I pinched the bridge of my nose. “Come on, Meek—”
“No, Jay. I’m still me.” Her brow furrowed. “I might have been through something, but that doesn’t make me any different. I’m me.”
“And I’m still me!” I bellowed at her, trying to get her to understand she didn’t have to be afraid of me. I whipped my arms out to the side. Then I yanked them back, instantly regretting raising my voice at her.
This time she didn’t flinch, though. She smiled. “Good, back to you getting pissy and yelling at me. Just where I like to be.”
I took a breath. She was going to drive me insane; I already felt it deep in my bones. “Woman, I’m trying, okay? My first instinct is to protect you, even if it’s from being scared of me.”
“I’m not scared of you. It’s just… I can’t help it. I’m not used to being around…” She trailed off.
Exposing an open wound hurt like hell. Talking about that wound was like scraping it clean with sanitizer. I didn’t want her to feel the pain any more than she needed to, so I poured alcohol on my own wound to distract her. “So, ground rules: I need you to trust me to go out like you did before I went to rehab.”
She picked at a nail and then readjusted her blouse.
“I’m serious. This won’t work otherwise. You need to trust me to go out alone like you did before.”
“I never trusted you.” Her words fell out so quick, she tried to catch them by slapping her hand over her mouth. “I didn’t mean that. I trust you as a friend. It was just different when you were…”
“High? You can say the words, Meek. I was high and off my fucking rocker. No one can trust someone like that.”
“It feels wrong,” she admitted, her voice small. “I don’t want to rub your addiction in your face.”
“There’s a difference between talking about my addiction and rubbing it in my face. If I said you were with an abusive guy for years and you learned from it, it’s different than saying…”
She held up her hand to stop me. I wanted to continue. My frustration at her situation pushed me to. I needed to shake her from her world, show her that there was something better out there.
I was scared I wouldn’t be able to, that there wasn’t a rehab for the physically abused. They needed it just as much as any other addict, a place they could go to remember who they were before, a place that would teach them to break the habit and live without the person that had caused them so much pain.
“I’m technically still with him, Jay. We’re just on a break.”
I breathed in deep. “I know. What’s it going to take to change that?”
“It’s not that simple. He knows me like no one else. We’ve built this life together and he’s hurting too. Who is going to help him get better? No one understands him like I do, understands that he doesn’t mean it.”
“What if it ends up being someone else getting hurt?” I tried a different angle. “What if your mom showed up there and he was pissed about something. What then?”
“He wouldn’t do that.”
“You sure?” I countered, lifting my eyebrows and motioning toward my face where he’d aimed a punch. I saw the look in his eyes, I saw him weighing his options with me in that room. He’d have taken down anyone he knew he could beat. His best option in that moment was to say sorry, though. It was a calculated move on his part and he’d played it well.
She looked down at her outfit: ripped black jeans and a white designer top that hung loosely over a black bra. “I’m sorry you know about all our baggage, Jay.” Then she gripped the sides of her shirt as if she could squeeze out the emotion she was feeling. “God, I know I shouldn’t even be apologizing for his behavior. It’s just… I need time to rework things.”
“You mean rework them into working? Sometimes things just don’t, Meek. Relationships fail.”
Her gaze shot up to me. “I’m not used to failing. I don’t. Okay?”
“I said the relationship was failing, not you. There’s a difference.”
Her manicured fingertips ran over her top. “This okay for the pub?”
“Anything you wear is phenomenal, little one.” I brushed off her question fast. “Did you hear me, Meek? Just because your relationship isn’t working, doesn’t mean you failed. Got it?”
If I didn’t push her out of her comfort zone, no one would. No one else knew. And she was making sure that no one else ever would. He’d ruin every part of her before she had a chance to tell anyone else. She slid her small hands over the cotton of her tank top. “What do you want me to say, Jay? Dougie’s struggling. He hasn’t been able to find a job, he wants to contribute to our household financially, he’s lost confidence because I told him about us and…”
“These are excuses for something that’s inexcusable,” I shot back.
“Do you think some of the things you’ve done over the past few years have been excusable, Jay?” Her hands fisted at her sides as she stepped back to stare me down, heels clicking against the wooden floor. “You hit on me when you were wasted, knowing I was with another man. That’s not what friends do. And you’ve slept with countless women, degraded them by doing blow off every nook and cranny of their body and wasted a multitude of opportunities because you were too high to follow through with them. You had a problem. So does Dougie.”