Myopia

The first time your roommate touched me, I stayed up most of the night scrolling through the contacts app on my phone.

The roommate's color-changing light bulbs gave the apartment a glow that made the room feel fake. Somewhere beneath my skin, there was something human. Something innocent. Something real. Something that needed to be loved.

I met you in September of our freshman year. A month later you, my first boyfriend, moved into an on-campus apartment with eight other guys. There I was, an 18-year-old, practically living with eight guys in apartment 4317. They liked movie nights, mixed drinks, string lights, Marvel, and dark rooms that resembled a 1920s speakeasy in a hangover of inescapable desire.

Through those eight guys, you met your best friends.

Through those eight guys, I met my rapist. 

They were all film majors, so they decided to write a script and film a movie in their apartment. They called it Myopia. The story of an awkward boy with a major crush on a girl. But the boy’s best friend pursued the girl at a party before the boy had the chance. I don’t think they meant for the film to tell a true story.

For their first scene, they transformed the apartment into a bar, pretended there was a bartender, pretended he was twenty-one, not twenty-three, and pretended that the water in our red solo cups was vodka. They played electronic dance music, turned off the lights, and pretended for the next two hours, that all of it was real.

Over Thanksgiving break, the roommate started Snapchatting me more than you ever did. Christmas break, I FaceTimed you to tell you about the roommate. I was sobbing but you shrugged it off. So I did the same. You defended him. December. January. Back on campus after winter break. February. Marvel Night. Mixed drinks. Midnight.

            “Is crumbl girl here yet,” one of the guys asked.

            “Crumbl girl?” I asked.

            “She brings us cookies every Friday when she’s off work,” he said but didn’t look at me. “It’s midnight, she’ll be here soon.”

The ledge beneath the window became my home in that apartment. Every other chair was already taken. The sounds of their voices moved around the room in slow beats that never carried much weight. A navy-blue couch was pressed up against the ledge, and I’d dangle my feet over the back of it, pretending that I had a place in that room. Every so often, you reached your hand up to me to say I’m right here, love. Or were you making sure I was still there? Now, the sound of your voice moves in my head slowly, like a lie, but I’ve never needed to believe it more. The subtle rise and fall of all the roommates’ voices were the only proof of life in the room.

            “Can we watch something?” one of them asked.

            “Yeah, that sounds fun,” I said. No one looked up at me. That was the only time I spoke.

            “Not right now, let’s just listen to music,” another said.

A slow indie song played through the television speakers. I held a drink in my hand, something I’d joke about with friends I’d make later, but at the time it felt like an anchor. I didn’t know where the drink had come from. When the lights were off, I saw glimpses of faces I did not recognize. LED lights lit the tops of the cabinets that were lined with empty alcohol bottles, each one a reward for a successful night. To me, they looked like bodies who had lost their lives in that room. There was something eerily perfect about the way they were organized, while everything beneath them fell into rhythmic chaos.

The screen illuminated the roommate’s face, and that’s the only time I remember seeing him clearly. He had blue eyes, blond hair, and liked to get drunk before 4 p.m. Whenever he offered me a drink, I took it. He made good drinks. I met the roommate when I needed a friend, and he figured out how to be one.

You went to bed at 2 a.m. Why didn’t you take me with you? Wednesday night was therapy Wednesday. We sat in the living room and pretended to have adult conversations. An hour passed. 3 am I wished I’d gone to bed. But I was desperate for their approval. They were listening to me; just that one time I felt like I had a place in that room. One by one they went to bed. 4 am.

The night the roommate touched me, I opened your door to the sounds of Marvel superheroes traveling through time portals, throwing punches, and spitting satire. I sat down and realized for the first time that night that fear had coughed its way back up into my throat. Something ached. Something in my body felt like it had been broken. My stomach felt like it had been pushed in by something unnatural. The chair by your bed was hard, cold, and unwelcoming. I could’ve woken you up, but with no past evidence that you would protect me, I let you sleep.

Rain fell outside the window, but I couldn’t hear it and longed for the days when I could. I crawled into bed and faced the wall. If it were any other night, I’d have faced you at least for a while, then turn over subconsciously in my sleep. This time, I turned away before I fell asleep.

One Saturday morning in March, I fell asleep on the couch behind you. You let me rest. One leg over the other, I hid my bruises and bite marks. Later that night, I put on a dress and makeup, covering more than I ordinarily would. I walked down the hallway past his room, but he wasn’t there. I thought I was safe. The final fragments of daylight had turned into a hazy yellow glow after the rain stopped. I walked into the living room, and every muscle in my body ached. I did not notice that pain was trying to tell me something. He was sitting on the couch.

            “Wow, you look amazing,” he said. I didn’t say a word. You came out minutes later and took my hand.

We all drove two minutes off campus to our favorite Hibachi restaurant, Okami's. Eating at Okami’s was a three-hour event.

Someone at the table said, “we’re drinking when we get back, right?”

            “Yeah, we have to get shitfaced, it’s a Saturday night.”

            “Y'all are in, right?” one of his roommates asked, pointing at Zach and me. You looked over at me. I stared back at you and shrugged.

            “I don’t know,” Zach said.

            “Oh, come on, Zachary,” they pleaded with him. “It’ll be fun.” I never called him Zachary. As soon as we arrived back at the apartment, someone turned on a slow indie song and put a shot glass in my hand.

I took it. In the living room alone, I opened the window and stuck my finger through the gap. It was cool. The air felt like freedom. They stood in a group around the counter laughing. The roommate took another shot. You watched him. When they moved into the living room, I put my shot on the counter, hoping no one would notice that I never took the second shot.

The roommate sat on the ledge with me and played footsie under a blanket. You smiled at me, and I smiled back because if I didn’t, you’d know something was wrong.

There was something ritualistic about the way we took shots. They insisted on cheering to something each time, as if taking shots like adults made us older than we were.

The fire alarm flickered twice and blared as it did at least once a week. We all walked outside. Midnight, an hour after the end of visiting hours, I wasn’t supposed to be at the apartment. You and I were going to step out the front door, take a walk, and come back in an hour, when we could sneak back in.

            “It’s fine,” the roommate said. “Just hide behind me.”

The roommate never wanted me to leave. The only person who ever wanted me to leave was you.

I didn’t know how to tell you how scared I was. I’d spent nights on that navy blue couch, my head on your chest, understanding what love was for the first time since I was ten years old. I fell in love with you over and over again in that room, but a part of my body still lives in that apartment. A part of me is still sitting on the ledge watching the rain putting the world around me on mute, and I’m still not sure if it's the part of me that loved you or not. To me, that room was the only place our relationship felt real.

I used to wake up to the smell of whiskey every morning crawling through the apartment like a hangover headache. My body shook. I was covered in sweat, despite the cold air. Rapid breaths rose in my throat, catching themselves on the dry, tarnished pavement of my body, and then falling to rest. I wore your favorite tank top, now stained by his hands. You were sleeping.

I waited two months to tell you about that night and two weeks later, out of desperation I had to tell one other roommate.

I attended counseling sessions for a year, retelling the story of that night until it felt like a lie. But pain is loud and demands to be acknowledged. I believed it was always the roommate's word against mine and I told myself no action could be taken. Words don’t always have as much meaning as I give them. I had no evidence. Only the hurt of living with a piece of my body that had rotted in his hands.

I see the roommate everywhere around me, sometimes I put him in front of me, a mental image. Other times he’s just there because he always used to be. There are days, sometimes weeks that go by that I don’t remember you because to remember you I have to remember the roommate too.

A couple of days after everyone in the apartment found out what the roommate was doing, one of them, the only other girl who spent time in the apartment, called the counseling center, hotlines, and campus police. I had told my story five times by 3 a.m.

 The next day was move-out day. My parents arrived at 9 am.

My mom wanted to walk on the beach before we left campus, but I couldn’t leave. You took my hand.“I’ll go with you,” you said. You were holding my hand the way you always did, but something about it felt like the last time.

I sat in the backseat of my mom’s car on the way back home, feeling like I’d been demoted to a child-like state of insignificance. My parents knew the story, but we never talked about it. I told my brother when we got home, but he didn’t believe me. He said it was my fault and that I could’ve stopped the roommate if I had wanted to. The fact that we were drinking didn’t matter. I had to write my brother a letter three days later. After he read it, he gave me a hug. That was the second time in two years I’d seen my brother cry. We never talked about the event again.

The roommates filmed the final scene of Myopia a month before freshman year ended. A scene that implied sex between two actors. And the boy, who was played by Zach, and his friend, who was played by the roommate, had a fight over the events of the party.

“Alright, cut,” one of the roommates said, “that’s a wrap.” Scattered clapping and cheers spread through the room. Someone turned the lights back on. They filmed the final scene in Zach’s room on Zach’s bed. My first flashback to the night the roommate touched me.

One final dinner. One final night drinking in the apartment. Pretending we could do something other than watch the wasted nights fall to the linoleum kitchen floor. One more shot. One more chance to prove we were more than two people who only knew how to love one another when we were with each other. You were filming a project for your film class. You were laughing.

That was my last night in apartment 4317.

At the beginning of sophomore year, we both moved to off-campus apartments in the same complex. For months, I’d open my eyes at night and see the roommate in the corner of the room, or feel his hand tightening around my neck. (He “thought I’d like that)”. I’d sit up, noticing that the lights were off in the living room, but I’d still hear remnants of laughter and smell old drinks from the night before. You’d wake up with me and tell me he wasn’t there. Because he wasn’t; we were in a different apartment. How did you know who I saw? Then you’d say, “Come here baby, I've got you.” You’d kiss me and we’d fall back asleep in the middle of the bed.

I still saw the other roommates every day for the next six months. The new apartment had a ledge too, and they set it up the same way: the alcohol bottles on the cabinets, the LED lights, the music. One of those bottles had my name carved in the glass. I was just one of the bodies.

A year and a half after we met, 6 months into sophomore year, you decided we were both unhappy. You were right.

You didn’t need to say anything, I already knew. Looking back, it feels like you did it for both of us. You left that night without a word. I went after you but by the time I got outside, you were gone. What I didn’t realize was that you were finally running away from us instead of acting like you wanted to stay. The only thing that felt the same was the Wilmington wind that curved around me, blurring my edges.

I have to ask, where did you go so fast?

Kiley Woods is a creative writing major at Eckerd College on Florida's Gulf coast. She has designed and published two books of poetry and her work has been published in diet water, Pomegranate Lit, Portals Magazine, and elsewhere.