I want to write something here that I will remember fondly for many years to come. But I can’t. Connor bought two houses without telling me. He said it was a spur of the moment thing, he went to look at a house and it was a great deal so he bought it. Then the realtor found another great deal, so he bought that one, too. Here I am, not sure I will have enough money to buy him a birthday present, and he buys two houses. I was pretty damn excited about it all, but he didn't ask me to move in with him. He started to talk about a couple of guys he may ask to be his roommates. I couldn’t even hide my anger. We’ve been together for two years, I want to marry him, and he isn’t even sure he wants me to move in with him. He didn't say it, but talking about roommates is the same thing as saying it. I told him straight, that if he didn't ask me to move in, we were done. It’s embarrassing. Over two years together and he wants to turn his new place into a bachelor pad? I'd rather be alone than be that girl. So he asked me to move in. I should have felt bad about giving him an ultimatum. But I didn't. He should have felt bad about putting me into that situation in the first place. Just when I thought we were getting somewhere, I get slapped in the face with the reality that I am on thin ice with him. That our commitment could fall apart at any moment. I know I have to step it up at the new place. Keep things tidier. Be more like his mother and his sister. I hate doing the Betty Sue homemaker thing, but I'll do it at the new place. The excitement I feel about getting out of my trailer, I can't contain it. I'm finally close to having a life worth bragging about again. Worth being proud of. I just want to live life unashamed of my home. To be able to give my address out freely, without worrying that the person I’m giving it to will know I’m in a trailer park on the north side. It always comes back to this. The same shame.

I thought about the boys who had made fun of me, called me trash in school. The same boys who wanted me as an adult.

The one who pushed himself inside of me three years ago. I still haven’t told anyone. I still haven’t figured out what that was.

It happened over the summer, the first time I shook. The first time I trembled. Connor and I were in bed, touching and tasting. We were tender one moment, rough the next. He pinned my arms above my head, ran his tongue down my throat, and I moaned.

When he touched me, I forgot other men. I forgot other half lovers and leavers. I forgot who I was.

But that hot night was different. The window next to my bed was open, I could hear a car alarm going off in the trailer park. My skin was sweaty, slick.

My moan turned into a whimper. A salty tear fell down my cheek and I pulled away from Connor.

I was a hot coil, wound tight.

I had found myself day dreaming at work, boiling over. I still worked on the sales floor from time to time, despite my promotion. When white haired men would watch me walk by, a sickness took root in my belly. I couldn’t find a name or a word for the feeling I got. But a seed was planted, and I started to wonder. To pull at the recesses of my mind.

It was there on the fringes. I just needed to reach out.

Connor pulled away from me, worry woven into his brow. “Are you okay? What’s wrong?”

He pulled me to him and I wept. It was the first time I let the dam break, but it wasn’t the first time I wanted to pull away from him.

I had triggers. Arms pinned, nipples rose and wet from his tongue. Things that had turned me on, now turned my belly sour.

I didn’t say much that night. I let him pull it out a little.

“Did someone do something to you?”

It occurred to me then that he had seen my turning before, the way I had started to dull myself.

“I think so,” I whispered, to his chest, to his heart.

When your innocence dies, sometimes, you barely see it. I couldn’t see it. It was shrouded in mist and the mind is a masterful thing. I couldn’t pull any memory up. I went back and forth, questioning myself. Half believing and half damning my own heart.

I barely talked to my stepfather. What would I lose by writing him out completely? I would be the bad daughter, the bad sister. Could I risk all of that on a memory that I couldn’t even pull up?

In the fall, my mother came by my work. She was getting lunch nearby and wanted to talk to me.

“You remember your cousin Arya in Miami?”

“Yes,” I replied, pulling one of her fries from her plate. We were sitting in the lounge, where our customers could go sit when they stopped in off the interstate.

I didn’t know my cousin. I hadn’t seen her since we moved to Missouri in 1992. I was nine when I left Florida. Arya was a year younger than me. She was a cruel little girl, much like her mother, who was my stepfather’s sister.

One day my mother had to pick me up from their house because I was crying. Arya had told me I didn’t even have a dad, that her uncle didn’t even want me. I had learned just two months prior that the man I thought was my father was not in fact my father. He had come into my life at such a young age, I didn’t know him as anything else.

“She’s saying your stepfather did something to her.” My mom took a bite of her burger, looked me in the eye.

My heart thundered in my chest. I wanted to spit out the fry that was in my mouth, but I couldn’t give myself away. I wasn’t ready. I couldn’t ruin my mother’s world.

“Oh yeah?” I swallowed, reached for her drink. I should have felt relief, knowing I wasn’t crazy. I didn’t make anything up. Instead, I felt a hollow hole in my chest start to open up. I was not the only one he hurt.

My mother and stepfather moved us to Missouri to escape the big cities, the crime, the drugs. I learned that Arya had fallen into some of those traps. Miami was blamed, but what about the man? What about the man who hurt her? The one who hurt me?

When I got home that night, I told Connor what I had learned.

He never questioned me, not the way I questioned myself. He took my words as truth, saw the reality written on my face, felt it in my shaking limbs.

He believed me, but he ended up failing me, too.