Catch My Fall (18 page)

I sat up, smiling as he did the same before pulling me in for a gentle kiss.  When he was finished he cupped my face and said, “I think slow is out the window, Mimi.  I’m falling for you, big time.  I never thought I would ever have something like this, never believed that I deserved it at all, but I’ve changed because of you.  So, are you ready to make this official and become my girlfriend?”

I smiled a big silly grin that I’m pretty sure gave him his answer even before I dove into his arms as I let out an enthusiastic, “Yes!”

I woke up to Tristan bringing me breakfast in bed, and I burst out laughing when I saw that he had put four pieces of licorice on the makeshift tray he carried breakfast in on. I didn’t know how to tell him that I didn’t start my day with sugary coffee and Cap’n Crunch, so I ate everything with a smile on my face and not one word of complaint, even though I made a mental note to bring some Cheerios or Shredded Wheat over for future breakfasts. We didn’t have much time to kiss and cuddle and it was hard to leave Tristan him when Darby came to pick me up for our day of beauty.  I felt so much closer to him now that we’d been naked together…not to mention the fact that I wanted a repeat performance.  As soon as I got into my car I told Darby that Tristan and I were official and then laughed while she clapped and cheered.

We went to the nail salon and I pumped Darby for details of what had happened with Brandon. She told me she wanted to wait until we were alone to tell me everything.  When we got back to our dorm she spent the next hour explaining what had happened the night before to me, and I was stunned about everything she said.  It turns out that Brandon is gay, which explains why he never pushed for kissing or sex.  He’s not ready for his family to know and he isn’t ‘out’, but he knows that he’s gay.  Apparently he had been feeling badly about stringing Darby along, but luckily she didn’t have a problem with it.  She really cares about him and he seems to care about her, too.  His advice to her was to gradually start talking to Trace again instead of running back in and letting him off the hook, and while I didn’t get it at first, now I do.  Darby needs to know whether Trace’s feelings are deep enough to build a real relationship, and she doesn’t think that going into something when Trace is clearly having an emotional reaction is a good idea.  She says that she’s taking her cue from my relationship with Tristan because it obviously worked.  Tonight she’s coming with me to Tristan’s so she can talk to Trace.  She’ll drop me off and use my car to get home, and Tristan will take me to our first class of the day in the morning. 

I can’t li
e
—
I can already tell that I’m going to want to sleep with him all the time.  Waking up this morning spooned in his arms is something that I’ll never, ever forget.  I was embarrassed when I realized that I was still naked, but he was already up and when I said I wanted to put on a shirt, he told me I was beautiful.  With Tristan, I feel as if I am.

When Darby and I got to the house she walked right into the living room, took the clicker off the table and turned ESPN off before telling Trace to follow her. Without another word she turned and walked through the kitchen and out the back door.  Before she was all the way out she turned to look at me over her shoulder and said, “This is going to be a while… I’ll see you tomorrow in the cafeteria after your first class.  Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do!”

After Tristan took a seat in his giant lounger, I kicked off my flip-flops and climbed into his lap to get myself a hello kiss.  I was dressed in shorts and a shirt and he used the ability to touch my exposed legs to full advantage, drinking in my little gasps as he raised my heart rate.  Bending my leg so he could see my bright pink pedicure, he nodded approvingly.  “You’re beautiful right down to your toes, Mimi.  Did you have a good day?”

“I did.  Darby’s a mess about Trace but we had a good talk and I think we’re going to see an improvement.  I’ve been really worried about them both.”

Nodding thoughtfully he dropped his head back and blew out a breath.  “She’s his Achilles heel; always has been and always will be.  I didn’t want to be too specific with you because she’s your roommate and I didn’t want things to get weird, but the truth is, if he loses Darby, he’ll self-destruct.  I never really understood what was between them and why he feels so deeply until I met you.  I used to think he made too big a deal out of his feelings for her, but now I think he didn’t explain it well enough.  He loves her like fucking crazy but he’s never felt good enough for her.  I understood that part perfectly, but until now, I never wanted to try for something better than what I saw as my lot in life.  Before you, I really never envisioned myself as a meet-the-parents kind of guy.  Now, I can’t wait to get to know your family.  You always look so happy when your mom and stepfather call or text, and you clearly can’t wait for them to have their baby, but you never talk about anyone else.  Are your parents divorced or is your mom a widower?  Do you have a big family or a small one?”

I know that I need to talk to him about this, I’ve just been waiting for the right time… all the while secretly hoping that the right time will be never.  If my dad would just fade all the way out of my life and Brady moved to Alaska or somewhere else remote, it would be like they never existed…but I’m not lucky enough for that to happen.  I’m scared to death that when I tell Tristan he’ll doubt me in some way.  Every single ‘friend’ I had back home, aside from Macy, turned on me like a rabid dog once that Facebook group got out.  It was horrible, absolutely the lowest point of my life, and it changed me forever, but if Tristan turns on me… I’m scared I won’t recover.

“I need to tell you some things about me,” I said hesitantly.  “I’m afraid to tell you about this…but I need to.  Just…don’t change the way that you see me, okay?”

He squeezed me as he shook his head emphatically.  “There’s not a fucking thing you can tell me is going to change the way I feel.  Even if you tell me that you clubbed baby seals and stole an old couple’s pension fund, I’d still feel the way I do now because I
know
that even if you had ever done something that cruel, you’d fix it now.  I believe in you, Mia.  Don’t ever feel like I’ll judge you bab
y
—
Lord knows I’d be the last person to do that.”

“Thank you Stan, for knowing just what to say.  I’m not going to tell you that I hurt people, stole money or was cruel to animals, but what I do have is a complicated life and I come with a lot of baggage.  What I’m about to tell you is hard for me to talk about, and I need you to stay quiet until the very end, okay?”

Rubbing my back supportively he nodded his head. “Of course, baby, I’m right here and I won’t say a word until you tell me it’s okay.”

Twisting my hands together nervously in my lap, I tried to figure out how to start.  Finally I chose to start at the beginning.

“My parents are divorced, have been for almost twelve years now.  My father isn’t a nice man, far from it.  He hated my mother for getting pregnant in high school and he resented me for not being a boy.  His parents insisted that he marry my mother and he did.  I have no doubt that had they not forced the issue, he never would have been in my life at all.  I don’t know what happened with my father or what made him the way  he is, because my grandparents were amazing and his brother Jesse is my hero.  While my grandparents were alive he was pretty much forced into staying with my mother and putting on a show of being a family man.  The year I turned seven my grandfather had a heart attack and a week later, my grandmother died in her sleep.  A month later my father announced that he was leaving us and within three hours he was out.  My grandparents were fairly well off.  Not oil baron rich or anything, but more than comfortable.  When my parents got married it was my grandmother who insisted on a pre-nuptial agreement that benefitted my mother and her child no matter what happened.  My Uncle Jesse says that his parents were well aware of the fact that their son was a disaster, but they cared for my mother and wanted to make sure she was protected.  When my father left us he had to abide by what had already been agreed upon, but that was it.  He’s done everything that was signed off on but not one thing more. Visitation with me wasn’t included in the pre-nup and when the divorce was being worked out he made it clear that he only wanted to see me twice a year; at Christmas and Easter when his family holds family get-togethers.  Honestly, he was so cruel to me and so dismissive that I was relieved that it was only those two days.  My mom married Neil a few years later and between him and Uncle Jesse, I’ve got two of the best role models and supporters that I could ever have asked for.”

“About eight years ago, my father got married again.  I wasn’t invited to the wedding and thus didn’t meet his new wife and her son until almost half a year later at Christmas.  My father married up, big time.  His wife is a twice-widowed millionaire, and for her, he’s the perfect husband.  Her son is only a few weeks older than me, and he’s like a god in my hometown.  He and my dad are closer than close and I think that both of them go out of their way to rub it in my face.  I’ve never been allowed to call my father “Dad.”  I can call him Father or John, but his stepson calls him Dad.”

That was always hard for me to think about, and I paused as I got my bearings.  “The Christmas that I met his stepson Brady, it was very obvious he hated me on sight, just like his mother. When I went home that night I told my mom that the best thing she ever did was stand her ground with my father when he tried to force her to send me to private school, because if she had given in, I’d be in school with Brady.  Even when I was just nine years old, I knew that something was wrong with him.”

Taking a breath, I prepared myself to tell him the toughest part of the story.  He rubbed my back encouragingly until I was able to talk again.

“Almost nine months ago, I was with my best friend Macy at the mall and we ran into Brady and his best friend, Chad.  The two of them were bad news, and I tried to steer clear of them but Brady saw me and came running over like I was his long-lost best friend.  Instead of poking fun at me for having “buggy blue eyes,” he talked about how he wished I were around more often.  Honestly, I was creeped the hell out and when the conversation was over, I was relieved.  Other than being annoyed by his obvious bullshit, I wrote it off.

“A few days later, Macy and I were getting ready to go to a party.  While she was in the bathroom finishing her hair, I got a text from Brady.  He went on and on about how he really thought we should “spent time together as a family” and he invited Macy and me over to his house for the night.  I thought it was pathetic, and when I showed the text to Macy, I expected her to commiserate with me.  Instead, she said we should go.  We argued, for the first time in years, about going to his house.  I took a stand and said no. She told me that she was going without me and if I were really her best friend, I’d go.  She was gung-ho to go because Brady is the most popular guy in our town and she thought it would be a boost to her reputation to hang out with him.  In the end I agreed to go because she wouldn’t drop it.

“That night at Brady’s is the first and last time that I’ve ever been in my father’s house and I’d give anything to go back to a time when I’d never set foot inside.  Brady and his friend Chad were being overly friendly and I was trying to keep calm by telling myself that I’d be out of there in a few hours.  They wanted us to drink and I declined.  At first Brady tried to give me something with alcohol in it anyway, but I gave it back.  He gave in and poured me a soda, and I thought I’d be fine because at least I’d have my wits about me.  What I didn’t know was that he’d drugged my drink and Macy’s too.  Everything after that is fuzzy, a bunch of disjointed and memories that I struggle to fit together.  I saw flashes behind my eyes, heard Brady and Chad talking, felt myself being moved around and positioned… felt them in my mouth.  When I came to, I was naked in the pool in the backyard next to a passed-out and also naked Macy.”

Feeling the tension in Tristan’s body, I stopped talking for a minute to see if he was going to interrupt me, but he stayed completely silent. 

“Macy was raped by both of them but they didn’t rape me because I’m a virgin.  Macy threw a fit and refused to go to the police, but when we compared notes we realized that in addition to drugging us, they’d also taken pictures.  He sent me a few several days later, and they were bad.  A few weeks later, we saw Brady at a party and he was being a pig to Macy and I freaked out and got a little physical with him to get away from her.  A few days later, he put all of the pictures up online on Facebook and when Macy saw it, she had a nervous breakdown.  Everything got really, really bad after that.  I went to the police and reported the rape, but because of whom Brady’s mother is, a bunch of lawyers got involved and his mother threatened to pull her support of the police department.  The police refused to press charges--instead saying that their investigation showed I was making a false claim. Macy’s father worked for one of my stepmother’s companies and they fired him by text while he was in the hospital trying to deal with what was happening to his daughter.  My father turned on me like a rabid dog, too. He said I was nothing but a goddamn mistake that had ruined his life, and he accused me of making up the entire story. I’d just turned eighteen and he and his wife threatened to destroy my life and sue me for slander.  He wasn’t kidding, either.  I called my Uncle Jesse and told him everything, and it was Jesse that found a way to squash my father back like a bug. 

“The night that everything happened at Brady’s, Macy and I both were only seventeen. Even though my father and stepmother wanted to pretend that wasn’t true where I was concerned, Macy was still seventeen when I called the police.  Since Brady had turned eighteen a few weeks before, it was provable that he was an adult and we were both technically still minors.  My Uncle threatened to have Brady charged with child pornography, and because he got a handle on it, the pictures were taken down and Brady was forced to delete every copy he had.  Not that it really mattere
d
—
by then, the group had been up for almost twenty-four hours and enough people had saved the pictures on their hard drives and phones.  But my Uncle got lawyers and investigators who spent months tracking down every single person that joined that Facebook group.  He threatened everyone with child pornography charges, and I believe that he got the majority of them taken care of and deleted.  I’m not stupid though, and I know that there are still copies out there.  They may turn up someday, and if that happens, I’ll have to deal with it.