Page 61 of Cain

“It’s the middle of the week.”

“That it is,” I agreed.

“I don’t get the appeal,” she said. “Admittedly, I didn’t have a lot of friends in high school, so I didn’t really experience house parties.”

“You were a cheerleader but you didn’t have friends?”

“I was a very disliked cheerleader,” she explained. “Some teen girls can be really catty.”

“What about after high school?”

“After high school… I was planning a wedding. Then being married.”

“Wait. What? How old were you when you met Perry?”

“Literally just turned eighteen.”

The hairs on my neck pricked up.

“How old was he?”

“Thirty-one.”

“That’s fucked up.”

“It was all… legal.”

“Nothing changed about you—mentally, emotionally, maturity-wise—from the one minute you went from seventeen to eighteen. Just because it’s legal doesn’t mean it’s right. You were a girl still.”

“You were married right out of high school.”

“To someone as young and dumb as I was,” I agreed with a little huff of a laugh. “That was a grown-ass man with a mortgage and a 401k latching onto a girl who couldn’t even drink yet. Who probably hadn’t even voted yet. The law might say otherwise, but there’s something sick about a man who wants to fuck someone just barely old enough to not end him up in jail.”

“I never saw it that way.”

“That pre-frontal cortex hadn’t fully formed yet.”

“Yeah. I mean, in retrospect, I can see why it wasn’t right. Women Perry’s own age, who had careers, educations, or just the basic self-esteem that comes from fully developing into adulthood, likely never would have put up with what I did. Would have seen the red flags sooner and maybe would have gotten away.”

“He took advantage of your lack of experience.”

“Yeah, definitely. I think he thought if he got a woman young enough, he would be able to mold her into what he wanted me to be. The perfect wife or whatever. And I tried to fit that mold. I really did.”

“Did you try to fit it or did he keep trying to force you into it until you fit?”

The pause before she spoke was all the answer I needed.

“The latter, I guess.”

“You wouldn’t have had to try if it was what you were meant to look like.”

“Yeah. I can see that now. I mean, no matter how many diets he put me on, my body refused to stay the size he wanted.”

The diets he put her on.

It was one thing for her to have a vision for her own figure, to have a goal in mind and work toward it in a healthy way. It was a complete other for her spouse to force his ideal on her.

“If you weren’t what he wanted, he should have left you alone. Because, trust me, there are men who will like exactly what you look like naturally.” I slid a hand over her hip. “Me included.”