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“Yeah, I think I did.” I pause. “Thank you, Bex.”
“No problem,” she says. “Now, what are we binging tonight?”
I laugh at the shift in her energy and settle into the couch to scarf down my food. We pick a movie to watch on a streaming platform we both have and countdown to press play at the same time.
“One.”
“Two.”
“Three.”
Chapter 9
Bex
Living on a ranch in the country means a lot of my closest relationships are long distance, so things like FaceTime dates are nothing new for me. It’s sometimes the only way I’m able to stay connected to my friends when life gets busy. So, I’ve had plenty of practice timing the start of shows and movies so they begin at the exact same moment as my friends’, and that’s what this feels like.
I didn’t mean to call it a date when I asked Naomi to hang out with me tonight. But sitting here with her on the other end of the phone, curled up on the couch in my comfiest pajamas, feels just like the easy comfort I always feel when I’m hanging out with friends.
The movie Naomi picked is a classic I’ve seen a thousand times about a waitress who’s planning to leave her sack-of-shit husband. As she gets closer to following through on her plans, though, she finds out she’s pregnant and ends up starting an affair with the new doctor she sees for her condition who’s just moved to town.
“Ugh. I hate characters like this. They always remind me of my ex,” I say as the husband comes on the screen.
“Oh?” Naomi says through a mouthful of pad Thai.
I put down my own food and turn my attention to the blonde on my screen.
“Yeah. The guy I was with before Alvie was a lot like this guy, a controlling dick who didn’t like me having any kind of autonomy or independence.”
Naomi stays quiet, but her own focus is now on me instead of the movie playing in the background. Part of me hesitates to share so much of myself with a new friend so soon, but I’ve never lived life halfway and I don’t plan on starting now.
I take a deep breath, bracing myself for the possible feelings that tend to arise when I talk about my ex.
“For a long time, I thought the attention he paid me was how he showed his love for me. That his involvement in my life was showing me he cared.” I shake my head, letting it fall down to my chest. “It took me far too long to see how toxic it really was.”
It’s like a switch flips in Naomi’s head as I drag my gaze up to meet her own displayed on my screen. There’s empathy in her expression, but something about it feels almost too observant.
“I’m sorry,” she says slowly when I don’t keep talking. “It can be really hard to see the truth of your present circumstances when you’re going through difficult things like that though.”
Her words, while true and comforting to an extent, feel almost clinical. Something about the word choice is so particular and calculated. It’s as though she’s operating based on a script.
“Yeah. Tyler was actually the first person to bring me to a club in the city, before The Playground was even around, and he also introduced me to kink. I think for him, he wanted to show me off as someone that he owned and controlled. He wanted others to see the power he held over me, and I let him.” I ignore the tickle at the base of my skull, opting to forge ahead instead. “It was actually Alvie and a few of the others in our group who helped me get out of that relationship.”
“Really?” Naomi asks.
I nod. “Tyler took it too far one night with an impact scene on the cross and I got hurt. Others in our friend group stepped in and got me help. They moved me out of his place within 24 hours. It was actually Alvie who took me in when I had no place to go.”
“That’s so nice of him,” Naomi says with a sweet smile gracing her lips.
“Yeah, it really was. He helped me find a therapist and I was able to talk through a lot of different issues that had built up over the course of my relationship with Tyler.”
“Did it help?’
I sigh. “It did for a bit, but as I processed more of my trauma and memories of the relationship, things got worse for a while.”
“What do you mean?” she asks, her head tilting in confusion.
“Tyler wasn’t physically abusive until the very end. He left a lot of scars, though, which led to PTSD. A few weeks into seeing my therapist, I started having panic attacks and nightmares. That’s actually how I got involved with Alvie at first.
