Page 54 of Another Love, Another Time

After he leaves, I ride back to my hotel room, make a list of the questions I want to ask, and then go to bed. I want to get up early and follow him throughout the day to observe him.

When I wake up, I jump in the shower. After I get out, I throw on some jeans, a T-shirt, and my combat boots. I leave my hotel room and head back to his house.

I wait, sitting on my bike, until he leaves his house. I start my bike and follow him to a house on the other side of the city that has a tall fence around it. I pull up and park farther down the street, close enough that I can still see the house.

I survey my surroundings. There’s a guy sitting on the porch and drinking coffee. He doesn’t look relaxed; if anything, he has the attitude of someone on guard duty.My guyshakes hands with the person on the porch and then walks into the house.

I need to know what he’s doing here. It seems off.

There’s no way I can walk up to the porch, so I walk down the street and then back down the sidewalk in front of the house, hoping I can get a glimpse of what is happening.

I can’t, so I try to return to my bike. By the time I get to my bike, the guy from the porch is now standing beside it.

“Do you know anyone who is in that house?” he asks.

I shake my head.

“Do you know what this house is?” he asks.

I shake my head again.

“I’m assuming you followed the kid here. Would you be the reason he has a black eye?” I look down, but I don’t answer. He deserved it. “We do not put up with any abuse in this house. Seeing him hurt could trigger some of the kids when he volunteers.”

I quickly look up. “Volunteers?”

“Look, I know a little bit about the kid’s past. He told me when he first started volunteering eleven months ago. And to be honest, you look like you’re out to kill. If you want to— ”

I ignore his comment. “What is this place?”

“Can I trust you not to tell anyone where and what this place is?”

“Yes.”

He must decide he can trust me because his next words are, “We are a women’s shelter for abused women. We house women and children who have come from abusive situations.”

I have no words. Why wouldhebe here?

“The kid comes here every week and volunteers,” he continues.

“He spends time with the kids, doing various activities. It helps take the kids’ minds off the shitty situation they are in while their moms can focus on planning the next steps of their lives.

The kids love him. He’s really good with them. ”

Again, I’m blindsided. I should have hired a PI because I was not prepared for this. I feel myself softening towards him. At the same time, I’m trying to stay mad.

“Thank you,” I respond. “I promise I won’t say anything.” I swing my leg over my bike and put my helmet on. The guy steps back, and I take off for my hotel.

~~

I went back to my hotel room to regroup. The past year, all I could think about was beating the shit out of this guy and finding out answers. I was basically obsessed with this, driving myself crazy. I needed to make him pay, make him feel what I felt when he attacked me.

But after last night and today, I’m not sure about anything. The guy who attacked me and the guy I’ve come face-to-face with don’t seem like the same person.

I need answers. I send him a message to meet me at a restaurant down the road from my hotel room in an hour. I pack up my stuff. After today, I’m leaving to visit my parents.

I leave a little early and get a seat at the restaurant. When I see him arrive, I start to get a little nervous. What the hell was I thinking? I should have just turned him in.

I pull out my list. He looks rough. I really did a number on him; he’s cleaned himself up from last night, but he’s done a poor job covering the bruises with concealer.

The hostess walks him to the table, and he sits opposite me. We don’t say anything for the longest time. We just sit there and stare at one another. The waitress comes up, asks what we want, and goes to fetch our drinks.

I asked him here, so I try to start the conversation, but he speaks first. “I just want to start to say how sorry I am about what I did to you—what I almost did to you.” He closes his eyes and takes a deep breath.

“There is no excuse or reason I could ever give you that would ever be able to justify my actions. I will always regret what I did to you. I’m not sure why you never told the cops that it was me.

I was out of it and completely fucked up, but I know that you recognized me.

You could have easily identified me. I’ve spent the last year looking over my shoulder, asking myself, ‘Is today going to be the day they show up?’”

I shrug. “You’re right. I did know who you are. I’m not sure why I didn’t tell the cops. You said something while you were attacking me that I kept thinking about, and I think I was afraid that if I turned you in, I would never get the answer.”

He furrows his brows. “What did I say? Again, I’m not making excuses, but I was out of it. I’ll answer any questions you have.”

I nod. “You said,‘Iknow you want this too; she told me you wanted this. She told me you would try to fight, but you like it rough.’I need to know who‘she’is.”

He rubs his hands down his face. “‘She’is your cousin Melissa.”

I don’t know what hits me. I don’t know if it’s the year I’ve been obsessing over this answer or that my gut instinct was correct, but I start crying. I don’t want to show my weakness, but it’s like I’ve been validated in my thinking.

I knew it was her, but this is still a shock. As much as I dislike her, I didn’t believe she would do something like this to me.

He goes to grab my hand to comfort me, but before he can make contact, I pull back. He lets me compose myself and hands me a napkin. I take it and dry my eyes.

“Why? Why would you attack me? I just don’t understand. Did she ask you to attack me, and you just did? Please, help me understand.”

“Again, I don’t want to make excuses. I own my actions. And if you want me to turn myself in after we talk, I will do that. I’ll do whatever you want me to. I at least owe you that. Basically, your cousin manipulated me and then held something over my head.”

“What? I need to understand how she did that. How could she make you do something so horrible?” I question.

“Six months before prom, I got assigned Melissa as a partner in one of my classes.

We rotated, going back and forth from my house and then hers.

I thought she was pretty cool, so we started hanging out after we did our work.

She seemed easy to talk to, so I told her about the stresses of trying to keep my grades up, the pressures of football, and the demands of being the best from my parents.

“She told me she understood and that sometimes when she felt overwhelmed, she took pills to help calm down. She offered to give me a few to try. I declined her offer. I didn’t want to have to rely on anything to help with my stress. She seemed to be okay with that.

“But the next time we hung out at her house after we got done with our work, we started watching a movie. The next thing I knew, I was feeling funny. I told her I felt weird, and she told me that she put one of the pills in my drink. She wanted me to see how relaxed I felt.” He stops when the waitress comes back with our drinks.

She takes our order, and then she leaves.

He continues, “I started to freak out on her. I didn’t want to take it, and she had tricked me. I wanted to go home right then, but she told me I was too impaired to drive, so I had to stay there. The pills did make me feel more relaxed, but I still freaked out, thinking she would give me more.

“As soon as I felt halfway normal, I got the hell out of there. I didn’t talk to her for almost two weeks.

I asked the teacher if I could switch partners, but it wasn’t allowed.

We were getting behind on our project, so I had to bite the bullet and hang out with her again to work on our project.

She apologized and told me she was just trying to help.

She said she took them all the time, and they helped.

She told me if I changed my mind, she could always get me some.

Her dad was a doctor and always brought home samples.

“She made it sound so normal, like it was nothing. Since we were behind on our project, we had to meet more often to finish on time. I was getting stressed, and she was always there with her offer. I don’t know why I started, especially looking back, but it just seemed the stress started piling up, and I couldn’t manage it anymore.

I told myself I would only take a few pills and only use them when I just felt overwhelmed.

“I had two offers for different schools. My dad wanted me to go to the college he graduated from, but I wanted to go to a different school. I had let one of my grades slip, and my mom was on me to get it back up. My coach was on my butt to do better on the field, and so the next time she offered, I took a few pills. I won’t go into detail, but all I know is that one day, I was managing the pills, and the next thing I knew, I was taking two to three of them to get through the day. I became totally reliant on them.

“It was about a week before prom when I went to Melissa to get more, and she told me she couldn’t get them. I started freaking out. I told her I would pay her for them. Up until then, she just gave them to me. All I could think about was, ‘How am I going to get more?’

“I needed them. I begged her to give me more. I told her I would do anything. And that’s when she told me what she wanted me to do for more pills. She told me that she would give me more if I roughed you up a little at prom. If I did that, she would give me all the pills I wanted.