Along with her pride.
Jackie offered her a bag of Doritos. Charlotte took a chip and nibbled at it. “I’ll go kick his ass if you want. He’s probably still there, smearing his bad attitude all over the place.”
“It’s fine.” Charlotte licked orange chip crud off her fingers.
Jackie put the chips down. “Do you want me to text Reece? Let him know you’re okay?”
On second thought, maybe her nausea wasn’t gone.
It’s me! How are you? You look great too!
She’d never wanted Reece to meet that mewling, neglected side of her. It was one thing to tell him about her abusive relationship in the sunshine of the quarry, at a moment of her choosing and firmly in the past tense. But to have him witness their toxic dynamic up close and personal? That was something else entirely.
Her skin crawled as she remembered the oily cling of Ben’s stare on her skin.
“I can’t believe Reece saw that,” she groaned.
Jackie patted her head. “He’s seen people vomit before.”
Charlotte cringed. She was pretty sure she’d puked on his hands. His efforts saved her hair from the worst of it, but it still took her a few minutes bent over the bathroom sink to scrub out the stomach acid.
“That’s not what I mean.”
She didn’t know how to explain what happened when Ben appeared. The moment she saw him, conscious thought abandoned her. It felt as if no time had passed at all. He’d summoned her younger self back from the dead.
“I told him it was good to see him,” she admitted. Her words ran thick with self-loathing. “I could have told him to go fuck himself. I could have thrown a drink in his face. Instead I just…”
She chewed on her cuticles as the horror of that moment returned to her: the strength of his cologne, his smug expression, how quickly he dismissed Reece. Ben probably enjoyed that the most, making her twist and simper in front of an audience. The human equivalent of peeing on a woman in front of a competing male, just in case he didn’t get the message.
See this girl? I broke her years ago. Have fun with what’s left.
“I told him he looked good, Jackie. And Reece was right there, watching me grovel.”
She pinched the bridge of her nose. Her eyes were dry but they throbbed in her skull, blood pumping at the back of her sockets.
Jackie put a gentle hand on Charlotte’s shoulder. When she didn’t flinch away, Jackie rubbed her back in slow, smooth circles.
“You know how animals have a fight-or-flight response to threats?” she asked.
Charlotte nodded meekly.
Jackie adopted the steady voice she used to lead the support group. “There’s a theory that there are actually four trauma responses for humans, not two. There’s also freeze and fawn.” She massaged the back of Charlotte’s neck. Charlotte let out a whimper as her fingers found a pressure point.
“Freeze is what it sounds like. But fawn is more complicated,” Jackie continued. “It’s when you comply. You try to manage the threat by agreeing with it, or by pleasing it. You literally fawn over it.”
Charlotte didn’t need her to spell out how the concept applied to her current situation. She mulled it over as Jackie poked and prodded her skull.
It made sense. In college, when Ben’s temper boiled over, Charlotte managed him. She apologized, agreed, made herself small, all in the hopes that he would calm down and leave her alone. There was no point fighting back or running away. Her only option was to wait until his anger passed.
When they were together, she wrote it off as an opposites-attract thing: Where Ben was quick and assertive, Charlotte was careful and diplomatic. Every relationship had its give and take, its odd balancing acts. He needed someone to contain his temper. She had the strength for that person to be her. Years spent living with her mother had taught her just how to do it.
That was all bullshit, of course. But it made sense to her at the time.
Fawn response. She fawned over him. It didn’t matter that she wasn’t in any danger, or that Ben wasn’t her boyfriend anymore. The urge to please him remained a part of her like a vestigial organ.
Charlotte shifted to rest her head in Jackie’s lap. She covered her eyes with her hands to block out the glow of the laptop screen until Jackie closed it.
“It’s funny,” Charlotte said. “For a brief moment today, I forgot how much college sucked.”
Jackie snorted. She smoothed Charlotte’s hair away from her face. “It wouldn’t be Hein without some repressed trauma blowing up in our faces.”
Charlotte swallowed her humiliation. She focused on the comforting pressure of Jackie’s fingers against her scalp. Before this weekend, she couldn’t remember the last time someone held her without an agenda. Jackie’s lap was warm and soft, and she was gentle when her fingers snagged in a knot.
“I really do think you should be a therapist,” Charlotte said, instead of thank you.
Jackie huffed. “Maybe I’ll have my own radio show,” she said. “I can be a less problematic, gay Frasier.”
“Real Talk with Jackie Slaughter. I’d call in.”
Charlotte relaxed as Jackie played with her hair. Her body wanted to slow down and let go, fall asleep in her blanket cocoon. It had been a long day, the highs high and the lows extremely low.
“Seriously, though, you should text Reece. He’s worried.”
She stiffened.
And say what?
Thanks for letting me puke on you, so sorry I’m a damaged fuckup.
