He accepted it and treated me exactly the same, well, without as much of his sex appeal. He was obviously a natural flirt, as it became apparent the more time he spent with Nathan and I. He seemed to know the score without me having to spell it out. It was refreshing, being around males with a healthy sense of masculinity. I’d always had to tiptoe around Robert’s. Anything I said that could be perceived as a rejection resulted in violence, name calling, anything he could do to make himself feel big.
People always wondered about victims of domestic abuse. Why they stayed so long. How they got themselves involved with such monsters. But the thing was, abusers were smart. Masters of deception. They didn’t woo women with their fists, name calling, degradation. No, they were charming, kind, attractive, attentive. Robert had been. He’d gotten me to fall in love with a façade. I was especially vulnerable because I’d never known real love, real attention, real kindness. Therefore, I found it impossible to spot the false versions of it. I was desperate to matter to someone, to feel wanted, to feel worth something.
Plus, I was eighteen years old, about to graduate high school with no plans, shitty grades and no sense of who the heck I was. What I was, was the perfect mark.
There was also this thing with Robert, when his attention was focused on you, it was powerful. It could make you feel like the most beautiful, treasured person on the planet. Then it began to make me feel worthless, weak. There was such a power in that, I started to believe it. And I was still clinging to the times when he gave me love. Kindness. Because when he showed me that, he made me feel like I was worth something. Everything.
I deluded myself into thinking that it would get better.
But it didn’t.
And I left.
To make a long story short.
It was only around decent men that I was beginning to believe that they were real, that they existed.
Duke’s handling of rejection showed me.
I knew better than a lot of women how scary rejecting or breaking up with a man could be. Most men would never know that fear. If they broke up with a woman, they got tears, maybe some late-night drunken phone calls. But they more or less could go on with their lives without fear. If a woman broke up with a man, rejected one, she had to deal with the very real possibility that he could hit her, rape her, kill her.
Heck, the entire reason Duke was frickin’ here was because of a man’s reaction to a break-up.
I didn’t forget that. No matter how well we got along. No matter how good he treated Nathan. Even with Polly’s calls, Rosie’s texts, Lucy’s emails. All received on my new phone, of course. Nathan had to teach me how to use it it was that fancy. Somehow my five-year-old knew more about technology than me.
I was still waiting for him to exhibit some behavior as a reaction to the kidnapping. For him to act out in some way, maybe even start wetting the bed, something that had thankfully he’d grown out of six months ago.
But his sheets stayed dry, and his smile stayed wide.
Until Nathan’s teacher pulled me aside at school pickup. My stomach dropped at this, I got Nathan situated in the car with a book to keep him busy. I was yet to resort to shoving a screen in his face, in front of his still-developing brain. Not that I judged parents that did. Kids were hard, moms were constantly tired.
Once that was done, I faced Hannah with a smile and waited for her to tell me my son was biting kids, licking walls or bullying someone. It was my worst fear, that somehow nature would trump nurture and some sort of gene from Nathan’s father would be passed onto him. It seemed impossible being around my kind, happy and well-behaved son. Most of the time I didn’t even think about it. But fears crept in in the darkness, in my weakest points, in times like this.
“Is everything okay?” I asked Hannah, more than a little panic in my voice.
She must have sensed it because she reached forward to squeeze my hand. I was gonna be super sad when Nathan moved up a grade because I really liked Hannah and I knew good teachers at public schools were rare as all hell, even in a public school as good as this one. “Everything is fine,” she reassured me. “I just wanted to have a quick chat with you about some of the things Nathan’s been telling me and the kids.”
Color drained from my face in a rush. I thought of all the stories Nathan could be telling kids about some random guy introducing himself as his dad whisking him away to an unfamiliar house, telling him he’d be living there, and then having more strange men come into that house and whisk him back to his mother in a strange office in the middle of LA.