and sounds very much like a wounded animal. I’ve never been a fan of women crying. It always angers me that someone did something to make them cry. But listening to my girl cry, that shit is killing me.
“It’s okay, baby. It’s gonna be okay,” I promise her. I finally get her to the sofa. But she gets up shortly after and runs to the bathroom to throw up. I follow her and she tells me not to come in, but no way I’m letting her go through this alone. I enter the bathroom and sit on the cold floor with her. She throws up three more times as I hold her hair back. I clean her up and put her in my bed. It’s nearly four in the morning by the time she drifts off to sleep. I wake her up just long enough to give her two low dose Ibuprofen and a bottle of water. After which, she goes right back to sleep.
***
I’m in the kitchen making breakfast when she enters, wearing the smallest grey tee shirt I have. She managed to run a comb though her hair and put it into a low ponytail. She looks small and pale. Her eyes are back to their original grey wonders, but now they are also filled with shame and embarrassment.
“Um…do you know where my clothes are?” she asks.
“Hi,” I reply warmly as I make my way to her. She steps back.
“I need my clothes,” she says in a whisper.
“No, what you need is to eat something.”
“No, I can’t stay. I have to go.”
“No, you don’t.”
“I have made a fool out of myself and I can’t be here right now.”
“You’re not the first person to drink too much.”
“It wasn’t just that and you know it.”
“Damn it, sit your difficult ass in that chair and let me take care of you. I get that you are not used to being looked after but you better get used to it because I’m not ready to stop.”
I go back to the stove and tend to the eggs while the bacon is frying. Once she sits down at the counter, I pour her a strong cup of coffee. She adds sugar and wraps her hands around the mug as she sips it.
“Wyatt, I’m so sorry about—”
“Baby, we’re not doing that right now, okay? Let’s just have a nice meal and watch mindless TV for the rest of the day.”
“I can’t. I have to work.”
“It’s Sunday, baby.”
“Oh, yeah. I still—”
“You have nothing that can’t wait. And the day is all but gone anyway.” She looks over at the clock on the wall above the stove. It’s nearly six in the evening.
“I slept all day?” she says in disbelief.
“You needed it, baby. That’s why I didn’t wake you.”
“Well, what about you, didn’t you have plans today?”
“If I did, they come second to us. Now, chocolate chip pancakes or banana?” I ask.
“You’re making breakfast in the middle of the night?”
“Listen ‘Candy Corn,’ breakfast is good any time of day.”
“Okay, fair enough.” She laughs. “I’ll take…both,” she says as she as I hand her the stack of pancakes. “Where are the plates?” she asks.
“Just above your head,” I reply. She takes out dishes for both of us and soon breakfast is a team activity. In the beginning it was little awkward because she still had doubts about what she saw. So before we dig in, I turn on the small seven-inch screen on the counter.
“What’s this?” she asks.
“Watch.”
Soon the screen turns on and we see people walking by and cars heading down the street. I tell her it’s a live feed and that it’s always recording, given the line of work I’m in. She watches on the monitor as I pull up and take the woman upstairs. We come back down about three minutes later, at which point she tearfully thanks me and get into the cab I hailed for her.
“I don’t understand,” she says.
“She gave us a lead on our current case. It was a really good one, but it could get traced back to her. So, she’s skipping town. I didn’t want her to go empty-handed and there’s too much red tape with stuff like this. It would have taken too much t
ime if we went through the proper channels. So, I gave her a few bucks because I didn’t want to risk her hanging around and getting hurt for helping us.”
“Why did she come up to your place?”
“The girl is scared for her life, why would I leave her alone in the car? And did you get a good look at her? She’s barely nineteen, what kind of guy do you take me for?”
“It just looked like…”
“Like I was screwing some random girl because you and I haven’t had sex yet?”
“Kind of,” she mumbles, looking at the floor. I place my hand under her chin and angle her face so that she’s making eye contact.
“God knows I’m ready to burst, but babe, I don’t want anyone but you. Just you. Now, c’mon, food’s getting cold.”
She tells me the news she came to share. I’m so glad for Carlos and for my girl. Now, she can stop worrying so much. We spend the next few hours going back and forth between stuffing ourselves and binge watching TV. Most of the time, we are doing both. We order Thai food, and she shares her egg rolls with me, which I’m told is an act of love unto itself.
I introduce her the creepy-ass TV show based on the Exorcist movie. It terrifies her and she loves every minute of it. She gets me into the animation about a bitter horse who is a has-been actor called Bojack Horsemen. We watch reality crime shows and she has a ton of questions that I’m happy to answer.
But somewhere along the way, I stop watching the screen and watch her instead. She’s lying on the sofa next to me with her knees up and her head on my lap. Watching her breasts rise and fall as she breathes is hypnotizing. The soft cotton shirt she’s wearing is so loose, it drapes near the opening and allows a partial view of bare breasts.
Her knees are slightly parted and I follow her exquisite legs I until the damn shirt obstructs my view. Just thinking about the space between her legs and how close I am to that space makes my fucking head spin. I try and focus on the screen again but then she scoots up further into my lap. She turns to her side, giving me a good view of my shirt cupping her ass. I feel her supple, warm breasts pressed against my thigh.
“Babe, what do have on—under the shirt?” I ask.
“Nothing.”
Christ.
I lie to myself in this moment. I tell myself that I can stroke her partially exposed thigh and stop there. It’s a lie. But it’s a lie I need to believe. I gently graze her thigh over and over again. Each stroke makes it harder and harder to stop. I venture under her shirt and feel my way up towards her bare breasts. She sighs with pleasure as I knead her mound between my nimble fingers. She looks up at me and there’s panic in her eyes.
Fuck! I have to stop. I can’t give her something she isn’t ready for. I growl in frustration. I should have known I couldn’t start something like this. How the hell did I plan to walk away from something so damn good?
I gently move her head so I can get up. She looks at me, confused. I can’t even explain while I’m so close to her. I have to walk across the room so I don’t grab her and fuck her like I want to—like I so desperately need to.
“Baby, what’s wrong?” she asks.
“I can’t do this. If I touch you, I won’t stop and—Christ, I can’t take it anymore!”
“You don’t have to, I’ll make some tea and I’ll tell you about me and Danny. You’re not the only one who’s tired of holding back…”
I put on a pot of tea knowing very well I probably won’t drink it. But I need something to do while I figure out how to say what I need to say. He turns off his phone, we make eye contact, and he nods, signaling he’s okay with cutting himself off from the world for a little while. When the water is ready, I pour it into two mugs and add a spearmint teabag to each. He sits on one of the barstools at the counter; I sit on the other.
Shit. I have no idea where to start.
“You can start anywhere, babe,” he says as if hearing my thoughts.
“Okay…”
Silence.
Jesus, help me.
“How did you meet Danny?” he asks softly.
Thank you.
“I met Danny three years ago. I was taking a class in grant writing because we couldn’t really afford to hire a grant writer for the center. I thought I’d give it a try. The first day of class, everyone had years of experience and I was already behind. I felt like such a loser. And I wanted to pick myself up, so I went to a movie. The movie sucked and I left early, and I met Danny coming out of the same movie. He said I looked as disappointed as he felt. We started talking about the awful movie and then we got a cup of coffee next door. He was kind and sweet. He said I was different and that he liked that.
“That night we met, I noted how he would compliment me but then take it away. It was strange. He’d say, ‘Winter, you have pretty eyes,’ but then ten minutes later he’d ask if I ever thought of wearing color contacts. During the whole first encounter, he would give a little but then take a little back. I thought it was kind of a fun game, you know?
“He’d tell me I was pretty and but then he’d make the waitress take away the dinner rolls on the table because he didn’t want me gaining weight. He’d bring flowers but then make fun of me for not having enough money to buy a fancy vase to put them in. He liked to put me down whenever he could so that he could build me back up. When I pointed that out, he’d say I was oversensitive.
“We had an argument once and he said he finally understood why no one wanted to adopt me when I was a kid. He said that I was difficult and that it was hard to love me. I broke up with him right then and there. But he begged for forgiveness. He said he was just lashing out and that he loved me. And I took him back because I didn’t think I could do better. And I didn’t want to be alone.
“We made up and broke up several times and each time I’d take him back because I thought I could change him. I thought if I loved him hard enough, he’d eventually be kind to me. And I held on to him because he made me believe that I only mattered so long as he was with me.
“I love my family but the fact that my parents broke up a year after adopting me always made me feel like it was my fault. And he knew that. So every time I’d try to leave him, he’d say ‘Winnie, we’re a family unit, don’t break us up.’ It always worked. I always came back to him. I found out he was cheating on me with some girl from his gym, and I vowed never to talk to him again. But he convinced me that if I had been a better girlfriend, he never would have cheated. I was such an idiot. I ended up apologizing for him cheating. I begged him to let me try harder to be a better girlfriend.”
“Christ.” Wyatt swears under his breath as he angrily shakes his head. I’m not sure if he’s pissed at Danny or me or both. I can’t think about that now. I take a sip of the tea, but when it hits my stomach it’s already cold. It doesn’t matter. I need to continue so I can get it over with.
“After the girl in the gym, there was some other girl from his job at the security firm, I think. Anyway, I rededicated myself to making our relationship work. I wanted to please him and make him love me the way I loved him. He said one way to do that was to loosen up in the bedroom.
He wanted to tie me and stuff like that. He kept hounding me about it. He swore if I didn’t give him the kind of sex life he wanted, he’d be forced to look elsewhere. So for his birthday, I did the bondage things he wanted and some role playing stuff. I thought that was the end of it.”
“Did he want you to make it an everyday thing?” Wyatt asks, unable to get the anger out of his voice.
“No, he dropped the subject. I was surprised, yet relieved. I thought we were getting better as a couple. Jana and my sister tried to warn me that Danny was and would always be a sadistic asshole, but I couldn’t see it. I didn’t want to.”
“What made you change your mind about him?” Wyatt asks.
“We went to a Christmas party given by a friend of a friend of his. I had a headache and I wanted to stay home, but he said I was being selfish and ruining his good time. So, I got o
ut of bed and went along. The party was loud, lots of drinking and music. My head was pounding even worse by the end of the night; I had to lay down in one of the guest bedrooms.
“I must have fallen asleep because when I woke up there was some drunk guy coming towards me. He said my lips were pretty and he’d love to try them. He grabbed my face and kissed me. I shoved him out of the way. He was so drunk, he rolled off the bed and down to the floor. He yanked on my foot and I fell to the floor alongside him. I tried to get away and he grabbed me and tore my blouse.”
“Baby,” he says with profound sadness as he takes my hand in his. “Did he rape you?”
“No, Danny came in just in time to stop it. But he accused me of leading the guy on. He said that I did something to get the guy aroused and he said it was my way of embarrassing him because I didn’t want to come to the party in the first place. I had enough of him at that point and I broke up with him. He thought he could get me back but I was finally done. I was finally awake enough to see how stupid I had been.”
“And he didn’t take well to you leaving,” he says bitterly.
“No, he didn’t. He had secretly videotaped us when we had sex on his birthday. He taped the bondage and the role-playing, he taped everything. When he saw that I was truly done with him, he wanted to get back at me, so he…he emailed the video to every one of my contacts, my mom, my dad, my sister…everyone. Everyone.” I burst into tears. He quickly reaches out for me and I sob into his chest.
“Wyatt, there were parents on the email list, kids I kept in contact with in case they needed me. I almost lost the center. My parents couldn’t look at me for months. It was my fault. It was all my fault; I let him twist and bend me like a stupid rag doll. I let love make me weak.”
“Baby, that wasn’t love. That was evil. Plain and simple,” he says as he strokes my hair.