The last time

31: Her

I guess I'm all you've got now. Danny's done. I saw that coming. He's really done with me. I feel like I owe it to you to clear up the timeline. Back in June I called Danny and told him I could be different. He told me I couldn't and I should have accepted that.
What ended up bringing us back together later that month was John coming to town. Danny spent a day with him and called me. He was feeling self destructive, he'd said and asked me to come over. I knew it wasn't smart but I couldn't say no to him. When I arrived, he was pacing on his front porch with a six pack talking on the phone with one of his little sisters. I heard him say something about being around John making him feel better about himself and smiled, but the smile faded when I realized he felt better around him because "being around a guy who talks about killing people and smiles makes you not feel crazy". John was a marine, and if you know someone in the early stages of a military career, you know that they look at things differently than the rest of us do. They have to. I didn't like that he used being around someone we were friends with as some sort of joke to make him feel better about himself. I didn't say anything though. That was June 29th. I would end up staying the night and going home in the morning only to come back later in the day on the 30th and spend the night again.
I guess there's more I'm not telling you though. This part is extremely important. We spoke on the phone the night before that first night I went over. When we were talking he told me one of the things he'd hated about dating me was that I always stood up for his father. Always tried to see the best in him. Danny's father was not the kind of guy that wins dad of the year awards. I'd heard stories from Danny and his sisters of the times he'd scream at them when they were children and would make them swear not to tell their mom because he was worried she'd leave him. I'd seen the man shatter a plate when he was angry once while Danny and I were in high school. He hadn't changed too much over the years, but one thing I always reminded myself was that the man had given the boy I loved a place to live when he had no where.
You see, Danny's parents split up sometime when he was younger and he ended up staying with his mother for a few years. She lost the home they were in and called his father when she wasn't sure where else to turn. She dropped off the three kids in Tennessee with their father and went back to the Midwest to look for a new place to stay. She was supposed to pick the kids back up in three days. That didn't happen.
What was supposed to be a weekend trip turned into months and eventually Danny's dad found a permanent home for him and the kids and enrolled them in school. This would end up being how I'd meet Danny. For that, I'd always be thankful to his father.
I said all of this to Danny that night and told him I just liked to see the best in people. He knew there was more to that though.
A few months back, it came up that something bad happened to me when I was young. Oh childhood trauma, I'm so glad you could make it for my new relationship. It was something I'd never spoken to anyone about. Not one word since the day it ended. When it came up months before, I told him that I didn't want to talk about it.
With a few poorly phrased comments that were intended to encourage him to forget what his dad had done when he was young, I brought Danny's mind back to that incident from when I was little. He guessed it. What had happened. If I told him no, I'd be lying. I couldn't lie about something else. I couldn't do anything. I couldn't even bring myself to give him more information than what he put together in his head. He asked questions that were impossible for me to answer. I couldn't believe we were talking about that. I couldn't believe I was talking about it. He cried. So much. I wished I could do something to make him feel better. I'd lived with that secret so long that I didn't know how to share it. I didn't know I'd end up comforting the boy I told. He asked if he could come over. He thought it was a conversation we should have in person but I didn't want him to come see me just because something bad happened to me 15 years ago. At the beginning of the call he didn't intend to see me again. Period. Hearing that my secret changed his mind felt so wrong and I hated that. I didn't let him come. We stayed on the phone for a while after that. Eventually we hung up and I went to sleep. He tried to call me 12 times that night. He couldn't sleep and was hoping we could stay on the phone for the night. Emotional exhaustion had already knocked me out though.
The next day when I apologized for missing his calls, he would make small conversation with me all day and eventually worked up to inviting me over.
So that fills you in some. July 1st would be the third night in a row that he would ask to see me, and I loved him so I went.
I can't tell you what went through his head on the night of July first. I can tell you we really were good at choosing dates that were easy to remember for all of the big moments. I can tell you the facts of the night. We sat back to back as he told me about his day. We each drank a few beers. At one point I sat on his lap and held up his chin so he would look at me. Eventually he got up and grabbed my cell phone. He wanted to look at the pictures of me from Bonnaroo. Needed to see what I was wearing, I guess. He looked at everything on my phone. The boy I kissed sent a message about a book. Danny looked at his entire page. Something I hadn't even done. He screamed at me. He knocked a beer onto the floor. He punched the fridge hard enough to dent it more than once. I hit my knee on the doorframe trying to get him to give me my phone back. I slept for maybe five minutes. I prayed for him. Out loud, my first time ever. He did too. I drove away from his house as he watched. I saw him close the curtain after I pulled out of the driveway. That was the end.