Tina

I walked up the stairs and made my way to my room. Why the hell did Kevin have to go and ruin everything like that with his asinine questions? He knows exactly why we broke up in college! We just… stopped hanging out! Stopped making time for one another! Studies happened and tests happened and late-night paper writing happened and we’d go days, and sometimes weeks, without seeing one another! How the hell did he expect something like a relationship to thrive in that type of environment!?

“Jesus,” I breathed. I stopped just outside my door and debated going back downstairs. I knew my upbringing was kicking in. I knew I was running away from a situation I shouldn’t have been running from. I mean, it was just Kevin. Kevin was the only person in my life who knew me in a light outside of my work. Sure, Brit and everyone else did, but he knew me intimately. He’s the only person I’ve ever cried with, the only person I’ve ever talked in-depth about my childhood with. In college, I thought he was it. I thought I’d found the person I’d marry straight after graduation and go on to conquer the world with!

I opened my door and the room began to spin, so I made my way to the shower and ran the hottest possible water I would stand. I let my clothes fall the tile floor and I stepped in, and as soon as the water hit my skin I felt tears crest my eyes.

My mom would be so disappointed.

Ever since I was young, I always looked up to my father. He was strong, independent, wildly successful as a lawyer, and commanded a presence whenever he walked into a room that was undeniable. His laughter barreled over conversations and his stare could melt the arctic. He was the perfect balance of comforting and intimidating, which made him comfortable for his clients and a shark in the courtroom.

So, when he told me to not be like him, it rocked the very foundation I’d built my entire life on.

I was 34 years old and I’d built my life on the premise that I kept a professional facade with everyone I met. I never crossed my arms so they felt they could talk to me, but I never sugar-coated anything so they knew exactly where I stood with what they had done before I agreed to fix their image. I wanted to be both the condemner and the fixer. I wanted to guide as well as help. And while my business eventually settled on simply fixing without condemning, I made sure my clients understood where I sat with their actions.

I never wanted for a man and I made sure I didn’t need anyone’s financial support in order to stand on my own two feet. I forwent sleep after college in order to build what I had made from the ground up so I wouldn’t have to dig myself into debt, and by the time I was 29 years old I had enough money invested and saved to not only live the lavish life I was, but to buy this island we were all currently vacationing on three times a year. In the eyes of many, I was more successful than my father. In the eyes of many, I was the most independent person they had ever met.

In the eyes of many, I was strong, commanding, and an expert in the field of cleaning up other people’s shit.

I had done it. I had become the person I’d always wanted to become.

And then he told me not to be like him.

I slid to my knees and buried my sobbing face in my hands, and I felt the wine rising in my throat before I began heaving onto the shower floor. My body shook and my knees slid out from underneath me, and before I knew it I was laying on my side with vomit lightly draining from between my lips.

“Shit,” I choked out.

In my eyes, my father was perfect. He had the perfect job and built the perfect house and raised the perfect family. He had a wife that was dedicated to him, a business that needed him, and a daughter that idolized him.

Why the hell would he want me to not be like him!?

“Daddy…”

He was dying, and there was nothing I could do about it. He made me promise I would come on this trip, and the only thing I kept thinking was that the next time my phone dinged it would be mom telling me he was dead. I tossed and turned with memories of him every night, and when I woke up I half-expected to be cradled in his arms like all the other times I woke up with nightmares.

My idol was crumbling in a hospice bed, and I was on an island allowing my college love to stick me with his dick.

God, it had felt so good, though. It had felt so good to be in bed with him during that party and it had felt so good for him to take me the way he did in that gazebo. Something in the back of my mind told me it was him who had gotten me back into my bed that night, but something also told me that none of this was planned. Today had not been planned, and the two of us were simply rolling with the punches.

God, the way he bent me over that kitchen counter was intoxicating. He took charge and had no issues taking what he wanted, and the thought of it sent shivers down my spine, even as I laid at the floor of the shower with my stomach turning itself inside out. He made dinner that I wasn’t responsible for and threw me over the precipice of pleasure without me having to do any of the work, and for the first time in a very long time I was willing to allow someone to give those to me.

I allowed myself to give away my independence to someone I trusted. I felt owned, but not in a property sort of fashion. It was like he was leaving his mark; reminding me of what he could give me and jogging my memory of all the other men that fell short since him.

Well, he probably thought there were other men. The truth is, there had been no one.

No one since him.

It scared me to open up to someone like that again. I’d done it once, and then he drifted away. I told him about how I wanted to be like my father and all the insane things my mother tried to teach me that stuck. I talked to him about my sexual fetishes and pried my soul open for him when I was 19 years old.

And then he drifted away.

I told him everything… and he left.

Really, I was just scared. When Kevin threw all those questions, it conjured up so many painful memories and I just got scared. And that was disgusting in my family. Well, at least to my mother.

My mother tried to teach me all of these insane things, like crossing my legs at the ankle instead of over the knee and how to properly set a table with four forks, six knives, and god knows how many plates. I never paid attention because that kind of shit never mattered to me, but there were three distinct things that stuck.

And I was breaking two of those three things.

Of all the things she tried to teach me, the three foundational things that frustrated Kevin the most about me stuck: fear is a weakness, crying is never acceptable, and I was to never eat food with my fingers.

To this day, he laughs at me whenever I eat goldfish with a spoon.

“Tina?”

I heard his voice, but it felt so far off. The hot water pounding my naked skin felt so good and I could see my vomit swirling down the drain. The bathroom door flew open and my skin puckered with the cool air, but the fear in Kevin’s voice slowly pulled me back into reality.

“Jesus… Tina!? Can you hear me!?”

I felt something pat my face. I felt myself being rolled over and I saw a blurry face come into view, and when my stomach heaved again I threw myself over to the drain and threw up the last of my dinner down the drain.

“Come here. It’s alright.”

The voice was so soothing and the hand on my back felt so good. Somehow, suds appeared in my vision before water ran over my head, and then the scent of apples filled the shower for a little while.

That’s kind of funny, because my conditioner smells like apples.

“Close your eyes,” the voice lowly commanded.

“Kev-?”

“Sssshhhh… just close your eyes.”

I sighed when the smooth conditioner ran down my neck. I felt a wash rag running up and down the crevices of my body, and when the water turned off in the shower I realized I was no longer heaving. I felt sore, and tired, and thoroughly disgusted with myself, but I was no longer sick.

“Come here, Tee.”

I felt a large, plush towel wrap around me before someone gathered me into their arms. I pressed my body into the familiar chest I was behind held against, and when my eyes fluttered open I felt as if I was being held seven feet in the air.

“Kevin, I-”

“Let’s get you in bed,” he interrupted.

I got sat on the edge of my bed and the blurry figure in front of me slowly came into view. My head began to pound and I was suddenly very thirsty, and when my body was no longer dripping water onto my sheets I felt a very familiar pair of hands plant themselves onto my shoulders.

“Why don’t you lay down, and I’ll go get you some water, alright?”

“Okay,” I breathed. I took a deep breath and hunkered down into the cool sheets of my bed. My body was shaking with the energy I had expended heaving up a dinner I really wanted to keep down, but when Kevin got up to leave I reached my hand out and grabbed his wrist.

Something inside of me didn’t want him to leave, and I didn’t have the energy to fight it.

I didn’t have the energy to forcefully exert my independence.

“Please don’t,” I breathed.

“Alright. I’ll stay right here,” Kevin murmured. I felt him brush my wet hair back from my tired eyes, and I couldn’t keep them open any longer.

“Get some rest,” he murmured into my ear.

“I don’t get it,” I whispered.

“What don’t you get, Tee?”

“Everything. I-... I don’t get anything.”

“Sssshhhh… just take some deep breaths. You’re fine. You’re safe, you’re clean, and you’re in your bed.”

I felt tears rise to my eyes again, but this time Kevin’s hands were there to catch my tears, and I fell asleep that night with one simple phrase spilling from the tips of my lips.

“Why doesn’t he want me to be like him?”