Jennifer:
Did you drop off his stuff at Matty’s house?
Me:
Not yet.
Jennifer:
Do it soon. Trust me.
Don’t let him lure you into paying his bail.
Pretty sure he only called me bc he knows my number since he has no phone.
She has a point. There’s an urgency here, and I don’t know what to expect when he gets out. I feel panic rise, knowing I can’t ignore her warning. There’s an urgency in her words, a strange camaraderie, like she’s been exactly where I am right now. And I’m feeling so flat after reading his gross messages with Skank Face.
I take all his stuff and load it into trash bags and then call an Uber to haul it all to Matty’s place, hoping to put some distance between me and whatever sick trap I’ve walked into.
I can’t figure out his keys—none of them fit in the lock—and so I leave his things right outside the front door, hoping nobody will take them. Of course, today is the one day since I’ve known him that Matty has a date and isn’t at home watching YouTube.
When I get back to my apartment, more selfies pop up from her, and I run to the bathroom, the bile rising as I fight back these feelings of betrayal and disgust. My body heaves as I empty my stomach, retching until my eyes water and my throat aches.
I’ve always thought I was strong, capable of anything, but here I am, folded over and breaking.
Whatever I deserve, I’m absolutely certain that it’s not this.
67
LUCKY
My chest feels heavy as I scroll through his four pages of publicly available criminal records. Who knew all this information was available? It’s like a whole new world has been opened to me. Some places charge for it, but in Sunset Cay, the info is free and incredibly easy to access.
Every charge, every conviction, feels like another brick in a wall closing in around me, cutting off the air.
My heart races as my eyes dart back to the screen, unable to look away, yet desperate to close the window and pretend I never saw it. How could I not have known? The man who promised me forever—the man who kissed me tenderly in the mornings, who made me laugh with absurd jokes about tentacle porn and superheroes—has lived an entire life of chaos, and I was blissfully oblivious of most of it until now.
My hands shake, my fingers twitching as if the words on the screen are venom seeping into my skin. Assault. Theft. Domestic abuse. Each charge feels like a punch to the gut. These aren’t youthful indiscretions or silly mistakes. This is a pattern. A roadmap of destruction.
I never would have thought to look at a guy’s criminal record. Itnever even crossed my mind that I could look into someone’s past this way, to proactively protect myself from someone like Timmy.
My mind races from the revelation.
Sure, I can see someone getting a speeding ticket here or there. And nearly every guy I’ve ever met has had at least some kind of run-in with the cops. Hell, even my cop ex-husband told me a story about how police dogs chased him and his teenage friends onto a rooftop because they were smoking marijuana. Even my very buttoned-up ex told me about how he has a metal plate in his foot from the time he skateboarded off a roof as a teenager.
Even the most sensible of guys seems to have done a bunch of dumb shit when they were younger.
It’s just what they do.
But four pages worth of charges?
That requires dedication. Or a string of extremely bad luck.
I want to scream. I want to throw the laptop across the room and shatter the screen into a thousand pieces, just like Timmy smashed the top of my toilet. But all I can do is sit, frozen, feeling the walls of my apartment, once a sanctuary, now closing in on me.
How did I let this happen? My mind races through every interaction, every conversation we’ve ever had, replaying them with a new lens. His charm, his excuses, the way he downplayed every mistake—now it feels like it was all a script. A script designed to manipulate, to pull me in deeper, to make me believe that he was the victim, that the world was just unfair to someone as misunderstood as him. And I fell for it. I wanted to fall for it, because the alternative—the truth—is almost too unbearable to confront.
My stomach churns as I think about the detective’s words: “He’s a real nut. You’re lucky you’re still alive.” Those words echo in my head like a drumbeat, constant and unrelenting.Lucky. I’mluckyto be alive.