My best friends stitch me back together one hug, one laugh, one dance-off at a time. The past year melts away under their care. There are days when I wake up sad and angry at all the time lost, at the wasted months of loving a ticking time bomb. They take me to get a Pepsi Freeze. They prescribe twenty minutes of jumping on the trampoline or force me into Nat’s car late at night so we can drive by your apartment and flip it off. Sometimes I cry, wondering how it was possible that I could have been so goddamn weak, so fucking spineless. Without you around, I can finally see all the ways you’d kept my heart shackled to yours. The manipulation, the verbal and physical abuse, the mind games. And yet I still miss you. Isn’t that fucked up? But I do. I miss being loved, even if that love was sick, terminally ill.
These girls, this summer—it’s the best kind of medicine. They show me how I can be enough, how I don’t need you to be me. They show me how to fill days with good memories, catching and trapping them like lightning bugs in a jar. They glow and glow and glow.
I help Nat put the star on the tree—the final touch—then she drives me over to the Honey Pot. She picks me up at the end of my shift—a double. I’m working as much as I can to save up for the things I’ll need for school: computer, dorm decor, and anything else a proper college girl needs.
“Ugh, I smell like the Pot,” I say as I walk into the house.
The living room explodes with laughter.
“I told you she always says that!” Lys says to the room.
I love this: being known, laughing, not worrying if I’ll do something that will make you threaten me, hurt me, slice me wide open with your words. I don’t have to look over my shoulder anymore.
It has been seven weeks since I broke up with you. I called your mom right away so that she’d keep an eye on you. If you tried to hurt yourself, I never heard about it, but she’s texted me a few times, telling me how much she and your dad miss me. I wonder if you put her up to it. You scared us for a while there, pounding on the door in the middle of the night, coming to visit me at work. One night we came home late from the movies and we’re certain you broke in—I could smell my perfume in the air, as though it had just been sprayed, and my favorite shirt was missing, the one you helped me pick out at the vintage store downtown. Once or twice we made Kyle sleep over so that we didn’t have to sleep with butcher knives under our pillows. I’ll never forget what happened the morning after Disneyland—the look on your face as you held my wrists. It keeps me up nights.
We pass out presents wrapped in Christmas paper we’ve foraged from Nat’s garage. Silly Dollar Store stuff: Play-Doh, a shower cap with rubber duckies on it, six GI Joe figurines. Kyle crosses to the piano and runs his fingers along the keys. I think of Gideon and my heart hurts.
I’m sandwiched between Nat and Lys and I slip my arm around each of their waists as we sing carol after carol—rowdy, raucous versions of the old standards and the best cover of “All I Want for Christmas Is You” that I’ve ever heard. I don’t let it bother me that you sang that song to me last Christmas because it’s not yours and you can’t have it. I direct the words to Natalie and Lys, the real loves of my life, who stood by me during my darkest moments. These girls are my lights at the end of the tunnel, guiding me back to myself every time I get lost stumbling around in the darkness.
In a few weeks, I’ll be moving to Los Angeles. I’ve already purchased my leopard-print bedspread and red pillows with delicate gold embroidery: Chinese dragons, for good luck. I have my Rent poster carefully rolled up. My Paris-themed calendar. My French dictionary. All of it is neatly stacked in a corner of the living room, waiting. Waiting for me to start the rest of my life. I know you’ll be there, playing shows with Evergreen, being a rock god. Your mom texted me that you were moving there in September but that you’re not going to school. I’m worried you’ll come to USC looking for me. Yesterday Lys handed me a bottle of pepper spray on a key chain and it goes everywhere with me now so I hope, for your sake, that you leave me alone. I wish I could warn every girl you’re going to meet, tell them that your hotness and sexy songs and enigmatic smile aren’t worth the cost of the ride. I wish I could put a warning label on you. I wonder if you’ll always haunt me like this, a ghost with a baseball bat and a bad-boy car.
Natalie and Lys start rocking out to “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” and a sob tears up my throat, my eyes instantly damp. I rush into the kitchen and splash my face at the sink, sick with the thought of leaving them behind. I wish I could pack them in a suitcase and set them up in my dorm room at USC. I wish I could have all the hours you stole from me back so I could spend every minute with them.
I need an excuse for being in the kitchen and so I grab an apple and begin idly twisting its stem, playing the little game with fate that I have since I was a kid. Once again, the stem breaks off at G.
And I suddenly get it.
G is for Grace. Not you. Not Gideon. I am the person I’m supposed to be with right now. I lift the apple to my mouth and take a big, noisy bite.
It’s just as sweet as I thought it would be.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
When I was sixteen I fell in love. Hard. For the next two and a half years I would stay in my bad romance, desperate to get out of it. It wasn’t until I’d graduated high school that I got the guts to break up with my Gavin. It can seem pretty crazy that anyone would stay in such an abusive relationship so long, but when you’re in it, breaking up seems impossible.
The essence of this book is true even though much of what you’ve read is made up, wildly altered, or reimagined. As Stephen King says, “Fiction is a lie, and good fiction is the truth inside the lie.”
I wrote this book because, as the incomparable Lady Gaga puts it: I’m a free bitch, baby. If you’re stuck in your own bad romance, I want you to be free, too. I also wanted to raise awareness: dating abuse now affects one in three young adults. Young women ages 16 to 24 experience the highest rates of rape and sexual assault. That’s messed-up and it needs to stop.
On the next page are some places where you can get help. I’ve also created a website for all of us to share our experiences and to get encouragement and inspiration. Blogs, art, music, and lots of love: badromancebook.tumblr.com. Our hashtag is #chooseyou.
Whoever you are, know that it does get better. You just have to take the leap. You’ve got this.
RESOURCES
Love Is Respect (loveisrespect.org): This site is amazing. It has quizzes you can take to see if you’re in a healthy or unhealthy relationship, tons of resources on what you can do to get help, and how to stay safe. If you are in an abusive relationship, this should be your first stop for online help. Peer advocates are available 24/7 to talk. Text “love is” to 22522 or call 1-866-331-9474.
Break The Cycle (breakthecycle.org): This site has tons of info about dating violence. You can find out what the signs are and what you can do about it.
No More (nomore.org): This organization is great and also has information if you are the friend or family member of someone who is being abused. They need you more than ever. For some tips on how to help them, check out nomore.org/how-to-help/what-to-say/.
Girls Health (girlshealth.gov): This site has all the phone numbers you need, a great Q and A section, quizzes, stats, and more.