“It’s not hard to figure out. After what you endured, I imagine that you wouldn’t give yourself over easily.”
Or at all. Our fooling around had reached a desperate pitch, each of us aching. But I couldn’t give myself to him, show myself that way. I—just couldn’t offer him that part of myself. Later, I’d give it over to people I cared about far less, wanted less. But back then I guarded everything that was precious to me.
“He got drunk one night,” I continue. “We were at some party. Back in his apartment, he got aggressive. Said I’d been teasing him, toying with him. I didn’t even know him in that moment. He was strong, and so angry. He was someone else when he drank.”
“Like your father.” It’s so easy with you. You understand me.
“Yes.”
“What happened?”
“We struggled. I thought I was strong, in shape, fast. But he was stronger by far. I was a child in comparison.”
Your heart is beating in your chest; I can feel it pulsing.
“What did you do? Did he rape you?”
“He would have.”
“But.”
“Something primal rose up, a rage I didn’t know lived inside me. It was raw power. I reached out for any weapon, my fingers found this bookend, a geode—sharp and heavy. I hit him with it, in the head. I hit him hard. I thought—”
Your chest rises and falls. I liked it, that feeling of rage. It was better than fear. Fear cowers and begs. Rage raises her sword and stands her ground.
“I thought—”
“What?”
“I thought I killed him. He was so still. One minute he was all power, and the next he was as soft and quiet as a sleeping child.”
“And then what did you do?”
What might I have done? Called for help, reported his assault, waited for the police. It was a clear case of self-defense. My shirt was ripped; already his grip on my arms was marked by bruising.
“I gathered my things and I left him there to die.”
The memory has come back vividly—the dark of the room, lit only by the streetlamp outside, the stale smell of alcohol coming off his skin, his breath, a black skein of blood on the side of his head. The green glow of his digital clock. It’s a time and place I rarely visit because of what it says about men, boys who take what they want, what it says about me. How remorselessly I left him there, not caring if he lived or died. When the rage dissipated, there was only apathy, a kind of kill or be killed resolve.
“But he was fine,” you say. You’ve done your homework, I guess.
“He left school, went back home, I heard. I hurt him, a fairly serious head injury. He recovered though, yes. He’s married now. We follow each other on Facebook.”
“I noticed that. Wouldn’t that be awkward? He tried to rape you. You tried to kill him. Not exactly the stuff of a lasting friendship.”
No, not the stuff of friendship. Jackson is an accountant now, apparently happily married—but you never know. Social media is such a lie. He coaches his son’s lacrosse team, takes his wife to Cabo for their anniversary. That night between us, so primal and bloody, is stitched somewhere into the underlay of our lives, there but mostly untouched.
“You know how it is. He either doesn’t remember what happened, or doesn’t want to. I don’t really want to remember it either. Loose tie connections, right? It’s all very distant, almost a fiction, isn’t it?”
“All modern relationships are a kind of fiction. A story we tell ourselves in curated, filtered posts on a screen. The truth, real relationships, are gritty and messy and complicated.”
They’re all here; their specters hover. Over the last few days, I have come to know well the stories of Mia, Bonnie, and Melissa—I know their faces, their favorite books and smoothies, their chosen Instagram color palates. Brightening Claredon for Mia, dramatic Ludwig for Bonnie. Melissa favored the calming Lark. I could feel Mia’s desperate search for the light in her earnest blog, her gaggle of friends on Facebook, her pastel colored, inspirational memes. Bonnie clung to childhood—unicorns, bubbles, adult coloring books. She was a loner, lots of nature shots and quotes about solitude. There were no girls’ night out posts, no cheerful selfies, no boyfriend shots, romantic dates for Bonnie, plenty of sweet images though of other people’s children. Melissa was online far less than the other two. It seemed that she couldn’t find her voice in social, wasn’t as adept as the other two in creating her avatar.