Page 46 of Unexpected

“I knew what was happening wasn’t okay… I knew it wasn’t okay when he started jerking me around and when it escalated, and he hit me for the first time.” My back was to her as I downed the rest of my drink, needing the liquid courage to hear about what she’d been through. I kept my back to her as I slowly refilled both of our drinks. I worried that if I turned my attention to her at that moment, she would have stopped talking.

“But it wasn’t all bad, you know? At the beginning, God.” She sighed. “He was the sweetest boyfriend. No matter what, I had all of his attention and he said all the right things at all the right moments. I seriously believed that I was the lucky one, and I questioned every day what I did to deserve him.”

With our glasses refilled, I turned back to her. I placed her drink in front of her, where she was fidgeting with her chipped nail polish as she spoke. She whispered a quiet “thanks” but didn’t look up at me. I realized why she wouldn’t meet my eyes when one lone tear slid down her cheek.

“It wasn’t until we moved here that things seemed to change. It was slow at first, and I realize now, only after seeing everything with new eyes, that there were a few red flags that I should have noticed beforehand that I thought nothing of at the time.” She was silent for a long minute, lost in the memories, and I could see by the twist of her face that she was just barely hanging on.

“What were the red flags?”

“Umm… he liked to tell me who I could and couldn’t hang out with. He liked to comment on what I ate and how it would affect how I looked. He only wanted me to wear certain things. Now looking back, he also wasn’t just affectionate, he became aggressively possessive. And all of that became worse when we moved here and away from our families. He began dictating almost every part of my life, including who I hung out with, what food we kept in the house, when I could go places, anything and everything had to be his way.”

Her hand was shaking as she lifted her glass to her mouth. Cautiously, and unable to hold back the need to touch her any longer, I reached out and placed my hand on top of hers that still lay on the counter. In a move I wasn’t anticipating, she wrapped her fingers around my hand and squeezed.

“He isolated me. I don’t exactly have any friends here because he wanted to keep me to himself. Then he wanted to make sure I looked a certain way, so he kept meaccountableto a specific diet and workouts,” she said with disdain. I could feel and see her shift from sadness to contempt. Her shoulders tensed, along with her grip on my hand as her face pinched. “Did you know he cheated on me?”

I kept my facial expression subtle, only narrowing my eyes and shaking my head. I mumbled, “Fucking idiot,” under my breath, but I didn’t let her see the fucking rage boiling in my veins as I tried to keep a lid on my anger. Each detail made it all the worse.

“That’s what pushed me over the edge. When he told me he’d been cheating on me for a while, I—I realized that I couldn’t do it any longer. For so long, I thought if I tried hard enough, maybe I could fix things and if he saw how much I wanted to be with him, then he’d revert back to his old self. Which I know sounds stupid—”

“No, it’s not stupid.”

Her eyes jumped to mine, and I could see the doubt there. I couldn’t let her blame herself for any of it; no one was by any means perfect, but none of what she had been through was even remotely her fault.

“Well, I feel stupid. I should have left after the first time he hit me. I should have left before that, but I had invested too much at that point. I mean, our families are best friends, I’ve known him since I was a kid and I moved across the country for him. The worst part was he was always so apologetic. He was so good at getting me to believe that it was just a one-time mistake and that he wouldn’t do it again. And for a while, he wouldn’t.” She was speaking quicker—each word seeming to flow a little easier than the previous—but she still wavered over certain parts and shook her head at her recollection. She stuttered over the good parts, and from experience, I knew those were the worst. Relationships end and when they do, thinking of the good times seemed to sometimes outweigh the bad. Even if the bad was horrible.

“He would stop, and all would seem right in the world until I would fuck up again. And slowly, as time went on, his outbursts became more frequent—” The doorbell rang, and she whipped her head to the front of the house, her eyes wide with fear.

“Shit, I forgot about the food. Let me get it and we can eat in the living room.” I gave her hand a final squeeze before I retrieved the bags of hot Chinese food from the shivering delivery guy. I tipped him generously, feeling like I needed to put a little extra good out into the world after hearing Hazel’s story.

I arranged the cartons of food on the coffee table while Hazel got comfortable on the couch under the blanket. The room was chilly from the unusually cold evening, so I turned the fireplace higher and turned the heat up a degree or two. I settled in next to her after making sure we had anything else we may need.

We made our plates, and I switched on the TV for background noise. I didn’t know if she wanted to continue talking or if she had more to say. I was caught between pressing her for more information and bringing up a new topic.

We both ate in silence. I watched her from my peripheral—trying not to look like I was actually watching her—and was immediately impressed with her ability to eat rice with the cheap wooden chopsticks they provided. She watched the TV intently when she wasn’t looking at the food on her plate, and not once did she look toward me in the few minutes we sat together.

Before long, she had cleared her plate and set it on the coffee table in front of us. She sipped her drink and settled back into the couch cushions. She looked so at home in my home and on my couch with my dog settled in next to her. I decided that I liked her being there.

“I didn’t mean to unload all of my stuff on you like that,” she said. Her knees were tucked up against her chest and she seemed so small again.

“It might make you feel better to talk about it, and I’m more than willing to listen. I know I like having someone to talk to when shit goes down.”

“I do kind of feel better. Like I said, I don’t have many friends here, and telling my family anything is going to be a nightmare I’m not exactly ready for, so I appreciate you listening. You did not sign up for any of this.”

She was right. I hadn’t signed up for it, but neither had she. She didn’t sign up for the abuse and manipulation, especially from someone who was supposed to love her. The least I could do was be there when she needed me and however she needed me—I wanted to do it.

“I’m here for whatever you need. We’re friends—” The words sounded weird and inaccurate when I spoke them, but I didn’t have a better word for our relationship. It felt like more than that.

She nodded but didn’t say anything else. From experience, I knew talking had to be on your own time, but I waited too long after my parents to talk to anyone and it did damage that was hard to undo—damage that was still evident each and every day. After Valerie and I divorced, I learned from my experience and confided in Josh, along with my therapist. I couldn’t let Hazel endure what I did after my parents.

“You said the other night that you’d… you’d kill him.” Her statement caught me off guard as I placed my empty plate on top of hers. I leaned back and turned toward her, wanting to see her face before responding. Her glass was propped up on her knees just in front of her face with her eyes wide and curious. In the dim light, the fire cast shadows that danced across her face. Her black eyes didn’t seem as dark in the faint light.

“I did.”

NINETEEN

Luke

My throat wastight as I waited for her reaction.Seriously threatening to kill someone wasn’t something to gawk at or take lightly.

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