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“Stop, just fucking stop with the stalling and give it to me.”
“Donovan Clark…” she murmured, her breathing suddenly labored as she fought her own rush of adrenaline and panic. I said nothing but held her gaze, unblinking. I held my breath and nodded slowly for her to continue.
“Bradley was right, I did cheat on him… that was all on me. I was sixteen and drunk, so fucking drunk,” she scoffed, “it’s a wonder I didn’t die from alcohol poisoning. Donovan was a little older, and very cool with the ladies. Looking back at that night, with all I know now, he targeted me. You could say I was easy prey.”
“That’s not all of it, right? Did he force you to do things you didn’t want… or like? Could it be he drugged you—” My hands moved to my lap and curled into fists. I immediately wanted to hug her but I knew I had to stay seated and not break her disclosure.
“No, like I said, I went willingly with him, enjoyed it even…what I remember of it anyway. For my first experience.” She fell quiet for a few moments and I saw a range of emotions flit over her face, narrowed eyes, pursed lips, taking her top lip between her teeth, all showing me she felt disgusted with herself and hated what she’d had to say next.
“Rumors flew around… so many fucking rumors,” she scoffed again. “I was ashamed and humiliated, but I tried in the beginning to work through it. That was until karma bit my ass for cheating. I was pregnant.” My heart squeezed when I saw how saying those words almost killed her.
Fresh tears streamed down her face and dripped from her chin, but I still stayed where I was. It was painful to watch her, but I had to know all of it and I felt she wasn’t done. She grabbed some tissues from a box, wiped her nose, and scrunched them up her hand. She looked at me again and shrugged.
“I hit the fertility jackpot. Instead of the rumors subsiding like I’d expected, they intensified, except the rumors were true. I’d protected Donovan to my parents and refused to name the father, unlike him, who boasted about sleeping with me. The rumors had begun before I had told Donnie I was pregnant and I had no idea how he’d found out.”
I felt incensed she went through that. “What a fucking lowlife,” I cussed.
“Yeah. Did Bradley tell you Donnie told people he wasn’t the only one to fuck me that night?” I shook my head, horrified that at the tender age of sixteen she went through such an ordeal. “I guess after the initial euphoria of breaking Brad and me up was over, he’d realized what being a father would do to his chances of a future scholarship.”
“What a bastard, and you’d coached him to get the scholarship?”
“Not after I knew I was pregnant. That’s when he began talking shit that other guys were involved and turned a one-eighty, claiming any baby I had may possibly not be his. It was months later that I found out where the information had come from. It turned out it was Donnie’s aunt, who had worked at the Walgreen pharmacy I went to. She was the one who sold me a test and supported me to take it. I had trusted that lady, but she shared I was pregnant with Donnie’s mom. The irony was that his mom used my case to warn Donovan about using protection when the time came for him to have sex, according to what he told me.”
“Fuck, you must have been so scared,” I replied, suddenly thinking of all the girls I’d fooled around with at that age. Thankfully, I had never made disparaging remarks, nor had I shared my sexual experiences in the locker room either. A gentleman never disclosed his conquests according to my dad. “Come here.” I held out my hand and she looked at it for a long minute before ignoring my request and turned her back on me.
For a few minutes I sat waiting for her to talk, staring at her back. Her stance was stiff, and I felt her pain. My gut feeling told me to stay quiet and seated. I felt nothing I had to say would have carried much weight in comforting her, anyway. Being there and allowing her to confess what had torn her apart was a privilege, but I felt the next move had to be hers.
After a while she drew in a breath and held it. I knew it was a significant moment from the way she steeled her body to attention, legs straight and fists clenched.
Without turning around, she said, “So you see, that’s why this won’t work. I had that baby, and I gave her away.” She broke down again and my heart cracked in two because it dawned on me, she pushed people away because that’s how she’d coped with the open-ended trauma she had carried for thirty years.
Standing up I moved close behind her, encircling my arms around her waist. I pulled her tight to me and kissed her hair. “It’s okay, Tricia,” I whispered, but I wasn’t sure what else to say, if anything. I wouldn’t have been as insensitive as to tell her everything was going to be fine because it clearly hadn’t been up until then.
Trust didn’t come easy for either of us, yet she had trusted me enough to tell me her horrible story. I had already guessed she was ashamed of something, but I had suspected she had been subjected to a serious sexual assault. However, the truth was equally as devastating and it was overwhelming her. Tricia had post traumatic stress; a mental torture which had played on her mind for decades.
Before I thought further, her legs buckled and I barely took her weight. As she faced away from me, it took me a moment to realize she had passed out.
“Fuck,” I shouted and eased her gently down. Lifting her from the floor, I laid her on the couch. “Baby, are you with me?” I asked, tapping her face gently. After checking her pulse and breathing, I knew she was likely okay. I’d seen plenty of guys knocked out during my kickboxing days, and I figured she’d fainted from shock. Turning her from her back to her side, I stroked her hair and sat stunned by all that I’d learned, and waited for her to come around.
