“Well, it’s not too late, you know,” he says, his expression rife with resentful determination. “You should chase your dreams, damn it.”
I wave him off. “No, I actually did that. Only it didn’t work out so well.” I clear my throat, twirling a stray piece of grass between my fingers, anything to give my hands something to do and my eyes something to focus on other than Rogan. “It was what I wanted, and even though my parents were against it and very upset with me for applying anyway, I packed up and left. I did what I wanted to do. At the time it didn’t matter what they wanted.”
“But it didn’t work out?” Rogan asks, his warm palm covering my bare foot nearest him.
“Not in the end. At first it was great. I accepted the scholarship and moved to New York. Within a couple of months of being at The Julliard, I was getting a lot of attention. Instructors, directors, local theater. They keep an eye on all the productions put on at the arts center and I guess for a while, I was the apple of their eye. The up-and-comer to watch.” My laugh is bitter. I can’t help it. It wells within me when I think back on my life, on my decisions. On fate. “I was in the paper a few times the summer after my freshman year. It was surreal. And that got me the notice of a guy.”
I take a deep breath, girding myself for what’s to come. Talking about it almost feels like reliving it. And I’d never want to do that. “He was charming and handsome, wealthy and accomplished. His father was influential. He was all that a girl with stars in her eyes needed to complete the picture. I dove right in, despite the fact that I didn’t really know him. Not really. For a while, it was perfect.”
When my pause drags on too long, Rogan prompts me. “But that didn’t work out either?”
I sigh softly, like the sound leaked right out of the never-quite-healed gash in my heart, along with a trickle of blood. Still too fresh. Always too fresh. “No. We moved in together before I found out that he had a temper. And that he wasn’t afraid of what a girl from nowhere might tell others. He knew no one would believe me.”
Rogan’s voice is steel when he asks, “He put his hands on you?”
I know he doesn’t mean sexually; he means physically. Abusively.
I don’t answer. I don’t need to. And he knows that my silence is answer enough.
“It was worse when he was jealous, which he often was. He didn’t want me to have friends, he hated everyone that I had class with, he didn’t want me acting on Broadway, which I’d had an offer to do. Unfortunately, he expressed all this with few words and a lot of flying fists. And palms. And the occasional kick with his boot or whipping with the mean end of an extension cord.” I don’t glance up at Rogan. I can tell by his posture from the corner of my eye that he is rigid with anger. “When I finally got up enough nerve to leave him, he followed me. I should have known he would. He found me at a friend’s apartment. I’d gone there to stay until I could figure out something else. He waited for me to leave for my night class. Waited until I got in and rolled down my window, like I always used to do. Then he walked right up and threw alcohol at me. Bourbon, I think it was. It hit my left side and splattered down the door and onto the floorboard. I remember looking up at him, wondering what the hell he was doing. I started fumbling, trying to get my window rolled up, but I wasn’t fast enough. I saw him strike the match. His face was almost sad. Almost.”