I gave myself a long moment.
“Do you know what he used to do?” I asked, looking over at her. “He used to tell me I smelled bad.”
She wrinkled her forehead at me. “What?”
“Right before we’d walk into a party or a restaurant or something he’d lean in and go, ‘Did you take a shower today?’ And you know me. I’m compulsively clean. I’d be half an hour out of a bubble bath, and he’d wrinkle his nose and tell me my deodorant wasn’t working. I’d go to kiss him, and he’d turn his face and ask me if I’d had onions for dessert.”
“You don’t smell,” she said. “I would tell you.”
“Yeah, well, I was so freaked about it, I had Bri give me a full physical to see if something was wrong. Came back with nothing. I went to the dentist to see if I had an issue with my mouth, same thing, nothing.
“He wouldn’t touch me or kiss me. I was taking three, four showers a day at the end, brushing my teeth constantly. I was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. And you know what my therapist said? She said it’s a form of abuse. That he was purposely lowering my self-esteem.”
Someone on a bike chimed their bell, and we stepped onto the grass shoulder. We waited for them to whiz past us before I continued.
I rubbed my forehead. “It’s so much to unpack, Jessica. I feel like I’ve toppled down a therapy rabbit hole over the last six months.
“It was good in the beginning. He was nice. We got serious, bought the house. He was kind of cranky sometimes, but it wasn’t bad. Then he started making these little comments about how I looked. Didn’t that used to fit better? Why do you look so tired? Joking that if he’d known how much I was going to let myself go once we were living together, he would have never moved in with me—”
“Let yourself go?” She sounded annoyed. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you without lipstick.”
“Yeah, well, it just kept getting worse. After a while he wouldn’t even talk to me in the morning until I had my face on. I’d wake up and he’d lean in and sniff and shake his head and then he’d be irritated all day like I’d picked a fight with him. I started getting up before he did to get ready. Six a.m. and I’m showered and in full makeup. And if I didn’t do it and he made some comment I’d find myself apologizing, like his reaction was completely reasonable. He was always in these bad moods. I never knew which Neil I was going to get. One day he’s cooking me a nice dinner, my favorite bottle of wine, and the next he’s mad at me for God knows what because he won’t even speak to me. It was like he liked me on eggshells. Like as long as I was running after him, begging him to tell me what was wrong, what I could do better, he was happy.
“I could never relax, I started getting depressed, I had anxiety all the time. I was miserable and I felt totally trapped while at the same time feeling grateful that he was with me, because who else would want me?”
She shook her head. “Ali, I had no idea.”
I scoffed. “I had no idea either. It started so gradually, I didn’t even notice it was happening until it was so bad it was my whole life. It wasn’t until I had a therapist breaking it down for me that I even realized what he was doing. It was like I’d been brainwashed into thinking this was normal.”
Two joggers passed us, and we went quiet until they were out of earshot.
I let out a long breath. “I almost died of relief when he had that affair, because now I didn’t need an excuse to leave him. ‘Neil cheated, so I Ieft. He’s the bad guy, I’m out.’ Cut-and-dry. Only it’s not, because now he’s playing the whole remorseful ex thing and everyone feels sorry for him. And I don’t think he even expected me to break up with him. I think he actually thought I was going to stick around and keep what he did quiet like I always did because I’d be so embarrassed that I was disgusting enough to drive him into the arms of another woman.”
Her face was hard. “Who else knows?” she asked. “Bri?”
I shrugged. “I told her after, when I was starting to understand it myself. I mean, she never liked him. But he never did it in front of anyone, and it’s sort of hard to explain. Can you imagine me trying to tell you guys this? Convince you that Neil was mean to me? Everyone’s favorite guy, Neil? Complain about him being a good boyfriend and letting me know that my breath smells bad? You’d probably be more inclined to think that he was trying to help me out than to believe that he was being purposely cruel. It wouldn’t even surprise me if you didn’t believe me now—”