Chapter 25
Olivia
While Hellie tried to give the tequila shot to Jenn and Jenn made a big show of refusing, Olivia just stood there, frozen
to the spot.
Her conversation with Jenn had shattered her. As Jenn had gone on about Will’s bedroom penchants, Olivia couldn’t focus, because
she was trying to hold herself together as her heart splintered: five years ago, Phelps had sexually assaulted her.
It was clear as day the moment Olivia heard herself say out loud to Jenn, I was really drunk, blackout drunk. And a woman who is blackout drunk can’t give consent.
What was wrong with Olivia? It shouldn’t have taken her five years to realize this. She of all people, given her history . . .
As the BB gun passed to Bennett and tequila and laughter flew around like confetti, reality beat its cruel bat into Olivia.
She had been assaulted, yet she had spent five years thinking it was her fault. She had wasted five years of silent agony.
Sleepless nights, anxiety attacks, entire days she couldn’t stop crying for the guilt—all because she hadn’t understood what
happened, when the pieces were there all along. She shoved her hands into her coat pockets and tucked her nose under the collar.
Why was she like this? Always the last person to connect the dots about her own life. It was excusable at nineteen. But at thirty-five . . . Stupid, stupid, stupid.
Even though she could feel the first sign of panic in the electric snap of her heart, she wasn’t completely freaking out yet.
She could still hold it in . . . she was used to holding things in . . . She was Olivia, Miss Always Has It Together. Standing in a different dimension. A piece of glass
dividing her from everyone else. The same piece of glass that had been there her whole life, like Olivia was an exotic animal
in a zoo. Sometimes smiled at, sometimes admired, but never belonging.
“Bennett, you aren’t nearly as good with that gun as your wife is!” Doug guffawed as Bennett’s shot soared above the line
of plates and to the right, embedding itself into the siding of the Dog House.
“Five bucks if you don’t hit my shed again,” said Phelps.
“Five bucks if you can stop talking,” Bennett returned. Her husband always got snappier, mouthier, around his friends.
Olivia felt herself teeter. On one hand, she didn’t want to believe Bennett’s oldest friend was capable of assault. How could
Phelps lie as coolly as he had behind the refrigerator when they were serving the mousse, claiming not to remember something
of this magnitude? Unless . . . unless he had forgotten.
Oh, dear God.
Maybe it was such a small event in his dramatic life that it had faded into the noise. Maybe Olivia was nothing. Maybe assaulting
her counted as less than nothing.
Her heartbeat was frenzied, her head hot. Did she give Phelps the idea that he could take advantage of her? Because of what she shared with him, right beforehand? The idea
made her sick. Maybe he thought that since Professor Larkin got away with it . . .
Olivia hadn’t even realized she was raped by her old professor until ten years after it happened.
Strange how you could be raised by two doting parents in a fairly liberal household, have a feminist mother who regularly talked about consent, and somehow not realize what was happening when it happened to you.
It was at the eighth New Year’s party that her eyes were opened. The year before her supposed mistake with Phelps. Kylie,
who was still married to Phelps at the time, was going on about her first husband, and how when a woman says no, it has to be over right away. Without thinking, Olivia said, “Well, sometimes people say no, but they kind of let it happen
anyway.”
Mild Hellie seemed to come to life. She’d been reclining on the couch, but she sat straight up. “That’s rape, Olivia. If you
say no, and it keeps happening, it’s rape.”
The conversation kept going, barreling right past Olivia as, unbeknownst to everyone else, she fell backward in time. Back
to her sophomore year of college.
She never told Bennett about her relationship before him. It was too embarrassing. After all, she was just nineteen. He was
fifty-six.
When her art history professor asked her to come to his office hours to discuss her first paper—a silly one-page statement
about why she was taking the class—she couldn’t believe her ears. He said that just by her personal statement he could tell
she was special . . . she was one in a thousand students, one in ten thousand . . . deeper, more mature, not like the others . . .
she could have a real future in academia, if she wanted . . . she should come back and the two of them could just talk about
art together, it would be so refreshing to talk to someone who got it, he could make some tea and set up the projector so that Olivia could see Monet in large format, as it was meant to be . . .
She fell for it.
She told herself she wanted it. He was divorced, and Olivia was a legal adult, and if it felt a little icky, well, she was used to not feeling the right things.
After all, she wasn’t comfortable with her own peers.
Olivia’s sister, Emily, had died so young, Olivia had practically grown up an only child.
A third wheel to her parents. She did adult things with them.
They skipped Candy Land and went straight to Scrabble.
Skipped Disney movies and went straight to foreign films with subtitles, which they’d see together at various film festivals in Chicago, with cocktails afterward and a Shirley Temple for Olivia. Adults were her comfort zone.
When Professor Larkin said, You know you’re the work of art, it felt sweet. You were meant to be an artist’s muse. So painfully obvious in retrospect. When he touched her leg, it didn’t feel like she could say no. He’d been so nice, so
complimentary . . . She didn’t want to seem ungrateful, or accuse him of something that would embarrass them both.
Bennett was in Art History 101 with her. He sat behind Olivia for the first half of the semester. Then he moved down next
to her. She remembered—stupid Olivia—feeling so superior to Bennett. She had a relationship he could never comprehend. And
then, the semester was over and Professor Larkin told her they should pull back, Olivia was young, he didn’t want to cheat
her of the college experience.
“But I’m falling in love with you,” she said, to her shame.
He reached forward and tucked her hair behind her ear. “We’ve fallen for each other. But you have your whole life ahead of
you. It wouldn’t be fair for me to hold you back, Olivia. I’ve loved having the chance to mentor you, but . . .”
Is that what it was called, when she was face down on his desk in the blue light of the projector with her skirt hitched up,
murmuring no so quietly she figured he must not be able to hear her, so filled with shock at what was happening that she went completely
numb, because it was the only way to deal with it? Mentoring? Now she saw he was just ready for a new semester. Out with Olivia, in with the next mentee.
How strange that when he dropped her, she was actually crushed. Heartbroken. And Bennett . . . well, he was ready and waiting
to pick up the pieces. She only spoke of her recent breakup in vague terms, but Bennett was so compassionate. So earnest.
So soothing to her shattered ego. He was the first boy her own age she’d dated, and he would be the last, because she had
found the impossible—a boy who didn’t seem to notice her stiffness, her coldness, her awkwardness—and she’d be a fool to let
him go.
The first New Year’s party sealed the deal. Bennett took the train into Chicago, met Olivia’s parents, and then they took
the South Shore to Michigan City, where Phelps picked them up at the train station. Seeing Bennett with his friends—with Phelps,
and Doug, and Will—and poking their thumbs with the tip of the wine opener while they swore to celebrate the New Year together
forever—she’d found her miracle. She belonged.
In successive New Year’s celebrations, the feeling of distance came back. But that first New Year’s . . . it was like being
in love. Even now, when she remembered falling in love with Bennett, it was in the context of this very party. These very
people.
Fast-forward to party number eight, with Hellie going on about sexual assault. Olivia was twenty-nine years old, sitting slack-jawed
on Phelps’s couch, her breasts tender because they’d left their nursing seven-month-old at home, and listening with familiar
numbness as Doug’s wife unwittingly illuminated to Olivia a part of her past that had been comfortably hidden in the shadows.
She had not been in a consensual relationship like she’d thought.
The next year was so hard. She turned thirty.
She was so depressed she couldn’t make it through a day without crying.
Bennett thought it was the adjustment of becoming a mother and losing some independence.
But it wasn’t that at all. It was being confronted with the fact that she’d been groomed and raped ten years prior and hadn’t even known it.
What else in her life had she misconstrued? What else was she blind to?
Feeling guilty about her unorthodox fling, in a very strange way, had been easier than facing her victimhood. If she was to
blame, at least she had agency. But if she was powerless . . .
She looked at Professor Larkin’s bio on the university website obsessively. He was in his mid-sixties now. Close to retirement.
You should report him, her conscience told her. But at what cost? Olivia was now a young mom. She and Bennett were a dual-income family with a
complicated schedule. She would just ruin their lives with a legal mess. Be forced to relive one of the most painful experiences
of her life in front of strangers. The public would hate her. People would question why she waited so long to speak up. Her