Rough Love (Tannen Boys 1)

I nod. “I can see that, I guess. Then what?”

She swallows. “It wasn’t silly games anymore. But he didn’t jump from hiding my glasses straight to the bad. It was incremental. Things got worse so slowly that I didn’t even realize it was happening until it was too late.”

She sits on the couch, and I turn, sitting at her feet as she delves into her past, offering up a story. “One time, there was this super-fancy Italian restaurant coming to town, and as soon as he saw the sign in the window, he wanted to go. I tried to tell him that it was too expensive and out of our budget. I mean, I was working and he was in his last semester of law school and we had a baby. Five-hundred-dollar Michelin-star food wasn’t happening. But I wanted to do something nice for him, so I made lasagna. It was almost half the weekly grocery budget for all that meat and cheese, but he raved over it so it seemed worth it. I was so happy to have done something right.”

A small smile lifts her lips, but there’s a wry twist to the smile, not happiness like she’s saying. “The weekend the restaurant opened, I made it again as sort of an apology that we couldn’t go. He called it disgusting, dumped the whole 9×13 pan of it in the trash and spat on it. That was bad enough, but then he started ranting that if I loved him, I’d know that he doesn’t even like lasagna, that his favorite Italian food was fettuccine alfredo. Two weeks later, he’d bugged his dad enough that he invited him to try out the fancy restaurant. Jeremy told his parents I couldn’t come because I wouldn’t leave Cooper, not even for an hour to have dinner. So he went alone and came back with a to-go box. I thought he’d brought me dinner after all, to be nice or something.” She shakes her head. “I should’ve known better. He opened it, showed me the lasagna inside, saying it was his favorite and that the restaurant’s was so good, he got one for his dinner the next night. He was baiting me, eager to get a rise out of me. This was early on, so I questioned him, and he told me he’d always loved lasagna, hated fettuccine alfredo, and had never told me otherwise. He laughed out loud when I tried to remind him that he’d thrown an entire pan of lasagna away, telling me that he would never do that because one, it’s his favorite, and two, it’s so expensive to make and we don’t have the money to squander on things like that.”

“He sounds like a prick,” I spit out bitterly. A memory of her lasagna and her sweet smile at my complimenting how good it was runs through my mind. It’d seemed like such a little thing to me, but I can see now that it was major to her.

She sighs. “Yeah, but it was more than that. It was his being a prick in a sneaky, underhanded way that made me doubt myself and question reality. It wasn’t that he threw the food away but that he said he never did it. And after a while, when he did things like that, I started to believe him over my own eyes, my own memories, my own thoughts. And like the narcissist he is, he basked in my needing him for everything even as he called me names for it.”

I’m still not sure I get exactly what she’s saying. I’m a simple guy, and this gaslighting sounds complicated and nuanced. But I can grasp that he was an asshole and she got away and divorced his sorry ass. I’d love to think that’s all that matters, but whatever damage he did to her, it’s still written in the scars on her heart. Today’s proof of that.

“He tried to make you weak, but you were so strong you got out, baby,” I say reassuringly, though I’m not sure it’s the right thing to say.

Her frown is deep. “Not because he hit me. He didn’t physically lay a hand on me except for that once, but he was too rough sometimes.” I don’t realize I’m growling, thinking she means he was hard on her in the bedroom in a way she didn’t want, until she sets her palm on my chest. “Not like that. Sex with him was bland. He wanted the whole good girl, missionary, once a week, in the dark. And I figured it was just different because it was someone different.” Her eyes meet mine, so much heartache and pain right there on the surface. She’s not even hiding it from me, and I gladly take it in, carrying the weight of it with her.