Page 14 of Surviving the Merge
Hearing Blake discuss Damon as a separate entity held a strangeness that never eased. Easier to accept from Damon because he lacked the emotional tools to face the connection. But Blake was self-aware.
What Damon suffered at the hands of his mother sickened me. Filled me with rage imagining the level of desperation, fear, and loneliness required to cause his young mind to fracture. But had he not been dealt the life he had, our lives wouldn’t have intersected. Glad we’d found each other, and I wouldn’t change that for anything. I refused to dissect what that ultimately said about me.
“I’d like to skip ahead for now,” Julie said, removing her glasses. “Tell me, Blake, how did this re-emergence begin?”
Blake took a breath and then deep-dived. “About four months ago, I noticed a change with Justin.” He looked over at me. “Subtle change. The type of thing you tell yourself you’re imagining. Him tossing and turning at night. Sometimes, I would roll over, and he’d be gone. He’d leave after I fell asleep, and I’d catch him sneaking back in. Claimed he couldn’t sleep, so he went for a drive. He would always want sex after an incident like that, and always more intense than usual. So worked up I’d have to take him right where we stood.”
My cheeks flamed at his revelations. Remembering all too clearly the level of sexual pursuit my body would be in after a night on stage.
“Long hours rehearsing or anxiety about an upcoming show. Those were his infamous excuses for his sleepless nights. Something was off. I just didn’t know what. Maybe I was overthinking things, I told myself.” He shrugged.
“One evening after work, I left the city for Chadwick. The plan was to grab dinner with a friend, Ash, and then spend the night at our house. Something urged me to drive back to the city, though. As I neared the condo, Justin’s car pulled out of the garage. I followed him.”
Blake went silent; his demeanor shifted to one of dread, signifying that what came next was the foundation for where things began to go downhill. I flexed every muscle in my body to keep from squirming in discomfort. He attempted to slip his hand from mine. I held firm, and when he briefly rolled his head in my direction, my glare said that I wouldn’t allow him to put distance between us.
“The route he took led to Chadwick. I instantly thought he was on his way to surprise me. And there I was, tailing him. Because I didn’t trust him. Shame on me.
“I did get a surprise. When he exited the freeway too soon for Chadwick and a few minutes later pulled into the parking lot ofElite.”
I relented then. Giving Blake the space he obviously needed. Now free of me, he sat forward, elbows to knees, hands steepled in front of his face.
“I couldn’t makesenseof it,” he said. “What did this mean? Why now? For how long? I thought he was happy.” He shook his head. “That’s when I felt Damon. The feeling is hard to describe, like two forces on opposing sides of a door. One trying to push it open and the other struggling to keep it closed. In my moment of weakness, he got through. I was shut out at that point.”
Sitting back, Blake stared straight ahead as I regarded his profile, pleading without words for him to give me a sign that we were still okay. That’s the trouble with rehashing the past. Your intention was to dig up the facts, but sometimes you unburied the hurt.
Guilt burned away at my insides. For the first time, I viewed the situation from his perspective, and it tormented me to know exactly how much my deception injured him.
Julie called my name, and from the way she scrutinized me, it wasn’t the first time.
“Are you all right?” she asked.
“Yes, ah, I can continue from there.”
“Please, go ahead,” she said, watching me with concern.
“I planned for a short set that night, aware that I was becoming careless. I finished and rushed to my room to shower and change. Before I could get the door closed, Blake...Damonpushed me further into the room and locked us in. I’d been caught. Those words ran through my muddled mind on a loop. Weak from shame and fault, I didn’t consider that the man in front of me wasn’t Blake.” I proceeded with the edited version of events for Julie and Blake, while my mind drifted back to Damon’s parting words to me that night…
“I left you with him because I thought you would be better off,” Damon had said. “Because we were at our breaking point. You could no longer live with me, and I couldn’t live without you. But you’re not happy. Not if you’rehere.” He looked around the room at the wreckage he’d caused when he tore into me.“Get him to allow us to at least have this.” He released my neck, and my skin burned from the unwelcomed departure. It begged for his hands to return. “If you don’t come back to me, Iwillfind my way to you,” he warned.
Shaking my head to rid it of the memory, I hesitantly turned to Blake. He gave me a look that said:you’re not fooling me.I chose to ignore it. Julie was on to me too, but I wasn’t about to sit there and tell my husband and therapist how another man fucked me to within an inch of my life. That when fucking me was no longer an option, he licked and sucked every part of me that had the ability to expel something. Not even if that other man was technically him.
“What made you decide to go back to Elite, Justin? Why after five years?” Julie asked.
“To answer that, I would need to first tell you why I stopped.” I waited for Blake to provide some indication that sharing this part of our past was okay. He squeezed my thigh.
“Five years ago, I was assaulted. Raped, to be more accurate. And no, not by Damon. This was different from any presumed force from Damon. This was true terror.
“Damon and I attended different universities, and one night, I showed up to his dorm as planned, only to find his cock down his ex-roommate’s throat.” The anger returned tenfold, the taste fresh on my palate. It tasted of yesterday. “I left in a daze, broke up with him later on by text, and took painful measures to avoid him.” I inhaled a shuddering breath at the memory.
Alone with myself, each passing day I sunk deeper into a black void.Dancing kept me going?until it didn’t. I’d stopped going to school because Damon wouldn’t stop popping up, and I grew tired of dodging him. I stopped eating, showering, and getting out of bed. Deleted his voicemails without listening to them. Deleted his text messages without reading them. I removed him from my dorm visitors list, so he couldn’t get past the guard.
Then I turned angry.
Unable to sit still any longer, I got up and went over to the window. Blake’s hand flopped to the sofa cushion. Abandoned. “I uncharacteristically accepted an invite to a fraternity party. A party was the last thing on my mind.” I looked over my shoulder and fixed my eyes on Julie. “But if Damon could hurt me the way he did, so easily, the least I could do was return the favor.” Facing the window again, I placed my palm flat against the pane, allowing the vibrations of the wind and rain to be my central point of focus.
“I got to the frat party pretty late. Everyone already wasted six ways to Sunday. Wasn’t a problem.” I shrugged a shoulder. “Just meant I needed to catch up.
“After a few drinks, I sat in a corner brewing with self-righteousness.”Who the fuck does he think he is?The once familiar contempt wrapped its loving arms around me.I’d isolated myself away from the world because he wanted me to himself. To Damon, everything and everyone resembled a threat to his hold on me. We were so high off the codependency. Wefedoff the drama. The break-up to make up, the fighting, the fucking, the fighting that turned into fucking.Jesus,how did we ever get anything else done? My thoughts rushed through me, and I pounded the side of my fist with tempered force against the glass.
