He nods and helps me back into my shoes. He pulls off his jacket
and wraps it around me, then we walk out of the hospital without
anyone noticing.
He says nothing to me as we drive. I stare out the window, too
exhausted to cry. Too in shock to speak. I feel submerged.
Just keep swimming.
- • •
Atlas doesn’t live in an apartment. He lives in a house. A small suburb
outside of Boston called Wellesley, where all the homes are beautiful,
sprawling, manicured, and expensive. Before we pull into his
driveway, I wonder to myself if he ever married that girl. Cassie. I
wonder what she’ll think of her husband bringing home a girl he
once loved who has just been attacked by her own husband.
She’ll pity me. She’ll wonder why I never left him. She’ll wonder
how I let myself get to this point. She’ll wonder all the same things I
used to wonder about my own mother when I saw her in my same
situation. People spend so much time wondering why the women
don’t leave. Where are all the people who wonder why the men are
even abusive? Isn’t that where the only blame should be placed?
Atlas parks in the garage. There’s not another vehicle here. I don’t
wait for him to help me out of the car. I open the door and get out on
my own, and then I follow him into his house. He punches in a code
on an alarm and then flips on a few lights. My eyes roam around the
kitchen, the dining room, the living room. Everything is made of rich
woods and stainless steel, and his kitchen is painted a calming bluish-
green. The color of the ocean. If I wasn’t hurting so much, I would
smile.
Atlas kept swimming, and look at him now. He swam all the way to the
fucking Caribbean.
He moves to his refrigerator and pulls out a bottle of water, walking
it over to me. He takes the lid off and hands it to me. I take a drink
and watch as he turns the living room light on, then the hallway.
“Do you live alone?” I ask.
He nods as he walks back into the kitchen. “Are you hungry?”
I shake my head. Even if I was, I wouldn’t be able to eat.