Chapter Eleven

AJ

Looking back, I always found a lot of blame to place on my shoulders. Times I should have seen the red flags. Times I should have accepted bad behavior for what it was instead of making excuses for it.

The thing was, it wasn't my fault.

I'd been really sheltered growing up.

I'd been born and raised in a small town in Iowa. Population: eight hundred. It was the kind of place you saw in old movies. With a one-road town flanked by mom-and-pop stores that shuttered at sundown. And all along the outskirts of town were the farms that kept the area alive.

Because of the small, tight-knit community, I'd been raised to believe that people were fundamentally good. That they were out to help, not harm.

I'd never been taught to look for red flags in people.

Maybe, had my early years been different, I would have seen the signs before it was too late.

As it was, though, my life revolved around my school with just a few kids in my grade, events in the town, and helping my parents care for my grandparents as they started to decline.

If we'd stayed in that town, maybe I would have ended up with Jimmy or Calvin, the boys from school I'd always had a crush on, who maybe would have grown to like me too.

The thing was, my father suddenly had a heart attack while working in the fields on a local farm one day.

He'd died before the ambulance could even arrive.

It became clear directly afterward that my mother had not been privy to our family's personal finances. Which meant that, while we were grieving and trying to plan a memorial, we learned that the house was in foreclosure.

And we had thirty days to get out.

We'd been lucky enough that the town had gotten together to pay for my father's burial.

But with nowhere in town to work, let alone stay, we'd needed to sell just about everything we owned, pack the car, and head into a bigger city, where my mother could find work.

I'd been fifteen at the time, naive as the day was long, suddenly transplanted in a place where I didn't know anyone, where it seemed nobody wanted to know me.

Whereas I'd been reasonably pretty in my very small town, I was all but invisible in this new area.

And because I'd known everyone in town since I was a little girl, I'd never struggled to find ways to engage others.

In the city, though, I found that because I couldn't find ways to approach and engage others, no one bothered to do so with me.

Slowly but surely, I became more and more introverted and lonely, so sure of my own inadequacy that the second someone finally seemed to actually see me, I'd been desperate for that attention.

At the time, I'd been a few weeks shy of my seventeenth birthday and working as a barista around the corner from our shoebox apartment because my mother was struggling just to keep the lights on and a roof over our heads with her three jobs, and I wanted to save up to buy myself a car.

It was the beginning of summer, and I was hyper-aware of the fact that I'd put on a solid twenty pounds of stress weight, which was stretching my work uniform to the max, and further reinforcing my belief in my lack of worth.

In other words, I was prime for the picking by a man with bad intentions and a silver tongue.

Then on a random day, there he was.

Waltzing into the coffee place, a plain kind of handsome. Nothing about him really stood out to me, someone accustomed to seeing the entire beauty spectrum day in and day out. He'd been average height, if maybe a bit on the shorter side for a man, with brown hair that flopped over his forehead, and brown eyes.

He'd been dressed in a button-up that was a little too loose, and a pair of slacks that were too long.

He'd ordered his drip coffee with milk. And I'd been ready to completely forget all about him like I would with any random non-regular.

Until he leaned over the counter as he waited for me to make his drink, and shot me a smile while telling me how pretty he thought I was.

As insecure as I was, as unaccustomed to compliments as I'd been, I'd eaten that up with a spoon, blushing, giggling, thanking him.

When I passed his coffee across the counter, his hand accidentally-on-purpose closed over mine on the cup as he asked me which days I would be working.

"Then I guess I know where I'll be on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday afternoons," he'd said.

I'd brushed it off.

Plenty of men flirted with my coworkers.

But that Saturday, there he was again.

With more compliments and smiles, asking me about myself.

"Including, I might add," I told Atlas. "My age."

Atlas exhaled hard at that. "Let me guess, he wasn't a teenager."

At the time, I honestly wasn't good at telling the ages of people who were older than me. It seemed like everyone in their twenties and thirties looked the same to me.

Though, yes, I knew he wasn't in high school, that was for sure.

Maybe I should have also known that he wasn't even in college.

But I'd been basking in the glow of his attention, eating up his compliments.

I found myself spending hours getting myself ready on the days I knew Joss would show up. When I got to work, I got all my side work done as soon as possible, so when Joss came in, I could spend as much time talking to him as I pleased.

Then, three weeks into his visits, it finally happened. He asked me for my number. And once he had it, he asked me out on a date.

Looking back, I wondered why my mom hadn't asked me more questions when she'd seen me getting myself ready for the date, slipping on the casual dress I'd picked for the milestone.

But, of course, my mom was living in survival mode. And she likely just assumed that my date was of an appropriate age.

"How long did it take for you to learn how old he really was?" Atlas asked.

"The second month of dating," I told him.

After that first date, my first date ever, where he'd taken me to dinner and a movie, two things I hadn't been able to experience since I was little, and he'd kissed me—my first kiss—, he continued to come into the coffee shop on my shifts, but he also wanted to see me outside of work.

We were seeing each other every single day at that point. On the nights when I wasn't working, I was out with Joss.

And two months in, he took me to his apartment. Where he showed me his old STEM trophies he'd earned in high school.

They'd been dated, of course.

And I'd been left to do the math.

Which told me that Joss was thirty-two.

"Jesus Christ," Atlas said, shaking his head.

It didn't occur to me at the time that he was nearly twice as old as I was, that he'd lived twice as much life as I had.

All I could think was that, here was this guy. He was mature and accomplished. A full-on adult. And he wanted little old me.

I'm sure it didn't help that he'd spent months at that point telling me how mature I was for my age, how no one understood him like I did.

"Yeah," Atlas interjected, "because women his own age saw him for what a loser he was."

"Yeah," I agreed, trying not to let that sting. Because I'd come to that conclusion many times myself. It was just the first time I heard someone else say it. Because this was the first time I ever told anyone about Joss.

And we hadn't even covered the half of it yet.

That night was the first time Joss took me to his bed, stripping me without much seduction, climbing on top of me, and taking my virginity.

It was a nightly pattern after that.

And while the pain subsided, there was never any of the pleasure I saw in TV shows and movies.

Once, back before he'd gotten too much of a chance to beat down my spirit—aside from telling me I was ‘too fat' and that while it wasn't as noticeable when I was dressed, it was ‘not attractive' when I was naked, which led to months of me starving myself to lose the weight—I'd asked him about our sex life, about orgasms for me.

His face had gone tight.

Then he'd told me that he ‘didn't have all day' to get me to come, and I could just figure that out on my own, if I wanted.

If I wanted.

As if sex wasn't supposed to be something mutually enjoyed.

It was maybe the first time I learned that all that Joss cared about was, well, himself.

The thing was, I was young and naive. He was my first boyfriend. And I was, I thought, in love.

Over the next year, things continued on for us. Sneaking around because, I realize now as an adult, he knew what he was doing was wrong, and that if my mother found out how old he was, he could be in trouble.

The second I turned eighteen, though, I was moved out of my mother's house, and into his.

That, of course, was when it really started to get bad.

The isolation was first.

My mother and I weren't all that close at the time. She had also found herself a man, one who—once she was free of me—let her move in, which allowed her to work less.

But little by little, Joss ‘forgot' to tell me that my mom had called or stopped by. Until we weren't really even speaking anymore.

And then he came for my job.

"I make more than enough for the two of us. I'd rather have you here, taking care of the house. It's a mess since you moved in."

I'd quit my job, no questions asked.

And dedicated myself to keeping up the apartment. But no matter how much I swept, dusted, mopped, and straightened, he always found something out of place to mention.

"How did you not see this, Amy Jane?" he'd snap, tone sharp and disappointed, chipping away at that confidence he'd slowly but surely helped to build inside of me.

Food came next.

"Would it kill you to have a hot meal on the table for me when I get done with work?" he'd snapped. Although he'd never mentioned it before.

I found recipes and dedicated myself to having dinner ready for him every single night.

But the lasagne was never like his mom made. And the pasta noodles were too chewy and the meat was overcooked and For the love of God, how hard is it to make something halfway edible?

So I tried and tried and tried.

And failed to meet his expectations every single time.

I was an eighteen-year-old housewife—without the ring—crying on the bathroom floor every single night, pressing my face into a towel to muffle the sounds of my sobs because Joss hated crying.

It's emotional manipulation, Amy Jane.

So, I cried alone, wiped up the evidence, went to bed, got up, and tried harder.

He'd whittled away at me in other ways, of course. My weight was a never-ending bone of contention, despite him supposedly ‘falling in love' with me ‘at first sight' back when I'd been at my heaviest.

"What is this?" he'd asked, grabbing a bit of flesh over my hip, jiggling it. Or he'd demanded I'd spin for him when I was naked and then grimace and tell me that my ass was too big, or the cellulite on the backs of my thighs was revolting.

"I'd always seen myself with a woman whose thighs didn't touch," he'd say when looking at a woman on the TV who fit his beauty standards.

My boobs, which never went anywhere no matter how much weight I lost for him, went from being something he used to praise me for, to something that made his lip curl, claiming I looked like a ‘slut' in everything I wore because of them.

Eventually, he was so paranoid about anyone looking at me, that I was no longer allowed to wear dresses, tank tops, or sundresses.

I'd questioned him about that last one, getting an eye roll, like I was the dumbest person he'd ever met.

"Because every man will think about hiking it up and fucking you."

That one hadn't made sense to me since he was always insisting that I was lucky I found him, that no one else would want to put up with my bad housekeeping, inedible cooking, my ‘weight problems,' and the fact that I was a ‘cold fish' in bed.

"It's like fucking a blow-up doll," he'd once said as he'd rolled off of me, his sweat still all over me. Then he'd let out a little snort and declared, "But at least the doll wouldn't wince and whimper when I want to fuck harder."

"AJ…" Atlas said, eyes sad.

"I never denied him sex," I was quick to tell Atlas.

"Sweetheart, just because you didn't say no, doesn't mean you wanted it, either," Atlas said.

And, of course, I didn't want it. Why would I? When I was never turned on? When it went from simply not being enjoyable, to being uncomfortable or sometimes painful?

The thing was, the more I endured from him, the less it seemed possible to ever… stop enduring.

I wasn't happy.

But it was all I knew at that point.

"What are you moping for?" he'd snap when I couldn't hide that something he said hurt me. "Other men would beat the shit out of you for this kind of shit. Have I ever put a hand on you?"

He hadn't.

It seemed as though mentioning it, though, put the idea in his head.

It didn't happen right away.

It was like he needed to work his courage up to do it.

So he'd thrown things at me.

He'd slammed into me, knocking me out of his way.

He'd punch the wall beside me.

First, they hit thingsaround you.

Then they hityou.

Sure enough, one night after he'd had his one and only friend over for dinner and to play video games, he'd started screaming at me. Telling me what an embarrassment I was, how gross the food was, how stupid my comments were to his friend.

Was I trying to make a fool of him?

"Well, were you?" he'd screamed. "Fucking answer me!"

He hadn't given me the chance, though.

The words were out of his mouth.

And then his hand was slapping hard over my cheek, the stinging pain making me cry out, causing tears to fill my eyes.

I'd never been hit before.

My father had claimed his parents had beaten him for everything and nothing, using their hands, fists, belts, handles of brooms, anything that was close by when they were mad at him. And that he never wanted to do that to me.

The only discipline I'd gotten were lectures and time to ‘think about what I'd done.'

I'd been unprepared for how much it would hurt. Physically, yes. But more so, emotionally.

He'd immediately regretted it. He pulled me against him, pressing kisses all over my face, promising he would never do it again.

You just make me so angry sometimes.

But once someone starts hitting you, they don't stop.

Somehow—and looking back, I wasn't sure how he'd managed to make me think this way—I'd started to believe it was just punishment for never being good enough.

He always ‘made it up' to me. With affection, which he often withheld from me, or praise. Sometimes, even with gifts.

"That was how I got Samson," I told Atlas, looking over at him as he sat at Atlas's feet, silently begging for a bite of food. Because he knew Atlas was a sucker, and would give it to him.

It had been the week of Christmas.

And I'd made the mistake of spending Joss's ‘hard-earned money' on ‘gaudy' Christmas decorations. And ‘didn't I know better?'

Then he'd decided to ‘teach me a lesson' about it.

And beat me so badly that I'd blacked out, waking up confused, in pain, bloody, finding Joss kneeling next to me, eyes wide.

At the time, I tried to convince myself it was because he was sorry, because he couldn't believe what he'd done.

Of course, though, it was because he was worried he'd pushed it too far, and I was going to need medical attention. I might tell on him. He might get in trouble.

He'd actually been sweet to me that night, taking me into the bathroom to clean my wounds, then drawing me a bath, and snuggling me to sleep.

When he came home the next day from work, he wasn't alone.

In his arms was a fluffy little Lab/Golden Retriever mix who'd made my heart swell, even though the immediate thought that followed was how I was going to need to work even harder to keep the apartment clean because of the hair and toys, the accidents as he house trained.

Regardless of the extra work, though, Samson was the bright spot in my dark life. He also provided an outlet that I didn't realize I'd been missing out on for a long time.

Because by that point, I wasn't really leaving the apartment anymore.

Joss did the shopping because I bought ‘all the wrong things' and he didn't want me ‘buying junk' that I would ‘sneak' when he wasn't around.

He didn't take me anywhere either.

And because of his jealousy, he didn't want me going out without him.

So my whole life was confined within the four walls of that apartment.

But because of Samson, I had a valid reason for leaving the apartment. Training Samson. And then, getting his energy out, so he didn't chew things up.

I inched toward the idea of freedom, just taking him right outside of the building to do his business, but taking longer and longer walks as he got bigger, and I got more comfortable.

Until, eventually, I found myself out of the neighborhood and into town.

And there was where memories came back to me. Of being young and free, so full of hope and eager to experience life. Working hard to save for a car that would lend me even more freedom.

Until Joss slowly but surely stripped it all from me.

Except, of course, he hadn't taken everything.

It may have been sitting untouched in a bank account for years, but I did still have a small savings.

My mind ran wild with ideas then.

Of getting away.

Of starting over.

Just me and Samson.

But I couldn't seem to force myself to take steps toward that fantasy.

Not until one fateful night.

When Joss finally did something completely unforgivable.

I'd been preparing dinner, but had to stop to see why the washing machine tucked in our bedroom closet was knocking.

I was gone for all of two minutes.

But in that time, it seemed that Samson had smelled the meat on the counter, and had jumped up to steal it.

Pissed, Joss had charged off the couch that was starting to have a permanent ass print from him always parking there, had grabbed him by the collar, and lifted him up off of the floor by it.

He still had him strung up, dangling, choking, when I came back out.

He could hurt me. Tear me down. Beat me.

But he couldn't put his hands on Samson.

I flew at him, slamming my hands into his chest, shocked by my strength when he flew backward, the counter cracking across his back.

I saw the rage chase the pain out of his eyes.

It didn't matter, though, so long as Samson was free, scampering off to whimper under the dining room table.

That beating was almost as bad as the one that had me blacking out. But the thing was, Joss had gotten better about beating me, knowing just how far to push it without causing permanent damage, without it getting bad enough for me to need to go to the hospital.

He'd stormed out afterward, muttering about getting something decent to eat.

I stayed there on the floor, crying in pain, until Samson came over to start licking my face.

My eyes slid open, I looked at him, and I knew it down to my bones.

It was time to go.

Not knowing how long I had, I rushed around the apartment, shoving some clothes, bath products, and a blanket into one of Joss's backpacks and a big purse.

Then I grabbed as many of Samson's toys and treats and a big plastic bag of his food as I could, hooked on his leash, and walked out of that apartment.

I had no real plan, not in an emergency situation. But I'd cleared out my bank account, then walked to a used car lot, and bought the only car I could afford. One with wonky air and heat, nearly bald tires, and almost two-hundred-thousand miles on it. From the looks of things, hard miles.

It didn't matter.

It was a way out of town.

It was somewhere safe to sleep.

"How long did you live in your car?" Atlas asked, eyes sad.

"Eleven weeks."

"You didn't go to your mom?"

"She'd passed that spring." It was the only outing I'd had, aside from taking out Samson.

The last of my family was in that coffin. And any safe space I may have been able to run to if or when I got away.

So I was completely on my own.

Well, aside from Samson.

And thank God for him.

He made the cold weather sleeping in the car tolerable. We curled up under the comforter and chased off the chill as I tried to figure out what the hell I could do, how I could get a job without a home.

Eventually, I started working little odd jobs. The kind of things where people paid cash, and I didn't have to worry about filling employment forms. Dog walking, snow shoveling, weeding. Until, little by little, I was able to afford more than just food and gas, and got us a short-term renting situation.

Once I had that, getting an actual on-the-books job was easier.

"I thought everything was on track," I told Atlas. "Until Joss showed up at the rental."

I'd been coming back from the park with Samson. The rental was small and stuffy, a glorified box with a mini kitchen and a bathroom with such an awkward setup that I couldn't completely close the door thanks to the sink cabinet. And the neighbors on both sides were loud enough to set my nerves on edge, so we spent as much time as possible out of our room.

I thank God that we'd been in the car when I was pulling into the lot.

A quick K-turn allowed me to get out of there, parking down a side street, my heart racing, panic gripping my system.

I sat there for seven hours until, finally, his car pulled down the street.

After waiting another half an hour, just in case, I rushed back to the rental, emptying everything back out of it, stuffing it into my car, and leaving it behind.

I thought something as simple as a new rental would help.

Until, one day, he showed up at my work.

And, unfortunately, that time, I hadn't been able to avoid him. He'd grabbed my arm and pulled me outside with him, telling me he missed me, he was sorry, it would never happen again.

"You didn't go back, did you?"

"No. Because the whole time he was making assurances to me, his hand was crushing my upper arm."

"What'd you do?"

"I told him I would grab my things, then meet him out front. Then I slipped out the back, rushed out of there, got my stuff and Samson, and headed out of town."

"To Navesink Bank?" Atlas asked.

"No. Unfortunately, he found me six more times across four states."

"How?"

"Yeah, that was the problem," I admitted. "I didn't understand how it was happening, so there was no way to prevent it.

"Somehow, I hadn't put the pieces together about Joss being into computers, and the fact that he was able to trace me wherever I went."

"Was it through your phone?"

"That's what I concluded the first time. I wasn't on his plan, but I'd opened a new one for work purposes. I guess he figured out how to trace that. So I started using a burner."

The second and third times, I'd concluded it was something to do with the rentals I was using, which were set up through a major website that, I guess, could be hacked.

The fourth time, I decided it was maybe the job I'd been working at a chain store.

The fifth, I decided it must have been through my utilities. It was the first time that I'd been staying somewhere that the utilities weren't included, so I'd needed to set them up myself.

"I never figured out how he found me the sixth time," I admitted. That had been weighing heavily on me for a long time. Amplified after the phone call a bit back.

"Were you as lucky each time as you were the first two times?" Atlas asked.

"No," I admitted.

Once, he'd found me working a night shift alone, waiting for me behind the dumpster out back, and beating the hell out of me right there in the parking lot.

He'd been dragging me toward his car when a group of teenagers who were likely up to no good, given the hour, had decided to be heroes, and rushed over, getting me away from him.

One of them even used his skateboard to knock Joss on the head before he got away from them and ran to the safety of his car.

"Had you considered going to the cops that time?" Atlas asked.

"I did," I said, nodding. "I even went to the station, asking ‘hypothetical' questions to a female officer I caught walking out."

She'd been quick to tell me what she, officially, needed to tell me about filing a report, about getting a restraining order.

"But?" Atlas prompted.

But then she'd pulled me a little further away from the station, and told me what she'd seen and learned from experience.

About how stalkers don't give a damn about paperwork. About how, if anything, all it did was piss off your stalker, and make them escalate.

She'd also told me that, with many restraining orders, your address is actually shared with your stalker or abuser, unless you have a separate meeting where you can convince the judge that you are in danger.

"And without any documented evidence of prolonged abuse, she didn't think that was likely."

"So, you decided to keep relying on yourself."

"Yeah."

I took everything I learned from each time he found me, and wrote down a list of things not to do moving forward.

Do not get a phone plan.

Do not work at a chain store or restaurant.

Do not pay for utilities in my name.

Do not get rentals through a website.

Do not get any social media.

I'd been dreading the day I was going to have to register my car again. Or update my license.

There were some things that you simply had to do just to exist in society.

It was why I was so crazy about keeping an eye on my spending, about socking away as much money as possible. Because having a savings was the only thing that allowed me to start over each time without having to live in the car again.

The problem was that, in the past, I had no attachments. I never really got out of survival mode enough to make friends or become attached to my surroundings.

Now, though?

I was attached.

To my job and my coworkers. To this house that felt a little more like mine than anywhere else I'd ever stayed. To Navesink Bank in general.

And now, of course, to Atlas.

For better or worse.

"Can I ask you something?" Atlas asked when I finally stopped talking.

"Sure," I invited, reaching for my orange juice.

"That night, after we went out to get dinner, when you got a phone call, was that him?"

Sucking in a deep breath, I exhaled it slowly.

"Yes."

"How did he find your number?"

"I don't know," I admitted. "I looked into it, and I blocked him, but I have no idea how he figured it out in the first place."

"It was a new number?" he asked.

"New since I came to Navesink Bank," I said.

"Hm," Atlas said, sitting back.

"Yeah, I know. I've been racking my brain ever since."

"Just to be safe, how about I order you a new burner?" he asked. "You can just tell your work that you switched providers. No one has to know."

"Yeah, that's probably a good idea," I agreed.

Atlas reached across the table, taking my hand, and giving it a squeeze.

"Thanks for telling me."