“Well he had a girlfriend. He kissed me and then decided he was in love with me and he broke up and then we made out and then I realized I was not okay with him… Then I discouraged him. He made up with his girlfriend and here I am”, I said.
Steffan really was shocked.
“Why don’t you just get into a relationship like a normal person!”, he said.
“I did try!”, I said and looked away.
“There is more right!?”, Steffan asked.
I shifted uncomfortably. This one was actually a hard thing to narrate.
“He was kind of older. Liked by everyone else. Seemed like a gentleman”, I said.
“But turned out he was a total creep. He tried to take advantage of me. He blackmailed me till I could not even believe my friends. Tried to take another girl by force while we were supposed to be in a secret relationship. And then tried to persuade people that he had just made a minor mistake and was in fact, in love with me”, I continued.
I could not look at him. The last one had broken me. It had cost me some of my friends. It had cost me a lot of time worrying about what was wrong with me that I had not been able to spot him for who he was from the beginning. It made me squirm at every choice I had made with him while we were together. Every time he had tried to coax me to have sex and I had tried to just satisfy him with a blowjob which he made me feel obligated to give. Every time he tried to make me feel guilty for having refused him sex. Every moment I thought that maybe I loved him before being completely disillusioned about him.
Steffan said nothing. He just stared ahead. He put the fishing rod on the ground and put his arms around me.
“I was there the whole time, Cassy… Every time. You could have just given me the motherf**ker’s address and I would have given him a … Piece of my mind”, he murmured.
I gave a weak smile. He pulled me to him and hugged me tighter.
“It was hard because he was supposed to be good. Everyone thought he was the definition of a gentleman”, I said.
“He was not, was he?”, he said.
I found myself telling it all to him. About the blackmails. About the way he used to be when we were together. I had kept quiet and had decided to lose my friends rather than tell them the truth. Now I found herself telling Steffan everything. All the while, he just held me tighter and stroked my hair.
Without knowing it, the sky was changing color. Suddenly, someone came to the clearing. Before we could spring apart, our guide informed us that it was now time for the campfire and that we’d better have caught something.
Even after the guide had gone back, I couldn’t bring myself to detach myself from him. It was not just physical. That afternoon, I had felt like we had been united from our very core.
He took the fishing rod and stood up. I collected my stuff too. I felt a little put down as he had drawn away but as we started walking side by side, he put his arms around my waist again and our hands just naturally intertwined with each other..
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