Tessa's Escape to Athena's Ground(7)

                Tessa stopped, even though there was more to tell. Shawntay give her a long moment, and remained silent until Tessa continued.

                “I was still wearing the dress I’d worn to the movies. It was wet, and sticking to my backside. Kent said something about getting me out of my wet things so I wouldn’t catch a cold. Then he laughed, like he’d said something funny. He lifted me up a couple of inches, bent me over the top of the drier, and pinned me face down. He pulled my dress up and ripped my panties off. I could feel his erection against my backside, but when he used force to remove my underwear, I could feel it throbbing. Shawntay, he got off on violence, so I stopped fighting.” Tessa stopped talking. She felt frozen, as if she was once again pressed face down on her drier, waiting for something awful to rip her world even further apart.

                “Tessa?” Shawntay gently prodded.

                “He raped me.” Tessa began to cry again, but she spoke between sobs. “It felt like a knife, inside, and he kept at it and at it. He pushed into me so hard he knocked the drier all the way against the wall. As soon as he came, he pulled his clothes out of the drier, put them on and left.”

                “And you never reported him?”

                “That’s the thing I’m truly ashamed of,” Tessa said. “I should have called the cops. But I was so humiliated. I scrubbed myself with soap and water as soon as he left. And I stopped seeing men.” Tessa thought about David, and made a small correction. “At least face-to-face.”





-4-

                Tessa,

                I’ll be in New York for business next week. How about meeting someplace for a drink? Wine. Coffee. Gatorade…whatever. I really enjoy our email chats and would love to meet the person behind the computer. What do you say?

                David

                PS: no pressure : - )





                Tessa read the email a second time. If the mouse in her hand had been an animate object instead of plastic and microchips, it’d be dead now, strangled by the white-knuckle grip of the very nervous woman holding it.

                Since meeting men in the ‘real world’ was way out of Tessa’s comfort zone, and walling herself away like a celibate nun was incredibly lonely, Tessa dipped her toe in the brave world of online “dating.” In the last six months she “met” a lot of men and like Goldilocks, had little success until she found David, who seemed to be ‘just right.’ He was smart and funny and the perfect blend of interest without pressure. They had mutual interests in movies, books, and travel. Wouldn’t it be great if we met in Rome, David had once said. Trevi Fountain, Tessa replied, though even as her fingers typed, her head told her she’d never have the nerve to follow through.

                Tessa smiled, thinking of the ways that David seemed perfect, from little things like a shared distaste for cauliflower, to big things, like their take on politics. They had their differences, of course, but those, too, made Tessa smile. Tessa had tried to convince David that her alma mater, Northwestern University, was an athletic powerhouse with many conference titles under their belt. David countered that the measure of true college athletics was America’s Passion: football. And on that score, Northwestern had one of the worst collegiate records. His alma mater, on the other hand, was a football powerhouse, boasting a glowing record and an impressive list of superstars.

                Like OJ Simpson, Tessa had countered, grinning mischievously as she typed her reply.

                Touché, David had responded almost immediately, though he later asserted it was unfair to judge a century old football program on one bad apple.

                Tessa reread David’s latest email. Another read-through and she’d have it memorized, word for word. After her last phone follow up, Tessa had begged Shawntay to act as her therapist.