Hazed (Palm South University)

“Home,” he echoes, and then he groans as I roll my fist over his shaft. “I could get used to that.”

“Me, too, Mr. Church.”

And then my mouth is on his cock, and his hands are in my hair, and we’re well on our way to step one.

Who knows.

Maybe one day I’ll be Mrs. Church.

I rather like the sound of that.

WHY HAVE I BEEN here so many times?

I know this feeling as if it’s meant to be my perpetual state of being — the shaky hands, the shallow breaths, the racing heart, the dizziness and gut-wrenching sense of dread.

I’m not sure I even remember what it was like before I felt this for the first time, when I was staring down at that positive pregnancy test in my bathroom at the sorority house. Who was I, before that pivotal moment? That seems to be when it all changed, when I went from Erin Xanders, sorority girl living the dream, to Erin Xanders, magnet for eternal misery.

I thought it was finally turning around. I found a therapist who works well with me, and a therapy group that I feel comfortable sharing with. I feel like I’ve finally buried the demons of my past and stepped fully into the present. I graduated college. I started law school, just like I always said I would.

And I found an incredible guy.

Gavin has been everything I never thought a man could be — funny, mysterious, caring, and kind. From the moment he first laid eyes on me, I knew he saw deeper than even my closest friends ever did.

He knew my misery and pain, my scars, because he had them, too.

It feels like a dream, dizzying and foggy, how up and down my time with him has been. From him blowing off our first date to then pleasantly surprising me with an impromptu sushi dinner, from being a sarcastic little prick in group therapy to being the sweetest, most gentle and sensual partner on our spontaneous trip, and most recently, from being with me almost every night to only making time for lunch every other week.

He’s like the spinning teacup ride at Disney World, full of joy and laughter, but one wrong turn of the wheel away from a nauseating disaster.

I haven’t seen him since I left his apartment that night he rejected me.

For the first week after that, he was calling me every night, texting me throughout the day, checking in. But then the contact became less and less, the texts fewer and farther between. I asked him multiple times when I’d see him next, and he always found a clever way to avoid the question.

He didn’t show up to group therapy like he said he would.

He didn’t meet me for lunch or take me out for dinners or even stop by after work or school.

And eventually, he just stopped talking to me altogether.

It was a gut punch, one I didn’t know how to sit with. I tried to convince myself that he was just busy, that he wouldn’t just abandon me, that he wouldn’t ghost me after all we’d been through. But the more calls that went unanswered, the more texts I sent without a reply, the more reality sank in.

I tried tracking him down through our group therapist, but she hadn’t heard from him in weeks.

I tried showing up unannounced at his job, but they said he quit unexpectedly.

I even showed up at the Palm South campus and marched right into the building where I knew he had class that afternoon. But when the class let out, he wasn’t among the students that flowed from the classroom, and his professor said he’d been absent the past three classes.

He didn’t just ghost me.

He ghosted everyone.

Which is why I have that all-too-familiar sense of dread simmering low in my gut as I stare at the envelope with my name sprawled across the front.

It’s his handwriting.

And it was delivered anonymously to the front desk downstairs, no stamp or return address.

Usually, I’d want to be alone for this. I don’t like anyone around when I’m feeling this way. I want to be left alone to my misery so no one can talk me out of it.

But right now, I need a friend.

Ashlei is either with Brandon or at work, no telling these days, and Jess is in her second week now at her brand-new job. I can’t just bombard her when she hasn’t even learned the employee handbook.

And I definitely can’t wait until after work.

I debate calling Skyler, but it’s Wednesday, which means, as president, she’s at the Panhellenic meeting. And though I could call Cassie, she’s probably in class.

Even if she isn’t, I’m not sure she’s the one I want here right now.

“Looks like I’m on my own,” I finally decide, letting a deep sigh flow from my chest before I slip my fingernail under the crease of the envelope and slide it along the top to tear it open. I pull out a neatly folded sheet of notebook paper, then with an internal pep talk, I convince myself I can handle whatever it says.