Blue eyes blinked through the bright sun that slipped between the open window and the blinds of Jude and Thom's bedroom. Thinking it was late morning from the luminosity of light that filled the room and reflected on the grey walls, Jude was surprised to find that it was only 8AM.
And yet Thom was gone.
Sitting up rapidly, Jude felt her entire body come alive with adrenaline. Heart rate, respiration, overall energy increasing.
Did he leave?
And by leave, Jude meant gone. Forever. Moved out.
After what had happened last night, she wouldn't be surprised. But she found herself terrified at the thought of Thom leaving her, at him breaking their eight-year relationship that had always run so smooth. What was it about this city, this place that they were in, that poured on what had previously been a warm and dry relationship? She felt the need for an umbrella to protect her from the troubles that had ensued in only a matter of weeks since she and Thom had moved here.
Thom's side of the bed felt cold. Like he had been gone for a long time-like he was never really there.
Jude stood, watching her hands shake as she held them at her sides. Thom was organized. He never left his things laying around like Jude did. Their room was decorated with notebooks and pencils and hair elastics and perfume bottles laying on any surface Jude could find. But Thom didn't have much to leave around, and he kept the things he had tucked away, obscured from view, and secured.
She opened the closet. Relief washed over her-a flood of air she exhaled deeply-as she saw all his clothing still in the closet. And then she walked quickly into the bathroom, and found his toothbrush, his razor, his comb. Everything where it was supposed to be.
In the process of searching for Thom's belongings in the bathroom, Jude caught sight of herself in the mirror. Just above her tender jawline, a circular bruise had formed. Its shade was dark blue-not at all a soft colour.
This wasn't uncommon.
This happened to a lot of couples.
As Jude stood in front of the mirror, her bare feet cold against the white tiles on the floor, goosebumps gradually growing upon her forearms and neck, she tried to convince herself of several different things.
It was alarming, yes. It's alarming when anyone hits you-it doesn't matter who. But it wasn't Thom's fault. It was the mixture of the stress of his job, the change of the city, and the booze he'd been drinking seconds before it happened. It wasn't his fault, but it wasn't Jude's, either.
She didn't provoke him. She knew this, and yet she had a hard time believing it.
As she squeezed toothpaste onto her toothbrush and held it, shaking, to her mouth, she fought the urge to find a statistic on how many girls are abused by their boyfriends. Surely there would be a number somewhere online.
But "abused" was the wrong word. It had only happened once. Thom hadn't meant it. He wasn't a violent man-Jude had never seen him angry before a few weeks ago. What had happened last night was a one-time thing, a rarity. It would never happen again.
What Jude wanted was to talk about it. To sit down with Thom, their nervous bodies separated only by their kitchen table that was barely broken in, and discuss what had happened. Like adults. Like a proper boyfriend and girlfriend.
She knew that wouldn't happen.
But she could still hope, like she sometimes hoped that Thom would burst through the door after his shift, a smile on his face the moment he saw her. She wished he'd pull her into his arms and hug her tightly to him. She missed the scent of his skin, his hair; the taste of his lips.
What had happened that had made him so distant? Jude was starting to forget simple details about a man she slept beside every night.
The lump in her throat made it hard to swallow her breakfast. She wasn't very hungry anyway. She decided that if she could make something good out of what had happened between she and Thom last night, she would.
Jude stood in the mirror for a half hour, ensuring that the bruise was fully covered by several thick layers of foundation. Then, she grabbed her notebook off of the coffee table and left the apartment.
-
Jude made sure to be home before Thom was. She wanted to straighten up the house. Suddenly, the things that were normally scattered on every surface there was to possibly place something were tucked away in the drawer of her nightstand, or stacked neatly on top of their shared dresser. The kitchen was clean of any dishes, Thom's dress shirts were laundered and hung in their respective positions. A cup of warm tea was waiting on the kitchen table for him.
Jude couldn't shake her fear that he wasn't going to come home. That he'd head to a bar, a club-somewhere Thom would never go-and spend time without her. And not just without her. With another girl.
But that was ridiculous. Thom had always been honest with her. He told her everything she needed to know, and nothing more. He had his secrets, but so did Jude. The difference between them was that Jude felt guilty for not sharing hers with the man she loved. With the man she planned to spend the rest of her life with.
Keys in the door. Thom only carried a single one, so there was never any warning. When Jude came home, her chain of multiple keys that she really didn't need to carry around anymore created a symphony in the palm of her hand. The metal chimed and chimed as she struggled to find the small apartment key, and by then, if you didn't know that Jude was home, you must have been deaf.
But like everything about Thom, his key was quiet. In and out of the lock. The door open. The slipping off of leather shoes. All of it nearly silent. If Jude wasn't listening for it, she never would have known that Thom had arrived.
"Hi," said Jude. Tentative. Testing out the waters. "Tea."
Thom nodded at her, long hair falling in his eyes. He brushed the curls across his forehead in a single, swift motion, and took the tea from the table. Having cooled off already, he gulped it eagerly, and set the empty mug back on the table.
"Thank you," he said. No warmth, not like the boiling water Jude had boiled specifically for him. Instead his tone was cold. Like the chilled air that wrapped around your body the minute you stepped outside, threatening to hold you-to never let you go.
Jude cleared her throat.
She leaned against the counter, watching Thom scroll through his phone.
"How was work?" she asked.
And when he looked up at her, she searched his eyes for any sign of remorse. Or apology. Or guilt.
She found none.
But then again, Thom's eyes had started to look different ever since they had moved. Once affectionate and amiable, the emerald seemed evil. Bitter and rigid. Eyes of a snake that show no indication of regret as they move upon their prey...
Jude cleared her throat again. Any distraction to stop her swelling thoughts.
Does sleeping in the same bed each night make you a couple? Jude couldn't rid herself of replaying the past days' events of she and Thom dancing around each other throughout the apartment. They avoided conversation and eye contact at all costs. There was too much tension, and the only way around it was to directly discuss the bruise.
If it was anyone else, Jude would have no problem bringing it up. Small but fearless around people, she wouldn't have been scared if it wasn't Thom. But it was.
Add him to her growing list of fears.
Heights, the dark, losing her parents. Her boyfriend.
Almost a normal list of fears.
So much for being fearless.
She was afraid that bringing up the bruise would cause another. Jude didn't mean that metaphorically. She was very well aware that talking about what Thom had done could leave her with a mental scar-in that it may cause Thom to leave her. But what she was more scared of was him hitting her again, leaving another bruise that she'd have to cover up, that she would have to hide from him and the rest of the world.
She couldn't hide it from herself. She felt it all day, every day, underneath her makeup. Like it was tattooed on her skin. She felt strange sensations of wanting to scratch it off, to peel off the skin and get rid of it. The visibility of the thing was driving her insane.
Five days. Five days since that night-since Thom shattered glass between them; glass that Jude never wanted to exist, because she wanted herself and Thom to be inseparable.
Jude was beginning to realize that no matter how many fragments of glass she picked up off the floor, she'd never be able to fix what Thom had done. Instead, she'd keep hurting herself.
It was his fault. His fault that he hit her, that he broke her trust and was making her think this way. His fault that she couldn't fix it because she was now terrified of him.
His fault that she could barely sleep at night, fearing for her safety.
His fault that all the poems she had written in the past five days centred around a broken heart and broken bones, her words coated black and blue like the skin on her cheek.
It was turning yellow now. Uglier than it had been when it first appeared. Even when it finally faded, Jude didn't think she'd ever be able to unsee it.
And yet, she still didn't want to leave Thom. Because despite everything, she believed that this was just a rough patch that would blow over. They had never experienced anything like this in their eight years of being together. They didn't know how to deal with it because they had never dealt with anything like this before.
She still loved him.
And even with her own skin screaming that she should run, run, run, and never come back, she stayed.
-
Monday. A break. Thom had gone into work early again. Jude decided it was because if he went at his regular time, she would most likely be awake and out of bed, and they'd have to do their awkward routine of avoiding each other.
Jude didn't want to think about how quickly her relationship was plummeting. She chose instead to be oblivious to the problems they were enduring-she simply wouldn't think about it. Every couple had their ups and downs. Thom and Jude were just taking a quick detour through rock bottom. They'd re-surface soon enough.
Too cold to walk the two blocks over to the cafe, Jude spent the day on the couch with her novel. She thought about finding a part-time job. All she wanted to do was write, but she knew it was going to take a long time. And if Thom decided to leave her...
Freeze. Jude reminded herself not to think about that specifically. Thom wasn't going to leave. He didn't have anyone to run to, and the Thom Jude knew didn't like to be alone. And wouldn't survive on his own. Besides, she rationalized, if he was going to leave, he would have done so already. If Jude had been the one to hit him and leave, she would've left on the night the bruise formed, not when the bruise was beginning to turn back to the tan shade of her skin.
As she lifted her feet to set them on the coffee table, she noticed a pen that didn't belong to her. Silver, with the name of Thom's mother's dance company she managed on the side. Jude had never seen it before.
Thom had gone to bed after her last night. Perhaps he'd been writing before he crawled silently into their bedroom. But writing what? Thom had never liked writing-Jude didn't think she'd ever seen him write anything that wasn't school-related-and he always seemed to tease her about her own writing.
He'd be mad if he realized he had left it laying around. He'd be furious if he realized that Jude suddenly contemplated whether Thom wrote for fun, for relaxation, for stress-relief...
Jude picked up the pen, took it into their bedroom. Thom kept the things he had brought from Kenora in a small shoebox under their bed. That was all he brought other than clothes. Jude had packed a handful of cardboard boxes containing journals, photos of her and her friends from high school and college and her family. She packed up her whole life and brought it with her. If Thom had done the same, he hadn't lived much.
The box was dented at the corners. A thin layer of dust sat on the top, and Jude blew it off, watching the particles cascade through the hollow atmosphere of their bedroom.
Opening the box, she was surprised to see a few pens resting on top of a notebook. It was brown, with a leather cover. Pages had been torn and now hung out of the sides lazily, all stained with black ink.
Jude lifted the notebook, not bothering to look at the small number of items that had been buried below it. She felt like she had won something. A prize. A key, maybe. That would unlock the mystery that was Thom. The mystery that she had thought she'd known so well, but now wasn't so sure.
The cover was heavy. All of it was heavy. But she could see, from the pages sticking out, that it was barely full. Opening the journal, she quickly skimmed through the pages. Only a few pages were filled with words, but the ones that were had been written in from top to bottom, margin to margin.
She landed on the first page, and let her eyes rest there.
She began to read.
I don't think this is a very good idea. I've never really liked writing - never been that great at it, I don't think. (Not very good at anything...) The school counsellor told me to do it. He is a nice man, but he makes me nervous. I don't like telling people things about me - especially these things. He told me to write about them. He bought me the journal. If only he hadn't seen me after basketball practice. Then he wouldn't know. But he told me it doesn't matter because he isn't allowed to tell anyone about it anyway. That's what he said. I don't know if it's true. I'm not supposed to write about that, though. I'm supposed to write about my dad, and what he does
Jude was interrupted before she could finish reading half of the page. She wasn't entirely sure what she had just read-didn't have time to process it-before the journal was snatched out of her hands.
She felt the strong grip of the hands she had held so many times in her life. They had been her safety. Jude knew Thom's hands like they were her own. She may have even known them better than her own.
Thom pushed her to the side, grunting. Jude hit her head on the corner of his nightstand-not hard enough to become dizzy, but enough to sting. Or maybe that was her heart.
Because she had been hit by Thom, and now she had been pushed, too.
She didn't even know what was happening. He did it so fast. Pushed her out of the way, slapped the book closed. He shoved it back in the box, along with the pens and a necklace that held a small cross in the centre, and a photo of his family.
Jude wasn't sure if she saw it correctly. Maybe she was hallucinating because of the bump that was now forming on her forehead.
Thom stood in a line with all of his younger siblings. He smiled, and so did they. Behind the kids were his mother and father. Both their faces had been scratched out with red ink. And so had his.
What the hell is that supposed to mean?
Jude scrambled to get up, to compose herself. "I'm sorry," she said, "I was putting your pen back, and I just saw it. I didn't see anything, I promise."
"I told you not to touch my stuff."
"What?" Jude was slightly out of breath. It must have been the rate at which her heart was beating. Her body was electric with panic.
"That day you wore my shirt. I told you not to touch my stuff, Jude." He didn't meet her eyes. He didn't even look at her.
Maybe he felt bad for shoving her. Maybe it had been an instinct to protect his journal from her eyes. Jude suddenly felt angry that she hadn't finished reading it, because now she was curious. But she was also angry at herself for reading it in the first place. That was a complete invasion of privacy. She was uncovering secrets that Thom wanted to keep in the dark. She had to respect that. She understood it herself.
"I'm sorry," she repeated.
"Will you just shut up?" Thom turned, jaw drawn tight, eyes wild. Jude had never seen them like that. He was a predator; he had smelled his prey. He was about to pounce. And Jude, like a deer caught in the headlights, froze. "Just shut up for a second, please. God, Jude! You ruin everything..."
Again, What the hell did that mean?
Jude couldn't think of anything else to say. Maybe she shouldn't have said anything at all. But she did, because she was Jude, so she mumbled a faint, "I'm sorry, Thom. I love you."
Thom laughed. Like he had when Jude told him about her poetry book.
Like he laughed at everything Jude loved.
Was he now laughing at himself?
And then the room turned cold. As if someone had opened a window, and the winter breeze blew inside, draping Jude and Thom's shoulders like a coat. Snowflakes decorated the walls momentarily before freezing. Jude shivered. Thom's eyes narrowed, blinking through the frigid air. His heart too cold to warm him up.
The forest fire had ended.
Replaced with an ice age.
A punch. A second. A third. A fourth.
Rib cage. Forearm. Shoulder. Stomach.
Jude lost count. She lost sight of her body. It wasn't long before she was watching herself, out of her body, abused by Thom.
She withstood the pain. She welcomed it. Let it come. There was no point trying to fight against Thom. He was taller, stronger, angrier. She couldn't win against him.
Instead, Jude waited for it to be over. Waiting was the hardest part. She didn't care about the bruises and the blood she would have to cover up. She didn't think twice about the pain that people wouldn't see from the outside-the nest of betrayal and hurt and brokenness that would be buried deep inside her blood.
She just waited.
And when it was over, when Thom was breathing heavily and he seemed to have had enough, she stood back, and then she leapt into action.
It took all the energy she had left in her body to push him out of the room. She was thankful that their bedroom door locked.
She'd be losing a lot of her stuff. Her favourite mug, her kettle. Leaving Thom and the apartment meant losing so many things she had brought from Kenora. Most of all, it would mean losing herself.
She couldn't afford to think that way now. Packing her things into a small duffle bag, she found herself surprised that her eyes were dry. Her entire body hurt. Her mind hurt, her heart hurt. Everything inside and outside of her ached.
Clothes, her journal, her photos, some blankets. She didn't know where to go. She had nowhere to go. But she couldn't stay here.
She deserved better. She deserved way better.
Thom was crying. The door unlocked, Jude stepped out, and found herself once again fearless.
It was the first time she had seen him cry.
"No," he said when he saw her bag at her side. His crying gave her enough time to grab her favourite mug and novel from the coffee table. "Don't go," he cried, "you can't go. I can't-Jude, no."
There was a time in Jude's life when this would have made her stay. Undoubtedly. But she hurt too much. There was nothing left for her here except shattered glass and cut skin.
She looked at Thom for the last time.
Sweat dampened his curls, he pushed them back, and his eyes were soft again. He looked like Thom. Not a snake, or a monster.
That's not what he looked like. But that's what he was.
Jude wasn't scared anymore. She threw her winter coat around her shoulders, stepped into her boots, opened the front door.
She never looked back.