Page 11 of Female Fantasy
Perhaps he’d been putting on a show, too.
Kyle began casually controlling every single aspect of my life. When we were out with other people, he treated me as a punch line rather than his partner. And things at home weren’t much better. Although I was normally the one to cook dinner, he began dictating what we ate, controlling how many calories I consumed in a day. When we’d started dating, I had stopped seeing my college friends as frequently, so our social group now consisted mainly of his own buddies, which meant he decided who I saw on the weekends. My girlfriends, mostly the partners of his friends, often reported our conversations to him. Nowhere was safe. He told me what I could and couldn’t wear, even going so far as to call me names if I went outside in something he deemed too revealing. When I questioned him, he told me he was behaving this way because he loved me so much. He was worried about me. He wanted what was best for me.
For a while, I was naïve enough to believe him. I was afraidto say anything, to fight back. The truth was, I thought I’d found my soul mate, my one true love. Admitting I was wrong felt terrifying. I thought that if I left him, I’d never get another chance at love. I’d be alone forever. The possibility paralyzed me.
Cruelty, I resolved, was better than excommunication.
I let all of the sunshine drain out of me, a slow, steady, depressive drip.
Kyle had let the light back in, then shut the blinds. His explosive declarations had actually been love bombs. He lit candles inside of me only to snuff them out on a whim. I was tired of fighting tooth and nail to hang on to my optimism.
Sam. Nico. Kyle.
They were all the same.
Happy endings had never felt more like a myth.
And then one day, I came home to find Kyle reading my diaries. He was tearing out entries, page by page. With a terrifying, manic look in his eye, he informed me that I was not allowed to write anything down ever again. That was the last straw. My writing was my one solace, the only truthful part of my life. Those journals were the only things that were 100 percent mine and no one else’s. I stormed out the door, even as he yelled after me. He warned me that if I left, he’d lock me out.
I could never come back.
It’s funny. I now recognize his behavior as emotional abuse. But I couldn’t tell how bad it truly was until I had some distance from the relationship. I had never wanted to call it theA-word. To admit how I had allowed him to treat me. Our time together had felt like waiting out a passing storm. I kept thinking,Well, maybe it’ll stop raining soon and I can go outside.But I had been stuck inside the hurricane for far too long, seconds away from being struck by lightning.
I didn’t tell Tey until after I’d already left. My parents were off doing their own thing. When they’d met Kyle at Thanksgiving, they’d declared him charming and well mannered. I did not want to pop their bubble of delusion, to let them down that way. They were happy for me. After years of watching me suffer from bullying and assimilation, they could finally exhale. How could I pull back that curtain, depriving them of the fantasy that everything was okay?
That’s the thing about being the child of immigrants. When your parents risk so much to give you a better life, you feel like the least you can do is pretend said life truly is better, even if the reality is so much darker.
Nico had never liked Kyle, though. When I told him, blinking back tears, that we’d broken up, he muttered only two words: “Good riddance.”
But he had lost the right to care a long time ago.
The day that Kyle kicked me out of our shared home, I found myself back in Mystic, wandering the streets just as I had after Sam revealed her true colors back in middle school. Just as I’d always done as a kid. And my feet pointed me in the direction of Ends Whale Books. As I lost myself in the stacks, hiding from the realities of the outside world, I heard a rustle. I shut my eyes and held my breath, preparing myself for thepossibility that Kyle had found me. That he was going to let me have it in front of all of my favorite authors.
Instead, I came face-to-face with Rona, the owner. She placed a slender hand on my shoulder, then rubbed my back until my breathing slowed and my body stopped shaking.
“Oh, honey,” she said, each syllable full of concern. “What’s the matter?”
I didn’t want to tell her. I couldn’t. I did not yet have the words.
“I need a book rec,” I blurted out instead.
She studied me, apprehensive. “What kind of book?” she finally asked.
I chewed on the inside of my cheek.Yes, what kind of book, Joonie?
“One that will restore my faith in love,” I said. And then, in a quieter voice, “And maybe myself.”
She nodded, offering up a sad smile. “I’ve got just the thing.”
I expected her to bring me a classic. Austen, maybe. OrJane Eyre.
Instead, she returned moments later with a thick hardcover novel from the fantasy section. I eyed it curiously.
“What’s this?” I’d never read fantasy as an adult before. In my head, it was a genre that children escaped into, then grew out of. A phase. Something frivolous.
“Welcome to the world ofA Tale of Salt Water and Secretsby Evelyn Grace Carter,” she said. “I’m so very excited for you to meet my friend Ryke.”
I sighed and graciously accepted the book, thanking Rona,fully believing I wouldn’t read past the first chapter. But that night, hidden inside a fortress of cotton quilts that Tey had lent me while I crashed on his pull-out couch, I devoured the entire novel. And began the second. The next morning, I staggered down to the restaurant with red eyes, bad breath, and damp underwear, a changed woman.
