I always knew it would be you two in the end.
She’s not the first to say it to me, not the first to see it, to know it.
And I knew it, too.
I knew it all along — from the first time I really talked to her on that bench on campus, when she saw what no one else saw and offered to help me when no one else even knew I needed a hand.
From the first time I danced with her, silly and uncoordinated.
From the first time I tasted her lips, even as drunk as I was.
From the first time I woke up next to her, even though she kicked me out in a panic.
I knew.
“Bear?” Shawna asks when I sit there for far too long, but I can’t help it.
It’s all hitting me.
It doesn’t matter that she’s friends with Gavin, that he’s back, that he may have other intentions than the innocent ones he’s painted for her. Who cares if he texts her, or if he even tries to make a move?
Because just like I did with Giselle, Erin would turn him down.
She loves me.
As unyieldingly as I love her.
I want to kick myself for being so stupid, for fighting with her, for letting my stubborn pride and jealousy threaten the one thing in this world that I truly love.
“Mr. Pennington?” a soft voice calls from one of the glass offices, and I blink, standing abruptly.
An older woman with long silver hair and a youthful smile strides over to me, shaking my hand as Shawna stands to join us.
“I’m Mrs. Jarwolowski,” she says. “Sorry about the wait.”
“It’s no problem at all,” I assure her, and then I turn back to Shawna, who watches me with a warm, genuine smile so different from the one she used to hold for me, but familiar all the same. “It was really nice running into you,” I say. And I mean it.
“You, too. Take care of yourself, Bear.”
I smile and nod, and then Shawna makes her way to the front door, and I follow Mrs. Jarwoloski back to her office where I plead my case for Pennington Personal Training, LLC.
All the while, I make an even more important plan for this evening.
YOU KNOW WHEN YOU say a word so many times, it stops making sense?
The first time you say fork, you think of the shiny metal instrument you eat with. You say it again, and the same happens. But say it out loud, over and over, twenty times in a row, and suddenly you’re wondering if it’s a real word, wondering what words even are and who decided what sounds and syllables equate to a definition. And what of a definition? Isn’t it just more strange sounds forming strange words that we have somehow come to agree mean a certain something?
It’s enough to make my head spin, and it has been — for two long weeks, I’ve done nothing but stew and steam and boil over thinking about one stupid word.
Dropped.
Dropped, like a football meant for a receiver, a touchdown opportunity lost. Dropped, like a slippery wine glass, crashing to the floor and shattering. Dropped, like a façade, someone finally admitting what they’ve truly desired all along.
Or dropped, like the charges against Landon Turner and the three other men who raped me.
I’ve been through enough trauma in my life to know how the grieving process goes. I fully expected the anger, the denial, the painful sadness and despair. I knew I’d cycle through it all, and I have been, every waking moment since Candice called to tell me the news.
I heard her voice replaying in my nightmares, little snippets of jargon and disappointing phrases nestled between sincere apologies.
Due to lack of evidence…
If we’d have had a rape kit…
Their word against yours…
They had multiple witness testimonials…
There were videos and pictures taken that night that dispute our claimed timeline…
Clinton was your only witness…
Without evidence we can’t…
It’s all blurry. All of it. Even after formally meeting with Candice upon my return and going over it more thoroughly in person, all the details are lost behind the one bold statement I can’t fully process.
The charges against Landon and his brothers have been dropped.
They won’t go to trial. They won’t have to answer for what they did to me. They won’t have so much as a pencil smudge on their permanent record.
They’re free to go.
They’re free to live their lives.
They’re free to keep working at their jobs and dating their girlfriends — who likely don’t even know what they’ve been accused of.
They’re free.
It is the most jagged pill I have ever had to swallow.
I know I don’t look much better than I feel when Herb calls from downstairs to let me know Clinton has arrived. I light a few candles and pull a fresh bottle of wine from the fridge, lining up two glasses on the counter and uncorking the bottle to let it breathe.