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He got it.
He told me how relieved he was that his lack of college degree hadn’t been held against him. Or apparently the fact that he’d only been working at the company six months to my five years.
But like he said, if I’d got it, it would have just looked like a diversity-hire thing. You know, because of my disability.
When I got my promotion, we wanted people to know it was really because I was the best candidate so there wouldn’t be any questions from the other workers, or jealousy, that sort of thing, he said. He liked to say things that way—to state things in terms of we without ever asking me what I thought about it.
But secretly…
Secretly I thought I already was the best person for the job. And not just because of my college degree.
Drew didn’t always do so well, though, when it was suggested that I, or anyone really, might— I swallow and frown at the thought, afraid to even think even if not say out loud my deep-down secret thought.
Drew didn’t do well if there was even a whisper that I might be better at something than him.
Everything was fine between us as long as we agreed.
Well, as long as I agreed with him.
But if I didn’t happen to think something was the right idea, or move, or—
I close my eyes and sink down in the steaming water.
None of it matters anymore.
Drew is back home in Minneapolis in a slightly bigger cubicle, with everyone else thinking what a hero he is to have been left by that crazy, disabled girlfriend that he was an absolute saint to have not only dated but proposed to in the first place. And then she just up and left him!
I doubt the office gossip has slowed down, even though I left two months ago.
And I should do better to believe that fairy tales are real.
Whatever overwhelming feelings I might be have now when my beast makes love to me—
I cut the thought off in its tracks.
This is not making love. No matter how much my naïve little brain wants to protect itself.
This is fucking.
I’m being fucked by a monster who’s only happy when I’m on my knees.
I’m being used.
Just like always.
There aren’t happy endings. Not in this life, anyway.
I get up out of the bath and haul my foot over the side of the claw-foot tub. I shake my head in wonder at the strength in my legs as I step onto the cold stone floor.
Again, it’s a shocking cold after the bath’s heat, but I welcome it, as well as the strong flex of my calf as I shift my weight to stand up.
So maybe it’s only the romantic happy endings that are hopeless, because this miracle I’ve all but given up hope on… I stand straight, without pain, and feel my shoulders square up.
When I breathe in and out, there’s no obstruction. No pain.
And a tear falls down my cheek. I still can’t believe it. To be healed, after all this time. A lifetime. Too many feelings are battling in my chest. Too many thoughts at once.
The tears are indistinguishable from the bathwater running down from my wet hair.
I stand there until my skin is pricked with goosebumps from the cold, feeling whole and strong in my own skin for maybe the first time in my life.
I feel like I could run a marathon.
I hurry over to a shelf with towels on it, grab one, and bend over to twist up my hair. Then, grabbing one more to wrap around my body, I head to the bedroom’s open window.
Icy wind blasts in through the open space, but I find it a little less intolerable than I did this morning. Still, I can’t just go around naked all the time. I look around for last night’s discarded clothes. Maybe I can clean them and sew them back together?
But when I look behind me on the floor, all I see are snow gusts and stray black feathers. I turn back to the window, holding tightly to the wall and leaning out a little to inhale the bracing, frigid air.
Did the monster leave this way? He just closed the door to the bathroom and said he’d be gone for a while. “Don’t leave the bedroom,” was the last thing he growled to me before he left.
The window opens at my knees and is almost as wide as it is tall. From here I can see some glass panes that might be able to be closed by a series of cranks, but I can’t begin to understand how they work. Plus, if the monster left that way, he probably won’t be too pleased to fly back only to find sheets of glass blocking his return.
I’m sure he’d just break on through, and then I’d never have hope of a warm night’s sleep.
