“Yeah, I’m sorry about that too.”
“Anyway, he caught me in the hallway coming out of the toilet and pushed me into one of the bedroom’s, and well, you know the rest. I’d never been in that situation before where someone was trying to basically rape me, and no-one there tried to help me. They probably would’ve thought that I wanted it because they always saw John with you and me together. That maybe I was just fooling around on you while you were away playing football.”
“Well, it’s good to know that you can defend yourself at least. I hope his balls still hurt to this day. So, what about your story?”
“Well, I met my ex Simon when we were both at college in our sophomore year, we started dating and we got engaged about a year after we left college. We got married about two years after that.”
“So, you were dating for a few years before getting engaged, then it took a few years before you married, why did it take you guys so long to tie the knot?”
“I don’t know, I like to think now that perhaps we both knew it wasn’t meant to be or something, that maybe we were settling for what we had at the time.”
“You loved him though, right?”
“Yeah in the beginning, but probably like your relationship we started slowly drifting apart with each year we were together. I think we finally got married because we were trying to save our relationship in the end, also with all the pressure from our family and friends as well. We only lasted about six months, the marriage I mean.”
“So what went wrong? Did you guys just decide to end it?”
“No, he lost his job, then didn’t like his new job. He was drinking more, then he started getting violent.”
“Really? Did he start hitting you?”
“First it was verbal, then a few pushes and shoves. By that stage I was ready to leave, then he punched me one night when we argued. I can’t even remember what it was about, but he came home drunk and angry, then just started on me like I was there to take out his frustrations on until he ended up hitting me. It was late so I demanded he sleep on the couch that night, then the next morning he started on me again, then he hit me again. That was it.”
“Did you go to the Police? Guys that hit women will usually do it again, they need it on their records so when the next woman complains, they’ll know.”
“Yeah, I did. I got a restraining order placed on him and he was forced to move out. I haven’t seen him since that day.”
“Well, I’m sorry you had to go through that, both with John and Simon. I hope your other boyfriends treated you well.”
“You’re my only other boyfriend, and you’ve treated me well so far.”
“So, you never dated anyone else in college until you met Simon? Surely there would’ve been guys after you the whole time.”
“There was, but I was still getting over you at the time. I didn’t want to go out on dates or anything. I just did my studies and hung out with my girlfriends. They’re the ones that were pushing me to start dating the following year, I was getting a lot of nun references, Mother Madeline was a favorite.”
I chuckled at that, and Maddie hit me with a pillow.
“Tell me Joe, do you think that you’ll ever forgive John for what happened? He is your twin brother after all.”
“No, I can’t see that ever happening. Even forgetting for a moment about Susie, or you. It’s that he would do that to me, that he betrayed my trust like that. I’ve thought about this a lot since Susie left, that even though he was my twin brother, we were never good friends. Maybe if we were identical twins it could have been different, but we’re nothing alike. He was always there with me, but I never enjoyed hanging out with just him, we would always be with other people. And my friends, my girlfriends, he would try to have for himself. Looking back, I realized that I never really like him at all, that if he wasn’t my brother, I wouldn’t have been friends with him.”
“What’s that saying Joe, that you can choose your friends, but not your family.”
“Yeah, but it’s hard when your family is always there with your friends. Mom and Dad expected me to take him everywhere with me, to always include him. Don’t know why he never wanted to do his own thing, have his own friends. That’s a big part of why I joined the air force, I could finally be rid of him.”
“Well, you’re rid of him now. Let’s go to bed Joe, I need to snuggle for a while.”
“Hold on, you said we should talk about this stuff so we could learn from it, what exactly did we learn?”
“Don’t fall in love with shitty people I guess.”
“Is that it? That we made bad choices about the people we loved?”
“That and don’t ever settle for second best maybe.”
“Okay, that I can go with. Well, I’m going to take my first choice, best ever girl to bed then.”
Maddie leaned in and kissed me on the lips, then stood and held out her hand, leading me to the bedroom.
The next few weeks went much same as the last few, but I was now struggling to remember what life was like before I was back with Maddie. I felt so at ease with my life, maybe this is what being truly happy and in love is like. Maddie came with me last weekend to have lunch at my parent’s, with both my Mom and Dad delighted to see her again. They were also glad to see how happy I was, that I had moved on from Susie.
This week I had moved all my stuff into Maddie’s place, as we were basically living together at this point already, it just seemed pointless for us to be paying for rent twice.
It was still a bit under six months since I legally separated from Susie and filed for Divorce, however Maddie’s divorce had just been finalized some eight months after filing, so hopefully I only had a few months to go as well.
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