Chapter 22
“So let me get this straight,” Anna’s voice drifts out of her walk-in-wardrobe to where I’m sitting cross-legged in the centre of her king sized bed, “he’s come to meet you after every night shift you’ve worked in the last two weeks?
To take you home? Then he just... checks your apartment and leaves? ”
“Yep.” I hug one of her decorative pillows to my chest while Anna shuffles around inside. The sound of coat hangers banging together lets me know she’s still rifling through her dresses.
“And he hasn’t tried to touch you again since you turned him down in your kitchen?” she asks skeptically.
“That’s right.” I don’t tell her that the sexual chemistry between us has been off the charts since then, though.
It’s as if spending that night together, as innocent as it was, broke down any walls I had up to fight off my attraction to him.
Being in Zayn’s presence makes me burn hotter than the fire of a thousand suns, and I spend most of the time squirming in the passenger seat of his car, thinking of nothing except how badly I want to slide onto his lap and ride him the whole way home.
Which would be a terrible, terrible idea.
Right?
“It’s like you guys are in a sexless relationship,” Anna continues as she re-enters her room with a handful of gowns thrown over her arm.
“He’s the perfect boyfriend, except that he won’t touch you.
The boy we knew has grown into a bloody adonis, and you won’t let him near you. I don’t understand it.”
“You know what it was like for me when he left.” I stare down as I fidget with the tassels on her pillow. “I can’t fall for him like that again. And he isn’t my boyfriend.”
“So you keep saying, but it sounds to me like he is, minus the perks.” She throws her loot down onto the bed before me and puts her hands on her hips. “You’ll look stunning in any one of these, but try them all on so I can decide. I’m in the mood for a fashion show.”
Anna tops up her wine-glass, then mine, then swooshes me off the bed so she can take my place, nearly sloshing her freshly poured red wine onto her cream bedspread. “Try the red one first.”
I scoot off the bed and pick up the red dress that sits on top of the stack. “Red isn’t my colour,” I say as I hold the dress up and take in the plunging neckline. “Where did you even wear this?”
“The accounts awards night.” She sighs dreamily, placing an elbow onto her knee and resting her chin in her open palm. “I slept with Scott, an accountant from our rival firm that night.”
“Hopefully after you removed the dress,” I laugh, making a point to turn the dress around and check for any suspicious stains.
Anna barks out a laugh and takes a large gulp of wine. “It’s been dry-cleaned.”
I undress down to my underwear.
“Tell me how you ended up with an invite to Zayn, your non-boyfriend’s, work gala tonight anyway.”
Shooting Anna a pointed glance, I slip the halter neck over my head and turn to face the floor-length mirror. “I told Zayn I was looking for an event space to host the Hope House fundraiser, and he suggested I come along to his work gala as a plus one to suss out the venue.”
“Riiiiight,” Anna says slowly, drawing out the single word like it’s a whole sentence in itself. “That doesn’t sound like the most obvious ploy to get you out on a date.”
“It’s not a date, it’s a work function. Hardly romantic.” I wrinkle my nose at the dress. The excessive cleavage is a bit much for a work function.
“Yes, but you’re his date.” She tilts her head to the side. “The cut of the dress makes you look like a bombshell, but you’re right, the colour is a bit too bright.”
I slip off the dress and reach for a slinky gold strapless gown. “I’m his date, it’s not a date.”
I pull the gold dress up and over my chest and turn in the mirror.
In the reflection behind me I see Anna raise a hand to her temple.
“Dear God, may this level of denial never find me,” she mutters to herself.
“Whatever you say. Too big for your waist,” she then tuts, waving a finger around my torso area. “Next.”
When I slide my arms into the thin straps of the next dress and zip up the tight white corset bodice, Anna lets out an excited yelp.
“Holy shit, yes!” she squeals, actually sloshing her wine onto her lap this time. “Fuck. You are going to bring him to his knees in this one!”
My hands glide over the tight, white fabric that hugs my hips then tapers off in a soft waterfall down to my feet. When I shift slightly, the tanned skin of my thigh peeps through the split and I agree the dress is perfect.
“You don’t think its too much?”
“What! No. It’s just enough, trust me. You are going to make a scene.”
This is Zayn’s work event. I don’t want to make a scene.
Anna sees the indecision on my face.
“If you don’t wear this dress I will no longer be your friend.”
I laugh and turn to face her beautiful, smirking face.
She adds, “You are a bloody vision. I’m thinking definitely hair down, a smokey eye and a red lip will just be the cherry on top of an already decadent cake.”
“Now I’m just hungry.”
Anna snorts and tilts her head to the side, eyeing me speculatively. “How come you didn’t raid your own wardrobe? You have way more gowns than me, literally made for you by high-end designers.”
Anna’s never questioned why I borrow her clothes every time we go out.
She’s right. I have an entire section of my wardrobe at our house dedicated to gowns I wore to Daniel’s award nights, club functions, and, of course, the Brownlow Medal night.
What Anna doesn’t know is that I’m too scared to return to my house with Daniel.
The dressing room that houses those gowns is the same room I was raped in.
I could never step foot back inside that house, and I’m not entirely convinced Daniel would let me walk back out again if I did.
I avert my eyes as I slide off the dress and pull my own clothes back on. “Those clothes aren’t me. Daniel chose them all, and as beautiful as they are, they just remind me of him.”
I gave her a milder truth that I could stomach sharing.
It’s not that I don’t trust Anna enough with the knowledge of the full depravity of my marriage, I just don’t think I could handle the overwhelming support my best friend would insist on offering if she knew.
Anna’s smart. She knows it wasn’t all that I portrayed it to be, but if she knew she would probably never let me out of her sight again.
I’m finally moving on from the past. I don’t want healing wounds reopened.
“He chose your clothes?” She eyes me cautiously, like she knows she’s heading down a rocky path.
“Yeah. He was a bit controlling like that.” I put the other dresses back on the hangers. “He controlled a lot of things when it came to me.”
“I suspected as much,” Anna continues tentatively, slowly rocking the glass between her hands. “What else did he control?”
Picking up my wine-glass, I perch on the corner of Anna’s bed and finally meet her concerned eyes. “Apart from what I wore?” I sigh. “What I spent my days doing, or more specifically, what I wasn’t allowed to do. What money I spent. Who I spoke to or spent my time with.”
Looking down at my wine-glass, I run my fingertip around the edge.
My cheeks heat with shame. “He expressed his distaste when I mentioned I wanted to catch up with you. He would give me the silent treatment for days if I even spoke your name. Then he would accept invitations on my behalf for coffee dates or lunches with other footballer’s partners.
As long as they were the ‘wholesome, loyal’ partners and not the ‘slutty attention-grabbers’, as he used to call them.
I think he knew that you wouldn’t condone the way he was treating me, and he didn’t want you to influence me to leave him. ”
Anna doesn’t answer and nervously I raise my eyes to hers, not knowing what I’ll find in them. I should find anger and righteousness. Probably even disgust. Instead, I see understanding and forgiveness as she reaches her hand out and rests it on my bent knee.
“He’s a fucking monster, G. I knew there was more going on, but I couldn’t get to you to ask you about it. You were always so protective of him.”
She doesn’t sound accusing in the slightest, and her compassion makes the back of my eyes burn with unshed tears.
“He was really good at making me feel like ours was a normal relationship, and he gaslighted me so badly I didn’t even realise I was being controlled so thoroughly.
Sure, I would get frustrated that I couldn’t see you, but even then he never outright said I couldn’t, he would just make me feel so bad like I was somehow betraying him by doing so. I was just so pathetic.”
“Hey!” Anna says firmly as she grips my knee tighter.
“Don’t talk about my best friend like that.
You are the least pathetic person I’ve ever met.
Not only were you abused by a fucking psychopath, but you pulled yourself out.
You’re the bravest, most resilient person I know.
He targeted you when you were vulnerable and he took advantage of you for too long.
I’m the pathetic one, I’m the one who should be ashamed,” her voice wobbles.
I’ve never heard Anna’s voice wobble before.
“I knew something wasn’t right and I didn’t do enough to help you. ”
I grasp her hand, which is still on my knee. “No, Anna, no. I didn’t want to be helped. I thought I was happy, and that Daniel’s protectiveness was just a sign of how much he loved me.”
I spit the last words from my mouth, anger rising like an active volcano in my chest. “The kicker is that deep down I knew it wasn’t right, I must have, because I never told you or my family the extent of how much Daniel was controlling me.
I hid it so well that even my own mother wants me to go back to him. ”
Saying the words out loud stings. Even though I hid the abuse from everyone, Anna knew something wasn’t right.
How did my own mother not see it? Was it because she wasn’t iced out of my life like Anna was?
Daniel was always the perfect husband to me around my family, but the signs were surely there.
Weren’t they? When I think about how much my family loved Daniel until he cheated on me, it makes me question my own relationship. Was it as bad as I now know it was?
Yes, Gianna. Yes, it fucking was. No one should have to live their life like that.
Anna launches forward and wraps her arms around me, some of her wine spilling down my back.
“None of it is your fault. You’re free, and neither of us will ever let it happen again, yeah?”
I squeeze my best friend tighter. “Yeah. I love you, Anna, and I’m so sorry I ever let him come between us.”
“I love you too, G. Let’s not discuss that stain anymore. You have a date to get ready for.”