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“Before I left Australia,” I explained. “I was young. Really fucking young. And really fucking stupid.” I took a bite out of the cupcake. “I thought I loved him. He made me feel special or whatever the fuck.”
I chewed, doing it slowly as if I could prolong the process.
Unfortunately, the cupcake was fudgy and smooth and went down just fine.
“You see, I did not come from a wealthy family,” I continued, taking a breath and not looking Nora in the face. “Like, at all. My mum liked the ponies and wine, and my dad liked anything that wasn’t working or spending time with his family. Suffice it to say, we barely scraped by on benefits from the government, income from whenever my father deigned to work, and whatever my mother didn’t gamble away.”
I winced at the pain of saying the words out loud, going back to that dingy flat we’d lived in my entire life. The damp crept into my bones again, the feeling of never being warm in the winter and the heat of the summer oppressive and thick.
“I met Emmet Landon at some house party,” I said, abandoning the cupcake as I once again felt sick to my stomach. This time it had nothing to do with pregnancy hormones but the rancid memories, soaked in Smirnoff Ices and cheap perfume that I thought made me smell older and more experienced.
“I knew who he was, of course,” I explained. “Everyone in my area knew who Emmet Landon was, even if you didn’t go to the fancy private school he went to… which I didn’t. But he came from a rich family, threw legendary parties, crashed expensive cars, and was generally a rich asshole,” I scoffed. “He was also really fucking hot.”
At the time, I’d thought he was really fucking hot, at least. I thought with his dark hair, olive skin, and lean muscles that he somehow looked older than his eighteen years. That he was a man.
Yet in all the years I knew him, he didn’t age a day. He still stayed that spoiled, rich teenager who thought he owned the world and everyone in it.
“And he only had eyes for me,” I told Nora, still not looking at her. I tidied bowls on the counter. “Now, I wasn’t the mousy wallflower. I had great tits early and figured out how to use my looks for my benefit. I knew men and boys noticed me. Still, I felt flattered.”
It was embarrassing to think of now. That I wasflatteredhe liked me. That he smiled at me. Made me feel I was worthy. As if I hadn’t been a valuable person until someone with means and status recognized me.
I was young, stupid, and fucking damaged.
“Anyway,” I said, waving my hand, “you can guess the rest. It’s cliché. Girl from the wrong side of the tracks with the rich boy. Parents don’t approve. That only makes the boy more determined to date, then marry aforementioned girl.”
I rolled my eyes. It was all so clear now. Sure, he might’ve been infatuated with me, might’ve liked to fuck me, and he definitely liked the stir I created. But he never liked me. Because he never fucking saw me.
“I was distracted enough by the money, the nice things, the house, the illusion that I was a grown-up, that I’d left all my pain behind.” I picked at the cupcake.
“I quickly learned that wasn’t the case,” I said after a long pause. Ugh. I didn’t like that I was getting stuck in the past like I was wading through a fucking swamp. No need for nostalgia. I needed to get the facts out so I didn’t feel like such a liar.
“You don’t need to know the details,” I told Nora. “Long story short, he got me pregnant a few times. Didn’t stick. I thought it hurt at the time, but someone, somewhere was looking out for me, I reckon, because he got violent after that.”
I snuck a glance at my best friend then.
Nora’s face was a mask of shock. Yeah, I’d laid a whole bunch on her in one sitting.
And maybe, I guessed, the person she knew now didn’t seem like a woman who might’ve been abused by her husband. I didn’t take shit from anybody, didn’t scream ‘victim’ with some haunted stare.
The reality was there was no woman in the world who couldn’t be made a victim by a man who she thought she loved. That was the horrific truth of it all.
People were afraid of monsters. Of life’s terrors. I was of the belief that there was no greater monster, no greater terror, than a man who made a victim out of a woman.
“I went to all the doctors… for the pregnancy shit, not for the bruises or broken bones.” I cleared my throat.
The bruises disappeared as if they were never there, and the bones healed eventually, even if they didn’t set quite right.
“The doctors couldn’t give me the answers as to why it was happening, then told me that after the last loss, there was too much scar tissue, that it’d never happen for me,” I said. “By that point I was jaded, bitter, broken, and thankful. He’d never force me to bring a child into this world with his blood.” I shrugged. “As pathetic as it was, that gave me the strength to divorce him. And it took a lot of strength.”
Fuck, I wish I could have a shot of tequila right now.
I figured Nora didn’t need to know about the grief he gave me with the divorce, the lies he spread about me, the friends I thought I had turning on me, the death threats, having to move back in with my fucking mother on account of not having a cent to my name.
Yeah, that was all too fucking pathetic.
“When I finally got that piece of paper, I sold the jewelry I’d managed to smuggle out, got myself into a student visa program and a one-way ticket… and here I am,” I chuckled. “Pregnant and married, the two things that almost ruined my life nearly a decade ago.”
Nora’s mouth was open in shock at that point, and her eyes were wet with tears.
