Total pages in book: 78
Estimated words: 74577 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 373(@200wpm)___ 298(@250wpm)___ 249(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 74577 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 373(@200wpm)___ 298(@250wpm)___ 249(@300wpm)
I’d brushed it off.
Plenty of men flirted with my coworkers.
But that Saturday, there he was again.
With more compliments and smiles, asking me about myself.
“Including, I might add,” I told Atlas. “My age.”
Atlas exhaled hard at that. “Let me guess, he wasn’t a teenager.”
At the time, I honestly wasn’t good at telling the ages of people who were older than me. It seemed like everyone in their twenties and thirties looked the same to me.
Though, yes, I knew he wasn’t in high school, that was for sure.
Maybe I should have also known that he wasn’t even in college.
But I’d been basking in the glow of his attention, eating up his compliments.
I found myself spending hours getting myself ready on the days I knew Joss would show up. When I got to work, I got all my side work done as soon as possible, so when Joss came in, I could spend as much time talking to him as I pleased.
Then, three weeks into his visits, it finally happened. He asked me for my number. And once he had it, he asked me out on a date.
Looking back, I wondered why my mom hadn’t asked me more questions when she’d seen me getting myself ready for the date, slipping on the casual dress I’d picked for the milestone.
But, of course, my mom was living in survival mode. And she likely just assumed that my date was of an appropriate age.
“How long did it take for you to learn how old he really was?” Atlas asked.
“The second month of dating,” I told him.
After that first date, my first date ever, where he’d taken me to dinner and a movie, two things I hadn’t been able to experience since I was little, and he’d kissed me—my first kiss—, he continued to come into the coffee shop on my shifts, but he also wanted to see me outside of work.
We were seeing each other every single day at that point. On the nights when I wasn’t working, I was out with Joss.
And two months in, he took me to his apartment. Where he showed me his old STEM trophies he’d earned in high school.
They’d been dated, of course.
And I’d been left to do the math.
Which told me that Joss was thirty-two.
“Jesus Christ,” Atlas said, shaking his head.
It didn’t occur to me at the time that he was nearly twice as old as I was, that he’d lived twice as much life as I had.
All I could think was that, here was this guy. He was mature and accomplished. A full-on adult. And he wanted little old me.
I’m sure it didn’t help that he’d spent months at that point telling me how mature I was for my age, how no one understood him like I did.
“Yeah,” Atlas interjected, “because women his own age saw him for what a loser he was.”
“Yeah,” I agreed, trying not to let that sting. Because I’d come to that conclusion many times myself. It was just the first time I heard someone else say it. Because this was the first time I ever told anyone about Joss.
And we hadn’t even covered the half of it yet.
That night was the first time Joss took me to his bed, stripping me without much seduction, climbing on top of me, and taking my virginity.
It was a nightly pattern after that.
And while the pain subsided, there was never any of the pleasure I saw in TV shows and movies.
Once, back before he’d gotten too much of a chance to beat down my spirit—aside from telling me I was ‘too fat’ and that while it wasn’t as noticeable when I was dressed, it was ‘not attractive’ when I was naked, which led to months of me starving myself to lose the weight—I’d asked him about our sex life, about orgasms for me.
His face had gone tight.
Then he’d told me that he ‘didn’t have all day’ to get me to come, and I could just figure that out on my own, if I wanted.
If I wanted.
As if sex wasn’t supposed to be something mutually enjoyed.
It was maybe the first time I learned that all that Joss cared about was, well, himself.
The thing was, I was young and naive. He was my first boyfriend. And I was, I thought, in love.
Over the next year, things continued on for us. Sneaking around because, I realize now as an adult, he knew what he was doing was wrong, and that if my mother found out how old he was, he could be in trouble.
The second I turned eighteen, though, I was moved out of my mother’s house, and into his.
That, of course, was when it really started to get bad.
The isolation was first.
My mother and I weren’t all that close at the time. She had also found herself a man, one who—once she was free of me—let her move in, which allowed her to work less.