It started off slowly. First little things, like controlling what we would watch on Netflix or what we were having for dinner. Things weren’t discussed anymore, it was just decided by Eric. Then came broken plates and shattered glasses. The verbal abuse wasn’t full force at first. But soon after came the physical blows. I should have seen the warning signs but I was blinded by a childish outlook on the world and by my love for this kid. I knew that if I left him, Eric would kill himself and I couldn’t bear to think that I would be the reason for that. It was just becoming so much harder to trust him. I’ll never forget the first time he laid his hands on me in a way that terrified me to the very core.
It was November, just around the anniversary of his mother’s death. I had accidentally ruined a new shirt that he had bought only a week before. Something in the detergent caused yellow and white stains to spread all over the front. I jokingly said it made for a nice tie-die look. Eric, a fury in his eyes that I had never seen before, grabbed the back of my neck in a grip that I was sure would snap me in half but he soon let go. There was a fleeting moment of regret in his eyes that disappeared just as fast as it made itself known. He walked numbly over to the bedroom, leaving me behind to try and comprehend what had just happened.
The rest of that night went on like a weird, hazy, messed up dream. I walked around, did my normal chores around the place, folded some laundry, cleaned out the refrigerator, and then when I was in the shower, I crumpled down onto the cold porcelain and cried harder than I had ever cried before. My body was racked with sobs as I touched the tender spot just behind my neck where I was sure a black and blue mark was forming.
I couldn’t understand what happened. Eric was my everything, he was my one true love. Why would he ever lay a finger on me? I was his support system. I was all he had left in this really fucked up world. I remembered being younger and seeing the images of my father punching my mom. I was too little to vividly remember the scene but I could clearly remember the emotions I felt at the time. I remember growing older and promising myself that I would never be put into that situation and if I was, I would walk out that same day.
But here I was. Years later. Deeper in than ever before.
Eric went to therapy which worked for a bit and helped me find my love for him again, but relapse was always just around the corner. I usually had the bruises to prove it.
Then Ryan spoke again, his deep voice carrying me out of my self-pity. “Well, all joking aside, your test results came back and you’re back to your normal self. You might have a little bit of a headache but you’ll be ok with some Tylenol. I’ll put in your request to discharge now and you’ll be back home to catch the season finale of Game of Thrones tonight.”
He smiled another one of his dream-catcher smiles and stood there, above my bed like the protector he had grown so accustomed to being. I could see the love he had for his job and his patients.
Then it dawned on me what today was. “Oh shit, I totally forgot!” I couldn’t miss tonight’s episode. Apparently something crazy with a wedding was about to happen.
I wasn’t sure, I never read the books.
“Oh, you’re a fan?” he said, sounding as though he was caught off-guard at my passionate exclamation. He clearly didn’t know how obsessed I was with the series, which I didn’t blame him for, seeing as he had no idea who I really was or what I liked anyway. I probably didn’t look like a girl who would be obsessed with Game of Thrones either.
“Hell yeah! I have like three Stark shirts and two Lannister mugs.”
And then it hit me. My HBO was cancelled.
“Wait, forget I mentioned anything,” I said dejectedly, “just remembered my roommate got rid of our HBO subscription.”
Roommate? Did I just refer to Eric as my roommate? This wasn’t like me, but something felt right about it.
He looked at me with the same pity reserved for a lost puppy found in a dirty old well.
“Well I’m having some friends come over to watch it tonight. You can join us,” he offered, genuinely trying to save me from a Game of Thrones-less night. I immediately thought of Eric and how I would be able to go to Ryan’s without him coming, and whether or not I should bring Courtney as a buffer. I don’t know what was coming over me but something about Ryan was making me take some big risks. Besides it wasn’t like I was going over there to have incredibly hot and passionate sex as dragons battle an endless army on the TV.
Suddenly I began thinking about having incredibly hot and passionate sex as dragons raged on in the background with this perfect man raging on top of me.
“Yeah, that sounds like fun,” I said, paying extra attention now to the way Dr. Matthews seemed to lick his lips lightly just before speaking.
Wow, this guy was incredibly hot. The kind of hot that makes you want to tear your clothes off without a second thought, even if it had to be in front of a crowd of onlookers. I was normally a modest girl, but I felt as though I wouldn’t care who was watching if I could just feel this man without the barrier of clothes between us.
“Cool. Here’s my address and number, just tell the security guard you’re there for Ryan Matthews and they’ll let you in.”
I watched him write his address down on the back of a napkin that rested next to my solid chunk of jell-o. I mentally went through the list of classes I had tomorrow, just to double-check that there were no midterms I had accidentally forgotten about. All I could think of was an online assignment that was due for my Biology of Reproductions class, but I figured I could just get Courtney to log in and fill it out for me.
I pocketed the napkin in my front chest pocket.
“See you tonight,” Ryan said just as his name rang over the intercom.
“See yah,” I called out after him.
I smiled, looking back to the framed photo of the elderly couple.
They were so lucky.
I walked out into the brightly beaming California sun, my head sending a quick stinging feeling as the light of day shocked my senses. I snipped off my hospital bracelet, threw it in the trash, and walked over to my beaten up but super reliable 2001 Nissan Altima. The nurses warned against me driving by myself but Eric was busy playing basketball, so he didn’t answer any of my calls, and my car had been sitting there anyways. I remembered coming here just a couple of days ago, butterflies floating around in my stomach, not knowing what to expect on my first real day of volunteer work. I thought I was going to be stuffed in a broom closet and forced to sort through various dusty patient records. Instead I was allowed to observe a trauma intake and was rewarded for my help by being given a premature mid-life crisis.
Great.
I threw my car into reverse and pulled out of the hospital parking lot, dreading what was going to happen when I got home. I still needed to figure out how I was going to go to Ryan’s house without having Eric blow up on me. He hated when I would spend time with my own friends. It was hard enough hanging out with Courtney, there was no way he was going to be happy with me going out with a real-life Dr. McSteamy. Literally, I wanted to meet him in multiple elevators and have a television style hookup leading to a porn style sex romp.
But Eric.
Oh Eric.
I knew I shouldn’t. I knew I just should not feel guilty about lusting over this man. I knew that Eric was no good for me in the slightest of fashions. But I couldn’t help loving him for who he was, not for who he had become. It felt like it was a horrible miswiring of my brain, some circuits that should be firing off, telling me “Run away! Stop being dumb and just leave!” instead firing off with “Eric was your first and will always be your true love.”
I guess it was my intense sense of hope. Growing up, hope was the strongest survival tool I could carve out. I always had hope that our situation would improve. It’s what kept me floating above the water, swimming furiously towards my goals. And it came to fruition too. I was a proud UCLA student after all.
So why was I so incompetent when it came to my own feelings and well-being? Put me in a biology class and I could spit out the electron transport chain like no one’s business. But put me in an abusive relationship and watch me whither under the pressure.
Maybe it was also a sense of responsibility. I almost felt responsible for not being able to bring Eric back to the lover I knew he was. Why couldn’t he see how much I had loved and cared for him, ready to walk to the ends of this earth and the next for him? Was it because of the intense grief that I knew still haunted him or was it in fact, me? Could I have been the problem?
I tried pushing that horrifying thought out of my mind. Focusing instead on the man dressed up like a knock-off Statue of Liberty twirling a sign that advertised “GOLD, WE BUY YOUR GOLD!” underneath the shadow of a shopping complex entrance. Just down the street was an Elvis also twirling his own gold buying sign. I wondered if they ever battled to see who would be the sign slinging king.
I imagined them fighting it out for the rest of my drive home, distracting myself from thinking of Eric with images of Elvis punching Lady Liberty in the gut.
My phone vibrated next to me, making me forget about Lady Liberty being in a chokehold.
“Em! Why haven’t you answered my calls?” Courtney said as I put her on speaker. I glanced at my phone, the teal hard case cover I had bought was peaking around the sides.
“Sorry, Court. Phone was dead.”
“Well come over! I don’t have to go to class today and was thinking of doing some light day drinking.”
I couldn’t help but smile. Day drinking was probably Courtney’s favorite pastime, and I couldn’t deny I enjoyed it either. But for some reason, chugging beer while the sun was still out the day after my hospital stay didn’t sound too appealing.
“I’ll go over but I won’t drink. Who knows how much medication I have pumping through me.”
“Well not enough Vicodin by the sound of it,” Courtney said, laughing at her own joke. I slowed to a stop at a red light and let her go on about how I should have asked Dr. Matthews to be my new gynecologist.
Thankfully traffic was light so the drive to her apartment was short. I found a rare street parking spot and walked up the steel black steps to her apartment on the third floor. The building itself was a little older, its age showing through the chipping white paint on the walls and the creaking noises that each step would make under my weight. However, it was perfectly suitable for college students, which made it a mecca for freshman and sophomores. I passed by a group of frat guys doing keg stands on their front porch, foamy beer spewing all over the concrete pavement.
The rowdy guys cheered and hooted as they hoisted a sorority girl up into the air. I had never seen a keg stand before so I slowed my walk, glancing over as the girl chugged the beer upside down. Five seconds into it and she was already spitting the alcohol everywhere, asking to be put back down. The guys, laughing and congratulating her, placed her back down onto the ground.
One of the less douchy ones looked over my way and waved, it was Connor, Courtney’s other close friend.
“Hey you wanna try?!” he asked me, leaning over the long white table used for the beer pong game.
“No thanks,” I said politely, starting my way back up the stairs. I didn’t make it two steps before I heard Courtney call out from the top flight of stairs.
“Holy shit, Connor! You didn’t tell me you were having a party!”
Courtney turned the corner and propelled herself down the stairs, her simple black flats slapped against the steps as she passed me, grabbing my elbow on the way and taking me down to the group of guys. I couldn’t help but let out an exhausted sigh, knowing that now I was going to be forced to act social when all I wanted to do was go to sleep.
“Connor, this is Emma, she was just at the hospital,” she said, so nonchalantly that I didn’t even realize she mentioned I was being hospitalized only an hour ago. “Emma this is Connor, remember I was telling you about that kid that I became best friends with over chem lab? This is him!”
“Nice to meet you,” I said, hoping he wouldn’t make too much of a fuss about my hospital stay.
“Nice to finally meet you too,” Connor said, sticking out a hand and taking mine in his. He was one of those guys that immediately gave you a good feeling, as though he was a genuinely good guy, no doubts about it. Why he was hanging out with these frat-holes, I didn’t know.
“You’re feeling ok, right?” he asked, looking me over, putting a gentle hand on my shoulder. I nodded my head in a yes and smiled, finding it being returned by the straightest and whitest teeth I had ever seen. Even his smile said that he was a good guy.
“Good, because it looks like Courtney needs our help cheering her on,” Connor said, nodding over to Courtney, who was lined up for her turn at the keg stand. We both stood there and rooted for her as her dirty blonde hair fell forward into a puddle of white foam, the golden beer spilling out everywhere around her. She laughed and choked a little as one of the hotter guys brought her down. I noticed his hands dangerously close to her butt, which wasn’t too hidden underneath her tiny khaki shorts that could barely conceal her Latina heritage. Courtney was an exotic mix of Australian and Cuban, a mix that was always able to capture everyone’s attention. She must have noticed the guy’s straying touch because I saw her immediately launch into flirting mode, her hands gently pushing against the guy’s chest as he joked that she was a good swallower.
Real classy stuff, folks.
I was just about to say my good-byes when Connor noticed me again. He must have seen I was beginning to hover closer and closer to the parking lot, which was just around the corner from his porch.
“You’re not gonna pass out or anything right?” He asked. I wasn’t sure if he was genuinely joking or serious, but I reassured him I was fine.