Chapter 12 #2
I shrug. “I was hurt by how it played out, but it’s kind of ancient history at this point. We all need to move on.”
“And moving on includes blasting me on social media?” Cooper asks. There’s an impish curl to his mouth, one brow quirked. He said it in a gently teasing way, but my hackles rise.
“We all say and do stupid shit on the internet when we’re drunk and see our biggest mistake’s face pop up in our feed.”
“You feel as though your time with Rylie is your biggest mistake? That seems worth talking about, Eva.”
My gaze whips to Roberta. “Jesus. I was hyperbolizing. I… It…” A small tornado of anxiety swirls up my arms and touches ground in my chest, sweat prickling at the back of my neck. I feel naked, exposed. I don’t want them to see these hideously weak spots.
I take a deep, measured breath, leg jiggling, eyes burning a hole into the fabric of the couch.
“My thing with Cooper was the first time I ever romantically pursued someone I liked. He was my first date. My first kiss. My first, uh, sexual partner. So, yeah, I didn’t enjoy being ghosted by the person I handed all those firsts to and I harbored some resentment.
But that doesn’t mean the whole situation is something I think about anymore.
I’m over it; there’s no need to harp on it or make it into this giant thing . ”
Liar , a voice hisses in my ear. It sounds a bit like Cooper’s.
“I didn’t know that,” Cooper says gently like he’s trying to soothe a skittish animal. “That I was your first for all of those things. Why didn’t you tell me?”
I scoff. “Would it have changed how you treated me?”
“It might have,” Cooper says, face etched with earnestness.
My sneer is pure acid. “It shouldn’t. Someone’s experience or lack thereof with relationships and sex shouldn’t be some metric to determine how shitty you can be to them.”
“It still would have been nice to know.”
“And it would have been nice for you to ask,” I say in a patronizing tone, throwing up my hands.
“No one likes to admit how inexperienced they are when they’re young and trying to impress someone they like; it makes them feel…
I don’t know, like they’re weird or sheltered or behind the curve.
I always felt like I was on shaky ground with you anyway, I wasn’t about to scare you off even more by being vulnerable and shit.
” I already felt like I was handing over way more of myself to him than he was returning; I needed some level of preservation.
“So, I didn’t tell you. I didn’t confide in you about my history because history wasn’t something we talked about.
Did I attach a lot of unnecessary meaning and emotion to all of those firsts?
Yes. Of course. I was a young girl desperate for male validation in any form I could find it.
But you also weren’t entitled to that information if you weren’t willing to hand over any of your own. ”
“Eva.” Roberta’s voice is kind, its tenderness dragging my unwilling gaze to hers.
“Before we continue, I do think it’s important to correct one thing you just said.
Your emotions and the meaning you attach to things that happen to you in your life are never unnecessary.
Attaching meaning and emotion to events is the most necessary part of living.
It’s your story. It’s your narrative to write and rewrite and revise as you see fit, but, at the end of it all, it’s yours . ”
“That kind of misplaced vulnerability is one hundred percent unnecessary,” I argue. “This entire ridiculous social media experiment we’re doing is unnecessary.”
“Then why are you doing it?”
Because I wanted vindication for my pathetic hurt feelings. Because every time I’m with Cooper he surprises me. Because I’m actually starting to like being around him.
“Because my job made me and I am nothing if not a meat puppet for the hands of capitalism,” I reply, crossing my legs and bobbing my foot.
Roberta looks skeptical. “Rylie?” she says, directing the question at him but keeping her eyes on me. “Why are you doing this?”
“Because I carry around my guilt like an extra appendage and I wanted a chance to make things right between us.”
My gaze snaps to his profile. He’s said it before—over and over—and it terrifies me that some naive part of me is actually starting to believe it.
Cooper looks back at me, pushing his glasses up his nose as he clears his throat.
“I get it. You don’t trust me. But for once, I want us to have a conversation of radical honesty.
No bullshit, no recordings, no confusion about if this is for our audience or for us.
I want us to talk , Eva. I want to listen to you. ”
My throat tightens, nails digging into the arms of the sofa.
I feel the sudden urge to cry. To run. To curl up in a ball on his lap and beg him to hold me tight.
I want to whisper every thought I’ve locked up in my head since I was a little kid because I knew no one would care to hear it.
But how am I supposed to trust it? Trust him ?
No one’s ever shown up for me before—not my parents or my partners or even my employers.
How am I all of a sudden supposed to believe Cooper is being authentic about wanting to listen to me?
I cough, trying to blink away the pinpricks of emotions behind my eyes.
“In the spirit of honesty,” I say when I think I can trust my voice.
Big mistake, it’s still hoarse and horrifically timid.
“I feel kind of uncomfortable talking about my hurt and emotions around the whole situation now that I know about what happened to his sister during that time. It makes my feelings on it all seem extremely trivial.”
Roberta nods, biting her lower lip for a moment.
“I can understand feeling like that. It isn’t easy to learn about someone else’s pain, then have to explain your own.
It can feel like the trauma Olympics and everyone loses.
But life doesn’t exist in a vacuum, and neither do our actions, even if they result from our personal experiences.
It’s okay to acknowledge that Rylie was going through a tremendous loss and grieving process and offer him grace.
But it also doesn’t do you any good to swallow your feelings altogether.
You were swept up in the storm of his grief and injured by the whiplash.
It doesn’t make you a bad person to admit that you were hurt by the actions of someone also hurting. ”
I’m silent, my heart ticking like a timer counting down an explosive.
“Is that something you feel like you can explore?” Roberta nudges when it’s clear I’m not going to make this easy for her.
I look down at my hands, cracking each knuckle with my thumb, pushing back my cuticles.
I ball my hands into fists, my nails digging into the fleshy pads of my palms. Cooper is giving me the courtesy of looking forward instead of at me, unlike Roberta, whose eyes feel like a physical weight.
“Yeah, we can explore that,” I finally mumble.
“Good,” Roberta says softly. “But know we can stop at any time. You’re in control here. You have the power to say whatever you need to, but also withhold if you don’t feel comfortable.”
I nod tersely, lifting my chin and tossing my hair back. “Right. Of course.”
“Why do you feel your relationship didn’t work in the past?” Roberta asks, ripping the Band-Aid right the fuck off and dumping some salt on the wound along with it.
I snort, leaning into petulance. “Like I said, there wasn’t a relationship. There was me mooning over him for a few months, some sporadic dates when he could be bothered to give me the time of day, about four minutes of really shitty sex, and an extremely successful ghosting. Rather cliché.”
“Now, I will admit that I am aware of the video you posted online about all of this,” Roberta says, giving me an apologetic smile.
“I’ve been discussing everything going on during sessions,” Cooper adds. I still can’t look at him.
“Yes, thank you for clarifying,” she says, nodding.
“It’s come up. It seems like that night, those four minutes of really shitty sex, as you phrased it, are actually quite a focal point for your hurt.
That evening seemed to have a ripple that we’re still seeing the effects of now.
You brush over it with flippancy but I wonder what details have stuck with you, Eva. ”
I remember all the details. That’s the problem.
I remember the night before too.
We’d gone to a crappy college bar that sold lukewarm watery beers for a dollar on Thursday nights and never bothered to card anyone.
The evening ended before nine, Cooper shit-faced and glassy-eyed, talking about his ex at a volume that got louder by the second, heads turning and girls laughing at my red face and his weepy voice.
I ended up paying the tab—an alarming total for how cheaply we were being served—and convinced Cooper it was time to go home.
With his arm slung heavily around my shoulders, we stumbled back toward his frat house.
We made it about a hundred feet before he started crying in earnest, blubbering about how much he missed his ex, how much he wanted them back. How he really thought he loved them.
Being shameless and jealous and nosy to the point of self-destruction, I asked who she was, but Cooper wouldn’t tell me, only shaking his head like a wet dog and crying harder.
Even when he slumped onto the porch of his house, eyes closed and face flushed, I couldn’t leave well enough alone, trying one more time for a name.