Emma González was in love with Danny Murphy. Most people say that being in love means falling head over heals for every inch of the person; their hair, their eyes, they way the smile, they way they walk, the way they move their bodies, the way they breathe. But what Emma González was in love with was the part of Danny Murphy that hated every inch of her. She was in love with the hatred he held inside for her, the one he developed only hours after meeting her.
While some may say Donald Trump rules our country, it's really technology that rules the world. The Wii was and still is a video game system that sparked the fire that possibly burned our lives to the ground. On one of the first nights we met our new friends, we played the sports resort game on the Wii, awaiting the day we could get a better game to play.
Emma was teamed up with Danny for frisbee dog. The competitive spirit that ignited inside her fueled her motivation to beat the other team in the harmless game. Or so we thought it was.
While knowing next to nothing about Danny, I quickly picked up on the spirit that ignited inside him, and it wasn't competitiveness. Danny got a twisted rise out of watching people suffer. Which was the very first problem.
He intentionally set his and Emma's team up to fail and she caught onto it rather quickly. Still determined to win, she set up her own plan.
When Danny's final turn came around, Emma proudly claimed that she would be playing for the both of them from there forward. She demanded he sit out and let her take his turn.
Another thing we didn't know about Danny was that he was incredibly violent and stubborn, a horrid combination. Of course he didn't just tolerate Emma's suggestion, he fought it. And by it, I mean her.
The two went head to head over the Wii remote. I know I know, how immature. They both got a solid grip on it and fought like children, tugging and pulling at it. It didn't take a minute for Danny to release one hand's grip from the remote and latch onto Emma's arm. His nails dug deep and straight through the flesh of her arm, an immediate trigger that cost her the remote.
So yes, Danny did take his turn on the game. And as for Emma, she was offended and pissed to the bone. But whatever, right? It's not the end of the world. Just the first phase of the beginning of the end.
Ever since the whole remote fiasco, Danny was brutally rude to Emma. He was even harsh at times. And the rest of this friends had no way of controlling him or his erratic behavior. It was something they were all horribly used to. And therefore something we'd all have to get used to. And boy, did we ever.
While it was somewhat problematic that Danny was constantly picking on Emma, our real problems didn't start until the night Emma confessed that she had a blooming crush on Danny. To formally begin the timeline, that was the night of April 13th 2018. It was also the second phase of the beginning of the end.
We all tried to talk her out of it. Getting involved with Danny was a absolutely horrible idea. His friends vouched for his selfishness, violent behavior and inability to feel anything for anyone. She was bound to get hurt. Not to mention that he didn't return the feeling.
The next morning, Emma texted me and thankfully claimed that her little crush on Danny had practically faded. He was still outright rude to her. In fact, he dumped a nasty blue cup full of all different sauces and juices we used for liars and chickens in truth or dare all over her. And that wasn't even half of the nasty shit he did to her.
Phase three of the beginning of the of end started the night we all decided to get Danny drunk to somehow talk a confession out of him as to why he was so brutally cruel to Emma.
Drunk Danny was a fucking mess. That boy was thirteen years old. His alcohol tolerance couldn't have been worse. He was wrapping himself around people who continuously pushed him off. Me being the loving, accepting person I was, I let him come sit with me and my best friend, Cameron. I let him use me as his full body pillow. I've definitely been more comfortable in my lifetime, but I'd also been more uncomfortable than I was in that moment too.
Danny reached his arm across me, over Emma and straight at my other best friend, Emily Grusky. She didn't know what to do, she high fived him for a second but he pulled away from some kind of dissatisfaction or something. Emily was relieved.
He reached his hand over to Emma and shook it until she high fived him like Emily did. But instead of pulling away when their hands connected, he entwined his fingers with hers and held on tightly. Danny's best friend, Chase told us that he was craving attention and affection from whoever gave it to him the least. Which explained his choice to hold onto Emma.
Chase also mentioned that Danny wouldn't confess shit in front of such a large group, and we physically couldn't disentangle his hand from Emma's. I decided to let Emma switch places with me and we'd leave her alone to beat the confession out of him. We all parted our own ways until the next morning.
It didn't take long for the rest of us to piece together what happened. Danny's hands wandered to places they probably shouldn't have. And Emma's three hour crush on him from the previous week made it unbelievably hard for her to stop him. And things went from there.
"You weren't a virgin, were you?" I asked Emma the next day.
"Nah, I had full on sex all the time with my ex-girlfriend."
Well, that was a relief. Emma later explained that the following morning, she prayed Danny would have no recollection of the events of that night and luckily he didn't.
He did remember eventually. And that started the budding romance. Once Danny's pride let him admit that he remembered it, actually did it and felt something for the first time in his life about an actual person.
We were all so certain that he would end up hurting her. Abby and Chase told us he was a diagnosed psychopath, and was incapable of love. And Emma was the exact opposite of that. She was already in so deep before Danny even knew what was going on.
Eventually they fell into a pattern of having sexual interactions on a regular basis. Because my house was the main hangout, they always took over my bedroom and kicked me out to do the deed. The first night, it happened unexpectedly on the couch. Fine by me but apparently too public for them. God forbid Kate and William not have their royal privacy.
The problems they had in their relationship were messy. It was the drastic differences between the two. Emma was loving, caring, fighting for justice and against violence. Whereas Danny was uncontrollable, irrational and could act violently and had no ability to control it. Their morals were on different continents. I'm surprised it lasted through April, May and June. They had so many fights over that time. They were at each other's throats whenever they weren't getting it on in my once precious bed.
Danny became attached to her, something science and the world of medicine and psychology couldn't explain. It was impossible. But he did it. He felt it. She was his solid ground. He was both physically and emotionally connected to her at the hip. He needed constant attention and reassurance from her. He was always worried she was gonna leave him.
But it was Emma that admitted to feeling unheard and overlooked by Danny. She admitted that she felt he was using her for stability, depending on her like a child depends on a mother.
"He loves me because he needs me, not because he wants me" Emma told Cameron and I.
I knew she didn't see the whole picture. Danny was more obsessed with her than she was with him. And she knew it. She knew he'd never leave her, that his security depended on her loving him back. She knew she had him wrapped around her finger and she felt no need to fight for his attention.
But at the same time, she felt misheard. She felt like what was bothering her wasn't important to him. What was going on with her, her hopes, fears and experiences didn't matter to him. She only mattered to him to the degree that she affected him. That's how she felt. But in reality, Danny just didn't know how to express how much he loved and cared for her. He couldn't communicate with her about her own problems.
The communication issues between Emma and Danny was phase four of the beginning of the end. These issues led to something so much more dangerous and destructive than anyone could ever have imagined.
