Page 54 of Love Me Like It's Real
I zip my mouth with a smile and he narrows his eyes.
“My lips are sealed,” I add and rezip my lips.
“So you’re not going to tell me, huh?”
“Tell you what?”
“Who hurt you,” he says.
A sigh comes out before I can control it. “It’s…a long story,” I say after a few moments or minutes of cheese and silence.
“I’ve still got time before my curfew.” He checks his empty wrist as if checking a watch and I shake my head with a chuckle.
“What’s yours?” I reach out for another slice if for no other reason than to keep my hands and mouth busy.
“My what?” he asks.
“I don’t know. Californian single dad of two settling in the middle of Vermont. Sounds like there’s a story there.”
He sighs the same way I did a moment ago and I stuff my mouth before I take the question back.
“Fine. My husband, Mark, he was my high school sweetheart. We went through everything together. Failures, successes, miscarriages, funerals, the lot. He was my rock through everything and I for him. He was the best guy there was. He cared about others. He cared for equality. He was empathetic. He was the dream guy. And he was mine.”
He turns to me and takes a deep breath before he licks his lips and stares back forward, out the windshield.
“But I never felt…right. You know? I was never comfortable in my own skin. I didn’t know what it was until I got pregnant and my hormones made my dysphoria even worse. But then I gave birth to Elsa and I got too busy being a parent to figure out what I wanted to do about me. Then, when I got pregnant with Arya I had realized what was wrong with me and I needed things to change.”
He presses his lips together and his gaze stays pinned on my lips, unwavering, unmoving.
“Elsa and Arya, huh? Anything to do withFrozenandGame of Thrones?”
He laughs, breaking the quiet in the car and filling it with the most beautiful sound I’ve ever heard. “You can tell the periods of my life by how I’ve named them. Elsa came out when I was still in denial and so happy being a new parent but knew something was missing and Arya when I was angry and out for blood.”
I cock my head and purse my lips to the side.
“That’s when I came out to Mark. My third trimester. I couldn’t keep it in anymore so I told him. By that point I knew he was an accepting, kind man who stood up for the little guy so there was no harm, right? He’d accept me and love me like he did before, right?”
“He didn’t?” I ask with a pang in my chest, bracing for more pain.
“Kind of. He wasn’t jumping for joy, but he said the right things, though I could tell there was something off. We didn’t talk about it again for months after Arya was born. I was angry because he ignored it and I was starting to get antsy. I wanted to start my transition as soon as I was done breastfeeding so I came out with it.
“Anyway, long story short, he turned into a condescending, vile man. He started talking about a woman’s position in marriage, about a man’s rights. He started listening to all those nasty misogynistic, homophobic, transphobic podcasts and parroting their bullshit as if he had discovered the truth of the universe.”
“Wow,” I say and reach for his hand. “I’m so sorry.”
He glances down at my hand and I start to pull back when he squeezes it instead.
“Thanks,” he says. “It took me a long time to leave him but I did. I just couldn’t reconcile the Mark I married to the Mark he became post-my coming out. It was like dealing with two different people. I was hoping it was just a phase he’d come out of. I thought maybe he needed to get this shit out of his system to realize he still loves me, but it only got worse and I was done. I left with the girls and filed for divorce. Then he started a nasty custody battle, and what’s worse, when he got the girls he’d feed them misogynistic crap, talk to them about their place, order them around like his little slaves, punish them harshly. I was disgusted. I won sole custody and I thought we’d start fresh.”
“And that’s when you came here?”
He shook his head and relaxed his hold on my hand. “No. We moved to Sacramento. And a few months ago he broke in and tried to take them. He almost succeeded.”
“Jesus! What a dickhead.”
“He truly is. He gave Elsa nightmares for months. It’s only since we got here she’s started to sleep at night. Thank God Arya is still young enough for some things to not faze her.”
“That’s good.” I give his hand another squeeze and withdraw it from his lap where it’s been for far too long for comfort. “What happened to him?”
