K. Randis - Spilled Milk

Well im glad. Need to go for now but im looking forward to seeing you.

I switched my phone to silent as I heard Jason’s car pull in the driveway. I fanned my face and waited for him to come into the living room while I tried to regain my composure.

“You’ll never guess what just happened,” I said not giving him a chance to take off his shoes.

Beyond already having Jason as my best friend, I cherished that I could tell him anything. Even if it was something he didn’t want to know.

Jason studied my face. “You okay?”

“You know how I’m watching Gina’s dog?” I explained the Facebook message and text messages in one breath. When I finished Jason shifted his weight on the couch and clasped his hands together.

“So, what are you going to do?” he asked.

“What’s wrong? Why do you look so sad?”

“I used to ask you what you would do if he ever apologized, said he was wrong and wanted you back. I used to ask if you would go back to him.”

I nodded, “Yea?”

“And what did you always say?” When I didn’t respond after a minute he finished his own sentence. “You always used to tell me he would never apologize, so it didn’t matter for you to answer the question.” He rubbed his knees and smiled. He was so brave sometimes. “Well you finally got what you wanted, so now what?”

I asked myself the same thing for the next week. There had been so much between us at that age, and I wanted his family for my own, I loved all of them. But Jason was there for me when he was supposed to be, and he never walked away, even when I would have understood if he did. I loved Jason, too.

When I pulled into Paul’s driveway and saw his car I had to catch my breath. There were so many things I had to say I wasn’t sure I knew where to start. I knocked and when he opened the door I almost didn’t recognize him. He had half a beard traveling down his face and he towered over me. I reached up on all toes to give him a hug and planted a kiss on his cheek.

“Come in.” His voice was gruff and he pulled the hood from his sweatshirt over his head. He kicked his feet up on the coffee table and sat on the couch. I sat on the adjacent couch next to him and crossed my legs.

“How are you?” The awkward silence was intensified by the wavering in my voice.

He nodded and flicked a crumb off his sweatshirt.

Both of us stared at the blank TV for what seemed like hours. I crossed and uncrossed my legs and cleared my voice several times, but nothing ever came out. He looked at me, once, and raised an eyebrow.

We had shared a common beginning. At fifteen we thought we knew what love was and ran with the feelings that were new to us. I loved him, but it always seemed like we would be on different chapters in life. At this point, it seemed impossible we would ever be parallel. It seemed like no benefit would come of going backward, and in all honesty, I was a little angry that it took him comparing me to several other failed relationships before realizing I was what he needed. Jason always knew, right from the start, that I was special.

It was unfortunate, the way we had to part ways when we were so young, and I guess I would always wonder about a lot of decisions I made in life. I couldn’t go back and change them, we weren’t the young teens we were back then, and if the good pieces of our relationship weren’t enough to keep us together in the first place they wouldn’t be enough to keep us together a second time. Maybe, love isn’t enough. If that’s even what we had.

Paul stood up, looking at his phone. “I gotta get back to college. Roommate needs his key.”

“You’re still taking classes?”

“Yea. Failed a few.”

I nodded and stood up. We had absorbed each other’s company in total silence for over a half hour, neither of us completely sure why we were there in the first place. I wrapped my arms around his neck to say goodbye and buried my cheek into the side of his face.

He didn’t move and we dragged out the embrace. When he pulled away and looked down into my eyes, all I could do was fake a smile to keep myself from crying. He walked out the front door and I resumed my position on the couch to listen for his car to pull away. I was finally able to let go of the idea of Paul.

I was happy in my marriage, more than happy, and that’s where I wanted to stay. I was sure that somewhere down the line he would meet someone and she’d be lucky to have him, but I didn’t know him anymore, I knew Jason. I loved Jason, my husband. I thought back to the night Paul told me that I would never find anyone as good as him. He was right; Jason was so much more.

Paul and his family would always have a special place in my life. It seemed like a pattern of wrong time wrong place with Paul and I, and he didn’t owe me any explanations or apologies, but he did it anyway.

I was so grateful for that.

My old professor Dr. Russ saw me on the news one night working an event for Women in Crisis and called to ask if I would accompany him to a meeting at the local courthouse where I used to go to college.

“I was asked to speak to the domestic violence policy group and I thought you would be perfect as a guest speaker.”

“Okay great, what exactly do you want me to talk about?”

“There will be a lot of judges there, lawyers, courthouse personnel, that kind of thing. I want you to give them an inside look to what it’s like to go through the system. Tell them what was right, what was wrong, see if they can make any procedural changes or give any ideas to help children cope within the system.”

I was impressed with the idea. “That actually sounds great, I’d have a lot to say. Do you know how many people will be there, so I know?”

“Not too many. Maybe around ten, fifteen. I’ll send out a memo that you’ll be there as a guest speaker, see if we can get more people to show up.”

The room was packed with over forty people. Court personnel made up the majority of the population but there were also social service workers, some politicians and even a funeral director. The room encompassed all types of people whose jobs were impacted by domestic violence. The empowerment in the room was electric, and I folded several note cards over in my hands as Dr. Russ introduced me. My hands trembled as he turned the floor over to me.

“First I’d like to thank Dr. Russ for bringing this meeting to my attention. I think it’s great there is such a thing as a domestic violence policy group and I’m more than happy to help everyone here understand what it’s like to go through the system as a child.”

I cleared my throat. “This is actually the first time I’m talking about these things, out loud, to people who aren’t jurors or a judge. I’ve never talked publicly about my own experiences before.”

Everyone’s eyes were locked on mine. I addressed some of the latest statistics on domestic violence and how so often children become silent victims when they witness a parent being abused. “My mom was never physically abused by my dad, but my siblings and I were.”

I told them that more than half of teen relationships were domestically violent. “It’s just in a different way. Boyfriends control who girls talk to, or who they text and they think that’s okay. Girls think it’s okay to punch a guy in the arm or scream in his face or scratch him. It’s normal for them to call each other names that are degrading or hang up on each other in the middle of a conversation. Teen dating is a breeding ground for adult relationships and if they don’t realize that what they’re doing now is wrong, they’ll carry that over into their relationships as adults and it only escalates from there.”