Page 100 of Meant to Be

I turned and walked out the door, past Chip, and straight to the car. To my relief, Joe followed me, even as Chip continued to taunt him:“That’s what I thought, pretty boy!”

Joe started to open my car door, but I told him that I could do it myself, and a second later, he was sitting beside me, starting the engine. As he pulled away from the curb, his headlights illuminated the little house that had once been my mother’s dream. And in that second, I silently vowed that I would never return to this place again,so help me God.

—

Joe held myhand the whole way home, but we both said very little. I could tell he was in shock, and maybe I was, too. Obviously, I’d seen Chip abuse my mom a thousand times, but watching it unfold with a witness—withJoe—was a new kind of trauma for me. Or maybe it was thesametrauma, just a different level of shame. None of my usual mechanisms of denial were going to work this time. Joe had seen where I came from, and there was no taking it back.

He took me to his place without even asking. I was glad, as Imight have told him I wanted to be alone but realized I did not. When we got inside his dark apartment, he turned on a few lights, greeted Thursday, then pulled me to him, giving me a long hug. When we finally separated, I braced myself for a line of questioning and felt relieved when he said only, “Why don’t you go take a shower while I walk the dog?”

“Okay,” I said.

He kissed my forehead before I turned and walked to his bedroom, then his bathroom, closing the door before slowly removing my clothes. I started to look in the mirror, then stopped, embarrassed by my own reflection. I told myself that I’d done nothing wrong, but I still felt a wave of intense guilt and shame as I stepped into the shower. It was the best place to cry, but that night, no tears came.

About twenty minutes later, I finally got out of the shower, toweled myself off, and wrapped myself in Joe’s chenille robe. I walked out to the living room and found him sitting on the sofa in his favorite green-and-blue plaid pajama bottoms. On the coffee table were two mugs of tea, the bags still steeping, along with a plate of buttered toast cut on the diagonal.

“I put a little honey in your tea,” he said with a small smile.

When I didn’t smile back, he said, “I’m sorry. I don’t know what to say….”

“You don’t have to say anything.”

“Should we call and check on your mother?”

“No,” I said, shaking my head.

“Okay. Just come sit with me?” He patted the sofa beside him.

I sat beside him as he handed me my warm mug, steam still rising from it. I brought it to my lips without taking a sip, then turned my eyes to him and said, “Do you think we could pretend this didn’t happen?”

He looked surprised, his eyebrows raised. “I don’t know, Cate….”

“Please?”

He sighed, ran his hand through his hair, then nodded. “For tonight, yes…we can pretend. But not forever.”

I took what I could get, the two of us drinking our tea in silence.

“You should eat something,” he said at one point, gesturing toward the toast.

I shook my head and said I wasn’t hungry, remembering why I had been so thin in high school.

After a while, my eyelids grew heavy, the chamomile working its magic. The next thing I knew, Joe was gently shaking me awake. “C’mon, honey,” he said, pulling me to my feet. “Let’s go to bed.”

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