Rough Love (Tannen Boys 1)

“Again, it started little . . . bumping into me in the hallway or squeezing my fingers too hard when we were holding hands. He made it seem like I was bumbling and high-strung. The slap, though . . .”

She interrupts her own train of thought. “I don’t even remember what brought the whole thing on, what drove him to that point that time. Was it work? Me? Cooper? Just a natural progression of our fucked-up relationship? I don’t know. But I was standing in the kitchen, Cooper on my hip with my arm wrapped around him to keep him steady and a spoon in the other hand. I was making soup. I can remember that but not what triggered Jeremy.”

Her eyes go vacant for a second and then she shrugs like it’s inconsequential.

“He was yelling, and I was numbly tuning him out, only listening for the tone changes that signaled things were going to get better or worse but not hearing the words. He knew somehow, even though my back was to him. He grabbed my arm and spun me around, pointing in my face. I can see his face twisted in rage, white spittle gathered at the corners of his mouth, but I can’t hear the words, not in my memories. I guess I wasn’t reacting the way he wanted because he reared back and slapped me across the face. That woke me up, the hot burn of my skin, the pain in the muscle below, the stars dotting the black in my vision.” She blinks, lost to the memory.

“So you left?”

She blinks again, coming back to the present time. “No, not at first. In the moment, he seemed horrified and apologized, said work was stressing him out and he promised it’d never happen again. It wasn’t like some instantaneous wake-up call like in the movies because it almost wasn’t a surprise. We’d been slowly getting closer to that for years at that point. It was the next morning. I was barely awake, just rolled out of bed and went into the kitchen to get a cup of coffee. He was sitting there at the table, reading the paper as usual. He told me good morning like everything was fine, just a normal day like any other, and I thought we’d gotten past it. Until I turned around and he screamed in shock, jumping in his chair. ‘What happened to your face?’ he asked me, pointing at what I later realized was a pretty ugly bruise along my cheekbone.”

She delicately fingers her cheek, and I make the connection of why today’s events set her off so badly. The yelling, the finger pointing, the hit . . . all unfortunately so familiar, the perfect storm, as she called it.

“I was so confused and tried to tell him that I accepted his apology for slapping me. He accused me of doing it to myself, even saying that I was going to try to use it against him. But I knew, and I think he realized his hold on me was tenuous, in this at least. He switched to telling me that I must’ve just slept funny and that it wasn’t a bruise, just that I’d laid funny. He even said I’d tossed and turned all night. ‘Maybe you bumped the nightstand,’ he said.”

She lifts her brow at the ridiculousness of that. “The moment I lay in bed that night, forcing myself to lie on my back and propping up with an extra pillow, with him telling me that I’d sleep better that way and not do any more damage to my face, was it. I listened to him snore and felt the bruise on my face. I knew how it got there. What’s more, I knew I knew. I wanted to ignore it, but every time I opened my mouth, I felt that tenderness as a reminder of what had really happened.”

“I did some soul searching lying there in bed that night. I’d been holding Cooper, just a tiny toddler, when Jeremy hit me. All I could think was that if Jeremy could do this to me, what would he do to Cooper? How fucked up would my little boy be? I went into the relationship strong and healthy, and yet, I was cringing at loud noises, praying Jeremy would be in a good mood, and didn’t trust myself to do anything right. If he’d destroyed me, Cooper wouldn’t stand a chance growing up like that. I knew if I stayed, Jeremy would destroy my son too.”

I embrace her, needing to touch her. “You’re not destroyed, Al. Neither is Cooper.”

She hugs me back but pulls away. “Not anymore, thanks to a whole hell of a lot of intensive therapy. I had to rewrite my inner voice back to being my own, and my therapist gave me some tools and tricks to help when I get nervous or anxious.”